Some of you may remember from my Book Blog on THE MONSTRUMOLOGIST by Rick Yancey that I’m like Katy and don’t do scary. However, in the name of The Muses, I mustered enough courage to dive into THE GRAVEYARD BOOK by Neil Gaiman. (psst, Katy, it won the Newberry…figured it couldn’t be too terrifying). Here’s the description from NeilGaiman.com:

Bod is an unusual boy who inhabits an unusual place-he's the only living resident of a graveyard. Raised from infancy by the ghosts, werewolves, and other cemetery denizens, Bod has learned the antiquated customs of his guardians' time as well as their timely ghostly teachings-like the ability to Fade. Can a boy raised by ghosts face the wonders and terrors of the worlds of both the living and the dead? And then there are things like ghouls that aren't really one thing or the other. This chilling tale is Neil Gaiman's first full-length novel for middle-grade readers since the internationally bestselling and universally acclaimed Coraline. Like Coraline, this book is sure to enchant and surprise young readers as well as Neil Gaiman's legion of adult fans. 

Now, the first scene is pretty intense for Middle Grade with murder of Bod’s family, but the rest of this story is exciting, funny, and not very scary.  Sure, it’s got ghosts (duh), witches, the undead, and demon-ish things, but it’s the humans outside the graveyard who are the threat. Gaiman brings his usual zaniness, creativity, and twisted-beauty to the text and it’s spell-binding. THE GRAVEYARD BOOK may not produce buckets’o’sweat or sleeping with the lights on, however, it’s a great October read – shoot, a great read any month. 

This week has me thoroughly inundated with Book One of the NEVER SKY Trilogy winding down, and Book Two gearing up. Here to help out this week is my friend, the one and only Jackie Garlick Pynaert, to talk about the highly-acclaimed  best-selling novel, THE NIGHT CIRCUS. Welcome, Jackie, and thank you!

“What’s A Little Magic Among Friends?”

‘A friend in need is a friend in deed.’

Thus, when I received the call (via a random email) re line: “Read Any Good Books Lately? Wanna Help Me Out?”

I said, hell yes, to both requests and viola, like magic **un blog de guest appears. **

(Translation: while Veronica conducts some serious, behind-the-scenes magic, you get to enjoy a guest blog written by, none other than, moi.) 

The magical wannabe, Jacqueline Garlick Pynaert

BTW, these puns and equally pathetic French references are never going to get old, because the book I’ve chosen to RAVE about today is the fabulously enchanting, or should I say, fabuleusement enchanteur - The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern.

a.k.a., Le Cirque des Reves.

If you haven’t read it yet, you must. You simply must.

But a word of caution, before delving into its deliciously decadent and verbally gilded prose; this is not a book for the faint of heart. Meaning: This book requires you to ‘think,’ while you read.

My favourite kind.

(And yes, it is ‘favourite’ with a ‘u’, because I’m Canadian.)

I always know it’s a good book when this happens. I read the first paragraph and without taking my eyes from the page, start groping the nearby coffee table for my highlighter, thinking to myself, self, this is so incredibly well written, let me just mark a few memorable passages. And the next thing you know, things get looking a little, ‘yellow’.

Pertaining to the plot, some will argue this a book about a circus. Others will insist it’s a book about two, young, unlikely love-smitten, magicians trained since childhood, to partake in a cruel competition of fantastical heights. Others will assert, there’s more to the plot than meets the eye.

And they’d be right.

In this, her debut novel, Morgenstern creates a tantalizing multi-layered experience for her readers, weaving the sub pots of a plenitude of alternating secondary characters whose lives, get this, affect the circus, as well as, are affected by what the circus has to offer. You see…the circus itself, is a cleverly crafted character in Morgenstern’s book. Some may argue, the main character, off which, all the rest are played.

Hmmmmm…  See, I warned you -- thought provoking.

Nevertheless, anyway you look at it, the delicious visual descriptions, and enticing visceral illusions, depicted within the pages of this book, guarantee to transcend its readers, not only to another time and place, but among the tents of an extraordinarily, captivating and fantastically circus. The experience of which far exceeds anything worldly, bar none.

Not to mention, this book boasts, not one, but two killer opening lines:

Case in point:

In, Anticipation (ie: A Prologue of sorts…)

1) “The circus arrives without warning.”

Magnificent, non?  Hell, yes. Yet incredibly passé, when compared to the sheer brilliance of…

In, Unexpected Post  (ie: A Chapter One of sorts…)

2) “The man billed as Prospero the Enchanter receives a fair amount of correspondence via the theater office, but this is the first envelope addressed to him that contains a suicide note, and it is also the first to arrive carefully pinned to the coat of a five-year-old girl.”

