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Book Review: Belle Vue by C.S. Alleyne

 

Belle Vue by C.S.cover for Belle Vue by C.S. Alleyne Alleyne (   Bookshop.org   |  Amazon.com )

Crystal Lake Publishing, August 2020

ISBN: 9781646693115

Available: paperback, Kindle

 

Belle Vue isn’t a horror story.  Nor is it a suspense novel, or a crime thriller.  It isn’t even a story of the occult and ancient rituals.  It’s a beautifully entangled web of all of the above genres, with the author adding just the right dose of each to create a compelling, first-rate story.  Belle Vue deserves a serious look when next year’s nominees come out for ‘best debut horror novel.’

The story runs two threads concurrently throughout the book, and they join together at the book’s climax.  The present-day thread concerns Claire, a graduate student in her mid-20s, who just rented an apartment in Belle Vue, an old Victorian-era insane asylum that has been converted to luxury apartments.  The other thread is set in the late 1800s, and stars two sisters, Ellen and Mary Grady.  Ellen is the sweetheart who is always trying to help others, while Mary, to put it simply, is cold-blooded, conniving, and ruthless.  Mary has Ellen committed to the asylum for her own scheming reasons, whereas poor Ellen, kindhearted soul she is, thinks Mary is trying to help her deal with the death of her mother.  The true depth of Mary’s evil unfolds as the story progresses.

Both stories are the “slow burn” type, and both are equally compelling.  Claire soon finds her dream place is not all she expected, with the strange occurrences that happen once she moves in.  It’s to the author’s credit that many of the things that happen are fairly minor, but they are written well enough to leave the reader with a feeling of disquiet, expecting something worse to come (and it usually does).  The suspense builds as the story progresses, and the author snaps off a couple of well-placed curveballs in regard to the fate of some of the main characters.  The 1800s part of the story is less supernatural, but explains the complicated history of Belle Vue.  It’s a complex tangle of characters, supporting and backstabbing each other for their own ends.  It’s a wonderfully enjoyable net of intrigue, and this part also contains the occult section of the story, as the reader learns of a depraved pleasure and sacrifice cult that once called the asylum home.  The actions of the Belle Vue staff and cult members are horrible enough to justify considering this book to be a horror novel, yet it’s so much more.  Emotional swings for the reader should be expected when reading this.  Sometimes you can thrill to trying to figure out who will betray who next, other times you will be reading fast to find out what weird things will happen in the present day thread.  Occasionally, you just feel sadness, especially where the character of Ellen is concerned.  That’s a hallmark of a good book: it takes the reader on an emotional roller coaster.  Belle Vue does it exceptionally well.

This is a story no one should miss.  From its skillful cross-pollination of genres to its Hitchcock-style ending, this book should easily find popular acclaim.  It won’t scare you out of your seat, but instead leaves you with a feeling of unease that grows throughout the book, and lingers long after the conclusion.  Extremely well done, C. S. Alleyne is an author to keep an eye on in the future.  Highly recommended.

 

Contains: violence, profanity.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Posted on September 25, 2020 by , Reply

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth illustrated by Sara Lautman

Cover of Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth illustrated by Sara Lautman

William Morrow & Company, 2020

ISBN-13: 978-0062942852

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audibook, audio CD ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

 

 

Emily M. Danforth, author of the YA novel The Miseducation of Cameron Post, stretches her boundaries in this unsettling, haunted novel that reveals a buried history of queer romance and horror and some seriously creepy hornets.

The story moves smoothly from events in 1902 that led to the deaths of three students at the Brookhants School for Girs, tied to an uninhibited and shocking memoir by openly bisexual feminist Mary McLane, to a present day where author Merritt Emmons has written a book about the deaths that is about to be made into a sapphic “Blair Witch” style horror movie.

Two of the girls who died were co-founders of a club called The Plain Bad Heroines, which admires Mary’s unapologetic attitude, are found dead in the woods with a copy of the book,  attacked by a swarm of hornets in an orchard of rotting fruit. The third acquires it after their deaths and is literally poisoned by reading it near a plant in the campus greenhouse where she is caretaker. The headmistress confiscates it, convinced that it is cursed. As the students abandon the school, both the headmistress and her relationships begin to disintegrate, and trapped almost alone in a snowstorm, it’s hard to tell how much of a grip on reality she has left.  She’s also left remembering her college days, where a love affair led to her eventual inheritance of Brookhants, chosen by her husband because of its reputation as a spiritually important location, in a very strange manner.

The horror movie based on Merritt’s book will star the popular actress Harper Harper and the less well-known actress Audrey Wood. Merritt initially is starstruck by Harper and they hit it off; her interactions with Audrey are more negative. The movie will be filmed at the actual Brookhants School and on the grounds, adding atmospheric creepiness.  Once the filming starts, it seems nothing can go right– it’s almost like the production is cursed. This leaves Harper, Audrey, and Merritt, a lot of time for exploration on the Brookhants estate. Black apples, rotting vegetation, and ominous swarms of hornets in the woods ratchet up the tension, and eventually the story behind the Brookhants curse is revealed.

This is a doorstop of a book. After its tense begining, it slows down for some time and, had I not known there would be a payoff, I might have set it down. I think a large chunk of the Hollywood segment could have been easily eliminated  to slim it down. This is where a lot of the present day characters’ personalities are established, and Merritt’s romantic interests start to develop, but it is just too drawn out.

Danforth isn’t subtle about centering lesbian and bisexual characters. It is even a point of contention in the casting of the movie, where Merritt objects to Audrey playing a lesbian role, assuming she must be straight, to have Audrey come out and say she’s bisexual. The headmistress’ memories of inheriting the school are all related to the romantic love she and her partner had for each other. even as she turns on her.

