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A Tall Dark Trouble, Vanessa Montalban, Book Review.

☆☆☆

I received a copy of this title from Netgalley. My thoughts are my own. I requested this title because I enjoyed the author's short story in an upcoming anthology, Night of the Living Queers: 13 Tales of Terror Delight. I found much to enjoy in this story, and I recommend it, but I can't say I loved it, and it took me a while before the pages turned themselves, if you know what I mean. Half of the story is set in 80s Cuba, and I really liked those portions with Anita. In the modernish day, we're in Miami, and we follow 2 sisters, Delphi and Lela, each with magical abilities. One sister is more eager to explore this side of her identity. Both of them are having premonitions of a woman's death. Their mother very much wants them to ignore this side of their identity. (This last detail reminds me of The Witches of Bone Hill, and it's interesting to compare each mother's reasons for discouraging her daughters from coming into their full power.) The girls are under a family curse, as well, that means that anyone they love romantically will come to ruin. So, they both have love interests. It might say something about my wiring, but I could resist resist temptation under the circumstances. Not going to lie, while I like romance, I don't consider it mandatory across genres. In this book, there's so much material that I'd like at least one of the three romantic subplots to have been eliminated. But of course, if this is your candy, you're going to think the more of it the better. In that case, the love interests are all interesting, particularly Anita's love interest, who gets the fewest pages, and then Andres, Delphi's guy. I feel like I have unanswered questions about Lela's love interest. While I was entertained, I was never shocked. I find myself wondering how much I was supposed to have figured out, maybe all of it. Still, knowing that the sisters' initial impressions of a couple characters were wrong, took away what could have been a moment to gasp. I minded less that how Cuba and Miami relate to one another was obvious, but I think it was supposed to be -- that we're a step ahead of the sisters, and waiting for them to figure it all out. I think you'll enjoy the story if you love sisterhood, siblinghood, familial bonds, and female friendships. Magic. Real and fictionalized religious and spiritual practices. Cuba and Cuban politics. The author is great at setting a scene, and atmosphere, and so there's some delightful creepiness. And gore. Because Vanessa Montalban can set a mood, I'm interested in seeing where she'll go next.

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The ancient world didn't have a word for blue. Blue things were filed away under the colors they understood/perceived. Once they had a word for blue, not only could they "see" it better, they could further break it down into shades and hues. You need words for things to know the thing, to begin to understand the thing, to speak of the thing, to realize the thing is common enough to be named.

People have lived and died never being able to tell another person who they were, thinking they were the only one, robbed of community. Sometimes not even understanding themselves.

So it's a hell of an argument to take the silence of people who didn't have the words or the support as proof these people didn't exist.

I graduated high school in 99.

There was a student at our school named Wayne.

Wayne was gay. It was obvious. He was unable to stay in the closet even if he wanted to. To make matters worse, he was also Black. From a bullying standpoint, that was not a great combo. Both Black and white students made fun of him relentlessly. He was ostracized from the only community that may have given him protection. Only us theater kids stuck up for him, but not to significant effect.

Wayne was bullied so much that at one point he finally snapped and attacked his bullies with a lunch tray. I was actually seated in perfect line of sight and just sat there chewing my soggy fries in stunned silence. It didn't even seem real as I was witnessing it. The image of him wailing on his main bully as the food on his tray flew off is permanently logged into my long term memory.

The bully he attacked had blood all over his face and went straight to the nurse. Other than superficial cuts, he was not injured.

Before the attack, Wayne went to teachers for help. He went to guidance counselors for help. He went to the principals for help.

He did all of the things you were supposed to do. No one helped him. They wagged a finger at the bullies and warned them to stop.

Wayne's lunch tray melee was the only thing that worked. His bullies stayed far away from him. But a week later Wayne was expelled and the bullies were given no punishment.

So... no.

No one in my school talked about being trans.

Because the only way to survive being openly queer was to bash people with a lunch tray.

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"It said that I'd be safe."

(Note I listened to the audiobook. This is the second book in a month I've heard narrated by Nicky Endres, and they're just on that at the top of my narrators list. In the first book, I wondered if they were French, and this time they were convincingly English. Each character comes across as unique and distinct.)