Ok, seriously. Shut. Up.

Damn, I wish I’d written those lines…

Jackie

As Halloween approaches, we are sharing our scary October reads. THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER is atmospheric, mysterious, and dark, but still manages to be fun and romantic.  That's a feat!  First take a look at the gorgeous cover:

 

I know!  V says the cover is even more beautiful in real life, that it's like velvet.  I ordered the e-book, but I'm tempted to buy the hardcover too, just so I can pet it from time to time.

This is a hard book to talk about without getting too spoilery.  Mara is coming to terms with a horrific accident that killed her boyfriend, his sister and Mara's own best friend.  Mara survived, but she doesn't remember what she and her friends were doing in the abandoned asylum (I know! Creeped out already, huh?) the night it collapsed.  As she starts to piece together the events that led to the collapse, she starts to experience disturbing hallucinations.  Is Mara suffering from PTSD or are her visions symptoms of something even more sinister?  Hodkin combines elements of horror, romance and psychological thriller to create a story that will keep you turning the page long into the night.  Just be sure to have a flashlight handy.  

Happy October, everyone!  Welcome to a month of ghouls and ghosts.  Witches, vampires and zombies.  Everyone loves a fright, right?

Well, not me.  I don’t do scary.  The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova – brilliant in its history – gave me nightmares.  Just being in the same town, during our retreat, as the hotel that inspired Stephen King’s The Shining made me nervous.  Public restrooms still freak me out after seeing the movie Copycat in the 90’s.  I have never seen Jaws.

However, this month’s book blog is devoted to scary books.  I needed to swallow my fear and find a good one.  I thought about what terrifies me most – and it’s not zombies or vampires or even possessed dolls (though I shudder at the very idea of them – the only reason I haven’t yet read Gretchen McNeil’s POSSESS).  No, the thing that scares me most is the cruelty of the real world.

So I chose this week to write about LEVERAGE by Joshua C. Cohen.  This is a book that is all about cruelty.  But more than that, it is all about fear.  Not fright – a ghoul popping out of the darkness or Glenn Close leaping out of the bathtub – but the deep-rooted, undeniable emotion that can seize our hearts, control us, and even paralyze our very thoughts.

Told from the alternating perspectives of two very different athletes, LEVERAGE recounts the details of a fictional incident inspired by factual events. 

From Cohen’s LEVERAGE website:

There's an extraordinary price for victory at Oakgrove High. It is paid on - and off - the football field. And it claims its victims without mercy - including the most innocent bystanders. 

When a violent, steriod-infused, ever-escalating prank war has devastating consequences, an unlikely friendship between a talented but emotionally damaged fullback and a promising gymnast might hold the key to a school's salvation.

Cohen’s book is so frightening, I had to put it down halfway through and let it rest for a couple of days.  It is told with a visceral grip on reality and an unflinching eye on the truth – no matter how ugly.  I absolutely had to finish it.  In the end, it didn’t give me nightmares.  It gave me hope.

Welcome to October! As usual we are spreading the good news about great books during the first week of the month and, since it's OCTOBER, we're sharing about scary books we love. When we first talked about this topic, I immediately put in dibbs for Ilsa J. Bick's ASHES. A terrifying thrill ride, ASHES is raking in the fantastic reviews. Below is the description from Amazon:

It could happen tomorrow . . .

An electromagnetic pulse flashes across the sky, destroying every electronic device, wiping out every computerized system, and killing billions.
Alex hiked into the woods to say good-bye to her dead parents and her personal demons. Now desperate to find out what happened after the pulse crushes her to the ground, Alex meets up with Tom—a young soldier—and Ellie, a girl whose grandfather was killed by the EMP.

For this improvised family and the others who are spared, it’s now a question of who can be trusted and who is no longer human.

Author Ilsa J. Bick crafts a terrifying and thrilling novel about a world that could be ours at any moment, where those left standing must learn what it means not just to survive, but to live amidst the devastation.

"Splendidly paced apocalyptic zombie horror ends with a thrilling, terrifying cliffhanger and a number of unresolved mysteries."--Kirkus Reviews

“Bick delivers an action-packed tale of an apocalypse unfolding, launching a trilogy with flair.”
--Publisher's Weekly

"Bick has written a thriller of a post-apocalyptic novel."
--Ingram's

If you love a good scary read, this is the perfect Halloween companion. The only bad thing I can say about this wild ride through zombieland is that it ends too soon on a cliffhanger that will have you dying for book two of this trilogy!