Plain Bad Heroines is also about as metafictional as you can get; it’s a fictional story inspired by a book by a real person, containing illustrations and images of what I’m pretty sure are news articles about the book, that a fictional author has written a fictional nonfiction book about, that is being made into a fictional movie being filmed found-footage style, as if it is nonfiction. Both the director and Harper Harper use social media to affect the narrative, so Harper’s Instagram posts document the movie shoot and all of its “cursed” problems for her followers, creating a Blair Witch effect of convincing the audience for the movie that the haunting is real. Even the people around Audrey and Merritt are in on the gaslighting, so that none of them know whether they can trust each other or reality. It’s clever, and the unreliability of the people around them and the way the reader knows the three women are being manipulated is distracting, but it doesn’t detract from the sense of atmospheric creepiness, dread, and tension, with hornets and rotting vegetation always around. You will never feel the same about hornets after reading this book.

Danforth actually has an author’s note where she discusses her discovery of Mary Maclane in researching hidden sapphic history, and that she wanted to bring that to light through Plain Bad Heroines. I never had heard of her and I found this fascinating. Unlike The Miseducation of Cameron Post this is not a YA novel, although it might be appreciated by some older YA readers, but certainly it is an original book with plenty of dread and some well-drawn lesbian and bisexual characters that will draw in readers of historical and metafictional horror, Hollywood, and haunted houses. It won’t be for everyone, but this book will certainly find its audience. Recommended.

 

Contains: violence, murder, body horror, sexual situations, insects

Posted on August 10, 2020 by , Reply

Book List: Haunted Hotels

It’s summertime, which means vacations, and unless you’re staying with relatives or camping, you’ll probably stay in a hotel at some point. You might want to take care, though, because hotels are not always the safest or most relaxing places to stay; Lizzie Borden’s former house is now a bed-and-breakfast, and a boutique hotel, The Blackburn Inn, now stands where DeJarnette Sanitarium, the setting for David Simms’ Fear the Reaper, used to be. Below you’ll find a list of titles that take place in haunted hotels.

 

cover for The Sun Down Motel

 The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James  ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

The Sun Down Motel alternates between two points of view. Viv, in 1982, is a runaway headed to New York to become an actress who ends up unexpectedly left in the town of Fell, New York. With almost no money and nowhere to go, Viv takes a job as the night clerk at a seedy hotel on the highway, The Sun Down Motel, that she quickly discovers is haunted. Carly is taking a break from college to cope with her grief over her mother’s death and explore the mystery of her aunt Vivian’s disappearance, at age 20, thirty-five years earlier, in Fell. Following in Viv’s footsteps, Carly visits her apartment and befriends the current resident, Heather, who invites her to become her roommate. The two of them then visit the Sun Down Motel, where Carly takes the same night shift job Viv had.  Carly learns from Heather that Viv was not the only girl at the center of a mystery during the time she was in Fell; several girls and women of varying ages were murdered in the time just before Viv arrived in town. With hauntings, psychological disturbances, and a serial killer on the loose, the Sun Down Motel is a dangerous place to stay.

 

 

cover of The Shining

The Shining by Stephen King  ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

I probably don’t have to go into detail about the horrifying events at the Overlook Hotel, which is based on a real hotel, The Stanley Hotel. Jack Torrance is hired to be the off-season caretaker at the isolated Overlook Hotel, where he will live in with his wife, Wendy, and his son Danny, who has psychic abilities, referred to as the Shining. As the hotel gets more and more cut off, Jack’s behavior becomes more and more erratic as the hotel reveals its secrets.

 

cover of The Silent Land

 The Silent Land by Graham Joyce  ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

A couple on vacation at a ski resort surrounded by deep snow,  dig themselves out of a flash avalanche and discover they are completely alone and cut off from civilization. More than the characters, the atmosphere of complete isolation is what creates the suspense and creepiness of this book. I’ll be honest, I don’t remember a lot about the characters, but the world Joyce creates is one I haven’t forgotten.

 

cover of Ghost Stories of an Antiquary

Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M.R. James  ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

This collection contains two short stories that involve haunted hotels, “Number 13” and “Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come To You My Lad”. The second one has been adapted for radio and television. “Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come To You My Lad” is the story of a college professor who takes a room at a hotel for a golfing holiday, and while walking along the beach discovers a bronze whistle in the midst of a ruin. That night, when he blows on the whistle, he has a disturbing vision, and possibly supernatural events start to occur.

 

cover for Jacaranda

Jacaranda (The Clockwork Century #6) by Cherie Priest  ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

The Jacaranda Hotel, on the island of Galveston, in southeast Texas, has seen two dozen deaths since it opened a year ago. A local nun, a disgraced priest, and a Texas Ranger, along with a handful of guests and hotel employees, are trapped at the hotel during a hurricane, with a hostile supernatural force inhabiting the building.  Gothic, creepy, and violent, Jacaranda is a gripping ghost story. When I read it, I didn’t realize it was part of a series, or part of a steampunk universe, and you really don’t have to have read any of the other books to visit this haunted hotel.

 

cover for All the Lovely Bad Ones

 

All The Lovely Bad Ones by Mary Downing Hahn  ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

Maybe you’re looking for a book you can share with your kids? You can’t go wrong with Mary Downing Hahn.  Travis and Corey are visiting their grandmother for the summer. She runs a small Vermont inn that has a reputation for being haunted. The boys decide to pull some pranks to fool the guests into thinking there are ghosts in the inn, only to awaken actual ghosts. Travis and Corey must discover the story behind the hauntings in order to put the spirits to rest.

 

Posted on July 28, 2020 by , Reply
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