Wonderfully Wicked Read-a-thon Wrap-Up

I did pretty well this read-a-thon! Here's what I read:

* The Evolution of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin (reviewed)
* The Queen is Dead by Kate Locke (reviewed)
* White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi (gave up on at about page 150)
* The Shining by Stephen King
* Bedbugs by Ben H. Winters
* American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis (still reading at page 180)

This was super fun and really motivated me to read this month. I enjoyed just about all of them and reviews for the The Shining, Bedbugs, and American Psycho should be up this month.

Bedbugs

Susan and Alex Wendt have found the most perfect apartment: in Brooklyn Heights, 1300 square feet, 2 bedroom, 2 bath, top two floors of a beautiful brownstone, and recently renovated. The price is crazy low and is totally worth having a weird landlady with a creepy handyman and an odd fixation with the basement. The couple moves in with their daughter and everything is fine at first. Then everything starts to crumble. First Susan finds out a kitten died in her apartment, leaving a horrible smell. Then the bites come. She's absolutely convinced they have bedbugs, despite the rest of her family being bite free and an exterminator examining the house and reporting no bedbugs. Her mental health deteriorates as she becomes obsessed with the bugs, researching ways to get rid of them, covering their house with dirt to deter them, itching, and becoming increasingly covered in bites. Are the bugs real or are they all in Susan's mind?

Bedbugs is a very fast read that packs a punch and goes places I didn't expect. Susan Wendt used to be a high powered lawyer, but gave it up to focus on her art. I didn't really like her for most of the book because she claimed to want to do art and then spent all of her time on errands, chores, and generally agonizing over unnecessary things. She is high strung and quick to freak out about random things, so I personally thought the bugs were going to be all in her head. She treats people she views as subservient to her pretty badly, especially the nanny, and that never reflects well on people. The financial problems put a strain on her relationship with Alex, a photographer who want to return to art photography, but has to support their family. By paying an unnecessary nanny an exorbitant amount plus pushing to move to a more expensive location, Susan doesn't help matters and is combative instead of supportive to her stressed husband. This all before the bedbugs even come to light, but establishes Susan as not a very sympathetic figure.

Then the bedbugs come in. Just reading about them made me paranoid and itchy. Yuck. They are gross creepy crawlies that I hope I never encounter. After she starts freaking out over bedbugs, Susan becomes marginally more sympathetic than before. She freaked out really early about them before she even saw signs, which was weird. Plus when she researched them and read something about badbugs (bedbugs from hell), she believed it! How gullible is she? The solution to get rid of the bugs according to the book is just psycho and she attempts it. After that point, I felt sympathetic towards her. I think she was insufferable through most of the novel and it would have been nice to feel for her a little before the ending. I kept reading because I was curious where the novel was going rather than caring what happened to Susan.

Bedbugs is a fun horror novel. I read it within a few hours and the momentum really builds well. Although I really disliked Susan, the story and side characters were interesting and kept me turning the pages. The ending has a bit of a twist and I never saw it coming.

My rating: 4/5 fishmuffins

The Shining

Jack Torrance is a recovering alcoholic, desperate for a new start. He drove drunk regularly, drank heavily daily, and was encouraged by his alcoholic best friend. Two events changed his life: breaking his son's arm in a drunken rage and hitting what turned out to be just a bike on the highway with his best friend. Now he's on the straight and narrow. Jack, his son Danny, and his wife Wendy move into the historical and grand Overlook Hotel for the winter to act as caretaker, running the heat, doing maintenance, and making sure the hotel can open easily in the spring. The hotel has other plans and mysterious things start happening. At first, the happenings are relatively harmless, presenting as horrific visions, but soon, the visions give way to violence and horror. Can the family escape the hotel before it's too late or will they perish in the Overlook Hotel?

