The latest short reviews are here, enjoy!
The Sofa by Sam Munson
So these weird and eerie occurrences keep getting gradually weirder and eerier throughout this novella, adding to the tension laced with surreal humor, but don't really add up to a punchline. I enjoyed reading it, but what it amounts to isn't really satisfying to read. I guess it might be a kind of satire on how the objects we own end up owning us? While there might be people who enjoy that ride, that person wasn't me in this case. The cover is fire, though.
The Pendragon Legend by Antal Szerb
OK, every now and then comes a book that I guess I simply don't understand and in hindsight I think I should have read this book in Turkish, and not English. People praise the humor and brilliance, while for me, this was a chore. There are few books that made me feel more bored than I felt reading this book and I have to admit I then skimmed the last 20 percent. It happens.
Nothing Tastes as Good by Luke Dumas
Emmett Truesdale is a retail worker and he weighs over three hundred pounds - not suitable for posh South California where everybody is tanned and trained and has six packs. He just can't lose the weight...
Until he joins the clinical trial for a new weight loss pill, Obexity. As the pounds start to shed at an incredible speed, Emmett enjoys the perks of pretty privilege - people are genuinely nice to him, he gets job offers and promotions, his love life revives, and everybody loves this new Emmett, everyone but his diehard best friend who always accepted him as he is.
Meanwhile weird murders are happening around town that the press attributes to coyotes, but it's actually some killer side effect of Obexity since the victims are only people Emmett had a beef with and coincide with phases of blackout Emmett starts having. Will he give up all the good things he is now experiencing in order to stop killing?
This is basically a “what you see is what you get” kind of story, and if you have read the synopsis before starting, you know what's coming your way. It's also very fast paced, really well written, very emotional and features one of the best best friends of all time. I really wanted to give young Emmett a hug, bullying is harsh. I'm not a big fan of the ending, but that's basically the one thing I wish was better.
The Rise: Tales from the Gulp 3 by Alan Baxter
If you know you know –Gulpepper is the worst seaside town in Australia. You get stuck if you enter and chances are good you will never be able to leave again – there are few cases people were able to leave the Gulp behind. People fall from the skies, weird mushroom formations overtake houses, Mob crime competes with supernatural crime, and the local band’s corpse paint is not painted on at all. It’s crazy.
In three tomes containing five novellas/short stories each, Baxter now completed his mosaic-trilogy with this absolute glorious finale, The Rise. The book follows the same pattern as the first two installments structure-wise, and features equally familiar characters and brand-new ones – Strange Leaves gives us a slice in the life of organized crime in Gulp, as strange leaves are being mixed in regular weed and customer aren’t happy; in Sunlight on Clear Water we’re introduced to little "spyders" and a young girl hunting for her grandma; Vitulinum is just sad, but that’s life, The Gulpepper Institute of Health and Wellbeing features a rock star who for some reason ended up in the Gulp for rehab, and she really really regrets it, but in the final chapter, The Rise, it all comes together in a fantastic way, not the least because of a stellar cameo you didn’t know you were waiting for and that will make you howl for joy.
I feel a little sad now that it’s over, I was telling my Goodreads friend Vicki that I could live my whole life happily knowing that every couple of years a new Gulp book will be released, but the author dismisses that possibility in his afterword – though he leaves a door open for other stories where there are mentions of the place or of certain characters. In any case, this was an amazing ride, and I will miss the Gulp a lot. If you haven’t read the books yet, lucky you. And what are you waiting for, go grab them now!
Hooked by Asako Yuzuki
Two women who have difficulties to connect with other people and to make meaningful friendships meet and catch a hope that they can have a close friend after all. Eriko works in a trading company in the seafood department, she has great parents she lives with and is always composed and collected. Shoko is an influencer who reaches thousands of people with her lifestyle blog, in which she gives herself untidy, careless and relatable in a country always aiming at perfection. The two of them meet and have a meal together, both charmed. But Eriko is so wrecked by loneliness that she develops an obsession for Shoko and starts acting crazy. Her perfect life starts to crumble as she has a sexual relationship with a colleague of hers, who happens to be engaged to one of the toughest and most insane people working at the same company. And she wants to see Eriko crawl on the floor.
Hooked is not really a thriller or mystery but more of an account of the loneliness epidemic and being a woman in today's Japan, and can be a little heavy-handed at times, but definitely worth a read.
A Blackened Heart, A Blackened Soul by John Ward
A book as dark and black as the title insinuates...
Since his childhood, John Tinsley has been befallen by some kind of evil entity which wants to make him suffer as much as possible - it starts with his mother dying in a car accident, then his father and then his grandmother die back to back. He loses everyone he loves and is haunted by visions. As an adult he becomes a demonologist of all things and follows supernatural occurrences with his wife who is pregnant with their child.
I will give it to you straight - don't expect rose gardens here. Everyone John knows must die and will he even want to survive himself in the end, or will evil prevail?
Well, this was dark and pessimistic. Just what the world needs right now. Not.
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