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Delicious Monsters chapters 31 & 32

Today's review might be difficult for some; reader discretion is advised

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Chapter 31

Until it ended. Abruptly. Everything. No one calling my name. No maggots. No screaming. Silence.

Chapter 31 summary: Daisy finds herself alone in a locked room with Ivy. No mention on how they got in there, but whatever. 

Anyway, Ivy says all of this stuff about how Daisy’s life is so devoid of literally anything, to the point where she didn’t even notice how much time she kept losing. She also says that she killed the goat, simply so that Grace couldn’t get to it first. But that doesn’t seem to have mattered, I don’t think. Daisy knows that the anxiety she feels as she gets further from the house is because Ivy is tethered to it, and probably can’t go too far. She wonders if she were to leave the area, would Ivy be able to follow. 

Daisy then finds a maggot on her head. One in her mouth. She vomits, but among the bile are more maggots. Then Grace is there, pinning her down. She plucks a maggot out and stuffs it back inside of Daisy’s ear. 

That stops all of the noise. 

Chapter 32

“I had one rule. One rule! To protect you. Everything I do is to protect you.” 

“How was I supposed to help without coming inside?” I cried. 

“You weren’t! You were never the solution. You were the insurance!” 

“You don’t under—” 

“Yes, I do,” she snapped. “You can see fucking ghosts! Does that make your ears not work? Your brain not work? Why can’t you follow simple instructions?”

Horace the dead horse here to tell you that simply saying “Stay out of the house!” without giving any actual explanation is inherently meaningless! Getting angry at people for disobeying when you can’t be bothered to explain things is the stupidest thing imaginable!

“Why don’t you ever listen to me? Haven’t I done enough to show you that I know what I’m talking about? Have I ever steered you wrong?”

We’re literally in chapter 32 and I have yet to see Grace doing… well. Literally a single goddamned thing.

Most of the time, Grace has been moping around, and then getting angry at Daisy for doing the same thing. 

“It’s killing them now! You knew something was wrong with it! You say I never listen to you? You never listen to me!” 

Mom stared me down. “I don’t listen to you because you can’t keep a handle on yourself. You panic and freak out, just like you did with that girl at school. And then I have to come save you, again.”

If there’s ever a time to be freaking out, it’s upon finding out that your mother knew this entire time that you were being possessed by a vengeful ghost and did fucking NOTHING to try and help you. It’s when you find out that she’s been lying to you FOR MONTHS AND KEPT LYING AND GASLIGHTING YOU INTO BELIEVING THAT EVERYTHING WAS PERFECTLY FINE. While doing nothing to actually help. 

“This is all wrong. This was supposed to be easy. Years of work, years!” She covered her face with her hands and shouted, “Fuck!” into her fingers. It echoed off the high ceilings.

You 100% deserve all of this, and so much more. You got pregnant with the intention of giving the house a “dessert” (the book’s word), groomed your child to do this singular job… BUT NOT ONCE IN SEVENTEEN GODDAMNED YEARS HAVE YOU EVER BOTHERED TO TELL DAISY LITERALLY ANY OF THIS. 

I hope that Grace dies a slow and painful death. 

“And yes, your ability was insurance. Like I said. As necessary, only. In case we have a problem, which I can see now that we do.”

Horace the dead horse here to remind Grace that the only reason why the problem has snowballed is because you refused to explain literally a single goddamned thing to YOUR DAUGHTER. 

That’s right. Daisy isn’t some “bargaining chip” against the murder house. Daisy is a GODDAMNED CHILD. 

But for once, Mom said the truth. “The house told me.”

Chapter 32 summary: In case you couldn’t tell by my commentary, the entire chapter was nothing but a hot mess of Grace continuing to lie and gaslight Daisy, even after the truth of her deception came out. Little by little, the truth finally starts to come out.

There was an incident with the dead in a public park when Daisy was 7. After that, Grace started to put maggots into her ears. That literally the only reason why Daisy was even conceived was to deal with this.

Despite what Ivy told Daisy, the house isn’t some unholy monster. It eats whatever you feed it. And they have to get rid of Ivy so that the house can go back to eating the dead like it’s supposed to. That Peter lived in the house for a long time without the house ever murdering somebody. (Except for him, I guess? This is never addressed.) 

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Delicious Monsters chapters 29 & 30

Today's review might be difficult for some; reader discretion is advised

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Chapter 29

I got out of bed. Brushed my teeth. Peed. Washed my hands, obviously, before making my way to Mom’s room.

Did we really need this play-by-play? Especially the confirmation that she washed her hands after using the toilet?

“Mom. Something is wrong with the house.”

 “Enough!” she shouted suddenly, hands dropped, the smile gone from her face. “You cannot fall apart like this. Not again! This isn’t hard. I’ve barely asked you to do anything.” Her shoulders slumped, and the beginning of tears that sat in her eyes spilled out. “I am doing my best. I have always done my best. For you! Why can’t you just meet me halfway?”

That isn’t “meeting someone halfway”, holy fucking shit. That is gaslighting somebody into the thought that there’s nothing wrong… Despite the fact that Grace herself stays as far away from the house as possible. 

I think the worst part about this is that Grace is getting angry that Daisy refuses to continue to swallow her brand of bullshit. 

“I wanted you to just be able to be a teenager and not worry about any of this shit. I really wanted that for you. But you insist on making everything a challenge.”

I think it’s really fucking funny that not once has Grace actually allowed Daisy to be a child/teenager. This is by Daisy’s own account of needing to take care of the bills, or else they’ll get slammed with late charges, btw. 

Like Grace is so quick to talk-the-talk, but I’m not convinced that she knows how to walk-the-walk. 

