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Book Review: 56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard

cover art for 56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard

56 DAYS by Catherine Ryan Howard.

Blackstone Publishing, 2021

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1982694654

Available: Hardcover, hardcover large print, CD ( Bookshop.org )

 

We knew it was coming. Just as 2020 had to finally hang up its tainted spurs and 2021 decided it needed some negative attention, a novel about COVID-19 was inevitable.

 

The only mystery was whether it would be any good, or just capitalizing on the modern plague.

 

Set in Dublin, Oliver and Ciara meet 56 days ago, just as the virus hits Ireland. 35 days ago, the lockdown begins. Yet, instead of doing what most fledgling couples would, Ciara moves in with Oliver. I highly recommend NOT doing this in real life. Relationships are tough enough; the virus can cause isolation to drive the most “normal” person to near homicidal tendencies.

 

Oliver is not who he seems to be, and with the pandemic, prolonged time together shaves away the masks we wear, leaving behind the true faces underneath. What did Oliver and Ciara learn about each other? What drove one to kill the other?

 

Catherine Ryan Howard takes a chance with allowing 56 Days to build at a slow, steady burn. If readers hang on, they will be rewarded in a blistering second half that delivers on what is promised.  She has produced a quality suspense novel here that will undoubtedly win her new fans with this story that refuses to play by the rules. That’s a very good thing.

 

The format is interesting, beginning with the discovery of the body and then jumping between the lovers and the pair of officers, Kurt and Lee, who struggle to piece together this timely mystery.

 

The reader is immediately thrust into a story that is narrative heavy, describing the scene where a dead body is found.

 

Is it Oliver or Ciara?

 

It’s an intriguing puzzle that will keep readers buzzing.

 

Recommended for any suspense/mystery readers who are ready for the first big COVID hit.

 

Reviewed by David Simms

 

Posted on August 30, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: Ghost Wood Song by Erica Waters

cover art for Ghost Wood Song by Erica Waters

Ghost Wood Song by Erica Waters

HarperTeen, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-0062894229

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook  ( Bookshop.org  | Amazon.com )

 

 

Shady Grove grew up in a haunted house, and her father owned a violin that could raise ghosts, but it disappeared when he died in a car accident when she was twelve. Like him, Shady is a talented bluegrass fiddle player, but she’s never gotten over her father’s death, and is obsessed with the violin.

 

After her father’s death, Shady’s mother remarried to his best friend, Jim. Shady, her troublemaking older brother Jesse, her toddler half-sister Honey, her mother, and Jim live in a trailer on the edge of town. Jim is an alcoholic with an anger management problem, and he and Jesse are always clashing.

 

Shady and her friends Orlando and Sarah enter a music competition at a local cafe. They discover Jim’s son Kenneth is also participating, as are his friend Cedar and Cedar’s sister Rose. Shady is impressed by Cedar and Rose’s playing (and a little by Cedar himself) but is unsure about asking to play with them out of loyalty to Sarah and Orlando. Jim and his older and more respectable brother Frank show up as well. Kenneth gets into an altercation with Jesse that ends with Kenneth in the emergency room. Jim and Jesse end up in a fight, Jesse storms out, and the next morning Jim is found dead, killed with a hammer. The logical conclusion is that Jesse did it in a fit of anger, but Shady refuses to believe that Jesse could be responsible and decides the only way to find out for sure is to find her father’s violin and raise Jim’s ghost for the true story. But there is a dark and terrifying price to pay for playing the violin.

 

Set in small-town Florida, Erica Waters tells this Southern Gothic tale of grief, guilt, shame, anger, and family secrets, with gorgeous prose. Her poetic language flows through wild areas, jolting both characters and readers with electrical shocks from emotional events. Hauntings unsettle, and Shady’s violin pulls her deep into shadows that may lead to her destruction… or to discover what her family has been hiding all these years.  Waters describes the setting in such a way that I could see stepping right in to the forest or climbing into the attic of Shady’s former house.

 

In addition to the ghosts, the mystery of Jim’s death, and the secrets of the house she grew up in, Shady has to navigate relationships. She has deep feelings for her best friend Sarah, but is getting mixed signals. She’s also attracted to Cedar, who loves the same music, and is waiting for Shady to figure out how she really feels. Sarah and Rose are both lesbians, but with very different personalities, and it’s nice to see varied representation there. While it’s more common to see gay and lesbian protagonists in YA fiction, bi protagonists (and characters) are less frequently seen. With bi erasure a problem in society as well as fiction, I was glad to see bisexual representation.

