Black Ice by Becca Fitzpatrick

Britt and Korbie's spring break trip is going to be epic. Britt's been training for it for months and has plans to hike the 40-mile Teton Crest Trail. Korbie plans to spend much of her time lounging in the family cabin making out with her boyfriend. And it's the boyfriend's attendance that prompts Korbie's parents to have her older brother, Calvin, tag along as chaperone. Britt is none too pleased about having her ex along on the trip but won't let it put a damper in her plans. Not even rumors of a killer stalking the woods near where they're staying can do that!

With everything packed and ready to go the two girls take off, planning to meet the boys there. Unfortunately, though the forecast was for clear skies, they're soon trapped in a freak snowstorm and unable to drive any further. Britt convinces her friend that they need to seek shelter and they're lucky enough to stumble upon a nearby cabin. But the two men they find in the cabin are anything but heroes. 

It's clear the men are hiding something and they plan to force Britt to help them trek their way to the highway. Are they the ones behind the recent murder everyone's been talking about? And will they really let Britt go once they make it out of the woods?

Becca Fitzpatrick's latest is a big deviation from her debut, Hush, Hush. Black Ice is a pretty straightforward teen thriller. No paranormal stuff here, just good old chills and thrills. 

It begins with a murder but the official story on this particular girl is that she's gone missing. The only hint the reader is given as to the identity of the killer is that he's a man with a crooked nose and a black stetson hat - the same details given on the person this girl was seen leaving a bar with before her disappearance. And so when Britt and Korbie come across Mason and Shaun in the cabin in the woods, Shaun sporting a distinctly crooked nose and a black stetson, it's understandable that they'd pretty immediately be concerned. 

I'll admit it was a bit too coincidental for me that Mason just happened to be passing through Idaho and the neighborhood gas station while Britt was getting her Slurpee fix and then just happened to be hiding out in this cabin in the Wyoming woods when the girls break down. I kind of wished that had been worked in a bit more fluidly (last chance for gas before heading up the mountain pass, maybe?). I got over that pretty quickly. 

Britt's ordeal is a harrowing one and the book is an intense read. I believed that her training would allow her to survive in the conditions she faced and I was completely convinced this character would face the challenges the way she did. With all the various bits and pieces it might seem like the story is a mish mash of plot elements but I really found that Fitzpatrick wove all the various story lines together in a way that made sense. There is a romance aspect that I thought played out quite well and I really loved the extra wrinkle of the serial killer. 

Black Ice has all the makings of a great teen read. It's a bit horror, a bit mystery, and a lot of action-packed suspense.

Rating: 4/5

Top Ten Tuesday: Books for People Who Like Character Driven Stories

I've decided to jump on board with Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week the topic is: Character Driven Titles.

To Dwell in Darkness by Deborah Crombie

Good morning, readers! Today I'm a stop on the TLC book tour for Deborah Crombie's To Dwell in Darkness, the sixteenth Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James mystery!

DS Melody Talbot was all set to enjoy her boyfriend's performance. Andy and Poppy were to kick off the musical festivities at London's historic St. Pancras Station. Unfortunately the press and the crowd were a draw for more than just music fans: a protest group planned to use the opportunity to get attention for their cause with an explosive finale of their own. But what was supposed to be a smoke bomb turned out to be a white phosphorous grenade that left one man dead and many others terribly injured. Duncan Kincaid and his team take the lead and quickly find that there's more to the case than a protest gone wrong. 

Meanwhile, Gemma James has an overflowing plate what with a sick toddler, a pack of stray kittens, and a case of her own. While Melody is mixed up with the station incident, Gemma is faced with finding enough evidence to nail a child killer. 

Three books into this long-running series and things are getting much smoother for me! This is, as mentioned above, the sixteenth installment. I'd begun just two books back with No Mark Upon Her noting that while the book works fine for readers new to the series I'd felt I was missing out on the characters' backstories.

The same would likely be the case were I beginning here with To Dwell in Darkness but because I've got a bit of a head start I found I was much more comfortable with everyone. I suspect this will continue to be the case as I read more of Crombie's work (and I definitely plan to do so).