Ivy said it showed you more when you were alone. Fine. I was ready to see what it had to give.

Chapter 29 summary: A week passes, and the police finally leave the manor. Daisy sits in bed on Saturday, and thinks about how despite the pact she made with King to try and fix things, they weren’t able to get anything done. 

She goes to her mom, who is like “Oh, we need to get the house ready for the next guests!” Daisy is like “Um… somebody died.” “Oh don’t be silly. It was a brain aneurysm!” It’s not so much that anybody can die from one of those, but rather the fact that it’s also how Mackenzie said that Peter died in the house, too. 

Grace then starts in on this BS guilt-tripping “why won’t you do this for me? It’s your job to be a teen!” I said what I said about that. At the end, she literally starts crying, but I don’t fucking believe that they’re actual tears for a single second. 

Eventually, Daisy leaves and goes to tend to the greenhouse. However, in there she discovers that while she was missing time, she apparently hadn’t been tending to the garden. A lot of it is now dead. So she spends several hours getting rid of the now-dead plants, and trying to tend to the ones that are clinging to life. 

She then goes back into the guest house, into Grace’s bedroom, and takes the keys to the house. She’s determined to hear what the house has to say to her when she’s alone. 

Chapter 30

The door slammed shut behind us, and her expression darkened. “Then I guess we don’t have a deal.”

Chapter 30 summary: In the house, the first thing Daisy notes is the woman who died; her picture had been all over the news. Daisy puts her hand into the woman’s chest, and feels some of her last thoughts. 

She’s then drawn upstairs by more mysterious moaning. What happens next is so bizarre. The house seems to vomit up a man; he’s covered in greenish goo, even. Daisy is so startled by this that she accidentally backs up into a vase that shatters and draws her attention away from the man. When she looks back, the man is gone again. 

She then goes into the room, which looks homy and lived-in. There are dozens of pictures of Grace as a child, but also ones of Daisy’s father, as well as Katie and Helga as well. 

Then, a teenage Grace comes into the room, gets ready for bed, and sits up and waits. Eventually, Dione comes in and tells Grace that she has to go away on a business trip. Grace begs her not to go, but Dione is like “Buck up.” 

When the memory fades, Ivy is standing there. Ivy says that the house likes to show people memories, and it likes to show ones of Grace all the time. 

However, when Ivy asks who that “little girl” was, Daisy finally understands that Ivy isn’t actually alive. This has happened before, usually at school. Daisy had a nasty experience with a girl on the playground. 

It also explains why Daisy keeps losing so much time: if the dead know your name, they can slip inside of your body. And what’s worse is that Daisy is certain that Ivy has also been controlling the birds. Daisy thinks that Ivy is way worse than the kid on the playground at school. 

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Delicious Monsters chapters 27 & 27

Today's review might be difficult for some; reader discretion is advised

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Chapter 27

King didn’t say any more, just kicked the truck into drive and pulled away.

Chapter 27 summary: The next day, Grace insists that Daisy go to school. On the ride over, King is quiet, and Daisy wonders if he even knows about the murder. But at school, she realises that he was simply being polite. Everybody in town seems to know. 

In classes again, Daisy loses more time. But at least she’s aware of it, so there’s that. After school, she asks King for help. 

They go over to MacKenzie’s house. At first, I was curious as to why. But then she pulls out a family tree, and it turns out that her mum is first cousins with Peter. MacKenzie explains that the house was built by a however many great-grandfather back in the era of the gold rush, as a summer home. Which is how the family continues to have money to this day. The house probably should have ended up in MacKenzie’s side of the family, but her grandfather never wanted it, so it ended up with Peter. MacKenzie’s mum also has no love lost for Peter; the two of them never got along, and he kept himself isolated from them. 

When her mum gets back, she says some things about the house, and a tiny bit about Grace. She hadn’t run in the same circles as Grace, but she knows of her. She mentions the goat incident from when Grace was a teen, but this is news to Daisy. 

As they leave, Daisy asks King if there’s a library in town. 

Chapter 28

“Daisy! You have to leave the house! You have to—” I hung up and blocked him.

Chapter 28 summary: At the library, Daisy finds the old article, the one that claims “Teens in cult sacrifice goat!” The farmhand who caught them on camera claims that he found a cross drawn in blood over the goat, but the journalist is like “Doubt.” From the date of the article, Daisy knows that her mum was pregnant at the time. 

She then asks King about the abilities of his family. He says that it starts to come on when the house starts to get bad. Always a new person every generation. When the healing ritual is done, then the power goes away. Before him, it was his own mother. But then it randomly went away, seemingly on its own. However, after Peter died, King began to have his powers. Daisy asks him why he’s helping her, and he has to spell it out for her: if we do nothing, then I’ll have these powers forever. They suck. 

Daisy’s dad then calls, and she figures that he would have been keeping a close eye on the Timmins news. He once again begs her to leave, to go stay with her grandma, to do anything but to remain there. She once again asks him why. 

He doesn’t give her a direct answer, but instead says that she was conceived in the house. That babies conceived there are special. Different. He acts all freaked out, and Daisy realises that he’s afraid of both Grace and Daisy. Daisy gets freaked out, hangs up on him mid-sentence, and then blocks him. 

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My new favourite thing is when I reread my own writing and realise I accidentally foreshadowed something important

Wait sorry “accidentally” was a typo it should have been “geniusly and with considerable forethought knowing exactly what was going to happen and all of my intentions being very clear”

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leverage is so cool i wish justice against the rich was real

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Kakashi: How many of you have played musical instruments before? Ibiki: Do instruments of torture count? Kakashi: No. Gai: Is mayonnaise an instrument? Kakashi: No Gai, mayonnaise is not an instrument.

