BOOK REVIEW: The Woman in the Castello by Kelsey James

I received this book for free from Netgalley. That did not influence this review.

The Woman in the Castello by Kelsey James is a newly-released slow-build mystery/horror story set in Italy a generation after WWII.

Silvia Whitford is an Italian-American actress desperately in need of a break. An unwed mother with a two-year-old, she is also supporting her mother who is slowly dying of cancer. In order to allow her mother to die back in Italy, Silvia must make her way in a country she has never really known.

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, her mother has an estranged sister who lives in a crumbling castle. An Italian production company in need of a castle in which to set their horror film hires Silvia to be the star–and to secure permission to use her aunt’s castle.

At first, it seems like a dream come true. Her co-star is a long-admired handsome film star. The supporting actress is eager to be Silvia’s friend. And the show’s “fixer,” a man named Paul, is gorgeous, kind, strong, and interested in a relationship. 

Unfortunately, everything quickly goes wrong. The castle is reputed to be haunted. And strange happenings seem to bear out its reputation. Silvia’s aunt disappears and Silvia fears she has been murdered. The director is a bully. Her co-star is a sexist pig. And even her new friend is not entirely trustworthy. When Silvia starts to doubt Paul, she begins to question if it really is everyone else in the wrong or if she is imagining things.

The stakes rise as accidents threaten the production and no one takes Silvia’s concerns seriously. Is the castle truly haunted? Or is one of her coworkers a murderer?

This atmospheric novel is a bit slow-paced for a thriller and the love story, to me, seemed a bit banal, but I did love the setting. There is also an intergenerational family drama twist. And fascists. Maybe the novel was trying to be too many things at once, but I wasn’t as drawn in as I expected to be. I’d be interested in what fans of gothic horror think, since it mostly seems to be a ghost story in the setting of a horror movie. 

BOOK REVIEW: Here Goes Nothing by Steve Toltz

I’ve been suffering from a bad reading slump. I was stuck in a historical novel that I really should have liked, but it just seemed to drag on forever. I was reading a couple of pages every few days and struggling. I finally gave up. To get out of my slump I needed something entirely different.

I chose Here Goes Nothing by Steve Toltz. It couldn’t be more different from my usual fare.

The narrator is Angus Mooney, a petty criminal, who happens to be dead. He had a terrible childhood – abandoned by his parents at age three, then in and out of foster care. He ended up making ends meet through property crime, drug dealing, mugging, and possibly accidental murder. He drifts without purpose through life until he meets Gracie, an ebullient, sarcastic wedding officiant. He falls in love.

Unfortunately, Owen, a man dying of an incurable brain disease, also falls in love with her. He murders Angus when Gracie is a few months pregnant with Angus’ child. Owen has already moved into their house, and now he makes his move on Gracie.

Sounds horrible, right?

Angus is in the otherworld. He’s mortified to learn that there even is an otherworld because he has never believed in anything. And now he has to navigate a new existence, which is regrettably similar to his old one. It’s hard for him to get his bearings.

Meanwhile, back in the land of the living, a new epidemic is quickly exterminating the human population of earth. Gracie is dealing with the end of the world, pregnancy, widowhood, and the slow death of the man who has invaded her home, and to some extent, her heart.

It should be a morbid horror story. It is, and yet it is also very funny. The ironic voices of Angus and Gracie, as well as their strangely awful yet compelling personalities, make this a fun read from start to finish. Even if ironic, dark, apocalyptic literature is not your favorite thing, this is well worth the read.

BOOK REVIEW: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

Having so enjoyed Henry James’ lengthy novel, The Bostonians, I thought I could easily squeeze in another back-to-the-classics challenge read—James’ The Turn of the Screw, which was my choice for classic novella.

This is a classic ghost story, set up by a narrator who promises an ugly, dreadful tale and has his audience quivering with anticipation. However, it’s more than your typical round-the-campfire scary story. The participant, a governess, is sent to a remote estate to care for two orphaned children by an attractive wealthy man who is their uncle. The uncle’s sole request is that she never bother him with any details. Anxious to earn his approval, she sets out to obey.

The young children are uncannily beautiful and well-behaved, but there is the odd circumstance that the boy has been expelled from school for reasons the headmaster did not make clear. The governess is unable to believe the boy guilty of any wrong-doing, and his goodness is corroborated by the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose, who has known the children a long while.

Not too much time passes before the governess begins to see apparitions: an evil man and woman who she can describe in such detail that Mrs. Grose recognizes them to be Quint and Miss Jessel, the uncle’s previous valet and the children’s previous governess. Both these people are dead.

