JUST LIKE HOME......A HOUSE OF HORRORS....PAST AND PRESENT.....

 Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey (2022)

      For those of us who love a scary haunted house story, all the elements seem well in place here.....

       Creepy house?  Check.

       Dysfunctional family forever scarred by their late patriarch, a serial torturer killer?  You bet.

       Horrific flashbacks to the bloody past history? Oh yeah. 

       Possible creepy supernatural incidents occurring with escalating frequency?   Hmmm......who's moving stuff around in the room when nobody was looking?

        Mention any of these haunted house tropes and you had me at hello.....ready for a chilly good time.....

         Which "Just Like Home", I'm so sorry to report, doen NOT provide.

         Boring. Snail's pace. And even in its climactic moments, when the book unleashes copious amounts of horror, violence and indescribable human body corruption.....the prose and storytelling never ever shift out of low gear. 

         Any haunted house story worth its ectoplasm should leave you with a bad case of the chills and an overpowering urge to turn all the lights on. 

          This one only left me with a relieved sigh that I finally got through it to the end without dozing off multiple times. 

           Sure, it's top heavy with an atmosphere of dread and its depiction of an especially toxic mother-daughter relationship is both simultaneously heartbreaking and frightening. 

           But the pacing here is literally non existent and the book did a better job of wearing you out than scaring you.

          I wanted so much to love this so much, but it functions more like a horror oil painting instead of telling a story to keep you up.

           2 stars (**) at best.

FINLAY DONOVAN JUMPS THE GUN.....THE SLIPSHOD SLEUTHS GO TO POLICE SCHOOL...(****)

 Finlay Donovan Jumps The Gun by Elle Cosimano (2023)

Here's a don't-miss, delightful book that'll be coming your way on January 31st, and SQ thanks NetGalley and the publishes for the advance read.....so we can tell you all about it.....

                I should point out that anyone prepared to dive into the crazy world of Finlay Donovan should NOT start with this one, book #3 in the series. This is as far from a stand-alone as you can possibly get. 

                To fully savor and LOL at the full comedic madness of the Finlay-verse, it's wise to start from the origins of Finlay, a harried, divorced mom of two small children......she's kind of a mash-up of Stephanie Plum, Lucille Ball, and Nancy Drew.  Through little or no fault of her own, she finds herself constantly mixed up with a powerful Russian mobster, contract killers, and assorted goons, crooks and police. She  not only ends up juggling guys with the hots for her  but some bodies to bury as well....literally....(don't ask.) 

                And Finlay's aided and abetted in all her escalating moments of screwball danger by Vero, her equally madcap, trouble-prone nanny and partner-in-chaos.  They're a dream team of incompetent sleuthing and their hilarious efforts to get the bottom of things keeps you smiling and turning the pages at maximum speed.

                The result is always the same in all 3 books.....a super fast and funny read whose last page leaves you hungering for the next one. 

                 "Jumps the gun" finds our less-than-dynamic duo forced to honor a favor called in by Feliks the Russian mob boss.......identify and eliminate 'EasyClean' a mysterious hit-man whom Feliks has targeted for hitting.  And who's EasyClean?   Finlay and Vero think he's a cop, so off they go to a "Citizen's Police Academy",. It's a sleepaway camp for civilians who want to get to do cool cop stuff, as taught to them by real police officers. 

                Finn and Vero face quite a task.....figuring out who, among the unusual suspects of the Academy's staff of police instructors might be EasyClean.....and this even includes detective Nick Anthony, whose simmering sexual chemistry with Finlay heats up rapidly. 

 
               By this time, you can rest assured that multiple twists and turns will make this' foolhardy investigation go awry in all sorts of directions. But as I mentioned before, I'd consider this is a 4 star read (****) only if you've taken in the previous books...... ("Finlay Donovan Is Killing It", "Finlay Donovan Knock 'Em Dead")

            Diving into this one to start with will only make you wish you'd caught up with Finlay from the beginning.   Anyone who especially adores comedy-mysteries shouldn't miss any of these.

THE HOUSEMAID........WAY MORE THAN DUST BUNNIES TO UNCOVER.....(*****)

 The Housemaid by Freida McFadden (2022)    When it comes to the bottom line, SQ, like most readers, will judge domestic thrillers by the quality of the BIG TWIST they unleash........

          And once the twist is out there, you'll want to judge it for its cleverness and overall believability in regard to the rest of the story......

         So I'm happy to report that "The Housemaid" does not insult anyone's intelligence or strain credulity with the triple whopper of a twist it pulls off halfway through the book. 

          Millie, our young  ex-con heroine skates on very thin ice after securing her new job as a combo housemaid-nanny for a well-to-do couple with a young daughter.  She didn't reveal to her employers Nina and Andrew that she's coming off a 10 year prison sentence imposed on her as teenager. 

         And even with her lack of experience, she's surprised that the seemingly warm, kindhearted Nina has taken a chance on her........that is, until the seemingly warm and kindhearted Nina can suddenly turn unfairly cruel, deliberately 'gaslighting' Millie in an escalating series of disturbing episodes. 

        Often to her rescue comes the calm, handsome Andrew, whom Millie comes to see as a defender-protector in the midst of Nina's angry erratic behavior......and.....uh.....perhaps a bit more.....

        (And oh my, what about the little attic room that serves as Millie's live-in quarters?  How come it only locks from the outside?)

         Freida McFadden orchestrates this increasingly ominous set-up in preparation to turn the tables  upside and down and backwards on Millie....as well you the reader too.  Which would explain why I'm surely not going one more millimeter in plot description. 

          Just hang on for detonation of further multiple surprises after the BIG TWIST knocks you for a loop......and don't blame me if you realize you've been up til 3 in the morning zippin' through the pages to see what happens next......

          SQ says it's a surefire 5 star read. So once you bring 'The Housemaid' home, don't expect to get much cleaning done......          

'DEVIL'S WAY'....A PAIR OF P.I.'S DIG THROUGH A PAST FAMILY TRAGEDY....(*****)

 Devil's Way by Robert Bryndza  (2023)

First let me admit that I rarely delve into procedural mysteries involving police and/or private investigators doggedly tracking down leads and clues that'll lead them to the 'perp;. But the ;plot description of this one somehow hooked me right away, and author Bryndza's storytelling gripped me from beginning to end. The characterizations are so well drawn and most importantly, the book makes skillful use of the scenic but strangely ominous moors where its central crime originated.

        P.I. Kate Marshall's dedication to ocean swims lands her in the hospital after a near fatal bout with a riptide. She shares her room with Jean, ,an elderly woman coping with the memories of a terrible family tragedy. Eleven years ago. on a camping holiday with her troubled daughter, Jean's 3 year old grandson went missing then ruled presumably drowned by the police inquiry.. Living with the crushing grief of her daughter's subsequent suicide and  what she considers the unsolved mystery of the boy's true fate, Jean holds out hope that the child might have survived.......and hires Kate and her young partner Tristan to find out what happened out there in the treacherous landscapes of the moors. 

             Once Kate and Tristan's hunt for the chilling truth gets underway, the many twists and turns they encounter kept me firmly glued to "Devil's Way" to the very end.  Our relentless sleuths deal with a past brutal murder related to the missing child and even more heartrending discoveries.  Yes it's that kind of 'stay-up-all-nighter' that you can't stop reading till the final revelations unfold.

 
              And  I particularly admired the final emotional pages of the case's aftermath, which I wouldn't dream of spoiling here......other than to say that for avid mystery readers, this one's a 5 star find.(*****)