Anywho! Again, if you're willing to forgo some of the character details and ignore the carry overs and references to previous cases (the plot behind Kincaid's transfer, for example) you'll do fine here. The mystery is wonderfully compelling and the history bits that are interwoven into the plot add a depth that any Anglophile will greatly appreciate.

Rating: 4/5

To see more stops on the tour be sure to check out the official TLC tour page here.

For more on Deborah Crombie and her work (including a full series list) you can visit her website here. You can also like her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter.

Feel Good Giveaway for Fall: Spin and Spun by Catherine McKenzie

Morning, all. I've got some big giveaways coming up before the year is out and first on my list is a Catherine McKenzie giveaway pack!

If you're a follower then you'll know that I am a big fan of Catherine's work. This was a banner year for her as she had not one but two releases hit shelves - Hidden and Spun (a novella follow up to her debut Spin). All of Catherine's books are amazing. They're heart warming (and heart wrenching) and feature the kinds of characters anyone can fall in love with. Really she's one of my favorite authors to recommend to readers!

So to kick off this week I'm giving away a Spin/Spun prize pack! To enter just fill out the Rafflecopter below before Monday, October 20. (Open US only and no PO boxes please.)

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Good luck!

New Releases 10/7/14

Some of the new titles hitting shelves this week are:

Spark by John Twelve Hawks

Scarlet Tides by David Hair

Land of Dreams by Kate Kerrigan

The Murder Man  by Tony Parsons

Malice by Keigo Higashino

Brood by Chase Novak

Silverblind by Tina Connolly

Run by Andrew Grant

A Vision of Fire by Gillian Anderson & Jeff Rovin

An English Ghost Story by Kim Newman

The Shotgun Arcana by R. S. Belcher

The Night Garden by Lisa van Allen

Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie

The Forgotten Girl by David Bell

Desert Rage by Betty Webb

The Girl Next Door by Ruth Rendell

The Silent Sister by Diane Chamberlain

Some Luck by Jane Smiley

A Demon Summer by G. M. Malliet

Cattle Kate by Jana Bommersbach

Deadline by John Sandford

The Delta by Tony Park

Full Measure by T. Jefferson Parker

Closer to Home by Mercedes Lackey

Dark Spies by Matthew Dunn

Reunion by Hannah Pittard

The Boy Who Drew Monsters by Keith Donohue

The Lesser Dead by Christopher Buehlman

Sleep in Peace Tonight by James MacManus

Poison Fruit by Jacqueline Carey

Truth Be Told by Hank Phillippi Ryan

The Question of the Missing Head by E.J. Copperman

Sidney Sheldon's Chasing Tomorrow by Tilly Bagshawe

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams (reissue)

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams (reissue)

Dead Broke in Jarrett Creek by Terry Shames

The Good Sister by Jamie Kain

The Old Deep and Dark by Ellen Hart

Burying Water by K.A. Tucker

Black Ice by Becca Fitzpatrick

The Young Elites by Marie Lu

Zom-B Family by Darren Shan

The Invisible by Amelia Kahaney

The Perfectionists by Sara Shepard

Kiss Kill Vanish by Jessica Martinez

Whisper the Dead by Alyxandra Harvey

Emergent by Rachel Cohn

New on DVD:
Obvious Child
A Million Ways to Die in the West

New reviews at Bookbitch.com:
Wayward by Blake Crouch
The Banks of Certain Rivers by Jon Harrison

Short Fiction Friday: The Last Illusion by Clive Barker

I just found out that Clive Barker has a new book due out and that said new book brings together Pinhead and Harry D'Amour (I had to Google Harry thanks to my Swiss cheese brain). The Scarlet Gospels isn't due out until May 2015, so I do have time, but it seems some Barker reading is definitely in order as preparation. If you read yesterday's post you'll know the news also comes at a time when I'm craving some good horror movies and once my wholly holey memory was somewhat nudged by Harry's list of published appearances, I realized it had been quite some time since I'd seen any of the movies based on Barker's work. Lord of Illusions (and some others) have been added into the Halloween watch list and I dug out my copy of Cabal for my first Barker tale of the season.

If you've not read Barker before you should know that he is quite graphic and quite gruesome. This little tale even features a demonic band made of body parts!

