Book Review: Prom Dates from Hell by Rosemary Clement-Moore

Prom Dates from Hell
Author: Rosemary Clement-Moore
Publication: Delacorte Books for Young Readers; Reprint edition (April 22, 2008)

Description: Maggie Quinn, girl reporter. Honors student, newspaper staffer, yearbook photographer.

Six weeks from graduation and all she wants to do is get out of Avalon High in one piece. A sensible nerd would have kept her head down, done her drive-by photo shoot of the prom, and continued the countdown to Deploma Day. But fate seems to have different plans for Maggie.

High school may be a natural breeding ground for evil, but the scent of fire and brimstone is still a little out of the ordinary. It's the distinct smell of sulfur that makes Maggie suspect that something's a bit off. And when real Twilight Zone stuff starts happening to the school's ruling clique—the athletic elite and the head cheerleader and her minions, all of whom happen to be named Jessica—Maggie realizes it's up to her to get in touch with her inner Nancy Drew and ferret out who unleashed the ancient evil before all hell breaks loose.

Maggie has always suspected that prom is the work of the devil, but it looks like her attendance will be mandatory. Sometimes a girl's got to do some pretty undesirable things if she wants to save her town from soul-crushing demons from hell. And the cheerleading squad.

My Thoughts: Maggie Quinn is just holding on and laying low and waiting until graduation. She wants to let all the high school drama pass her by. But when she asked to prom by one of the nerds and then witnesses his being hazed, actually tortured, by the high school elite, she finds herself getting involved in more than she wants to.

Maggie has some sort of psychic gift that she has been denying most of her life. She doesn't want to believe any of that irrational stuff. But when the group of Jocks and cheerleaders - all named Jessica - start having some strange accidents and exhibiting strange behaviors, she finds herself involved. In fact, she was almost one of the victims when a fellow student takes her place in line for the diving board in PE class and suffers an accident. Maggie has a terror of water if she can't see the bottom and when she sees a strange shadow in the water, she just can't force herself onto the diving board.

But bad dreams and high school drama aren't enough to keep her from dredging up her hidden Nancy Drew and investigating the strange occurrences. 

This was a fun story of an intrepid - and sarcastic - high school student. I liked her circle of friends and helpers including a new love interest. I liked her supportive parents and grandmother. I liked the pop culture references which might be a bit dated for a new generation of teen readers since it was written in 2007.

This book has been sitting on my TBR mountain since 2008. But now I bought the other two books in the series and hope to read them without waiting for fifteen years. 

Favorite Quote:

I'd always thought Hamlet was a dumb play about a guy who can't make up his mind. I mean, I face the same drama in the lunch line. But at that moment I understood: When it comes to the big stuff, it is hard to decide whether to let things just happen, especially when it's to other people, or to take a stand and cause yourself a world of trouble.

I bought this one July 19, 2009. You can buy your copy here.

ARC Review: Hemlock Island by Kelley Armstrong

Hemlock Island
Author: Kelley Armstrong
Publication: St. Martin's Press (September 12, 2023)

Description: A standalone horror novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong.

Laney Kilpatrick has been renting her vacation home to strangers. The invasion of privacy gives her panic attacks, but it’s the only way she can keep her beloved Hemlock Island, the only thing she owns after a pandemic-fueled divorce. But broken belongings and campfires that nearly burn down the house have escalated to bloody bones, hex circles, and now, terrified renters who've fled after finding blood and nail marks all over the guest room closet, as though someone tried to claw their way out...and failed.

When Laney shows up to investigate with her teenaged niece in tow, she discovers that her ex, Kit, has also been informed and is there with Jayla, his sister and her former best friend. Then Sadie, another old high school friend, charters over with her brother, who’s now a cop.

There are tensions and secrets, whispers in the woods, and before long, the discovery of a hand poking up from the earth. Then the body that goes with it... But by that time, someone has taken off with their one and only means off the island, and they’re trapped with someone—or something—that doesn’t want them leaving the island alive.

My Thoughts: This horror novel takes place on an island in Lake Superior. When Laney Kilpatrick's marriage blew up during the pandemic, she was awarded the island home she and her husband had built. However, as a high school English teacher, Laney needed to rent out the home and island in order to make ends meet. 

When her tenants cause problems, she regrets her choice, but renting is her only option. None of the offers to purchase the retreat have been tempting since she loves the island. But then the strange things start of happen. A hex circle or two and eerie wind chimes are the start. Blood and claw marks inside a closet are the end for the latest renters.

Laney and her niece travel to the island to find out what is going on. She doesn't know that her ex-husband and his sister who is her ex-best friend are also coming because they heard about the problems. And she certainly isn't expecting another ex-friend and her police officer brother to join them. 