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characters in their 30's and older exploring their sexuality and discovering themselves beyond their teens and twenties is so important and beautiful and worth telling

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You know, an interesting tumblr transformation that's happened gradually, and which I've seen no one talk about: ask-culture has essentially dropped off to nothing.

By which I mean, asks used to be WAY more of the tumblr economy. They used to be more common to send, and receive, and see. They were integral to the collaborative, forum-like behavior of old tumblr communities, not even to speak on the HUGE number of ask-blogs that used to exist to only be interacted with in ask-form.

I'm not saying this in a vying-for-attention way but instead in an observational way: I used to get way way more asks in like 2015, even with a fraction of my follower count. I wonder if it's due to the homogenization of social media sites? There's a lot more of this divide between "content creator" and "consumer" instead of just a bunch of peer blogs who would talk to each other. "Asks" aren't really a thing on twitter, are they? And as I understand it, the closest thing to an "ask" on instagram or tiktok would be a creator screenshotting some comment and responding to it in a new reel or video or whatever those content mediums are. Are asks just too tumblr-specific? Is that aspect of the site culture dying out as more and more people converge to using all their social media sites in the same way?

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Delicious Monsters chapters 25 & 26

Today's review might be difficult for some; reader discretion is advised

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Click here for the rest of the series!

Chapter 25

Already almost a month had passed since we moved, and while October in Toronto was a slightly chilled version of September, in Timmins, it was the signal to begin winter. Snow fell intermittently in soft flakes that coated the ground in a thin dusting, and melted shortly after. Some people continued to stubbornly wear short sleeves as if it weren’t happening. 

Me, having lived in the desert of Arizona my entire life: what the fuuuuuck. 

Since the Ted-and-Mary incident, we’d had four more weekends of guests, each of them awarding Mom with five stars. One woman, a Black lady who came up from the city with her boyfriend, even claimed that she felt like an entirely new person after staying. That she was going to write a book about it.

And that would be Brittany’s mum. 

I knew that the timeline wasn’t off. But the way Brittany's first chapter made it seem, Brittany was Daisy’s daughter!!

I knew that I should be going into the house. Trying to do something about a situation that was clearly wrong. But I dealt with the dead, not with houses who fed on the living. King had basically told me it was too late. It was probably going to get worse.

Of course it’s going to get worse if you continue to not do anything! 

If you try every single thing that you know how to do and the house is still taking things from people… Then at least you can leave knowing that you did everything that you could. 

There were more butcherbirds than ever now. They coated the trees in dashes of salt and pepper, but the mansion had become their true home. The guests loved them, taking photos and videos. One of them, some sort of bird-watcher guy, insisted that they should have already moved on from the area by now. It was too cold for them. Besides, they weren’t even native to this region.

Considering that every single thing that I’ve read about butcherbirds tells me that they’re ONLY found in Australia…

I think if I saw hundreds of those birds chilling up in Canada, I’d call every freaking member of the audubon society.

This is how you know that the author doesn’t know shit about bird watching: audubon people are freaks (I say this in the nicest way imaginable). They’d cream themselves over these birds. 

Ms. Kuru was, as far as I could tell, boring. She took only a weekend to grade tests for at least two classes of thirty because she probably had that much time on her hands. Mom, meanwhile, was on a high of business success and somehow still managed to go into town every week for some sort of social appointment.

But maybe that didn’t make Mom more exciting than Ms. Kuru—just busier. 

I think the stupidest part about this description of Grace is that… she’s literally not even doing anything to maintain the property. She’s HIRING people to do it for her, so that she doesn’t have to actually go inside. 

Yet by Katie’s own words, Grace never reached out to her. So exactly what is Grace doing that’s taking up THAT much of her time?

“I would suggest that now you take the time to work on your participation more. That’s five to ten percent of your grade in all of your classes.”

I fucking hate participation grades. Especially in these sort of pass-fail classes. Like why do I need to participate in a lively discussion about plant cells? Why are we having a lively classroom discussion in HIGH SCHOOL BIOLOGY?!

It should 100% be enough that the student understands the material. This is simply punishing children who might be feeling socially overwhelmed and awkward. 

The door shut behind him, and I stood there with his coat. Shivering, even though it was warm.

Chapter 25 summary: A month passed since they moved in. After the first guests, they were pretty full up after that. Every single person gave them 5 stars. One of them was Brittney’s mum, who had her “life-changing experience”, as Brittany mentioned in her own chapters. 

One day in class, Mrs. K hands back tests from last week, and Daisy is surprised that she got a 96%. As she looks through the test, she 1) doesn’t remember learning any of this 2) doesn’t remember studying any of this and 3) doesn’t remember taking the test at all. 

After class, Mrs. K tells Daisy that she’s doing well in school. But that part of the education is also participation. I said what I said about that. Daisy’s opinion about all of this is “Blah-blah-blah, whatever.” 

She runs from the school, her mind in such a tumbling fog that it takes King pointing out that she ran out without her hat, coat, or even any of her school supplies. She then asks for him to tell her what’s going on, but he says that he can’t. But goes on to say that she already knows what’s wrong anyway, so it doesn’t even matter if he won’t say it again. She begs for him to stay away from her, going so far as to beg him to find her another ride to and from school. But he refuses. 

Chapter 26

Nice guys were a weird concept for me. Maybe that was sad, but maybe it was just realistic.

Says the girl who has been moping over a guy who ghosted her, and then gaslit her when she confronted him about it. 

Like your experience with men doesn’t have to be this bad. 