Alice and Ila are best friends and occasional lovers. They enter an abandoned house with their friend, Heather. Alice and Ila leave, physically and emotionally scarred, enemies, afraid of one another.

Heather never leaves.

Before I continue, I can't stress enough this book is dark, hard to read, and bound to be triggering for a lot of people. I know I have to be in the right mental and emotional space to handle certain topics, and I know reading the wrong book at the wrong time can be profoundly dangerous. This book deals with bigotry of all kinds, particularly transphobia, homophobia, racism, misogyny, and the rise of antisemitism. There's a lot of talk of dysphoria. The characters have turned a lot of the hatred inward. Did I mention body horror?

The house in question thinks of itself as Albion, an older name for England. I don't think the metaphor is meant to be at all subtle -- this house holds and amplifies hate. It's only welcoming in the way a spider welcomes a fly to its web.

I'm from the United States and yet so much of the sense of rising dread and the anxiety of not trusting your neighbors to be decent humans is familiar. I think my country and Albion are toxically codependent, in many ways mirroring one another.

Alison Rumfitt seems to hold nothing back, never shying away from taking the story to uncomfortable places. It felt brave to write about the rise of hate, but it's twice as brave to make your protagonists from marginalized groups horrible and hate-filled too. No one, other than the house, seems to hate them more than they hate themselves.

Relatable.

I'm not going to delve into much more. I loved the Tell Me I'm Worthless, I also had to take a lot of breaks from it. I felt the author understood my rising panic and anxiety, my confusion as to what's going on. (I'm starting to see antisemitic posts in discussions where I didn't think you could shoehorn it in if you tried.) I'm so happy I read it, and want to read more from this author, but I'm also really glad it's over.

None of this to say there's not also a sharp sense of humor and satire at play.

Recommended for people in the mental place to handle a dark story. Politically (to the left) aware people and those from marginalized groups. Those always online. People who like the subgenre of haunted house stories where the house isn't as much haunted as itself evil -- the lines of architecture or the ground its built on his soured it. (The book pays homage to those stories, particularly The Haunting of Hill House.)

Not recommended for people in a vulnerable state, particularly those from the groups harmed or degraded in this story. I don't think conservatives would have a good time, unless it was for messed up reasons. People with a strong gag reflex.

I will be recommending this book A LOT.

*****

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number131

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Love, love, love! Barbie can do anything! No Skipper?

Specific Barbie references in the Barbie movie (2023) based on the promo and teaser trailer (so far)

Margot Robbie as Barbie - 1959 Ponytail Barbie Doll (The first barbie doll)

Emerald Fennell as Midge - 2003 Midge and Baby (BANNED FROM WALMART!)

Issa Rae as President Barbie - 2020 Candidate doll from the Barbie Campaign Team Set

Michael Cera as Allan - 1964 Allan Doll (He's Ken's Buddy!)

(Unsure) Dua Lipa as Blue-Haired Mermaid (potentially Nori from Mermaidia (2006) , or Dreamtopia (2017-2018)

Kate McKinnon as messed up, played with chewed feet Barbie Doll (Transcends time and generations)

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"The blood is the life." ~Dracula, by Bram Stoker

"Marion! Marion! Come out wherever you are! The hounds would like to play!" ~House of Hunger, Alexis Henderson

I have loved this sort of book pretty much since I've been able to read. Spooky house or castle. Isolation. A love interest with questionable motives and morals. Fleeing in the middle of the night.

Marion is a poor young woman living in an industrialized urban area, think London in the Victorian era, working as a housemaid. She supports her drug-addicted, dying brother. She sees a notice in the paper for a bloodmaid, and ends of applying in hopes that after her terms of indenture she will obtain financial and personal freedom.

In this world, aristocrats feed of the blood of poor women, and they live on the moors in the north. There's no indication, that I can see, that the blood does them actual good, and it's certainly not great for the people doing the bleeding.

The moors/moors are a staple of gothic literature because they're wild, untamed, and symbolically cruel. In Seanan Mcguire's Wayward Children series -- first book if the series is Every Heart a Doorway -- one of the world they visit and revisit is called The Moors, and it's the embodiment of where vampires and mad scientists reign.