The tensions between all the adults are palpable. It seems everyone is keeping secrets that gradually get shared as the group deals with find a dead body or two and having the boats that would let them leave the island sabotaged. And then a storm comes...

The story was entertaining and not too horribly scary. I liked Laney even though she was sort of a doormat who isn't willing to fight for what she wants out of life. 

Favorite Quote:

He laughs, and I am caught in the tractor beam of that laugh. This is how I want things to be between us. The happy version, where we can still laugh together and pretend he didn't walk away during the worst time of my life, pretend he isn't desperate to buy his way out of that guilt.

I want the lie.

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.

Audiobook Review: A Stitch in Time by Kelley Armstrong

A Stitch in Time
Author: Kelley Armstrong
Narrator: Samantha Brentmoor
Series: A Stitch in Time (Book 1)
Publication: K. L. A. Fricke, Inc. (October 13, 2020)
Length: 10 hours and 39 minutes

Description: Thorne Manor has always been haunted...and it has always haunted Bronwyn Dale. As a young girl, Bronwyn could pass through a time slip in her great-aunt's house, where she visited William Thorne, a boy her own age, born two centuries earlier. After a family tragedy, the house was shuttered and Bronwyn was convinced that William existed only in her imagination.

Now, 20 years later Bronwyn inherits Thorne Manor. And when she returns, William is waiting.

William Thorne is no longer the boy she remembers. He’s a difficult and tempestuous man, his own life marred by tragedy and a scandal that had him retreating to self-imposed exile in his beloved moors. He’s also none too pleased with Bronwyn for abandoning him all those years ago.

As their friendship rekindles and sparks into something more, Bronwyn must also deal with ghosts in the present version of the house. Soon she realizes they are linked to William and the secret scandal that drove him back to Thorne Manor. To build a future, Bronwyn must confront the past.

My Thoughts: A STITCH IN TIME is a time travel romance complete with an impossible love and vengeful ghosts. 

Bronwyn Dale has recently inherited Thorne Manor from her great-aunt. Bronwyn had spent happy childhood summers there and made a friend of William Thorne, a boy of her own age, who lived in the house nearly 200 years earlier. But she hadn't been back since a terrible accident when she was fifteen.

When she's fifteen, childhood friendship has turned into adolescent love. But there are ghosts, ghosts. that only Bronwyn is able to see. When one of the ghosts frightens her awake one night, she runs out of the house in a panic which causes her uncle to come out onto an unsafe balcony and fall to his death. Her mother doesn't believe her ravings about ghosts and hospitalizes Bronwyn. 

After treatment, Bronwyn begins to question what she saw and becomes convinced that both her time traveling, and visions of ghosts were hallucinations. She goes on to live her life. She falls in love and marries but loses her husband to a fast-acting brain cancer. She gains her dream position as a professor of history at a university in Toronto. And then she inherits Thorne Manor and needs to go back...

Once in Thorne Manor, she remembers those things she had suppressed, and she is still seeing a variety of ghosts. She also finds that she can still travel back to William's time where she finds a man who is at first angry with her for leaving him all those years earlier. He's also a man who has never stopped loving her. They rekindle their romance but there are still many obstacles not least of which is that they each have lives in another time. 

There are also mysteries to solve. A strange number of disappearances have centered around Thorne Manor and William has gotten the reputation that carries into Bonwyn's time of being a reclusive murder. His sister, his fiancée, and his best friend's wife have all disappeared under suspicious circumstances. 

Bronwyn needs to solve the mysteries and clear her lover's name but is concerned that righting the wrongs will repair the stitch in time and separate her from her William forever. 

This was an entertaining story. I am not a big fan of time travel but thought that Kelley Armstrong dealt with the problems in a creative way. Samantha Brentmoor did an excellent job narrating the story. 

I bought this one November 2, 2020. You can buy your copy here.

ARC Review: The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

The Sun Down Motel
Author: Simone St. James
Publication: Berkley (February 18, 2020)

Description: Something hasn’t been right at the roadside Sun Down Motel for a very long time, and Carly Kirk is about to find out why in this chilling new novel from the USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of The Broken Girls.

Upstate New York, 1982. Viv Delaney wants to move to New York City, and to help pay for it she takes a job as the night clerk at the Sun Down Motel in Fell, New York. But something isnʼt right at the motel, something haunting and scary.

Upstate New York, 2017. Carly Kirk has never been able to let go of the story of her aunt Viv, who mysteriously disappeared from the Sun Down before she was born. She decides to move to Fell and visit the motel, where she quickly learns that nothing has changed since 1982. And she soon finds herself ensnared in the same mysteries that claimed her aunt.

