#Carrie by Stephen King #Horror #Thriller #Paranormal

Carrie
by Stephen King

Publication Date: April 5, 1974
Doubleday Books
199 Pages

Genre: Horror, Thriller, Paranormal

I first read Carrie as a kid many many years ago. It's funny how you read things as an adult and get such a different feeling from a book. Stephen King has always been one of my favorite authors of all time, but as I grew older my tastes in books had changed. I was on a strictly crime fiction reading regimen for the past several years and began to get bored as it seemed almost all the books were sounding the same. So I decided awhile back to go back to my roots so to speak and start reading/rereading genres I had enjoyed in the past. And boy, I am so glad I did! Now I'm reading a lot of fantasy and horror and almost makes me feel like a kid again. I'm getting excited now to begin reading a new book or series which is something I have been missing for some time. Soooooo.... I decided to start reading Stephen King books in chronological order which brings me to this review.

Reading Carries as an adult made me think a lot more about how we treat people. It also brought back some not so good memories of my childhood where certain kids were always the ones being picked on and bullied. I'm ashamed to say that as a kid I rarely had the courage to take up for these poor kids. I did however raise my own kids to do what their mom didn't. I would like to believe I did a good job doing that as my kids do speak up and step in when they see someone being mistreated.

I loved rereading Carrie because there were so many things that I had forgotten. I can barely remember things that happened yesterday let alone things that I read over 30 years ago. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and am excited to keep going with more King books and have even begun starting a Stephen King hardcover collection. I know some complain about King books with bad endings but in my opinion Carries wasn't one of them. The ending to me in this one was great. I would recommend reading Carrie. 4 stars!!

#BookReview for And No Birds Shall Sing by E.A. Clark #BlogTour @EAClarkAuthor @Joni2345zb @rararesources #ParanormalThriller #Thriller #SupernaturalSuspense

Thanks to author E.A. Clark and Rachel's Random Resources for hosting the blog tour for And No Birds Shall Sing. 

And No Birds Shall Sing by E. A. Clark
 
Genre: Supernatural Suspense / Thriller

Publication Date: October 24, 2018

Publisher: Crooked Cat Books
My Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
 
Potential Trigger Warnings:The book contains topics such as miscarriage, attempted suicide, infant death and murder.

Purchase Links

UK https://amzn.to/2Mvmbey

US https://amzn.to/2noxGJO  

https://www.crookedcatbooks.com/product/and-no-birds-shall-sing/

 

Not all spirits rest in peace…

Following a personal tragedy, a recovering Grace Clements relocates with her husband and daughter to an old cottage in idyllic rural Oxfordshire. As the family integrate into the seemingly benign local community, they learn unsettling facts about the cottage’s dark past. Grace quickly becomes uncomfortably aware of a menacing presence within their new home.

Stumbling upon a neglected cemetery, Grace and her daughter discover the graves of the house’s previous inhabitants, including those of nine babies. Dismayed to find herself pregnant, Grace suspects she has awoken something truly evil in her new residence. She develops a creeping sense of unease as she unravels the disturbing truth about the history of the cottage and the fate of its occupants.

Who is the sinister boy watching Grace and her family? Are there malevolent forces at work? Or is the mentally fragile Grace heading for another breakdown?

A spellbinding paranormal thriller from the best-selling author of Lay Me To Rest. You may want to keep the lights on…

My Review: 
5 out of 5 stars

This is my first read by E.A. Clark and what a creepy one it was. I totally loved it and so glad I was able to take part in the blog tour during the Halloween season.

I really enjoyed the story. I really felt bad for Grace at the beginning of the book and as things begin to happen at the cottage they just bought the creepiness factor goes way up!! I loved the realistic dialog between characters. The book wasn't gory but did had lots of  creepiness and suspense. The author was able to hold my attention throughout the book. Thanks so much to author E.A. Clark and Rachel's Random Resources for providing me with an ebook. I highly recommend this one. 

