Hello Interwebs!
I have no idea how August got so off the rails but I read very very little that was on my TBR for August and instead everything went way off the rails in a spiral of little to no motivation to read or finish anything and a flurry of DNFs. That being said I did end up reading 7 books in the month of August and I enjoyed pretty much everything I did read.
First of all this month I finished Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix which I actually listened to on audio. This is a classic haunted house story that takes place in an IKEA knockoff called Orsk. You follow a young woman who works there as well as her manager and three of her coworkers as they spend the night in the store trying to decide who is sabotaging the store after hours. Then weird shit starts happening and it seems as if Orsk is real and truly haunted and they might not all make it out alive. I really enjoyed this one and I've found that I'm a big fan of Grady Hendrix's mix of horror and humor and this was really fun. I listened to it between July 27th and August 5th and gave it a solid 4 star rating.
Second, I finished another audiobook which was Bird Box by Josh Malerman. This was surprisingly my first Malerman book and I really really enjoyed it. This is about a woman living in a post apocalyptic world where some strange unknown creatures have completely decimated humanity. Anyone who looks at them goes mad and ends up committing suicide. So we follow Malorie and two children as they get in a boat and head blindfolded down river to where they hope is a safe haven. I listened to this from the 9th to the 12th of August and gave it a 4.25 star rating.
Then I read The Last to Vanish by Megan Miranda which is not only my first Megan Miranda thriller but also her newest release. This follows a woman working at an inn in an isolated town at the edge of the Appalachian trail where a number of tourists have disappeared. She gets brought into the mystery and how everything might be connected when the brother of the most recent disappearance comes to town and they begin making connections between the disappearances and the people in town. I really liked this book. It was very isolationist and mysterious and no one particularly annoyed me in it for once. Plus I didn't see the twists coming which I love. I read this on ebook from August 2nd to 13th and gave it 4.25 stars.
Next I read my Literati book club book, also mostly on audio which was Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell. This is about a woman whose husband disappears during the heat wave in Great Britain during the 1970s and her three grown children coming to help her find their father and what happened. To be honest this book was fine. The whole heatwave thing was really just a gimmicky title and had nothing to do with the plot aside from placing the book during a particular summer. I really didn't like any of the characters and when the discovery of where the father was and the secrets he and the mother had was just fine. Nothing spectacular but also nothing I really hated. Just...fine. I read/listened to this from August 12-18th and gave it a 3 star rating.
Next I couldn't get into any other books so I piddled around with some ideas while I was trying out other books and finally decided to read a couple novellas starting with Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones. This is a story about a teenaged boy who sleepwalks and is seeing his dead father dressed in his native regalia. While he's seeing his father things are happening around him: his brother has seizures and the neighbor's dogs are ripped apart while trying to get at him under the house and he shoots and kills the neighbor thinking its his dad. It ends on the unresolved mysterious note that so many of his stories end on and I remain a pretty solid fan of his writing and storytelling style. I read it from the 19th to the 20th and gave it a solid 4 star rating.
Then I finally listened to The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse which is the first book in her Detective Elin Warner series. This book follows British Detective Elin Warner who while on leave from her job goes with her boyfriend to a resort in the Alps which used to be a Tuberculosis Sanatorium to celebrate her brother Isaac's engagement. Then his fiancée disappears and just before an avalance traps the remaining staff and guests a body is found linked to a mystery from the days of the old sanatorium and the dark things that happened there. This was a really interesting book, very twisty and I love things that relate to this kind of dark history and especially dark medical history. Plus this is also very isolationist and I love that trope in both my horror and my thrillers. I listened to this from August 18th to the 24th and gave it a 4.25 star rating.
Finally I read Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw. I've had the ebook copy of this since it was released and I recently received a hardcover copy of it, which is the copy I ended up reading. I was hesitant to read this because of the poor reviews it had been receiving but to my surprise I actually really enjoyed it but I can see why other people wouldn't. This follows a group of friends at a crumbling Japanese mansion rumored to be haunted by the ghost of a bride buried alive on what would've been her wedding day still waiting for her groom. Two are getting married and are planning on doing it in this manor and then the bride's ghost takes over and shit goes down. This people are all terrible but it worked for me. I read this from the 22nd to the 29th and gave it 3.5 stars. This is not the best book I've ever read but still enjoyable. Also, this remains one of my very favorite horror covers ever.
So that's it, everything I read in the month of August. If I had to pick a favorite I think it was probably The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse and my least favorite was definitely Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell. Onward to September!
Happy Reading!
Richelle
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