My Thoughts: This dual timeline story is filled with ghosts, terror, and mystery.

In 1982 Viv Delaney leaves home after one more argument with her mother. Her stated goal is to go to New York to become an actress. However, she get sidetracked in Fell, New York, where she takes a job as the night clerk at the Sun Down Motel never knowing what horror she will soon be involved with.

In 2017, Carly Kirk goes looking for her Aunt Viv who disappeared in 1982 without a trace from Fell, New York. Viv has always been the mystery her mother didn't want to talk about. Now, after her mother's death from cancer, Carly quits the college course she wasn't enjoying anyway and travels to Fell to see if she can discover what happened all those years ago.

Back in 1982, Viv soon discovers that the motel is haunted by a woman whose body was left at the site when it was a construction site, a boy who hit his head in the pool and died a couple of days later, and by the former night clerk who died of a heart attack. Viv also learns that the woman who was found on the site wasn't the only woman to die in town. It appears there is a serial killer who is targeting Fell.

As Viv investigates she comes to believe that she has discovered who the killer is. When she takes her findings to Officer Alma Trent, who is the only woman on the force and relegated to a permanent position on the night shift, Trent doesn't quite believe her. So Viv keeps investigating and soon meets Marnie who is a freelance photographer hired to take pictures of a couple meeting frequently at the motel for illicit  purpose.

Meanwhile in 2017, Carly takes a job as the night clerk at the Sun Down Motel which doesn't seem to have changed one bit since her aunt had the same job. She begins her investigation by reading old newspaper articles in the library archives and gains information from her new roommate who had a strong interest in the various crimes that were part of Fell's history. She meets Callum in the archives who has his own interest in Fell's past and Nick Harkness who is staying at the motel and is linked to a much more recent crime in Fell.

As Carly and her roommate try to track down those who were part of Viv's past - Alma and Marnie - they soon learn that both seem to be keeping secrets and being less that forthright about their roles in the past events. And all the while, Carly is meeting the same ghosts who haunted Viv.

The story had a very eerie vibe in the beginning but switched to more of a mystery in the last half of the book. It was very descriptive and very creepy. I liked the story and thought it was well told. However, I decided that I could only read it in the daytime and I crossed motel night clerk off my list of potential jobs.

Fans of creepy thrillers with vengeful ghosts will definitely enjoy this mystery.

Favorite Quote:

Viv had heard ghost stories. Everyone has. But she had never thought she'd be standing holding a chain-link fence, trying not to vomit in fear as her knuckles went white and something other crossed behind her back. It was crazy. It was the kind of story you told years later while your listeners rolled their eyes, because they had no idea how the terror felt on the back of your neck.

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from Edelweiss. You can buy your copy here.

Book Review: Daughter of the Blood by Anne Bishop

Daughter of the Blood
Author: Anne Bishop
Series: Black Jewels (Book 1)
Publication: Roc (March 1, 1998)

Description: Seven hundred years ago, a Black Widow witch saw an ancient prophecy come to life in her web of dreams and visions. Now the Dark Kingdom readies itself for the arrival of its Queen, a Witch who will wield more power than even the High Lord of Hell himself. But she is still young, still open to influence—and corruption.

Whoever controls the Queen controls the darkness. Three men—sworn enemies—know this. And they know the power that hides behind the blue eyes of an innocent young girl. And so begins a ruthless game of politics and intrigue, magic and betrayal, where the weapons are hate and love—and the prize could be terrible beyond imagining...

My Thoughts: DAUGHTER OF THE BLOOD is a fascinating dark fantasy about an ancient prophecy that is finally coming to fruition. Daemon Sadi, Lucivar Yaslana, and Saeton have all been waiting for hundreds of years.

Jaenelle is the potential Witch who can make things better and end the abuses practiced by the Queens who have gotten darker and darker. But when she makes her first appearance in the story, she is only a seven-year-old child who is in a terrible situation and who uses powers that are almost beyond comprehension to travel to many worlds.

Jaenelle is an intriguing character. She is young but already knows so much about evil and betrayal. She has a sweetness and a deep curiosity and a tremendous ability to love. She also has a deep anger at what is happening around her.

When she is twelve, Daemon meets her and recognizes that she will be his Queen. He's determined to protect her and shelter her which isn't easy for a man who is under control of one of the most evil and powerful Queens. But Daemon has powers of his own too which might be enough to keep this beautiful child safe.

