The Hollows by Mark Edwards

 

The plot:  Tom Anderson and his teenage daughter, Frankie, have come to Hollow Falls, a cabin resort nestled deep in the woods of Maine, for their summer vacation. Tom lives in England, so these ten days each summer is his only time with his daughter. But what they don't know is that twenty years ago this very week there was a double murder in the woods, and the murderer was never found. Rumor around the resort is that he's still hiding somewhere in the woods. But as eerie as those past murders were, there's something else going on at the resort...something that seems to be threatening Tom's daughter in particular. And Tom finds himself torn between leaving with Frankie before their week together is up, or staying and  trying to figure out the truth of those past murders in order to resuscitate his own writing career.

My thoughts:  Mark Edwards knows how to write a compelling pyschological thriller where "scary things happen to ordinary people". Between the resort's dark past and the creepy things happening to Frankie there's a nice build-up of suspense. It's also very atmospheric. And I liked the push and pull between Tom and Frankie, too, as Tom constantly struggles to deal with her teenage attitude and still be a good dad. Their relationship felt very real. And the mystery of what really happened in the past, and how it connects to the present, kept me guessing right up to the end. I didn't love the epilogue (and felt it was completely unnecessary!), but the rest of the book was great. 

Happy Reading!

From my TBR shelf...

 

Title & Author:  Dark Magic by Adam Wright

Genre:  Urban Fantasy

Setting:  Dearmont, Maine

Plot Summary:  Alec Harbinger is a preternatural investigator; he looks into cases with a supernatural twist, like when the dead start rising from their graves. He's new to Maine, so when Sheriff Cantrell requests his help on a three-year-old case of a missing woman, he doesn't feel he can refuse. Even though he's already working for the sheriff's daughter.

"This was going to be a nightmare. I would be working with Cantrell on the Deirdre Summers case while also investigating the death of his wife without his knowledge. I wanted to say no and send him on his way but what choice did I have? If I declined the case, he was going to start getting pissy about last night's zombie attack and I'd probably end up in jail."

Why I bought it:  I read and enjoyed the first two books in this series, Lost Soul and Buried Memory, and wanted to know what happened to Alec next.

My thoughts:  This series may not be as well-crafted or as deeply layered as Jim Butcher's Dresden Files or Benedict Jacka's Alex Verus series, but it's still a lot of fun! I really like Alec and his British assistant, Felicity. And there's always lots of crazy magic and fast-paced suspense in these books, too. I'm sure I'll be buying several more books in this entertaining series in the future. 

Happy Reading!

P.S. This book counts towards The Backlist Reader Challenge hosted by The Bookwyrm's Hoard.

The Precipice by Paul Doiron

The Precipice is the sixth book in Paul Doiron's Mike Bowditch series, and the second book I've read by him; I thought it was just as good as Dead By Dawn, which happens to be the twelfth book in this series, but the first Doiron book I read. How's that for convoluted? 

The plot:  When two female hikers go missing while hiking the Hundred Mile Wilderness section of the Appalachian Trail, Maine game warden Mike Bowditch is called in to help search for them. He's teamed up with Nonstop Nissen, a volunteer who's hiked the AT himself many times. Mike takes an instant dislike to the man. Still, they track the girls to their last known campsite, but find no other sign of them.

The other game wardens fear the girls might have run into trouble along the trail either from wild animals like coyotes, or from a serious fall. Mike's girlfriend Stacey, a wildlife biologist, worries the two hikers ran into something more dangerous--a killer of the two-legged variety. She's even more stubborn and hard-headed than Mike. 

Their investigation leads to an injured hiker, a strange church, a crazy backwoods Maine family known and feared for their criminal behavior, and the rumor of a serial killer who's been stalking the AT.

My thoughts:  Mike Bowditch is fast becoming a favorite character! I like him, and I find his job as a game warden quite interesting. I didn't like Stacey nearly as much; I found her tendency to overreact and argue and go off on her own kind of off-putting. But Mike likes her. And I really liked Mike's investigation into the two hikers' disappearance. That Appalachian Trail/Maine wilderness setting is also a favorite of mine. It really adds to the mystery. The Precipice is suspenseful, well-written, and it reads fast. And it totally ties in to Dead By Dawn, which was fun for me because I just read that one. I'm really liking this series, and I can't wait to read the next one.

Happy Reading!

Dead by Dawn by Paul Doiron

 

From the blurb:

"Maine game warden Mike Bowditch is fighting for his life. Ambushed on a darkened winter road, he plunges his Jeep into a frozen river and must escape drowning beneath the ice. Surviving the crash is only the first challenge he faces in a nightlong battle to stay alive and one step ahead of his unknown, heavily armed pursuers. To outwit them and return to his friends and family, none of whom knows where he is, Bowditch must dissect the hours leading up to the ambush and solve two riddles: who are these people who desperately want him dead and what has he done to incur their wrath?"