What would you give or gamble to change your life? Would you bleed? How much? Alexis Henderson makes no bones about how this is a form of sex work. Bloodmaids are mistresses, jockying for favor, making the best choices they can with limited options in order to some day be independent.

Marion is indentured to Lisavet Bathory. If you're a fan of vampire stories or creepy history, you might have heard of this character's obvious inspiration, Countess Elizabeth Bathory, a Hungarian noblewoman. What she got up to in her spare time -- both real and rumored -- well, I suppose due to the nature of the homage, would be a bit of a spoiler to share. However, whenever you see a quip about bathing in the blood of virgins to retain your youth, you have those rumors to blame.

Lisavet is beautiful, mysterious, demanding, and the people in her sphere fall under her spell, no one more than Marion, and the other 4 bloodmaids. The story is blood-drenched, and as meat is repeatedly described it's clear that the women in this house are another form of meat served up in a futile effort to sate the insatiable.

It IS the House of Hunger.

Every chapter starts with a quote from bloodmaid.

"We are all alike in the fact that our great life's work is deciding who and what we're willing to bleed for." "We bleed for those we love most." "It's a strange thing to go from hungry ... to the thing hungered for."

I don't want to say much more about the plot, so I'll say the author has given a lot of thought of the role of classism and sexism. Exploitation. Sex work and sex trafficking. There's talk of how important youth is and how vulnerable that makes girls.

"We're broken into submission, by grief and poverty, long before we ever set foot in this House. And then we arrive, on the promise of the first kindness many of us have received in years, and you take advantage of weakness. You cultivate it, to better exploit us."

It's fine to read this as a horror novel, and it works great on that level, but I appreciated the thought and symbolism, which only further engaged me.

The last portion of the book was pretty tense and pretty scary. And extra bloody in a book with no shortage of blood.

I had this at 4 stars, but I'm bumping it up to 5, because it honestly gave me everything I needed in this subgenre, and I bookmarked a million passages.

"Sometimes I feel like I've been building you a House out of my own bones. And still, you look at me with so much contempt and mistrust. You complain because there are gaps in the roof of my ribs, and you ask me to give more of myself to fill them. You want my hips to be the bowl you drink from. My shoulders, your bed. My arms, your walls. My legs, the very ground you stand on. You want your fill of my blood whenever you crave it. What more do you want from me?"

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*****(5 out of 5 stars.)

I purchased A Socialite's Guide to Murder through Aardvark, a book of the month style service, and had an absolute blast! Evelyn is the daughter of a hotel owner, and the story takes place in the late 50s. She is spoiled and pampered, and carries her little dog (Presley) everywhere. She could be mistaken for a "Dumb Blonde," and in some ways she's naive, but she has hidden depth. She gives me a very Elle Woods/Paris Hilton/Marilyn Monroe vibe -- intelligent, but knows how to play dumb. Easily underestimated, but you really shouldn't. She explicitly emulates Monroe's style in the beginning. A nice, somewhat subtle, thing is when someone says she has no personality other than emulating Marilyn Monroe, and a few scenes later she changes her lipstick color and eventually considers becoming brunette. I think she's finding herself. She wonders how being called Miss Marple could be an insult. As a child, she found her mother's body -- and I bet that'll be explored -- and it left her with anxiety, agoraphobia, and PTSD, which her therapist calls shell shock as a reflection of the time period. She rarely leaves the hotel, and part of her growth is her tentative efforts to go places. I laughed A LOT and loved her love for her dog. I kissed Presley's wet nose. "Do you want to find the real thief, sweet boy? Come on, let's get you in Mommy's bag." "No. No." Mac was on his feet after a few more stretches. "We can't bring the dog." "And why not?" I already had Presley's purse open on the counter, his little tail wagging at the sight of it. "He's a helper!" "A helper?"Mac wiped his face with the palm on his hand, his stubble whispering at the connection. "Evelyn, we're going to break into a crime scene. You can't bring a dog into a crime scene." "I can." I put Presley in his bag, slid it onto my shoulder. "I am. Look, I can even put flashlights in there with him! He'll keep them safe." Mac opened his mouth, closed it again. "Safe from what? Evelyn, what if he barks? Or pees in the middle of the crime scene?" I gasped. "Presley would never. He's a good boy, Mac." Spoiler alert, they take Presley. Also: She has an exchange with a lift operator where she proclaims Presley her favorite. The lift operator seeks clarification, and asks if she means favorite dog. No, her favorite of anything in the whole world. Her love interest, an employee of the hotel with a somewhat shady past, good-naturedly aides and abets her investigations. He can pick locks. She also has a Hollywood star she pretends to date in order to help quell rumors around a confirmed bachelor. I won't go too much into the mystery beyond saying it worked well for me, and there were a lot of suspects. I did pick out the murderer, and I don't actively try to do that, preferring to let the story go where it will. I guess I'm saying it might be easy, but I've also been watching a lot of Columbo. LOL! Anyhow, it's 5 stars for me because I simply had a good time, and want to spend more time in this world. I appreciate that a mystery with a sleuth who owns a pet, and the pet has more than a cameo with a spot on the cover. More dog. Always more dog.