Yes, there are shit men out there. But holy shit, don’t start stalking a guy who made it perfectly clear what you are to him. (Nothing.)

“We shouldn’t have come here,” Mom said. Her voice was its usual volume, even its usual tone, but there was something else in it that seemed to be missing. 

I shook my head. “What are you talking about? We were always going to come here.” 

“I asked you if you wanted to.”

Um… no. You don’t get to put this onto a literal child. 

Grace, you are an adult. You are Daisy’s mother. You knew how unsafe that the house is. 

Daisy is still struggling to figure out this murder house. 

This is 100% on you. 

More than anything, she had always wanted this house. Known about this house. Made sure I knew about it. 

It was always going to be a part of our lives. 

King was right. Knowing was useless. Because even when people knew that something bad could happen, they still went through the motions of whatever they planned to do. I knew it didn’t matter if I wanted to go or not, and I still walked around like it did. 

I said this in an earlier chapter, but sometimes it takes people multiple times to learn a lesson. Apparently, being in a MURDER HOUSE once wasn’t enough for Grace. She had to come back for round two. 

I don’t care about Grace, because she’s a shitty person. But I mainly feel sorry for Daisy, because she went in so goddamned blind to what was going to happen. 

“Then why are you so afraid of going inside?” 

“I never said that.”

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but normal people aren’t given a FREE manor house, move onto the property, and then don’t set foot inside the house. 

But there was a lot of urgency in stopping the house from killing people. I couldn’t give up. Not now. Not ever.

Chapter 26 summary: Daisy doesn’t go home, and stands outside of King’s house. She sees one of King’s aunties walking around, and even goes so far as to assure the readers that the woman’s name doesn’t even matter. The woman acknowledges Daisy, but also basically tells her that she fucked up in regards towards the house. Now the house is screaming, and there’s nothing anybody can do to stop.

On her way back home, Daisy runs into Ivy, who points through the bush that there are police all over the manor property. As Daisy watches, they load up a body-bag while Grace sits on the front steps with a strange man. 

Later, Grace complains that they shouldn’t have come. Daisy is quick to call her mum out on her shit. Says that for Daisy’s entire life, Grace has built up the idea of The House. That despite what Grace now says about coming being Daisy’s idea, that Grace would have come, regardless. I’ve said what I said about that. 

Grace then demands to know where Daisy goes at night. Daisy is like “What the fuck are you even talking about? I wake up in the middle of the night and hear you shuffling around. Where are YOU going at night?” What’s worse, is when Daisy asks about what happened with the woman, Grace seems to be hiding stuff from Daisy. 

As Daisy goes to bed, she thinks about how her biggest problem a few hours ago was that she didn’t remember taking that test. Now, she has to deal with a murder house. 

[percontaion-points]

Delicious Monsters chapters 23 & 24

Today's review might be difficult for some; reader discretion is advised

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Chapter 23

“I can’t. I know these things… but if I say exactly what’s going to happen, there’s no changing it anymore. It gets locked in. Warnings are all I have, and you’ve already ignored the biggest one.”

Ah yes, the prophecy curse. We’ve all seen it. 

In case you might not know: it’s the thing where somebody hears a prophecy about themselves, try to avoid it happening, and end up fulfilling the prophecy. 

Example: when Voldemort heard the prophecy about the baby born in the end of July who would destroy him, he went off and killed all of the boys born around that time. However, failing to kill Harry led to his downfall… and Harry survived in order to finish the job. If Voldy had done nothing with what he’d heard, I doubt Harry, Nevil, or any other boy, would have given half as many shits. 

And in that instant I knew that this ability he had was not one he wanted. 

Do you want to see the consequences of people’s bad decisions play out, and be 100% unable to stop them? 

“No one wants to be advised. They don’t want to make better choices. That’s why it doesn’t matter if psychics are real or fake. Everyone just wants to do whatever the fuck they want to do.”

Unfortunately, I feel like this has less to do with his abilities and more about how inherently stupid humanity in general is. 

E.g, I know that the 17 year old high school girl shouldn’t be hanging around with the college-aged boy. I know this because I was once in a similar position. Sometimes, people need to learn the hard way why 17 year olds don’t date 20-somethings. Sometimes, it only takes once. Other times, you need to keep coming back in order to fully understand why this has caused you pain. 

 It was enough to throw me back into memories on a bed, his fingers pressing against my throat so hard that a tear leaked from the corner of my eye. Him panting on top of me while I waited for it to be over.

Holy fucking shit, is that…?

“Because that means it might resist how very delicious it would be to make you scream.”

Chapter 23 summary: As they walk through the halls, Daisy questions King about stuff that he might still be keeping from her. He basically says that telling people about visions of the future will practically ensure that it happens. It’s at this point that Daisy realises that it’s not exactly like King wanted this power. 

They continue on, and eventually get to the door where the first two guests are staying. They hear the woman, Mary, screaming out about a bee inside the room. Then the buzzing grows from a singular “bee” to an entire swarm of them. They heard Mary and Tod pounding on the door, trying to get out. King tries to open the door from the other side, but it won’t budge. Ivy unemotionally tells them that the only way for the house to let them go is if they give up something. 

Daisy runs out, where she flips out about Ivy’s shit behaviour back there. But it’s like… what the hell do you want Ivy to do? Ivy’s exactly like Daisy and King, in that she has supernatural powers. She can basically “communicate” with the house. Much like with King and Daisy’s power, it’s not like she asked for it, nor can she get the house to stop. King is only worried that they’re too late; the house has already claimed its first victims. 