I know the story of The Shining very well. I first read it when I was about 10 or 12 years old and I remember absolutely loving it. Afterwards, I saw the various film adaptations and the story is still creepy and effective. This is the first time I read it as an adult and parts of it still hold up. It's one of the few ghost stories I like. It doesn't bring in religion (which is a pet peeve of mine as few of them are done well). It focuses on real life problems through the supernatural and the struggle of good versus evil. The Torrance family never really talks about their problems at all. It's the big elephant in the room that no one wants to acknowledge. Poor Danny doesn't know what's going on frequently with the situation with his family, reading peoples thoughts, seeing horrific images around the hotel, and finally being attacked by the apparitions. The only way they actually mention anything about Jack's drinking or anger problems are after the supernatural phenomena are present. It allows the family to unite (for a time) and address their problems. Jack Torrance is an interesting and deeply flawed character. He has a drinking problem and anger management issues, but he's a good person at heart. He cares for his family and wants to succeed for them. This job at the hotel is his last chance at success. The hotel exploits his flaws and turns him in to a literal monster, tragically destroying any humanity left in him.

The Shining has a lot of flaws that I didn't notice when I was younger. The writing is mostly good. King writes characters well and gives them little habits and quirks to make them memorable. However, the descriptions of everything and delving into every single detail of the characters' pasts just grew tedious. I wanted to move forward with the story instead of constantly revisiting the same past events through different perspectives. There was a lot of telling rather than showing. The reader can make connections in the text without it being explicitly stated and I felt that it was overkill to do so. I also had issues with Wendy and her choice to stay with Jack after he broke Danny's arm and beat a student rather severely. Her passivity and willingness to stay with Jack despite huge red flags simply disgusted me. Her reasons for staying were rather selfish, centering around not wanting to live with her mother and show that she failed rather than thinking about saving herself and her son from abuse.

The Shining is a good novel that I enjoyed. Parts of it dragged along and the writing was not always engaging, but the overall story and characters make the novel a classic that will continue to be popular for years to come. I hope the sequel Doctor Sleep is as good as, if not better, than the original.

My rating: 3/5 fishmuffins

Curse of Chucky

Nica lives with her mother and has been paralyzed since birth. She receives a mysterious package with a weird doll in it and thinks nothing of it. That night, her mother dies in a horrible accident. Her family visits for the funeral and stays with her for "support," including her sister Barb, her brother in law Ian, their 5 year old daughter, their nanny, and the priest who presided over the ceremony. As the night goes on, a storm brews and worsens, causing spotty power outages. Then people are found dead by mysterious circumstances one by one. Nica soon figures out who the murderer is, but the real challenge is getting the others to listen to her before it's too late.

Curse of Chucky is a complete turnaround in tone from the last few films. Bride and Seed of Chucky both focused on humor over horror and Chucky stopped really being scary. This film changes all that and makes an effort to create a creepy atmosphere and instill horror in the viewer again. The creepy historical house in the middle of a thunderstorm at night is the perfect setting for any creepy story. Suspense is built and maintained successfully, making this the scariest Chucky movie in years. Even the way Chucky approaches things contributes to the mood. He isn't seen moving around or speaking until about well into the film, making the viewer guess when he will decide to reveal himself. Nica's disability also makes Chucky more of a threat. She can't just kick him across the room and when the power goes out, her mobility is seriously hindered without the elevator to take her wheelchair between floors. Chucky is back to being a true monster instead of a laughable creature. It brought back memories of when I was a kid and I got rid of all my plastic dolls because I was totally frightened of him.

Nica is my favorite character of the film. She's the most sensible character and very self reliant. I grew frustrated as her family tried to push her into an assisted living home she didn't need in an effort to sell the house and collect the money. They viewed her disability as a weakness to be exploited and made efforts to insult and demean every aspect of her life. Nica is quick to act and doesn't make too many mistakes in her fight with Chucky. Fiona Dourif is admirable in the role and brings a genuine character that the viewer can actually sympathize with and root for. So many slasher films only have two dimensional characters that are only amusing during their horrific death scenes.

The film did have some flaws. There were a few too many cliches and expected scenes. There were a few small surprises, but fit in a little too well with typical horror movie tropes. Some of the acting was atrocious and over the top. The build up went on a little too long for my taste, especially when the reveal is well known to the audience. Suspense is only built up to a point and then annoyance sets in when he will be revealed as the killer.The CGI is terrible and probably shouldn't have been used at all if the quality was going to be so low. Chucky's face changes way too much throughout the film in the new state as if the filmmakers couldn't decide on a consistent look. The pros outweigh the cons and overall, the film was enjoyable.

