Fairyloot Unboxing December 2021

 We received two books in the box this month! But I’m going to stay with my favorite things in the box! 

1. Two Mythology Bookmarks and they are stunning!  This is going to be a collection and the first two are Hades & Persephone. 

2. Next is the second book in paperback: The Coldest Touch by Isabel Sterling 

3. We have a mini letter opener inspired by Once Upon A Broken Heart 

4. A booksleeve with zipper inspired by These Violent Delights 

5. The monthly tarot cards inspired by Red Rising of Eo and Victra 

6. We have an iron on patch inspired by We Hunt The Flame 

And last but not least, the book of the month: Year Of The Reaper. I love how this edition looks but if I love the book, I’m going to get the original hardback as well. 

 

Happy Reading! 

Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾

Little Bird by Tiffany Meuret

 

The skeletons in the closet have nothing on the one in your backyard.
Freshly divorced and grieving the death of her father, Josie Lauer has caged herself inside her home. To cope with her losses, Josie follows a strict daily routine of work, playing with her dog, Po, and trying to remember to eat a decent meal—and ending each night by drinking copious amounts of vodka. In other words, she is not coping at all.
Everything changes when Josie wakes to find a small shrub has sprouted in her otherwise dirt backyard the morning after yet another bender. Within hours, the vine-like plant is running amok—and it’s brought company. The appearance of the unwieldly growth has also heralded the arrival of a busybody new neighbor who insists on thrusting herself into Josie’s life. The neighbor Josie can deal with. The talking skeleton called Skelly that has perched itself in Josie’s backyard on a throne made of vines, however, is an entirely different matter.
As the strangely sentient plant continues to grow and twist its tendrils inside Josie’s suddenly complicated life, Josie begins to realize her new neighbor knows a lot more about the vines and her bizarre new visitor than she initially lets on. There’s a reason Skelly has chosen to appear in Josie’s suddenly-blooming backyard and insists on pulling her out of her carefully kept self-isolation. All Josie has to do is figure out what that reason is—and she has only a few days to do it, or else she might find herself on the wrong side of catastrophe.
LITTLE BIRD is a story about found family, no matter how bizarre. 

MY REVIEW: 4.5 Stars 

Wow! This book was a surprise! The cover is what originally grabbed my attention, but as soon as I started reading the book, I didn’t want to put it down. I will definitely be adding the physical copy to my collection. 

The book is about Josie, Po, Skelly and Sue. I should say Po is a cute little dog, Skelly is a talking skeleton, Sue is the nosy neighbor and Josie has many issues. This book is very sad on so many levels. I’m not even sure if I totally understood all that was going on, but I still quite enjoyed it. I look forward to a slow reread and highlighting! 

If you’re looking for something different, this book is the one. Some will like it some won’t. All I can say is, try the book! 

Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾

*Thank you to Netgalley and Black Spot Books for a copy of this book. 

Kagen The Damned by Jonathan Maberry

 

Sworn by Oath
Kagen Vale is the trusted and feared captain of the place guard, charged with protection the royal children of the Silver Empire. But one night, Kagen is drugged and the entire imperial family is killed, leaving the empire in ruins.

Abandoned by the Gods
Haunted and broken, Kagen is abandoned by his gods and damned forever. He becomes a wanderer, trying to take down as many of this enemies as possible while plotting to assassinate the usurper–the deadly Witch-king of Hakkia. While all around him magic–long banished from the world—returns in strange and terrifying ways.

Fueled by Rage
To find the royal children and exact his vengeance, Kagen must venture into strange lands, battle bizarre and terrifying creatures, and gather allies for a suicide mission into the heart of the Witch-king’s empire. 

Kings and gods will fear him.

Kagen the Damned

MY REVIEW: 2 Stars 

I love Jonathan Maberry and I was super excited to read a fantasy book written by him. Unfortunately, I couldn’t even finish the book. I used to enjoy Grimdark books but not so much any more depending on how bad it is with the grim and graphic scenes. 

I really wanted to find out more about Kagen as I like his character. I would loved to have bought these books for my collection as they came out but I’m going to pass. I’ll stick with Mr. Maberry’s other books. 

If you love grimdark fantasy at its best, you will love this book! 

Trigger warning for what I did get through: Graphic scenes of all things imaginable to men, women, children. A mention of killing animals, not sure if it got worse but I can imagine it did. 

*Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for a digital copy of this book. 

Wingwalkers by Taylor Brown

 

A former WWI ace pilot and his wingwalker wife barnstorm across Depression-era America, performing acts of aerial daring.