Daisy tells them to leave her alone and runs back to the guest house. However, to her immense surprise, she finds Mary and Tod talking with her mum. They’re checking out, and Grace will be taking them back to the other shore via the boat. Daisy runs off again, only to run back into Ivy. Ivy says that people who give up things to the house don’t remember what happened after. 

They go back into the house, to the room Mary and Tod had been in . There’s nothing out of the ordinary in there. Ivy reminds Daisy that the two of them are more alike than she thinks. But she goes on to say that the house usually feeds on the dead, but it’s gotten a taste for human flesh recently… But not to worry, since it seems to like Daisy. 

Chapter 24

“I’m sorry that I let Robert hit you.” 

That was the one that hooked me. Truly reeled me in. Robert, a man my mom dated from when I was six to ten. He was a guy who believed in corporal punishment. Not just for being bad. For anything. 

For forgetting to say “please.” For not washing the dishes right. For breathing too loud. 

And she let him. She would sit on the couch and say, “If you behaved, then he wouldn’t have to do this.”

I am once again asking where the hell CPS was. Mandated reporters in school? Doctors? LIterally anybody? 

/I also have no idea how CPS works in Canada… Or even what their version of CPS is. 

“Forgotten Black Girls” wasn’t just about the media preferring to highlight a “nice white girl” instead. It was also the girls who everyone expected to fail from the start. Expected that they wouldn’t have a dad. Expected that their moms were struggling alone. Expected that they get poor grades and not achieve because that’s just how it went. And if you lashed out, that was what they expected of your ghetto ass too. Left alone to slip through the cracks. And when you failed, they would say it was your fault. If you succeeded, you were a special case. Not like those other girls. 

Going to leave this right here…

I think of my mom breaking down via voicemail about Robert. She was afraid of him too. What was she supposed to do? But I don’t have memories of her afraid. I can only remember her sitting there, saying it was my fault that he had to discipline me.

It is literally the JOB of an adult to protect children from harm. Both physical as well as psychological/emotional. 

The fact that Brittany’s mum sat there, blaming Brittany for all of the hurt Robert caused, and did nothing to stop any of it… Honestly tells me everything that I need to know about her. 

“She was growing maggots in the goat stomach. Huge, disgusting things.” She shudders. “She wanted to put one in my ear.” 

“She wanted to do what?” Jayden blurts out. 

I can’t say I disagree. “She wanted to put a maggot in your ear?” 

“Yes. She said it would protect me.” 

“From what?” 

Katie twists her hands in her lap. “She was scared. That was when I really understood how scared Grace was. I thought she was fearless, but she wasn’t. She just hid it better.”

I’m sorry, but I feel like I missed something here. How did we get from “she was scared of the house” to “I need a goat stomach” to “putting a maggot in your ear will protect you!”?

“What were you both afraid of?” My voice is so quiet, I’m low-key shocked that I said anything. 

Katie bites her lip and shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I can’t. I thought about telling you ever since you booked me. But I just can’t do that to her. My truth is hers, too. And if I tell it, everyone will know, and she won’t have had a say in it. Grace Odlin was not a good friend to me, but I can’t help being one to her.”

The stupidest thing is that Grace probably wouldn’t hesitate if she thought that there was something in it for her. 

“We can learn the truth.” And I’m ready to make them tell it.

Chapter 24 summary: Brittany and Jayden schlep out to a campsite, where Katie is with her family for the summer. As they drag their gear to where Katie is, Brittany thinks about her shitty mom being shitty. Today’s new wave of “shitty ways to be shitty” is apologising for the abuse she intentionally put Brittany through in dating shitty men who beat Brittany when she was a child! Whee, so much fun! NOT!!

They sit Katie down, and she begins to tell them about how she’d gone to Peter for piano lessons. She hadn’t liked being in the house, but refuses to explain why. During breaks in her lessons, Dione would put out snacks, which Grace and Katie would eat outside. 

Then Katie explains that once, Grace came to them and said that she needed the stomach of a goat. Katie explains that Grace wasn’t unlike a charismatic cult leader, in that she could convince you to do literally anything. But Katie doesn’t think that she meant it in an evil way, but I’m not convinced. This includes helping to slaughter a goat on Helga’s parents' farm. The kids were caught on the new security cameras, because… WTF. Later, Grace was found to be growing maggots from the stomach. She tried to get Katie to put one into her ear. This is never explained, except to hint at that Grace wasn’t mentally well.

Katie also said that after Grace got pregnant, she insisted that the baby would be special because it was conceived in the manor. But she goes on to say that Daisy was insanely troubled, in ways that were difficult for Katie to reach by the time Daisy was in her class. 

Brittany asks about what really happened in the house, but Katie clams up. Says that it’s shared trauma between her and Grace. And despite how shitty that Grace was towards her, Katie is still a better person than that. 

Brittany then says that she has an interview with Dione, before they go to leave. They don’t actually, but their source claims that if they tell Katie that they have an interview with Dione, then Grace will get jealous. And then Dione will get angry and jealous. And then they can put both of them in the same room, and have the interview of the century. But most importantly, they’re eager to uncover the truth of what really happened. 

[percontaion-points]

Delicious Monsters chapters 21 & 22

Today's review might be difficult for some; reader discretion is advised

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Chapter 21

I slammed her door shut and rushed to get ready. There was no premade lunch waiting in the fridge, which wasn’t surprising. It was always like this. There would be promises to make life different, and then something would shift, something I couldn’t see that she could, and suddenly it would be over.

This literally lasted a day.

And you wonder why it is that Daisy is so messed up. 

Instead, I found the goat. 

There wasn’t much else to do but stare. It was quiet. No more bleating. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and texted Mom to not let the guests into the greenhouse. 

[...]

