The Spire in the Woods by Tony Lunedi

Trigger warnings for this book: Suicide, Rape, Abuse of a Corpse?, more?

This book was so good! It hooks you in and doesn’t really stop. Then towards the end I caught myself holding my breath and sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for what happens next.

Okay, the start of this book drops a teenagers suicide on you, then goes onto the ghost stories or legends surrounding that town. And then from there we go into the rest of the story. The way it is written, the author gives you puzzle pieces that you are putting together alongside the narrator/main character. At least that’s how it felt for the first few parts. There are also some parts that were relatable for me, like when the main character was talking about one of his female friends. It just reminded me about my own high school experience and being “the fat friend” myself. So, not necessarily a good relatable, but relatable nonetheless.

I don’t really know when it started, but during part 8 I realized that I was truly holding my breath because of the suspense. And it was just SOOOOOOOOO good!! I normally don’t feel the suspense like that, horror movies are predictable, some mystery books are the same. I’m just impressed with how well it was written, especially that chapter or two.

Something I didn’t really care for was the teenage horniness. I get it, it shows (at least part of) how our main character perceives a couple of the people around him and the relationships they have with him. For me the story lulls a bit around these parts, but that’s probably more so because personally I don’t feel they are necessary.

Overall, I would rate this book at least a 4.5. Maybe more like 4.8 because even though I felt some bits weren’t needed, as well as my hang ups left over from high school, it was still a really good read. I’d really recommend if you enjoy ghost stories based in true crime.

Borrasca {Parts 1 to 4} by C.K. Walker

Below is the link to the author’s own website to Borrasca part 1. There is a “Stories” tab where you can find the rest of the story. According to Goodreads, the original four parts of the story was posted in 2015 as a finished work. Then due to popular demand, C.K. Walker wrote part five in 2016.

Trigger warnings to be noted if you haven’t already read this story: NSFW, human trafficking, missing person, rape, suicide, drug addiction, and honestly there are probably more that I’m missing.

Borrasca

I was first introduced to this story by listening to the podcast called CreepCast this past September. (Side note: Wendigoon didn’t mention any trigger warnings, even though he had read it before, and Meat Canyon went into this story blind. Which is why I mentioned them above.) Going into this story completely blind, it ended up not being what I expected it to be. Also, I’m going to try to be vague because I don’t want to spoil anything if people haven’t read this yet.

I’ll be honest, as of right now I have only fully read to the end of part four. I started peeking into part five, but the vibe felt different to me and I decided to leave it for another day. I might try to come back to part five soon, though I’m not quite sure how soon.

You have our main character, Sam, and his family (mom, dad, and older sister) moving while he is elementary school age. Sam and his family end up moving into an old mining town. The story follows Sam, and two of his friends, as they grow up in this town. Going from elementary school up to high school.

Something that I really enjoyed about this story is that Sam never loses interest in Borrasca. He is intrigued by it when he first moves in to town, asking questions to both the adults in his life as well as his classmates that had spent all their lives growing up around it. Urban legends spread to the younger kids by the older kids around them, ultimately stemming from the history of the town itself. As Sam gets older though, he stops asking questions about Borrasca, but it stays with him. I wouldn’t say that he is obsessed with it; I took it more as him having that gut feeling or intuition about Borrasca being something important that he shouldn’t ignore or forget about. Not realizing until the end when he finds out just how important it is to his own situation as well as how important it is to the town and the day to day lives of the people around him.

I do want to note that even though it was only four parts, the story didn’t feel rushed or lacking and it was still a pretty decent length to read. It was almost five hours for CreepCast to read it (with commentary). Then when I reread it, it took me maybe closer to three and a half hours or so.

Also, I acknowledge that not everyone is going to enjoy this story. Two of my friends stopped reading when they were so close to the end of part four, because of how heavy it is. Personally, towards the end I was crying. My heart was breaking for Sam because he had to make such a hard choice and realizing the aftermath of making that choice. But, I JUST COULDN’T PUT IT DOWN. I was hooked, I was invested, and I had to get to the end and get closure for some of the characters.

I feel like if you’re someone that enjoys true crime, you will probably enjoy this story as well.

Okay, now onto my rating. Parts one through four are getting five stars from me. The writing style is good, the plot hooks you, the big bad isn’t what you expect it to be, and it feels realistic. Like, this is something that could happen, maybe not on the scale of a full town being in on the operation, but it’s still plausible enough.

Kidnapped the Wrong Sister by Marie Kelly

I originally read this book around 2012 to 2014 while I was in high school. It was one of the first “steamy” romance novels I ever read. It feels like it’s more of a short story because it is only about 130 pages long.

The main things I remember from my first read through was that I thought it was amazing, I started reading it then stayed up late to finish it on a school night. Like, I just couldn’t put it down. I also really only remembered that it was a billionaire romance, set in/around Greece and had some sex scenes. Also, the feeling of how much I enjoyed this book stuck with me all these years.

So, I finally found the book again and decided that I was going to skim-read it to see how spicy it was and sort it into my collection accordingly. Then, by about the 4th chapter, I stopped skimming and started fully reading because I just got sucked into it.

As I was reading, I realized that I had forgotten a decent amount of the story. Like, how our main character was a traveling nurse that had a fear of flying on airplanes. As far as our main character, Diona, goes, I feel like she is very well rounded and a likeable character in general. Then, there is HIM. The love interest…

This time around, his character frustrated me so much. I don’t know if it’s because of my life experiences over the past 10 or so years helping me understand and relate more or what, but I was a bit peeved. He, Nikias, was just so typical. He was hard headed, arrogant, didn’t fully listen to what Diona was saying, didn’t believe her even though her story never changed from when she first tried telling him, he also did and said things just to prove a point even though he was wrong.

Even though I was frustrated with his character this time around, I still wanted to see them get together in the end and was happy with how the book ended. I also understand that if Nikias was written any other way it would probably have been a completely different book overall.

Ratings:

I would still give this book about 4.5 stars in general because it was still a good read, just probably not as good as I thought as a teenager.

For the spice rating, I’d give it a 2. So, mild. I say that because there are some sex scenes, but not a lot and they are short. So, sex is definitely not the main focus of the book. They are also pretty vanilla scenes.

My Current Rating Scale.

For the standard rating of books, I’ll keep it out of 5 stars.

As for spiciness I’m rating from 0 to 5. 0 being clean romance with no sexual aspects the 5 being full blown erotica. Of course this would only apply to any romance novels that I end up reading.

Recently, I decided that I’m going to dive back into reading after so long of not having the time to my self for it amongst other things happening in my life. I also decided that I want to try to get back into posting reviews on this website as well as on Goodreads to help the authors even if I’m borrowing the books from the library or getting them for free from Amazon/kindle.

If you manage to stumble upon my book club thanks for checking it out and hopefully my reviews make sense and are decent enough to make you want to read some of these books.

-Shayla