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library classification labels

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even more than my blog being an unsafe place for terfs, this is a place of love and support for trans people and especially the trans women who single-handedly keep this website funny

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(Scheduled to be released November 28, 2023)

I received an ARC of this title through Netgalley. The thoughts and opinions are my own. Godly Heathens is the first book in a series, possibly a duology, about gods cut off from their home world, and in a cycle of reincarnation that keeps drawing together -- largely to try to kill one another, using a magical knife. The main character is Gem, a nonbinary Seminole teen. (To give you an idea of the vibe, one of the chapters is There are no Cis Gods.) When we meet them, they're on the brink of discovery/remembering their divine identity. Those gory, but often erotic, dreams? Memories. They reunite with Willa Mae/Rory, with whom they've shared many lifetimes. We're told early on that the gods, even if they don't always consciously pursue one another, tend to end up in each other's lives, and so many of the people in Gem's life are, well, not people. Or not just people. Among the gods we meet is Poppy, who is a death job with a quirky fashion sense. Has that been done before? Yes. Do I still love it? Also, yes. Every lifetime she's a little more like an animated corpse, for reasons. Gem is a character dealing with a lot even without the whole god thing. They're battling mental illness, like their father, as well as a sex addiction. They were also preyed on by at least one adult. They want to be wanted/worshiped at all times. They're a teen, with all the hormonal stuff, and having a parent to appease. This is a YA title, and there's part of me that would have liked to see it as an adult title simply for the increased freedom and maturity. These characters are both formidable gods, and teens, which certainly can work but it makes them feel occasionally leashed. It reminds me of the scene in Buffy where Anya says, "For a thousand years I wielded the power of the wish. I brought ruin on the heads of unfaithful men. I offered destruction and chaos for the pleasure of lower beings. I was feared and worshiped across the mortal globe, and now I'm stuck at Sunnydale High! A mortal! A child! And I'm flunking math!" None of this is to say the book is tame. There's a lot of blood and gore. Murder and torture. Gem is promiscuous, and while not everything there is spelled out, we're talking at least PG 13. If it were an adult title, it might have been more explicit, but still these topics are mature and the author doesn't pull too many punches. TWs/CWs galore. These gods, even the ones we root for, have their villainous moments, and Gem in the events leading up to their arrival on earth was one of the most villainous of all. The gods connive, they plot, morality wars with expediency. I found myself initially less then thrilled at the (inevitable) revelation of a certain character, but Edgmon managed to win me over. All the gods have a point, even as they're trying to kill our main character. And Gem has a point in wanting to neutralize them. This is very compelling read, though. While I can nitpick some of the logic, or why characters didn't always due the logical thing, I was SO INVESTED! This book ends at a pivotal moment, and I need to find out how it shakes out. There's a god that allegedly is out of play, but are they really? I'm going to be recommending this title a lot!

See original review, and please follow me!

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What’s better than a vampire? What’s better than a horse. A Vampire Horse, of course. I made this comic a few months ago.

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“You’ve been accepted by a group of people that very clearly does not accept me, and nearly every day this week, I have been called a freak, a child predator, an absurdity. I am none of those things that your cohorts are painting me to be, and my question for you is: don’t you feel a little lonely over there? These people that you’re standing with, I don’t know if they have your best intentions at heart. But they will use you to make mine and the trans community’s life a lot harder than it already is.” ~Dylan Mulvaney to Caitlyn Jenner

👻 Haunt your local transphobe!  