I had zero desire to discuss the goat.

I mean, you can guess what happened. 

But actually telling the readers what happened is for fucking squares, I guess. 

I wished that I had Megan’s version of a bad day. A colder-than-usual shower and messy hair. That would be nice.

Chapter 21 summary: Daisy wakes up the next morning to the sound of the goat screaming, and the sound of the birds flapping their wings really hard. The sound of the birds is really triggering to her, because of what happened a week earlier. She finds that the window blind is open, despite the fact that she closed it last night. And her headphones are out, which she’d never do. But she isn’t too worried about the dead, since they’re all attracted to whatever’s in the main house. 

She tries to get Grace to take her across the lake again, but her mum’s motivation to be a good parent has already ended. Daisy is disappointed but not surprised; how can she when it’s like this every couple of months for the two of them? 

As she starts to walk over to where King lives, she sees that there’s already frost on the greenhouse glass, so she goes inside to turn the heater on. Instead, she finds the goat with its throat slashed (the fact of which we don’t discover until the end of the chapter). 

King meets her outside, and they walk over to his house. After Daisy gets into the car, King’s mum comes over and tells Daisy that she’s welcome at their house anytime. Daisy is pretty sure that she won’t take them up on their offer. 

Her school day is glossed over. After school, King has to do grocery shopping for his family, so Daisy decides that if Grace has stopped being a parent, then she’s going to need stuff for lunch every day. As she’s walking around, she runs into one of her classmates, the most bubbly girl that Daisy could find. This was because the happy classmates keep the ghosts away; not because Daisy wanted to be friends. After chatting with Mackenzie a bit, Daisy continues on and sees Katie. She thinks about how different lives that Katie and Grace ended up leaving… But randomly paints Katie as a loser simply because she chose a different path than Grace did. (Yet Katie is the one with the stable job, in a stable marriage, probably not moving from home to home every few months.) 

As they go to check out, Daisy asks King for his phone, and uses it to stalk Noah’s new girlfriend. He immediately identifies Noah as her ex, and then goes on to say that he can get reads on people. But for some reason, not Daisy or Grace. He picked up a bit of info when she was thrashing around in the thornbush, but that’s about it. Daisy tells him to stop being so fucking creepy, and to mind his own goddamned business. Which is kind of fair, NGL.

Chapter 22

I thought about bringing it up with Mom but didn’t. It would just go down like mentioning the worm had.

Pretty sure Daisy could wake up missing an entire arm and Grace would say “It’s all in your head.” 

I got the distinct feeling that little by little, day by day, Mom’s plan was falling apart.

I can’t even pretend to be surprised about this. It’s like she was expecting easy money, and instead, she’s probably pulling back whatever sort of TRAUMA the house caused her 17 years ago. 

“Why did we buy a goat?” I asked. 

Mom’s expression deflated. “Can you just stay on topic and celebrate with me?” 

I pressed my lips into a line. 

“Goat’s milk is good for you.” Mom got her information from a variety of sources, none of which she could accurately cite.

There is literally no way that the ownership and maintenance of a goat (plus the cost of properly pasturing the milk so that you don’t get sick) is somehow less than the cost of going and getting a jug of goat milk from the store. 

But I’m going to file this under “suspicious shit Grace will not stop doing” and move on. 

There was no way the dead in that house wouldn’t eventually create problems. Not to mention, the house must be drawing them in for a reason, and I didn’t think I was wrong to assume that it wasn’t something innocent.

Daisy has already told us that the dead are drawn to misery. Something terrible happened in that house… And judging by Brittany’s chapters, the worst is yet to come. 

She pushed her sunglasses onto the top of her head. “Here we go.”

Chapter 22 summary: Helga and Joe came over and butchered the goat for them. Later, when Daisy tries to ask Grace why she even got a goat, her mom is like “Goat milk is good for you!” without further explanation. I said what I said. Grace is more focused on how popular that the Airbnb is getting than over literally anything else. 

However, as her mum goes to leave, Daisy has a sinking feeling that things aren’t half as good as Grace is making them seem. She knows that no matter what happens, Grace is going to blame her for all of this. 

After Grace leaves for her MYSTERY ERRANDS, Daisy meets up with King and Ivy so that they can go into the main house. In there, Daisy has to move away to avoid being touched by a ghost, and King asks her about it. He also asks about his great aunt who died nearby. But Daisy says that only those unsatisfied in life would linger for so long. But even those would eventually pass over. 

King explains to her that the house, when working correctly, is supposed to attract, trap, and release all of the nearby spirits. His great aunt was drawn to the area, and made a blood pact with the land in order to help keep this running. However, they need the homeowner’s permission to do a “factory reset” on the house. Which they really need to do, since the house is currently only trapping the dead, but not sending them on to the afterlife. 

The three of them start to look around the house after that. King refuses to split up, calling it, and I quote, “White people bullshit.” He’s not wrong. 

[percontaion-points]

Delicious Monsters chapters 19 & 20

Today's review might be difficult for some; reader discretion is advised

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Chapter 19

“I need you to listen to me, Daisy. Really listen to me. We can’t have any more unpredictable things like what went down the other day. That shouldn’t have happened at all. That wasn’t in the plan.”

Why do I get the feeling that a plane could have literally crashed on top of Daisy, and Grace would still find a way to blame it on her daughter?

I wondered now if she had experienced anything like I had inside the house. If that’s why she was avoiding it. 

Again, why the fuck did she take the house if that’s the case?

 I could count on several fingers the times when Noah had cut off contact because he was upset with me.

Girl, that should have been your first clue to run. 

“You can’t control me.” 

