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Women in Horror Month: Book Review: The Burning Girls: A Novel by C.J. Tudor

cover art for The Burning Girls by C.J. Tudor

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The Burning Girls: A Novel by C.J. Tudor

Ballantine Books, 2021

ISBN-13 : 978-1984825025

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

 

Some of the best books straddle genres and wind up splintering the boundaries in the process. Some of the best authors writing today have nailed this, refusing to be pigeonholed.

C.J. Tudor broke through with the phenomenal novel The Chalk Man and now takes her blend of horror, mystery, and thriller, churning it into one of the first hits of the new year.

Set in modern-day England, Reverend Jack Brooks appears to be running from her past when she is reassigned to a church in Chapel Croft, a town where the previous vicar committed suicide. Jack and her daughter Flo reluctantly leave Nottingham after a case that may have involved an exorcism left a young girl dead. Immediately, Jack discovers the small town is full of mysteries, conspiracies, and hidden shadows that make her past resemble heaven.

The legend of the burning girls harkens back to the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary in the sixteenth century, whose purge of Protestants resulted in the deaths of eight victims, including two young girls, through, of course, burning. Thirty years ago, another pair of girls disappeared from the town, apparently meeting with foul play. Toss in another missing vicar, and the stage is set for a creepy tale that might bring to mind the best of Shirley Jackson if channeled through Lauren Beukes.

The legend says that whoever sees the burning girls is destined for a horrific fate. On her first morning, Jack discovers effigies on her doorstep, while Flo catches a fiery specter on film when exploring a disturbing, abandoned house with a boy whose past carries its own hefty shadows.

As Jack discovers the terrors that Chapel Croft has spent centuries burying, she struggles to find who to trust, and who might be seeking to add her to the body count the church seems to invite.

Tudor brings a strong dose of horror that evokes folktale. mythology, and evil in human form, by way of small town mentality. What sets The Burning Girls apart from other novels is the writing. Tudor’s strong voice is both alluring and conversational, deceptively simple in its complex characterization, especially of the role of a female priest in a setting stuck on living in dangerous nostalgia. Humor is utilzed as a foil to the terror Tudor wraps around the twisting plot, succeeding in keeping the reader off guard until the final note is played. Both this novel and the author’s previous offerings are highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by David Simms

Book Review: The Forest by Michaelbrent Collings

cover art for The Forest by Michaelbrent Collings

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The Forest by Michaelbrent Collings

Written Insomnia Press, 2020

ISBN: 9798670345958

Availability: paperback, Kindle

 

The Forest is a bit different from the last few releases by Michaelbrent Collings.  His recent titles (Terminal, Scavenger Hunt, Stranger Still) were combination thriller/horror novels that relied on a fast pace and a lot of action.  The Forest relies less on action, and more on creating an atmosphere of helplessness and dread.  As usual with Michaelbrent’s writing, it’s a mystery also, and any reader will have a very difficult time unraveling the puzzle before the last few pages.  It’s a good plot and a decent read, and parts of it are excellent.   However, it does drag a bit at times and might have been better served by trimming some pages.

 

Tricia and Alex are the two main characters. They were students at the same school, and later got married.  The whole book revolves around their time interacting with the Forest, a place known to all the kids to be haunted, and of course it contains the proverbial “cabin in the middle of the woods”.

 

As kids, Tricia and Alex went into the forest to try to rescue their friend Sam from his crazy mother, and they came out having failed to rescue Sam, and with no memory of what happened.  All they know is the Forest is a bad place.  As adults, they drive by the Forest one day, and their only child vanishes into the Forest.  Later, at the advice of their therapist, they re-enter the Forest to face their fears and achieve some closure over what happened to Sam and their kid.  Needless to say, the Forest is NOT kind to visitors, and Tricia and Alex are treated to a kind of dimension-bending hell where time doesn’t exist, entities want to kill them (or save them) and nothing makes any sense.

 

Although Tricia and Alex are the primary protagonists, the true star of the book is the Forest itself.  Collings does a nice job of making it seem to be a living, breathing entity in its own right.  The use of  never-ending fog, various shapes that appear, and flashing lights do a good job of piling on the spooky atmosphere, and the secondary characters that drop in and out (some offering hints as to the nature of the Forest) only serve to enhance the effect.  Again, this book isn’t written in the usual 100 mph fashion of Collings’s past few novels, it’s more of a grim, spooky atmosphere that relies on vagueness and a fear of the unknown to make its point.  Think the 2016 Naomi Watts film The Forest (no relation to this book) and you’ll get the idea.  When it works, it’s done very well.  The sequence with Trish and Alex going crazy trying to unravel the mystery of the stream that keeps switching flow direction is the best part of the book, and may be one of the best sequences Collings has ever written.

 

As good as the writing is, there are times when it feels like Collings went just a bit too over the top with the descriptions, and it does slow the book down a bit.  There are times when the reader might find themselves skimming pages a bit, just to get to the next part.  A bit more dialogue and a bit less exposition could have pushed this book to the next level.  It’s still a good read, just a bit of a notch down from his usual work.  Also worth noting is the explanation for the mystery of the Forest may be a bit difficult for some readers to comprehend.  It’s best not to think about it too much, just take it at face value.

 

Overall, another decent one from one of the most consistent authors out there today.  Recommended.

 

Contains: violence, limited gore, profanity

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Book Review: In the Vines by Shannon Kirk

Cover image of In The Vines by Shannon Kirk

In The Vines: A Thriller by Shannon Kirk (Bookshop.orgAmazon.com )

Thomas & Mercer, Seattle, 2018

ISBN-13: 9781503901940 (hardcover)

ISBN-13: 9781503900752 (paperback)

Available: Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle edition, compact disc, MP3 CD

 

In The Vines: A Thriller by Shannon Kirk is a murder mystery with a sprinkling of horror and gore. Fans of Edgar Allan Poe will recognize the technique of peeling away the layers of an onion, slowly revealing past sins, guilt, self-doubt and escalating violence. The main characters are Mary Olivia Pentecost, aka Mop, and Lynette Viola Vandonveer, aka Aunty Liv. They are descendants of Boston Brahmins, both with scions  who seem to have guilty secrets, as well as privilege and power. Their character traits and secrets lead to tragedy.

 

Mop is a recent college graduate searching for her own identity She is to marry her childhood sweetheart, a son of a nouveau-riche family with an adjoining estate in Rye, New Hampshire. Aunty Liv is an unmarried nurse having an illicit affair with a Boston surgeon, and is spying on her lover’s wife. The novel begins with Mop bleeding from a leg wound, dragging an unconscious, unnamed companion out of hiding during a nor’easter. An unidentified, shrouded figure wields an ax over them. Who are they? How did they come to this? What will be the story’s denouement?

 

The author uses the voices of Mop and Aunty Liv to narrate the story. The story jumps back and forth between scenes from the present, two years in the past and two weeks ago. Kirk’s technique is disconcerting, but it is important in slowly revealing the characters’ secrets and building a sense of frustration, anxiety and anticipation in readers. The main characters are well-drawn, and readers will understand why they make seemingly bad decisions that often lead to disaster.  The author describes the ocean, beach, rocks, cliffs, trees and brambles of New England’s coast beautifully. They become participants in the story. Highly recommended for adults.

 

Contains: Moderate gore, moderate violence, mild profanity

 

Reviewed by Robert D. Yee