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Digital illustration of a person with purple skin and ombre green hair. They are wearing a black jacket with a trans pride pin, a pink triangle pin and a patch that reads, ‘punks respect pronouns.’ Around them are little spirit ghosts, and a green glow is illuminating a tree silhouette behind them. The text reads, ‘haunt your local transphobe’

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Dream of a Thousand Cats

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Honestly, this is a rare area where "what if it was the other way around?" holds water. You can't just sexually harass or publicly sexualize anyone. Your spank bank is your business, but making someone uncomfortable in that way is not okay.

Honestly this whole Pedro Pascal thing is getting out of hand it's scraping insanity. One thing is to tell your friends that you want to fuck him or thirst over him in your personal tumblr blogs like the rest of us common mortals do. Another completely different thing is to have people on his Instagram and other platforms calling him daddy and commenting what they want to do with him very explicitly and to have interviewers calling him the daddy of the internet or whatever the fuck. That's harassment. It is not okay. The man is clearly overwhelmed and tired of being called obscene things everywhere he goes plus online. Like what the fuck is happening. Can we collectively chill and start condemning this type of objectifying behavior please? People need to learn to keep things to themselves. I've seen literal grown ass adult interviewers telling him this shit directly and filming his reaction. Enough

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I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley. These are my honest thoughts.

You know the Robert Frost poem that ends "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference"? The meaning of the poem is less blaze your own path and more that we justify our choices as the right ones, having no idea what the other path would have revealed.

Going Bicoastal is very low stakes and feel good. Neither decisions -- summer in New York or summer in L.A. -- are bad decisions, just different ones. In some ways, but not all, she ends up coming to the same conclusions about her life. While readers might have their preferences as to love interest or location, neither is presented as a bad fate, making this an excellent choice for readers who get the new trend of warm, cozy only set in a YA contemporary romance.

Confession: When we talk about reading diversely some people will always say, horrifyingly, that they can't relate to people who they deem different from them. I don't usually have this issue, but I do struggle with extroverts! (LOL, not so bad, right?)

Natalya is definitely an extrovert. While having shy moments, it's clear that no matter where she goes she'll make friends. Often rich friends. Whether going to see a band, or being fed at dinner parties featuring a roster of chefs, she will WILLINGLY spend a lot of time with people. I'm triple her age (I need a moment to sit with that) and I have no idea who people meet people, strike up a bond, and effortlessly become friends. Trying might kill me.

She does like to read, though, which my introverted soul does fully comprehend.

Natalya is Jewish, and the book -- in both realities -- makes clear what this means to her, that she values and thinks about traditions without being shackled to them. We read about Shabbat dinner a lot and how it varies by your families community and country of origin. I am always hyped about food descriptions, of which there are plenty.

Food is about communion, not in the Christian sense, and this very much came into play in Going Bicoastal. When you break bread with someone, especially if you personally baked the bread, you allow them into your circle, you find out more about them, you share bits of who you are right back in time to who you were. This is very apparent in the L.A. time line.

The New York time line is more about how music connects us, which is just as vital, although I ended up feeling like I knew the N.Y. love interest -- Ellie -- less. Maybe because I never felt her vulnerability as much as I did the L.A. love interest, Adam.

I'd expected more of the book to be about Natalya hashing out her issues with her mom, especially in the L.A. reality, and that didn't materialize. There just seems to be a vibe that Natalya is old enough to not dwell on the past, and mature enough to move on. Her mother, and this surprised me, didn't seem to in any substantial way change her life at the presence of her daughter. I felt this to be a missed opportunity, but the overall readership might not be invested in that so much as the romance elements and Natalya figuring out what she wants for her life.

I had a nice time with this story, and the sense that Natalya is destined to be okay no matter what.

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“What's your name,' Coraline asked the cat. 'Look, I'm Coraline. Okay?' 'Cats don't have names,' it said. 'No?' said Coraline. 'No,' said the cat. 'Now you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names.” ― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

What IS this cat's name? (I learned nothing from the quote.)

paying $10 to make you look at this picture of my cat in the sink

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“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”

— Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God