“I’m not trying to control you. I’m trying to give you advice. If you wanted to go skating, and I told you the ice was too thin for that this time of year, would you go just because you thought I was controlling you? Or would you figure that, living here all my life, maybe I know a thing or two about ice thickness and was trying to help?”

 I squished down farther in the seat. When he put it like that, it made me look like some impulsive and reckless person who did the opposite of what people said for the sake of it.

I am once again stating that telling people “Don’t go into the house!” without actually telling them why isn’t exactly going to convince them to stay out. 

Every single person in Daisy’s life has completely and utterly failed her. Every single one of them. 

“I mean, why would you want to go inside?”

WHY THE FUCK WOULDN’T YOU?!

The house now belongs to Daisy’s mum; she’s fucking living there! Every single person tells her not to do it, but can’t be arsed to actually tell her why! 

“My mom and aunts want your mom’s business to fail because of how dangerous that place is.”

From the perspective of Grace, that has “lawsuit” written all over it. 

Note: I have no idea how the Canadian justice system works. 

I traced my fingers across the scratches on my face. I was doing a bang-up job already.

Chapter 19 summary: A week passed following Daisy falling, and the start of her first day of school. Grace is weird about the incident, and randomly seems to blame her daughter for the accident. Like yes, Daisy probably should have stayed on the path, and paid more attention to what was (not) under her feet. But at the same time… She literally fell off a cliff, JFC. 

Anyway, it’s her first day of school, but also the first guests are coming to stay at the main house. Grace takes Daisy across to drop her off, but also to meet up with the guests. 

King agreed to take Daisy the rest of the way to school, and the first half of the trip was spent in stony silence. He finally asks her why she went into the house, and then is kind of angry and disappointed at her. Yet he continues to refuse to explain why she shouldn’t have done it. He eventually tells her that he only warns people once, and then it’s kind of on them if they do the stupid thing or not. Which… I get it. But he’s being such a sanctimonious shitweasle about the entire thing. Again, without giving any sort of reason for his behaviour. 

Inside the school, Daisy is surprised to find out that King is kind of popular. He calls her out on her questioning this, though. They both agree that they aren’t interested in the other romantically. He then drops her off at the front office and leaves. 

Chapter 20

“How are your teachers?”

 “Fine… Why?” 

“Just making sure. Not everyone who works with children should.”

I get that there are people who probably shouldn’t be working with children, or anywhere near a school, full-stop. (Not simply for paedophile reasons.) 

But this is simply such an odd thing to say. 

“How are your teachers? Are any of them PAEDOPHILES?!” 

I wondered now what sort of friend Katie Kuru had been to Mom. And how she knew to be afraid of the house.

Chapter 20 summary: We mercifully skip over to the last class of the day, which is biology. After class is over, Mrs. K asks that Daisy stay behind for a second while the other kids leave. Once they’re alone, Mrs. K asks if Daisy is Grace’s daughter, and goes on to explain that she used to hang out with her mom and dad back in the day. She gives Daisy her phone number and asks that she pass it on to Grace; that Grace should call her, and they can have dinner sometime. Mrs. K is also surprised to hear that they’re living at the mansion. 

Grace picks Daisy up from the dock, and asks how her day at school was. As mentioned, she asks in such a bizarre way. Then Grace gets upset when Daisy tells her about Mrs. K, whom Grace identifies as Katie. Grace is of the opinion that Katie is a “summer friend”, and that you’re supposed to lose touch with them after the summer is over. Which Daisy thinks is utter bullshit. But Daisy also thinks that the reason why Grace keeps these sort of people separated in her head is because she felt like she could confess her deepest sins to them, and then move on after the summer was over. 

[percontaion-points]

booty shorts that say ASK ME ABOUT THE BOOK I'M READING on the ass

[percontaion-points]

Lord of the Rings fanart! I watched for the first time recently and loved it

[percontaion-points]

Delicious Monsters chapters 17 & 18

Today's review might be difficult for some; reader discretion is advised

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Chapter 17

Mom didn’t want that cleansing, and I didn’t think it would work anyway, but he knew something more about the house than I did. He might talk. Mom wasn’t going to give me any details. She wanted to avoid it.

The stupidest thing about Grace’s behaviour is like… Why did you come and take the house if you’re going to be this weird about it?

Noah once said that he didn’t even speak to his high school friends. That his real friends were at university. I’d wondered if, when he was done with school and a full-time adult, he would be saying he didn’t even speak to his university friends and that his real friends were at work.

To be fair, I’ve met people like that. They’re quick to burn bridges, no matter what. 

They’re usually never worth your time in the long-run. 

I still don’t know why Daisy’s so hung up over this asshole. 

When I chanced a look up into her face, she was staring back at me, pale, trembling lips, and sweat beading on her forehead. She was just as afraid as I was.

Chapter 17 summary: Daisy runs back to the guest house, only to find two weirdos waiting there. One of them has a box of food, and the other a live goat. Daisy is like “JFC, mom wasn’t kidding about the goat. Why the fuck did she get a goat?!” 

Grace had mentioned that she’d known Helga from her own childhood, so Daisy now asks what her mom was like. It’s wild to Daisy that her mom didn’t pop into existence right before Daisy was born. The Grace Helga describes is a complete stranger to Daisy. 

After Helga and Joe leave, Daisy decides that she needs King to come to the house and do his ritual cleaning of it. She isn’t sure that it’ll help, but she has to do SOMETHING. She’s walking through the woods when she thinks she hears the snapping of twigs. But every time she stops, she hears nothing. 

She then foolishly steps off the path, and immediately tumbles off a cliff for her stupidity. Into a thorn bush. Then to add insult to injury, a butcherbird lands on her and starts to peck her. She’s struggling to get out, when Grace grabs her up to safety. 

