A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

Last week I reviewed What Strange Creatures by Emily Arsenault.  This week I'm reviewing the same author's fifth novel, The Evening Spider .  I've read and reviewed all of the authors novels so far, and there's a sixth coming next year.  This novel has some supernatural overtones which is a departure from her previous novels. Initially I was really on the fence with this one. Its depiction of a 'hysterical woman,' who is really a woman who doesn't conform to the contemporary social norms of her time, and as a result is committed to an asylum in the 1880's for the convenience of her husband, is a story that is disturbing and difficult for me to read.  This story line is coupled with the foreboding and foreshadowing in the present time story line that implies that the modern day woman may be headed the same way.  However, as it turns out the former woman is committed for far more sinister reasons than her non-conformity to social norms of the day. In...

Before The Poison by Peter Robinson is the first book I've read by this author.  He has written other books. I'm not sure what I think about this book.  It kept me reading, but lately I've been finding that I'm ambivalent about these books once I reach the end.  I don't really have strong feelings one way or the other about this book or any of the characters in this book.  The thing I liked about this book was the historical mystery and the detective work/research involved in piecing it together.  There is also the implied supernatural element that is ever so subtly tiptoed around that I didn't really know what to make of it--like it's said the narrator may or may not be 'more sensitive' to the next world and that this is in the end how he knows with such certainty what exactly occurred in the house the night its last occupant croaked.  Once he's gone as far as he can go with the concrete research, the results of which he uses to flesh out a t...