Author Bio

Elizabeth Clark was born and raised in the Midlands, where she continues to live with her husband and son, plus an assortment of pets. Much of her formative existence was spent with her head in a book, and from an early age, she grew to relish the sheer escapism afforded by both reading and writing fiction. Putting things on hold for a time to raise her three children, she has resumed her fervent scribbling.

She has a love of antiquity and a penchant for visiting old graveyards, often speculating on the demise of those entombed beneath. Whilst she has written short stories and poetry for many years, a lifelong fascination with all things paranormal culminated in her first novel for adults, ‘Lay Me to Rest’, published in September 2017 by HQ Digital.

‘And No Birds Shall Sing’, to be published by Crooked Cat in October 2018, is her second foray into the realms of the supernatural.

Social Media Links

Twitter handle -  @EAClarkAuthor ;

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/elizabeth.clark.779857

Goodreads – E.A. Clark - https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17100457.E_A_Clark

BookBub - https://www.bookbub.com/profile/e-a-clark

#BookReview for Flesh by Laura Bickle #YA Horror #Paranormal #Fantasy @Laura_Bickle @Joni2345zb

Flesh by Laura Bickle

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
 
Genre: YA Horror, Paranormal, Fantasy

Book Description: 
 The dead are easy to talk to. Live people, not so much.

Charlie Sulliven thinks she knows all the secrets of the dead. Raised in a funeral home, she’s the reluctant “Ghoul Girl,” her reputation tied to a disastrous Halloween party. But navigating her life as a high school sophomore is an anxiety-inducing puzzle to her. She haunts the funeral home with her parents, emo older brother, Garth, their pistol-packing Gramma, and the glass-eyeball-devouring dachshund, Lothar.

Chewed human bodies are appearing in her parents’ morgue…and disappearing in the middle of the night. The bodies seem tied to a local legend, Catfish Bob, who has resurfaced in the muddy Milburn river near Charlie’s small town. When one of Charlie’s classmates, Amanda, awakens in the cooler as a flesh-eating ghoul, Charlie must protect her newfound friend and step up to unravel the mystery…and try to avoid becoming lunch meat for the dead.

Amazon BN Kobo iBooks

Excerpt:

“Amanda, I…Oh.”

I don’t know what else to say. My brain just shuts down.

She is wearing the sheet, wound around her like a toga. It trails behind her bare feet, sort of like a painting about Greek goddesses I’ve seen in art books. She’s leaning over another body stored in the cooler unit on a cart. Her back is to me, and I can only see her pale skin and her burgundy-black hair shuddering.

“Amanda.”

She turns at the sound of my voice, seeming only to hear me for the first time. Her face is covered in dark blood. In her hand, she’s holding a big chunk of purple flesh. Her eyes are half-closed. The autopsy incision on the elderly body below her has been ripped open, and I’m pretty sure that what she’s holding is a lung.

“So hungry…” she murmurs.

I retreat until my back presses against the cold door. A whimper escapes my lips, and I drop the laundry basket with a sharp crack of plastic on the tile floor. This has to be a dream. A screwed-up anxiety dream that I’ll wake up from any moment now…

Amanda’s black eyes snap open. She stares at the chunk of flesh in her hand. “I…Agh…What’s going on?”

Lothar waddles over to her and begins to beg. Bile rises in my throat. “That’s Mrs. Canner,” I manage to answer. “She’s seventy-two and died of surgery complications for varicose veins. Deep vein thrombosis, I think. I don’t remember.” I’m babbling, trying to keep the bile down.

Amanda drops the lung with a wet splat. Lothar scrambles to it and begins scarfing it down. Her hands are trembling. She presses them to her temples. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand.”

I nudge the laundry basket closer to her with my foot. “I brought you some clothes. And, um. Food. You should get dressed.”

I think I should be afraid. I think I really ought to be. But Amanda seems genuinely confused. She reaches for the clothes I’ve brought her. To be polite, I know that I should really look away. But I can’t move. I am not turning my back on her. My heart pounds, and I struggle to take deep, uneven breaths.

Amanda unwinds the sheet and slips into my clothes. Though I avert my eyes, I see that her shoulder and side are still torn open. But my mother hasn’t begun the autopsy yet, so there is no Y-incision across her chest and abdomen.