Chapter 18

“Grace was the sort of girl you couldn’t quite belong to, you know what I mean? You have friends where you just orbit around each other. You belong to the same universe. But Grace always hovered beyond ours.” 

“She kept herself at a distance.” 

“Yeah. When she came back to town to open that Airbnb, she was different. Friendly. Open. Approachable. I would have never called her that stuff before, but suddenly she was.”

That’s what not seeing somebody for nearly 20 years does. People change. 

Nevertheless, Jordan sent receipts. He’d paid out Grace on the first of every month since Daisy’s birth without fail. He also had phone records to show that he’d regularly called his daughter during that time. Which wasn’t what we asked for.

The problem is that you can send the money and call your child every Saturday. But none of that makes up for the fact that you make it obvious from the get-go that you weren’t actually interested in a relationship with her. 

Jayden crosses his fingers. “I really hope she saw ghosts.” I roll my eyes even as a smile creeps onto my face.

Chapter 18 summary: Brittany and Jayden go over to Helga’s and Joe’s farm for an interview. During the cab ride over, Brittany can’t stop thinking about the email from their anonymous source: “Grace and Dione are hiding something. Without them, you’ll never understand the full scope of why she’s dead.” There’s no explanation as to who “she” is. 

As Brittany and Jayden get the cameras and mikes set up, and have Helga sign the release form, she tells them about how she came to own the farm that once belonged to her parents. I’m not sure that any of Helga’s background matters much in the long-run, though. 

She tells them of the emotionally distant Grace. That the woman who came back years later with a teenage daughter was so far removed from the pregnant teen who left 17 years earlier. 

Helga hints that there was something funny between the relationship of Grace and Peter. That he “hugged Grace for too long”. But then she takes it back, and asks that they delete that footage. That there were already a lot of rumours going around; she doesn’t need to be a social outcast because of her speculations. Especially without any proof. 

Brittany then tells the readers that she understands where Helga was coming from about “hugging for too long”. That she was once in a situation like that. It was one of the few times her mom actually protected her from a would-be predator. 

Helga goes on to talk about Daisy’s dad, Jordan. That Grace apparently only had him in the house once so that they could have sex… But it only takes once, and I get that. But the entire thing is kind of odd. Especially when you factor in what Helga said about Peter’s relationship with Grace. But Grace seemed happy to be leaving for Toronto after she got pregnant. Brittany tells the readers that when they asked Jordan for an interview, he sent his lawyers after them, and their producer told them to stop. But Jordan sent evidence that he sent his child support payments every month, and called Daisy weekly. But that wasn’t the kind of stuff that they were after. 

As Jayden starts to pack up, Brittany asks Helga about the “goat incident” from when they were children. Helga brushes over the entire thing, but says that her parents forbade her to see Grace after that. But that it didn’t matter, because Grace got pregnant and left. 

Outside, the two of them talk about how when Daisy moved there, that she seemed to be on a quest to understand who her mother was and is. Brittany identifies with that, because she knows her own mother is so full of fucking shit and lies. 

[percontaion-points]

Delicious Monsters chapters 15 & 16

Today's review might be difficult for some; reader discretion is advised

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Chapter 15

I hadn’t come this far up north to do nothing. I reached out my hand and shook hers.

Chapter 15 summary: Daisy walks through the woods for a bit before Ivy comes back. She randomly tells Daisy about butcherbirds. Which is weird to me, because google tells me that they only live in Australia. I guess googling things was too difficult for the author.

Anyway, Ivy goes on to warn that if Daisy is going to be walking through the forest, she needs to wear hunter orange, since people like to hunt around here. She plops her orange beanie onto Daisy’s head, and asks how she’s liking living around here.

Daisy asks Ivy if she’s ever been inside the main house, to which Ivy says no. She jealously thinks that Daisy has explored the entire house, but then brightens up when she learns that Daisy hasn’t even been inside. The two girls agree that they should go explore the house right now. 

Chapter 16

Out of a tiny hole in my head, a tip of white was wriggling.

Me reading violent SA scenes: Whatever

Me reading gruesome murder scenes: It doesn’t matter

Me reading horrific child abuse: alrighty then

Me reading about a girl who’s hallucinating maggots in her scalp: I THINK THE FUCK NOT. 

She disappeared into the trees, and I kept standing there. Shaking. Listening to the butcherbirds call to one another.

Chapter 16 summary: Inside the house, there are a lot of the dead. Like way too many. Daisy knows that she should do something about all of them, but she can’t do it when Ivy is there. They go further into the house, only to come to a sunroom that’s completely full of them. 

They go up to one of the bedrooms, where Daisy lingers behind to look at herself in the mirror. That’s when she sees the maggot in her scalp again. Ivy isn’t around, so Daisy picks up some tweezers and pulls the thing out. It’s impossibly long, but it eventually comes out. (And I seriously wanted to vomit reading this scene. Why.) She drops it onto the ground and stomps on it. Ivy shows back up a second after this, and Daisy kind of explains that there was this thing in her scalp. However, there is blood and goo, but Daisy isn’t sure that it isn’t her own blood. Ivy helps her to clean it up, and they throw the towel in a trashcan. 

It’s at this point that Daisy realises that Ivy has been inside before. Ivy explains that she lied because then Daisy wouldn’t have wanted to come explore the house with her. 

However, there’s something that’s bugging Daisy about the house: King told her that the place was dangerous. And Ivy is acting like she’s a little scared as well. Her mom is afraid of the place. But aside from the dead, Daisy can’t quite figure out what’s going on.