My thoughts:

There's so much to like about this book: Mike's struggle to survive in the Maine woods is intense and compelling; the wintry Maine setting is as stark and beautiful as it is dangerous; the alternating chapters that detail the events leading up to Mike's ambush are interesting, as is the mystery behind everything; and I loved Mike's wild wolf/dog Shadow.  Talk about a great read!

Dead by Dawn is the 12th book in Paul Doiron's Mike Bowditch series. And even though I've never read any of his other books, Doiron is such a good writer I never once felt lost. I just got swept up in the story. The only bad thing is that I now want to read all the other books in this series, which adds eleven new books to my already lengthy TBR list. But if they're all as good as this one, then I guess that's a good problem to have. 

Happy Reading!

Urban Fantasy Fun!

5 Reasons to read Booke of the Hidden by Jeri Westerson: 

• It's set in Moody Bog, Maine. (How great is that?) And it's full of magic...and it's funny, too!
• The Booke of the Hidden.  Found bricked up in a wall, "It was at least twelve inches wide by eighteen inches tall. The cover was of ancient leather, worn at the edges. An ornate metal latch sealed the book ... I lifted the cover and opened the Booke. Tawny sheets of parchment crackled under my fingertips. It smelled musty, of old attics and forgotten memories. Eagerly, I turned the first few pages to discover its buried secrets. But no matter what page I turned to in this gigantic, ancient tome, I couldn't find a single word written in it...anywhere."
• Kylie Strange.  She moved to Maine to open an herb and tea shop. What she found instead was the Booke of the Hidden. And what she loosed when she opened it....well, now it's up to her to hunt the evil down and put it back. At least she has a cool weapon to do it with:  a magical Cthonic Crossbow. (It came with the book...sort of.) Too bad she doesn't know how to use it. Yet.
• Erasmus Dark.  The tall, dark, handsome demon with an English accent who's tied to the Booke and who's there to help Kylie with her task. At least, that's what he says. But can she trust him? He is a demon, after all.
• Doc Boone, Nick, Seraphina, and Jolene. Moody Bog's own amateur Wiccan coven. They're game to help Kylie any way they can. Too bad they've never actually done any real magic. (Jolene, who's a computer savvy teenager, especially made me laugh.)
  

(The one minor flaw for me:  Kylie's excessive attraction to Erasmus, and his to her, and how fast it got physical between them. Especially when she was still supposedly suspicious of him and his motives. I could have done without this bit of romance so early in the series. But at least it didn't overwhelm the plot.)

 My rating:  3.5/5 stars.

Happy Reading!

Similar reads:
Lost Soul by Adam Wright
Wickedly Dangerous by Deborah Blake
It Happened One Doomsday by Laurence MacNaughton

A little bookish fun...

Title:  Whispers Beyond the Veil
Author:  Jessica Estevao
Genre:  Historical fiction/mystery
Setting:  Old Orchard Beach, Maine, 1898
Main Character:  Ruby Proulx

5 Things to know about Ruby Proulx:  

• She was raised by her father and grew up traveling the medicine show circuit with him, helping to sell his "miracle" elixir to the needy and gullible.
• On the side, she tells fortunes using her dead mother's Tarot cards.
• She knows how to read people and can lie without batting an eye, but she has a good heart.
• When her father's latest get-rich scheme ends up killing a man, Ruby runs to Hotel Belden in Old Orchard Beach, which is owned by her Aunt Honoria whom she's never met.
• In order to help save her Aunt's hotel--which caters to the Spiritualist crowd--she pretends to be a medium who can speak to the dead even though her only psychic ability is the voice she occasionally hears advising her what to do (because it turns out, Ruby is clairaudient just like her mother was).

My thoughts:  This is a fun read. I like this time period. And Ruby is a great character, as are the other people she meets at the hotel, like Mrs. Doyle, the stern housekeeper who knows when someone is lying to her, and the two elderly Velmont sisters who are hoping to contact their dead father through Ruby. Then there's Officer Yancey who is investigating the recent murders at the hotel and who suspects that Ruby is somehow involved. Even though she's not. And while this isn't the most tightly woven mystery I've ever read, the few flaws and loose ends here and there didn't stop me from enjoying it. In fact, I liked it enough to have already put the next book in this series on hold at the library. 

Happy Reading!

Urban Fantasy Fun...

Title & Author:  Lost Soul by Adam Wright
Setting:  Dearmont, Maine

How it starts:  "There are some days when everything goes okay, or at least as well as you could hope. Then there are other days when it would be better to stay in bed and let the hours drift by while you remain hidden under the blankets. Today had hardly even started but I already longed to crawl back into bed and pretend the sun had never risen.

The story:  Alec Harbinger is a preternatural investigator whose employer, the Society of Shadows, has just shipped him off to a small town in Maine. He's not excited. To make matters worse, the Society has someone spying on him, and two ogre assassins just attacked him on his first day on the job. Looks like Dearmont isn't such a sleepy town after all.