While it’s possible (and as been proposed by some literary critics) that the governess is simply insane, there are too many things that point to her credibility as a witness.

She tries to protect the children from these evil influences, but becomes aware that the children are, in some way, in collusion with the ghosts.

Bravely, the governess tries fighting back against the ill-intentioned specters (just what their intentions are is left deliberately ambiguous) but her attempts to win control of the children has disastrous results.

To a modern reader, this book is not as terrifying as it might have once seemed, but it is still eery and full of suspense. I’m not a big fan of horror, but this one, superbly written, is worth the read.

BOOK REVIEW: The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

I’ve never read anything by Neil Gaiman before, but I see his name and his books around everywhere and felt that I needed to see for myself why his books are so loved. In particular, The Ocean at the End of the Lane has been receiving such positive buzz that I finally got a copy from the library. However, once I held the book in my hands, I was hesitant to start reading. Scary stories can creep me out. I do most of my reading in the evenings, and I didn’t want to read something that would unsettle my sleep. So I saved it for the weekend.

The book is short and a very fast read, so I was able to finish it well before my bedtime. And in fact, it would have been all right either way. It wasn’t as creepy as I feared.

The narrator returns to the site of his boyhood home in order to attend a funeral. His home has long since been razed, but it isn’t his house that he has come to see. Leaving the other mourners to wait for him, he drives out an old country lane to a farmhouse that he hasn’t seen in many years, the home of a girl he knew when he was seven and she was eleven. The girl is Lettie Hempstead. She lived with her mother, Mrs. Hempstead, and grandmother, Old Mrs. Hempstead. Lettie is no longer at home, but one of the old women greets him. She sends him down to the old pond that Lettie used to call her ocean. He goes to sit awhile and think.

While he sits there, he recalls and narrates the strange and terrifying things that happened to him when he was seven. They are otherworldly and worldly and include all the things that would terrify a seven-year-old boy–things that are frightening to grown-ups as well. His world dissolved around him and the only thing left for him to trust was Lettie.

It’s a spellbinding story, full of interesting images and nasty creatures that aren’t evil, they just are what they are. It reminded me a tiny bit of some of the stories in Nikolai Gogol’s The Collected Stories. Things that scare us are timeless.

YA BOOK REVIEW: NEVERMORE BY KELLY CREAGH

When I learned that another Louisville YA author had a debut book being released this year, I googled the name Kelly Creagh. Her upcoming book was titled Nevermore. The premise intrigued me: a paranormal teen romance that derived its creepy chills from the master of creepy chills—Edgar Allen Poe. I thought: what an awesome idea. I’ve always been a huge fan of Poe.

Still, I wasn’t entirely won over by the blurb. This is how goodreads starts off:

"Cheerleader Isobel Lanley is horrified when she is paired with Varen Nethers for an English project, which is due- so unfair- on the day of the rival game. Cold and aloof, sardonic and sharp-tongued, Varen makes it clear he’d rather not have anything to do with her either. But when Isobel discovers strange writing in his journal, she can’t help but give this enigmatic boy with the piercing eyes another look."

All right. So it sounds like— take a popular cheerleader add a romantic "dark" male hero and stir in some ghosts or something. Could Creagh take the promise of Poe-type horror and deliver in a teen romance?

I had to find out. And I’m thrilled to say the answer is yes.

Despite the stereotypical-seeming set up: pretty cheerleader-obnoxious football player-troubled goth boy triangle, the characters don’t come across as stereotypes. Isobel is a witty, strong, well-rounded character. She is considerate of others. She even continues to care about her obnoxious football player boyfriend after he proves himself a jerk who deserves to be dumped. (Not in a powerless I-can’t-get-over-the-jerk way, but in an empowered completely-over-him-but-he’s-still-a-human-being way.) Isobel comes across as real and as likeable. As does Varen. He’s aloof and sardonic, yes. But he’s also funny and earnest. And, he is also troubled. Beyond troubled. The difficulty arises because he wants Isobel in his world but knows he has to keep her out of it.

Isobel and Varen work together on an English report on Edgar Allen Poe. Varen is a bit obsessed with Poe. Isobel is gradually pulled into Varen’s sphere and learns things about him that are...unsettling. Nightmarish. Like something out of Poe.

Creagh made this work for me because of the way she made it work for Isobel. She didn’t plunk Isobel down into the midst of insanity that Isobel just accepts. Her very real, concrete world was taken over little by little. The line between the real world and this other world blurred until it disappeared. It was very creepy. Very Poe-like. And I am now a very big Kelly Creagh fan.

Check back tomorrow for my very first giveaway – a copy of Nevermore in celebration of Halloween!