The world building is intriguing as we see a society that is becoming more and more corrupt and more and more disconnected from the land. We see Queens who are quick to kill any potential rival which has the effect of diluting the power and magic. We see intrigue and treachery and a child who inspires those who love her to be better than they thought they could be.

I can't wait to read more in this series.

Favorite Quote:

"We are what we are. Nothing more, nothing less.There is good and evil among every kind of people. It's the evil among us who rule now."

I bought this one. You can buy your copy here.

Friday Memes: A Panicked Premonition by Victoria Laurie

Happy Friday everybody!

Book Beginnings on Friday is now hosted by Rose City Reader. The Friday 56 is hosted at Freda's Voice. Check out the links above for the rules and for the posts of the participants each week. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Beginning:

Hovering over the counter, I tried to explain.

Friday 56 (from 56% of the eARC):

"Spill it," she said, her hand finding her hip.

"It's just ... this guy, he kinds of plays the field. I'm sensing he's got a bit of a wandering eye."

This week I am reading A Panicked Premonition by Victoria Laurie. I got this eARC from NetGalley. Here is the description from Amazon:

The New York Times bestselling Psychic Eye Mystery series continues with P.I. Abby Cooper facing the ultimate locked room murder...
Professional psychic and FBI consultant Abby Cooper has used her inner visions to get her out of many a scrape—and solve many a crime—but she’s about to face a murder scene that will put all her powers to the test. Abby’s husband Dutch has a side business providing security and building panic rooms for wealthy clients. One morning, one of Dutch’s partners, Dave, goes missing on his way to meet a client. Abby’s intuition tells her something terrible has happened to him.

Then two of Dutch’s clients are found brutally murdered...inside their brand new panic room, and most of the evidence points to Dave as the killer.  With the authorities racing to find and arrest him, Abby's got to use all her intuitive prowess to get to Dave first, discover the real killer, and save her husband's business. This is one case where Abby is positive there’s far more to this mystery than meets her inner eye…

Book Review: Here I Stay by Barbara Michaels

Here I Stay
Author: Barbara Michaels
Publication: Harper (January 30, 2007)

Description: Andrea Torgesen is certain that hard work is exactly what her younger brother Jim needs to help him recover from the trauma of a serious car accident—and turning a decrepit old mansion into a beautiful country inn seems to be the perfect project. But unearthly voices and eerie visions haunt Jim from almost the first instant he sets foot in the dreary old house. And his strange obsession with a long-neglected graveyard is most troubling to his concerned sibling. There is evil in this place where the unthinkable is possible—a terrifying force that Andrea and Jim must confront . . . or forfeit their lives.

My Thoughts: This spooky story is about a woman who will do anything to care for her younger brother. Andrea has been in charge of her younger brother Jim since their parents' deaths when Andrea was 19 and Jim was 7. The parents left nothing and it has been a major struggle for Andrea. She became hyper-focused on creating a good life for them. When Jim is in a car accident and almost dies, Andrea pulls him back. Then she throws herself into turning an old house that she inherited from a great aunt into a bed and breakfast.

Andrea is so focused and single-minded that she refuses to acknowledge that the house has a presence that may not be good for either of them. She finds the previous owner, Mary Fairfax, to be a sort of role model for her as she was a widowed woman with a child who was determined to have a business and succeed in a time when Victorian ladies didn't do that sort of thing. Jim becomes obsessed with Mary's daughter Alice.

Martin Greenspan becomes a long term boarder at the B & B. He's a reporter who is writing a book. He also holds completely opposite political views from Andrea. He successfully befriends Jim and falls in love with Andrea. Andrea keeps him at arm's length because of her own obsessions with success and keeping Jim happy.

The story was spooky and just a little dated. It was written in 1983 in a time before cell phones and the internet. My first real clue to the age of this story was the number of people who were smoking. I have to say that I didn't like Andrea very much. She was so rigid and focused and blind to anything that didn't fit into her worldview.

If you are looking for a story that is spooky but with out graphic violence, this is the one for you.

Favorite Quote:

"You're crazy. Jim doesn't need a psychiatrist. He's fine."

"He is miserable," Martin said flatly. "He is desperately unhappy. You have an enviable capacity for ignoring things you don't want to see, but even you must have realized that. There have been times when his eyes remind me...."

"Say it. You couldn't offend me more than you have already."

"I once saw a couple of louts push a dog out of their car and take off," Martin said. "I suppose it had become a nuisance to them. It wasn't a particularly attractive animal—a mutt, middle-sized, shaggy... It stood their watching the car drive away. Its eyes had the same look Jim's have now. Bewildered, lost, uncomprehending."

I bought this one on May 8, 2008. You can buy your copy here.