“Do you remember what happened to you?” I manage to ask. I congratulate myself for having a rational thought. Woot.

Her voice is halting, and her brow wrinkles as she struggles to button my jeans. “I remember…something was chasing me. Jesus, it hurt…” Her hand comes up to her neck, and she seems to remember, fingering the edges of the wound. “Am I in a hospital?” she asks again.

I suck in a breath. “No. You’re at my house.” It’s not a lie. Not really.

She scans the room, as if registering the sight of the cadavers. “You’re the girl whose parents run the funeral home. The Ghoul Girl.”

“It’s gonna be okay,” I tell her.

“Why am I here?” Her breath makes ghosts in the cold air.

“The Sheriff found you, alongside the road.” That’s true also, even if not the whole truth. “I think we should get you upstairs, so you can talk to my parents…”

She shakes her head, and her dark hair slaps across her face. “No. I…Oh my god. I’m here because…somebody thought I was dead?”

I swallow hard. “Yeah.”

Her hands press to the wound on her side. “But I’m not dead!”

“I…uh…I think we need to get you to the hospital.” I tentatively reach toward her, to grasp her arm and guide her upstairs, toward the light of the much more civilized parlor and rational discussion. This is so far over my head, and I need my parents to handle it.

She shakes her head. “No. No. No.”

I hold her elbow gently, trying to keep her calm until I can get her upstairs to my parents. Her skin radiates cold through the sweatshirt, and I can see that the edges of her neck wound are dry, not seeping so much as a hint of blood. “Come with me.” I open the door and gently lead her into the lab, as if I’m herding a frightened cat. She gazes at the stainless-steel equipment. “I was here. I remember being here.”

“Come upstairs,” I urge, struggling to keep my composure. I use all the empathy that I’ve learned, dealing with grieving family members, trying to understand the shock and lead her away from the Body Shop.

She squints up at the buzzing light. “You were here, weren’t you? You and that woman. Looking at me.”

“My mother,” I say. I’m thinking crap crap crap. I’ve heard of cases of people whose vitals have dropped far beyond detection, who have awoken in hospital morgues. This has never happened to us. Not ever. Oh shit. The other body. Maybe it the same thing…

“The woman with that knife…” Her fingers go to her sternum, where my mother’s scalpel had rested. All of a sudden, Amanda becomes rooted in place, as immovable as a mountain.

“No one’s going to hurt you,” I promise. “Let me make you some coffee.”

She shakes her head, and I feel her trembling. Her eyes slide to the back door.

She slips from my grip. Before I can stop her, she rushes to the back door. She slams it open with a sound like a gunshot and plunges into the darkness. 

My Review:
This is not my usual genre but thought I would try something new. Boy am I glad I did! I wanted to read some creepy books for the Halloween season and this one fits the category perfectly.

The main character, Charlie, AKA Ghoul Girl, is a teen living with her family in a funeral home. Charlie's dad is a mortician and her mom is the coroner. Bodies begin disappearing from the funeral home and the reader is introduced to some zombies/ghouls.

I really enjoyed the story. I loved the Grandma character and especially Lothar the Dachshund. The dialog between characters was realistic. The book wasn't overly gory but did have some creepiness and suspense. The author was able to hold my attention throughout the book. Thanks so much to author Laura Bickle and Bewitching Book Tours for providing me with an ebook. Highly recommend this one.

About the Author:

Laura Bickle grew up in rural Ohio, reading entirely too many comic books out loud to her favorite Wonder Woman doll. After graduating with an MA in Sociology-Criminology from Ohio State University and an MLIS in Library Science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she patrolled the stacks at the public library and worked with data systems in criminal justice. She now dreams up stories about the monsters under the stairs. Her work has been included in the ALA’s Amelia Bloomer Project 2013 reading list and the State Library of Ohio’s Choose to Read Ohio reading list for 2015-2016.

More information about Laura’s work can be found at www.laurabickle.com

https://twitter.com/Laura_Bickle

https://www.facebook.com/Author.Laura.Bickle

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