Taste the Books: Review Morsels #72 Tatiana Schlote-Bonne, Neil Kleid, Christina Henry

Intro

Hello beauties!

Welcome again to my own brand of mini reviews! I never thought I'd do minis, until I recapped a few of my long reviews in some digest post in 2014, and then guest-posted some shorties for a blogging event in 2015. And Karen from For What It's Worth started praising my short recs/recaps 😊. Just to be clear,  I'm STILL writing long reviews too - but for anthologies, shorter books or books that I didn't enjoy/don't have enough to say about, I decided to stick to minis, and I took to writing them also for novels that I can do justice to in a less wordy fashion, in order to ease my reviewing burden. In addition to that, I sometimes write minis for books I don't want/don't have the time to review in full at the moment, but plan on rereading and writing "proper" reviews for later. Lastly, just be warned - this feature is VERY random!

Note: all the mini blurbs (in italics) are of my own creation.

What Feeds Below by Tatiana Schlote-Bonne (ARC Review)

★★★

After their latest guide job through the deadly chasm known as the Void goes wrong and they get separated, 17 y.o. orphan Petra (along with former friend Flint) braves its deepest levels to retrieve her partner and best friend Jade - but she has no idea what the monster-teeming depths have in store for her.

***

Rated 3.5 really.

First off...DISCLAIMER: this title was up for grabs on Edelweiss (in the To Download section). Thanks to Bindery Books for providing a temporary ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.

What Feeds Below is the most (relentlessly) brutal book I've read in my whole life - and no, I don't mean "the most (relentlessly) brutal YA book". Apparently, a recent trend in teen novels entails raising the horror bar higher and higher, to the point where there are adult books that don't hold a candle to their younger counterparts. So, if you're in for the dark stuff, you'll get everything your heart desires here (and probably even something it doesn't): body horror/mutilations/rotten corpses, bug horror (giant "bugs" included), claustrophobia, and the list goes on. The author's imagination knows no bounds, and her descriptions of both the Void itself and its inhabitants read like an acid trip, both in the best and the worst way (meaning you'll go "oooh" and "yuck" at the same time). I did enjoy the worldbuilding and the horror stuff (though I could never have watched it on screen), but it was difficult for me to buy that these teens could be able to withstand all the ordeals they did - plus their backpacks might as well have been Mary Poppins' carpet bag for all the things that came out of them 😂. I was surprised by the denouement - or at least by the angle Schlote-Bonne played - though in retrospect, I should have expected it. Petra simultaneously came across as very young and too old, but I did enjoy her coming-into-her-own-strength arc...well, until the ending did something that rendered it moot. Are horror books supposed to always go for shock value at the end nowadays? Asking for a friend...

P.S.: What's with all the stones/gemstones as characters' names?

Note: definitive review (I don't have enough to say to justify writing a full-length one later).

Return to the Motherfreaking Fun Factory by Neil Kleid (ARC Review)

★★★

Ten years after winning a tour of a famous (and impossible) toy factory, its four traumatised survivors come back to kill the past and save the boy they left behind - except the past has the same idea about them...

***

Rated 3.5 really.

First off...DISCLAIMER: I requested this book on Edelweiss. Thanks to Blackstone Publishing for providing an ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.

Think being a kid and find (or better, be found by...) a ticket to visit the toy factory of your dreams, where you'll get the chance to compete with other kids to win all the toys your heart can desire. Except - as it turns out -when you win, you lose...and even if you get out, the past will haunt you - more than figuratively. Horror-wise, this story is top-notch and super-imaginative (deliciously gross at times, too 😅...though maybe the feces were a tad too much 🙃). The theme of hope (or lack thereof) is woven into the plot in a way that I've never seen in horror before, and it adds an extra layer of depth to the narrative. The ending gives our characters closure while introducing a later, wicked curveball. So, why isn't my rating higher? First and foremost, the story would have benefited from more space to breath. The most important flashbacks are crammed into a handful of pages, and we don't even get to see how Henry "won" the contest in the first place. We don't really get to know (some of) the characters that well...but mostly, the plot fails to convey the reason why Veronica has been carrying a torch for Henry all this time (sure, he allegedly "saved" her at some point, but in the narrative, it's just a blip on the radar). Also, the protagonists are meant to be flawed, but they're also pretty cliché to start with, especially Joey and Indigo (though they ultimately redeem themselves), and I wish there had been more backstory to them and more room to make them fully human and more relatable. Finally, was Henry supposed to disappear without anyone investigating the factory? Even with the magic at play, it sounds hardly likely. That being said...if you're a fan of fast-paced, quirky horror and redemption arcs, you'll be guaranteed to have a good time with this one.

P.S.: the characters' age range is 17-20, which puts this book in the liminal space between YA and adult (you might say NA) - but the (body) horror leans toward the adult side.

Note: definitive review (I don't have enough to say to justify writing a full-length one later; also, due to time commitments, I've decided not to write full-length reviews anymore for short stories, novellas and anthologies, except in special cases or unless they're part of a series).

The Place Where They Buried Your Heart by Christina Henry

★★★★

A woman who, as a teen, lost her baby brother to an evil house (and had her whole world shattered in the aftermath) teams up with her found family - including a house survivor who used to be her brother's best friend - to tear it down before it claims her son too...but how do you destroy a house that defies the laws of physics?

***

A house that eats people (preferably children, but adults will do)? To the best of my knowledge, it's a fresh (if gruesome) premise. And the execution does justice to it, though I'd rather have had more scenes inside the house itself, because the ones that we got were both imaginative and spectacularly unsettling. TPWTBYH follows Jessie from age 13 (rebel without a cause, in a strained relationship with her mom) to 26 (single mom of a 7 y.o. boy, plagued by guilt over her brother's demise and haunted by the events it set in motion, yet brave and determined). In that respect, it's as much a coming-of-age-meets-found-family story as it's a cosmic-horror-centered one, and it succeeds on both counts. (OK, on a side note, the children talk like mini adults most of the time, but it wasn't a dealbreaker for me). Then again...I'm ambivalent about the ending. I mean, on one hand, it's emotional and bittersweet, and I found it to be one of the best parts of the book (along with the ghastly deaths in the house - what can I say? I'm a woman of extremes 😂). But it's also extremely rushed and anticlimactic, unless we are to believe that 1) the house would fear Jessie because she's a mom with a mission (but what about her own mom, then?); 2) destroying the house was ultimately child's play, in a manner of speaking. However, if you're looking for an evil/haunted-house story where the house is a character of its own, but you'd rather it had a dose of character development and a heart (no pun intended), TPWTBYH absolutely fits the bill.

TW: Death/child death, suicide, graphic violence/body horror/mutilation/dismemberment, fire, domestic abuse, toxic parent, bug horror.

Note: as a rule, I review every book that I rate 4 stars and above in full, unless it's a novella or an anthology. But I didn't want to go in too deep about this one to avoid spoilers, and it felt easy to summarise its contents (and my opinions) in a few sentences, so I took the mini-review route.

So, have you read/are you planning to read any of the above? And if you have, what do you think of them? Do you post mini reviews? Do you like to read them?