Book Review

The 31st Trick-or-Treater

/ Winona Morris / Leave a comment

You know what you need at the end of November and only 3 days away from Thanksgiving? You need me to tell you about a book that’s all about Halloween!

Ben Farthing, probably best known for his “I found horror” series, gave us a Halloween Advent Calendar this year in the form of The 31st Trick-or-Treater. It was set up so that if you started reading the book on October 1st, and read one chapter a day, you would finished it on Halloween night, which is also when the book concludes.

In it there is a small community who love and celebrate Halloween with great gusto. Then, 30 children disappear all at once on Halloween night.

A year passes, during which time our main character, Bob, never stops looking for his missing daughter. Then, just as suddenly as they disappeared, the children stat Reappearing, one child a night. The children, seeming to be 100% the same as they were the moment they disappeared a year ago, come back terrified and talking about a mysterious “31st Trick-or-treater” who will arrive on Halloween night.

While Bob waits nightly to see if his daughter will return, he still keeps looking for her around the town. Where he has not managed to find her for 365 days, but whatever floats your boat dude.

I hated Bob. HATED him. He looked own on all the other people in the community for “giving up” on the missing children, was absolutely self absorbed to the point of neglecting his wife and remaining children, and still had the audacity to complain that neighbors weren’t “neighborly” anymore.

Make it make sense my dude.

I did enjoy the book in the beginning enough that I accidentally read more than one chapter at a time and had to wait for the month to catch up with me. (When a story is good, chapter breaks cease to exist for me). There were some scenes that were definitely giving Stranger Things/Upside down vibes.

But the my interest fell off, and I had to catch up several chapters to reach the ending on Halloween.

The ending….

The ending couldn’t have fallen flatter for me if it had tried. I was left with a feeing of “That’s it?”

I ended up feeling generous with a 3 star rating.

I do recommend Ben Farthing, but not this book. The Twitching House and It Waits on the Top Floor were both good reads.

Cemetery Tacos and Other Delights

/ Winona Morris / 1 Comment

Cemetery Tacos and Other Delights is a new collection from author Nora B. Peevy. It’s currently slated to arrive in November from JournalStone Publishing, but I was lucky enough to get my hands on a coveted ARC copy.

Since the author self described it as a “weird little collection” I went into it fully expecting it to be full on bizarro, and was broadsided when the first story, “Knock, Knock,” turned out to be a straightforward grief centered horror that might or might not have made me tear up a little1. I blame it on the fact that the story revolves around a stuffed animal that plays music when wound up, and I have a musical teddy from my childhood.

That moved into the second story, “The Telling Place.” That one was another straightforward horror involving a family therapist.

By this point I concluded that this “weird little collection” was actually a strong horror collection that I could sink my teeth into.

In the end, Cemetery Tacos and Other Delights did end up serving a couple of weird tales, like “Carnivorous Cows from Outer Space” and even some with a more fantastical or sci-fi element, like “How Romeo and More Saved the World” and even a little humor with “Murder Hornet man Saves Milwaukee (Sort of)”, but those little gems of light serve a pallet cleansers before diving back into the more meaty horrors.

At 14 stories long, it felt way to short to me in the end.

The Author, Nora B. Peevy, has already released a novel, Flesh eating Turtles and a novelette For the Sake of Brigid. Both are currently available on Amazon. She is also a syndicate author for Thrill Ride eZine and The Butchered Writers, and editor for Baynam Books Press and a freelance narrator and editor.

  1. (Let the records show that the defendant cried like a baby….) ↩︎

Feral – A Book Review

/ Winona Morris / Leave a comment

Hello my Wildlings. It has been a while since I came to visit, and I’m sorry I’ve left you alone so long. I’m happy to see you still here, waiting patiently for my return.

I visit today with a book review. It should come as no small surprise to any of you that when I had a chance to read and review a novel called “Feral” that I absolutely jumped at the chance.

I read Feral by MFKR (MFK R on amazon/goodreads) one in one sitting.

It starts with Danielle and Malik moving into a 2 story farmhouse bought sight unseen by Malik who just wanted land of his own, dreaming of starting a small farm. They quickly befriend their neighbors Charlene and Jack, who warn them about the feral dogs in the area.

They didn’t ignore the warning, but didn’t understand the severity of the problem until they witnessed the size and ferocity of the feral pack for themselves. They seem to roam their yard nightly, waking Danielle up with their howling and leaving “gifts” behind.

Meanwhile, the upstairs of the home is in need of extensive repairs, and sooner rather than later. Malik spends much time working on it, and pondering the weird design choices that left behind whole rooms and much spare space in the walls. Walls Danielle swears she hears strange sounds behind.

Then during a snowstorm, they let a stray dog in their home. A dog that makes itself right at home, immediately acts like a guardian to Danielle, and is also very interested in SOMETHING behind the walls…..

This one is a “cozy” horror with a slow build up of suspense until the end. Not a lot of blood, and no gore but TW: Some description of animal injury/death throughout.

While I had a lot of ideas about what was going on with the house and the dog, the end wasn’t exactly what I have figured it would be.

A 5* read that had me immediately checking out some of the authors other work. Not to mention their short story “Cabin in the Woods” can be read in Books of Horror Community Anthology Vol.4 Pt.1 which also happens to house my own story, “Being the Eldest Daughter”

(IMAGE: black and white book cover, a close up of a single dog eye looking at the viewer with the title FERAL in white and red lettering at the top and the author name MFKR in the same lettering at the bottom)