Curse of Chucky stands as a sort of hybrid reboot and sequel to the franchise. This is also shown in the film when Chucky sheds his new face to reveal the scarred, old one hidden underneath. It acknowledges the past films and advances in a new direction. A bit of Chucky's past is filled in while moving forward with the story and setting a darker tone more focused on horror for future films. I don't know why this film was direct to DVD since Seed of Chucky was such a godawful mess and released in theaters. Hopefully, this new imagining of Chucky will spawn better, scarier films for the franchise in the future.

My rating: 6/10 fishmuffins

Wonderfully Wicked Challenge: Acrostic

For the Wonderfully Wicked challenge at the Happy Booker, I created this acrostic based on Stephen King's The Shining. The Overlook is the haunted hotel that Jack Torrance takes his family to for the winter.

Once Jack was an angry, out of control drunk.
Violent accident led him to change his ways.
Everyone still looks at him with pity and disdain.
Redemption lies in the position as caretaker at the Overlook Hotel for the winter.
Laughter and fun fill the halls at first.
One day the bar was full and Jack was thirsty.
Of course all work and no play make Jack a dull boy.
Kid needs to take his medicine like a man, muses Jack.

Wonderfully Wicked Read-a-thon Progress

I've now read over half of the books I listed for the read-a-thon! Here is my progress so far:

* 10/13 - finished The Evolution of Mara Dyer (reviewed)

* 10/14 - started and finished The Queen is Dead

* 10/15 - started White is for Witching

* 10/16 - gave up on White is for Witching after 150 pages, started The Shining

4 more days! It isn't to late to sign up if you want to get in more spooky reads.

The Queen is Dead

Xandra Vardan recently discovered she is not only a goblin, but their queen. As a result, her world is thrown into turmoil. Her family has thrown her out and people are terrified of her, humans, halvies, and aristos alike. Various factions try to gain her favor because whoever has the goblins on their side has a distinct advantage over the others. Xandra doesn't even know if she wants to be the goblin's leader or what faction, if any, she wants to align with. The only constants in her life are Vex, her werewolf boyfriend, and the goblin plague, most of them loyal and there to support her. In addition to all the other things complicating her life, her brother Val is nowhere to be found.  Xandra must use all her resources to find out where her brother is before it's too late.

I officially love this series. The first book in the series is good, but the second books in series can really suffer because it's setting up to the final book. Xandra is a fun protagonist. Her observations and unique curses make me laugh and make her very endearing. She is a little annoying with wishy-washiness about whether to accept the goblin queen crown and fully accept who she is. I give her a bit of a pass because she has to relearn everything she knows about herself and her world. The people she relied on and knew in her previous life now regard her as savage and untrustworthy. Every faction both fears her and longs for the power she wields. She's grown a lot since the last book, but she's still growing into her newfound physical and political power despite her reluctance. I enjoyed reading about her journey even if there were a few missteps.

The only people who are true constants in her life are her boyfriend Vex and the goblins. Vex McLaughlin is the alpha of a werewolf pack, but doesn't fall into the stereotypical roles he would usually be put in. He is no way misogynistic, controlling, or dickish, the rare werewolf that is satisfied being strong without belittling those around him. He treats Xandra as an equal and expresses no interest in using her for her power as goblin queen. I love that he is frank about his emotions and intentions. No drama, no bullshit. He supports her unconditionally and doesn't try to force her to do anything. The goblins are known to everyone as savage monsters that eat babies. They are shown to be as varied as any person and just as intelligent. Xandra grows closer to them and finds that she's not so different from them. They come to be her family as she gets used to their odd looks and customs.

 The Queen is Dead is amazing: fast paced, action packed, and chock full of interesting story lines. The alternative England is delightful and explored a little more than the previous book. I can't wait to see what's in store for these characters. The next book can't come fast enough!

My rating: 5/5 fishmuffins