Bad Girls Don't Die by Katie Alender

Fortunately, good girls don't die either in Katie Alender's debut novel Bad Girls Don't Die. Once the story in this absorbing, page turning, heart pounding, wicked, creepy, suspenseful thriller gets cranked up, you won't want to put it down until you've reached the end. Alender creates the creepy atmosphere of a possessed, haunted house and sister like nobody's business--the best part is that it is subtle rather than obvious supernatural elements. The creepiness can just as easily be explained away as a manifestation of a mental breakdown as the main character tells herself over and over again before finally realizing that she is not crazy and yes, her sister is possessed by one crazy, evil ghost.

Alender realistically portrays the outcast, teen outsider who doesn't fit in at her school --she doesn't want to and she doesn't care who knows it. She cuts class, speaks her mind, stands up to the popular in-crowd, and regards with scorn the misfit crowd that she also holds herself apart from. She is on the fringes--at school and at home--she's isolated and alone and has built herself a reputation as a troublemaker whether that reputation is rightly or wrongly deserved. She is just as disconnected from her dysfunctional parents and in many ways from her sister.

Alexis is a loner and an outcast and that's the way she likes it ever since her only best friend was run out of town by the popular cheerleader crowd at school. But she finds solace in photography--Alexis uses black and white film and develops her own photos in a makeshift dark room in the guest bathroom. Her younger sister, Kasey, is thirteen and for the most part the girls get along. But then Kasey starts blacking out, showing up with green eyes instead of her natural blue ones, talking in archaic phrases, behaving bizarrely and committing dangerous acts that verge on criminal. Alexis wonders first if she's going crazy and then if her sister has multiple personalities before realizing this is a far more dangerous problem that doctors and drugs won't fix--or believe. Soon Alexis finds out that the only person who can help her sister before its too late is the one person that Alexis hates. However, she has no choice if she wants to save her sister from herself and save her family from the chilling evil entity that possesses her sister.

With her newfound ally Alexis begins to put the pieces of the puzzle together of the events that occurred in her house ten years ago and over a century ago that have stained it and destroyed nearly every occupant since. Before long the evil spirit's plans for the girls who did her wrong--as well as their daughters and granddaughters-- becomes apparent to Alexis, and she realizes that it is up to her to stop it before its too late. The action steadily picks up speed and barrels to its explosive conclusion when the girls receive help from a surprising ally.

By the end of the story both Alexis and the reader learn that even the popular kids are misunderstood and in the end the only thing that can defeat a vengeful evil spirit hell bent on spilling blood is kindred friendship and the unconditional love a parent has for her child. The heart pounding thrill ride of the story will outweigh the awkwardness of some of the dialog and exposition.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes a good ghost story/mystery.

--reviewed by Ms. Angie

How To Be A Heroine: Or What I've Learned From Reading Too Much by Samantha Ellis

I feel as if I could write a book subtitled "What I've Learned From Reading Too Much" except all my lessons would be culled from Greek mythology, the Babysitters' Club, the lives of British queens, crime mysteries, suspense thrillers and celebrity and entertainment gossip. I first ran across How To Be A Heroine by Samantha Ellis in an ad in BookPage. The title sounded intriguing and once I looked it up on Amazon, I was in for reading it. It reminds me of the literacy autobiography writing assignment that I had in one of my English composition classes in college--except this is the literacy autobiography on steroids. The premise of this book is that the author revisits the seminal texts that she read in her youth by examining the lessons and impressions of the novels that she had upon her first readings when she was younger. Ellis has then re-read the novels as an adult specifically for the writing of her own book to see if the novels hold up to her original i

Heat Lightning by John Sandford

I'd previously read John Sandford's first Virgil Flowers novel, Dark of the Moon , a few years back and found it to be a quick, well written read. Recently I discovered he has since written three more Flowers titles and decided to start with the second title and read through to the fourth and most recent one. Heat Lightning is the second Flowers installment. The darkness of the crimes committed that must be solved in the novel are leavened by the lighter presentation of Flowers and the story. It works well together--a dark crime doesn't always need dark prose to back it up. Virgil Flowers is Lucas Davenport's go to man in the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension when there's a sensitive, tough or otherwise puzzling case to solve. Flowers has a high clearance rate and can often turn around a case in about a week. This particular case is especially perplexing with quite a few red herrings thrown into the mix to throw everyone--Flowers and the reader in

The Whisperers by John Connolly

If there was one thing Jimmy didn't care for, it was competition, ... There were some exceptions to that rule: he was rumored to have a sweet deal with the Mexicans, but he wasn't about to try to reason with the Dominicans, or the Columbians, or the bikers, or even the Mohawks. If they wanted to avail themselves of his services, as they sometimes did, that was fine, but if Jimmy Jewel started questioning their right to move product he and Earle would end up tied to chairs in the [bar] with pieces of themselves scattered by their feet, assuming their feet weren't among the scattered pieces, while the bar burned down around their ears, assuming they still had ears. from page 86 The Whisperers is John Connolly's newest Charlie Parker installment in which some beloved characters reappear and in which previous characters from another Parker installment reappear to shed further light on the big baddie that may or may not be coming for Parker in the future. This newest inst

A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

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