My thoughts:  This is one of the books I recently purchased online and now I wish I'd bought the next two books in the series at the same time because I loved this one! Alec is funny. I liked his assistant, Felicity, and his friend, Mallory. His supernatural cases are interesting. There's magic and mystery, witches (who run a bookstore) and werewolves, a run in with two changlings, spells and a magical sword, and suspense, too. Which makes this urban fantasy a very fun read.

Happy Reading!

A fun summer read...

Things to know:

• The Mermaid Collector takes place in Cradle Harbor, Maine, where there's a famous lighthouse, a coveted lighthouse keeper's house, and an annual summer Mermaid Festival.
• Part of the story takes place in the past, back in 1887 when the Mermaid legend first begins.
• It's a story about relationships:  those between a mother and daughter (Ruby and Tess), between two brothers (Tom and Dean Grace), between a lighthouse keeper and his young wife (Linus and Lydia), between Tom Grace and the man who accidentally caused the death of his parents years ago, between Tess and her stepfather, Buzz, and between Tom and Tess, who meet for the first time at the beginning of this novel and unexpectedly fall in love.
• With lighthouses and mermaids (though not as much about the mermaids as I was expecting or hoping for), past regrets, second chances, a few secrets, a bit of mystery, family, friendship, and romance, The Mermaid Collector is an enjoyable summer read, but without a lot of depth. Don't get me wrong... I liked this one; I just don't know that I'll remember it a few months from now.
• It's written by Erika Marks and is just 366 pages long.

Happy Summer Reading!

A Piece of the World

I love when fiction and art combine. Andrew Wyeth is one of my favorite American artists, and Christina's World is one of his most recognizable paintings. A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline is the fictionalized story of Christina Olson, the woman who inspired the painting. She and Andy Wyeth met one summer in Maine. He was a young man soon to be married; she was a middle-aged spinster. And yet, as Wyeth himself said, when they met "there was a very strange connection. One of those odd collisions that happen." Their quiet friendship deepened over the years as Wyeth studied and sketched her house and the fields around it; he even took over one of her upstairs rooms from which he worked and painted every summer for twenty years. But this book is not about Wyeth. It's about Christina:  her childhood, her physical infirmity, her family, and her hopes and disappointments. It's a lyrical and fascinating portrait of the unassuming woman who inspired a masterpiece. This is an amazing read, so beautifully written, and interesting, and quietly compelling. I loved it. A Piece of the World is historical fiction at its best.

Happy Reading!

A quick read:

Dead River by Cyn Balog is part mystery, part ghost story, and part fairy tale. When Kiandra Levesque was seven, her mother walked into the Delaware River and drowned.  That's when Ki started hearing the river's voice whispering to her and seeing visions of the dead. Fearing that she might share her mother's fate, Ki's father packs them up and moves to Wayview, Maine, far away from any water.

Now Ki is a high school senior, and instead of going to prom, she and her boyfriend, Justin, are going white water rafting on the Dead River. She's sure everything will be fine. But once she's near the river, the voices and the visions return. Along with a handsome ghost named Jack, who wants something from her, and another ghost named Trey, who claims he's there to protect her. And when they both tell her that her mother is Mistress of the Waters and is just on the other side of the river, she doesn't know what or who to believe.

This is a very readable, if slightly superficial Ya novel. I liked the fairy tale aspect of Ki becoming Mistress of the Waters like her mother, but I kept wishing that particular part of the story had been a little more well-developed. I had questions about their respective roles and responsibilities that never quite got answered. And the way everything got wrapped up at the end, especially with the ghosts, felt just a little too convenient. But it's still a fun read. And a quick one, too. I just wish it was a book with a little more depth.

Happy Reading!

Small as an Elephant

Jack Martel's mother takes him camping at the Seawall Campground on Mount Desert Island, Maine, but when he wakes up in the morning his mother is gone. Jack looks for her around the campground; he takes the Island Explorer bus around the island in search of their rental car; and he walks every inch of Bar Harbor in the hopes of spotting her in one of the shops or restaurants. What he doesn't do is tell anyone that she's missing because it's not likely that she's been in an accident or is hurt. "The likeliest possibility was that she had just gone off--again."

Here are some things I liked about Jennifer Richard Jacobson's novel:

1. Jack's ingenuity and stubborn determination as he searches for his mother. (Although the fact that he's only eleven and is on his own is also heartbreaking.)
2. The kind and quirky characters he meets along the way. (Especially Big Jack.)
3. The Maine setting. (The description of Bar Harbor and Mount Desert Island made me want to book a summer trip to Maine!)
4. Jack's obsession with elephants. (Every chapter is headed with an elephant fact or quote, which I loved.)
5. Jacobson's writing. (Although this 275-page novel is written for children, it doesn't read like a children's book; this is a moving and memorable novel perfect for readers of any age.)
6. It fills another category in my Reading New England Challenge!

Happy Reading!