 

Ghost Wood Song is a beautifully, darkly told story filled with moments of terror and deep feelings of love, grief, obsession, and fear, most certainly worth its place on the Stoker ballot and an excellent contender for the award.

 

Contains: attempted suicide, violence, murder

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

Editor’s note: Ghost Wood Song is a nominee on the final ballot for this year’s Bram Stoker Awards in the category of Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel. 

Posted on May 19, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton

cover art for The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton

(  Bookshop.org )

The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton

Sourcebooks, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-1728206028

Available: Hardcover, paperback

 

Stuart Turton probably wouldn’t describe his books as horror, but they are compelling, original, and dread-inducing. In a departure from the surreal Agatha Christie-like The 7 1/2 Lives of Evelyn Hardcastle, in The Devil and the Dark Sea, this story takes place in 1634, on a ship leaving from Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia), the center of the Dutch East Indian Trading Company, for Amsterdam, home of the company’s headquarters, a journey of about eight months during which many ships were lost as sea. Readers expecting accurate historical fiction will not find it here: in a note, Turton essentially says he did the research, but threw it out the window if he found it wouldn’t work with his story. By changing as much as he did, he’s basically written an alternate history, which would be fine except that he never identifies it as such, which is unfair to readers unfamiliar with the setting, who will think it’s solidly grounded in the historical period (I guess once someone calls your work genre-bending it’s hard to commit).

 

Passengers on the Saardam include Jan Haan, the ambitious governor general of Batavia; his wife, Sara Wessell; and their inventive daughter, Lia; his mistress, Creesjie Jens, and her sons; his chamberlain, Cornelius Vos; and guard captain Jacobi Drecht.  Also traveling on the ship is Sammy Pipps, a Sherlock-type detective and alchemist of unknown origin who has been accused of spying, and his bodyguard/case recorder, former Lieutenant Arent Hayes. Before the ship leaves, a leper warns the passengers not to leave, warning that the devil “Old Tom” will be their downfall, but the governor general is insistent on leaving for Amsterdam immediately. Complicating things by bringing religion into the mix on a ship where passengers and crew are already uneasy and superstitious, a predikant, or preacher, and his acolyte Isabel, stow away on the ship as well.

 

Just as the ship sets off, the sail is unfurled to show a symbol that Creesje, the predikant, Arent, and one of the sailors individually recognize and associate with Old Tom. Is the devil really on the ship with the passengers and sailors, are they imagining things, or is someone playing with the characters’ fears in hopes of personal gain? The predikant, a former witch hunter, claims they’ll know for sure once three unholy miracles have occurred. As the ship gets further out onto the open ocean, the unholy miracles are identified, and the weather worsens, the onboard situation gets more violent and treacherous, and it becomes clear that, real or not, Old Tom has followers among the crew. As the histories of the characters and plot twists are unraveled, and the deaths stack up, the situation becomes even more unnerving. Is the ship haunted by Old Tom, or is something else going on?

 

Turton does a fantastic job of creating a sense of mystery and dread. There is no escape from the ship out on the ocean, just people, most of whom don’t like or trust each other, adrift after a storm. Turton admits he took liberties with history for the purpose of the story, so I don’t know if sailors truly lived continually in such brutal, violent environments, but he paints a vivid picture of the dynamics. Characters who could have been one-dimensional were fully developed: Arent turns out to be the governor general’s nephew, and while Haan might have been terrible to his wife and underlings,  he clearly cherishes his relationship with Arent. Haan’s wife Sara could have been set up in opposition to his mistress, but they turn out to be close friends. Sammy and Arent, for all their similarities to Holmes and Watson, are completely different in body type, personality, background, and overarching motivation. I found the very ending unneccessarily brutal, unrealistic and extremely disappointing, and felt it marred the story in a big way,  but I felt the atmosphere, character development, and descriptive language still made this worth reading.

 

The Devil in the Dark Water reveals some very dark aspects of overseas trade and the participants in it during the 1600s. No one comes away untainted. Despite the faulty ending, it’s a tale I won’t soon forget, and I would certainly give Turton another chance.

Contains: violence, gore, murder, implied rape, brutal killing of animals, body horror, mass murder

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

 

Posted on February 24, 2021 by , Reply
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