Harry D'Amour is a PI in New York and has seen things no man can truly recover from seeing. But it's this experience that leads to his latest job - he's to sit with the body of well-known and recently deceased illusionist Swann. The job is weird, but Harry can't resist the mournful pleas of Swann's widow and agrees to take the case. Just a few hours and one very realistic nightmare later, Harry is relieved of his duty. But the job doesn't end there. Apparently, Swann had reason to worry about what would happen to his mortal remains in death and though the widow feels they're comfortably out of the woods, Harry has reason to believe otherwise.

So this is apparently the first time Barker readers met Harry. He would go on to be part of The Great and Secret Show and Everville (the first two books of Art Trilogy), a short story in a long out of print anthology called Cutting Edge (edited by Dennis Etchison), and of course the upcoming Scarlet Gospels. And while I thought I'd read at least The Great and Secret Show, it seems I have not.

Harry is a cool character. A classic PI but one that dabbles in the occult. "The Last Illusion" alludes to a pretty horrific case that launched the supernatural part of Harry's resume, which explains why he isn't too terribly surprised when demons and other stuff start popping up in the Swann case. "The Last Illusion" is disturbing and a bit oh, so 80's in my opinion (it was pubbed in 1985 after all).

I'll have to dive into the as yet incomplete Art Trilogy to see how Harry's character develops, and to be ready for The Scarlet Gospels. Anyone else interested in tackling Harry's evolution can find "The Last Illusion" in Cabal, the sixth title in the Books of Blood series (pictured above. This installment also includes the stories that make up the inspiration of Nightbreed. Interestingly enough, there is a forthcoming anthology set in the Midian world - called Midian Unmade - due out from Tor next year as well.)

I should point out - for any of you who've also seen the movie but haven't read the story - that the film is QUITE different from the short. And yet, Barker himself did write and direct the adaptation. It was odd, though, reading the short without knowing that they differed so.

As Above, So Below and The Sacrament - A Movie Post

It might seem, because of my lack of movie posts so far, that maybe I haven't been doing my civic duty as a horror fan in watching recent horror releases. You would be mistaken. I have, however, been somewhat meh about the ones that I've seen of late.

Miffed that I'd missed more than one horror release at the theater already, we hit the theater opening day to see As Above, So Below. The trailer promised a movie set in France's notorious catacombs and as such it did deliver.

Buuuut the setting was the best part.

The movie is set around the search for the philosopher's stone, a premise that would have been intriguing had it not felt like an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink hodge podge of world mythology rolled into one story. The characters go on something of a Davinci Code scavenger hunt for clues that eventually lead them to the catacombs where weird stuff starts ensues.

I left the theater with truly mixed feelings. On the one hand, with so little to choose from in the genre of late, I felt almost obligated not to dislike this movie. And yet, I was so underwhelmed and disappointed that I just couldn't force myself to be happy about simply having seen a horror movie in general.

That brings me to The Sacrament, the latest film from Ti West.

West is known for his seventies style House of the Devil, which I quite enjoyed. He's also the director who brought us Innkeepers and The Roost, amongst others. Both of these were ok, I didn't hate them but they definitely didn't live up to the expectations set by House.

So now we have The Sacrament, a movie about a group of journalists who travel to a remote and secret location to find Eden Parish. The Parish is led by an enigmatic leader called Father and is supposed to be a perfect community for his followers, one of whom happens to be the sister of one of the journalists.

And yet, the facade on Eden Parish is thin. The three men soon realize that there's something odd about the Parish even before the shit begins to hit the fan.

Yes folks, considering I was not even a thought in my parents' minds when it happened it did take me til the Kool-Aid scene to realize that The Sacrament is basically the story of Jim Jones and Jonestown.

I actually wasn't terribly disappointed by The Sacrament but I also didn't really walk away from it thinking of it as a horror movie per se. Yes, it is horrific and shocking. Yes, those are two elements of a horror movie, I know. It just didn't hit the spot as far as my horror craving was concerned.

I should point out both of these movies employ the increasingly aggravating found footage gimmick. I hate, loathe, and completely despise found footage films. I've never really liked them but each new movie released using this particular approach pushes me even further to my limit. I'm close to the point of simply turning off the next one without even giving it a shot. I find it highly likely that I would have enjoyed both of these movies more - maybe still not chalked them up as favorites - had they not been shot this way.