“They were over Georgia somewhere, another nameless hamlet whose dusty streets lay flocked and trembling with the pink handbills they’d rained from the sky that morning, the ones that announced the coming of DELLA THE DARING DEVILETTE, who would DEFY THE HEAVENS, shining like a DAYTIME STAR, a WING-WALKING WONDER borne upon the wings of CAPTAIN ZENO MARIGOLD, a DOUBLE ACE of the GREAT WAR, who had ELEVEN AERIAL VICTORIES over the TRENCHES OF FRANCE.”

Wingwalkers is one-part epic adventure, one-part love story, and, as is the signature for critically-acclaimed author Taylor Brown, one large part American history. The novel braids the adventures of Della and Zeno Marigold, a vagabond couple that funds their journey to the west coast in the middle of the Great Depression by performing death-defying aerial stunts from town to town, together with the life of the author (and thwarted fighter pilot) William Faulkner, whom the couple ultimately inspires during a dramatic air show—with unexpected consequences for all.

Brown has taken a tantalizing tidbit from Faulkner’s real life—an evening's chance encounter with two daredevils in New Orleans—and set it aloft in this fabulous novel. With scintillating prose and an action-packed plot, he has captured the true essence of a bygone era and shed a new light on the heart and motivations of one of America's greatest authors. 

MY REVIEW: 2 Stars 

I thought this book was going to be something else entirely. I’m not sure why but I thought this was going to be about a group of awesome wingwalking women. There is the one woman and her husband and random other people doing things. Some of the book pulled me in, but most of it I didn’t care for and I dnfed it at one point. 

There will be a lot of people that love this book so you can make up your own mind. 

*Many thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for a digital copy of this book. 

The Children On The Hill by Jennifer McMahon

 

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Drowning Kind comes a genre-defying new novel, inspired by Mary Shelley’s masterpiece Frankenstein, that brilliantly explores the eerie mysteries of childhood and the evils perpetrated by the monsters among us. 

1978: At her renowned treatment center in picturesque Vermont, the brilliant psychiatrist, Dr. Helen Hildreth, is acclaimed for her compassionate work with the mentally ill. But when’s she home with her cherished grandchildren, Vi and Eric, she’s just Gran—teaching them how to take care of their pets, preparing them home-cooked meals, providing them with care and attention and love.

Then one day Gran brings home a child to stay with the family. Iris—silent, hollow-eyed, skittish, and feral—does not behave like a normal girl.

Still, Violet is thrilled to have a new playmate. She and Eric invite Iris to join their Monster Club, where they catalogue all kinds of monsters and dream up ways to defeat them. Before long, Iris begins to come out of her shell. She and Vi and Eric do everything together: ride their bicycles, go to the drive-in, meet at their clubhouse in secret to hunt monsters. Because, as Vi explains, monsters are everywhere.

2019: Lizzy Shelley, the host of the popular podcast Monsters Among Us, is traveling to Vermont, where a young girl has been abducted, and a monster sighting has the town in an uproar. She’s determined to hunt it down, because Lizzy knows better than anyone that monsters are real—and one of them is her very own sister.

A haunting, vividly suspenseful page-turner from the “literary descendant of Shirley Jackson” (Chris Bohjalian, author of The Flight Attendant), The Children on the Hill takes us on a breathless journey to face the primal fears that lurk within us all. 

MY REVIEW: 5 Stars 

I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on. Even now my blood boils at the recollection of this injustice. 

Mary Shelley - FRANKENSTEIN

Omg! This book was exactly what I was looking for in a Mary Shelley sort of way! 

You can read the Synopsis yourself! Here’s my little thoughts:

I loved the twists in the book. I love how the author kept me guessing. I hated that I couldn’t finish this book sooner with real life happening! It’s one of those you don’t want to put down, at least I didn’t. 

Vi and Eric live with their Gran in the house on the hill. Gran runs a mental ish place next door ish. But, what is really happening in this facility? And who is this Iris girl that’s come home to be their sister and where did she come from? 

There is creepiness and horror but you can decide for yourself what exactly is the horror. There is evil all around…what form do you think it will take..

Kudo’s Jennifer McMahon for another wonderful book!! 

*Thank you to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for a copy of this book! 

Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾

What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo

 

 A searing memoir of reckoning and healing by acclaimed journalist Stephanie Foo, investigating the little-understood science behind complex PTSD and how it has shaped her life

"Every cell in my body is filled with the code of generations of trauma, of death, of birth, of migration, of history that I cannot understand. . . . I want to have words for what my bones know."

By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD--a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years.

Both of Foo's parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. She thought she'd moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. She found limited resources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD.

In this deeply personal and thoroughly researched account, Foo interviews scientists and psychologists and tries a variety of innovative therapies. She returns to her hometown of San Jose, California, to investigate the effects of immigrant trauma on the community, and she uncovers family secrets in the country of her birth, Malaysia, to learn how trauma can be inherited through generations. Ultimately, she discovers that you don't move on from trauma--but you can learn to move with it.

Powerful, enlightening, and hopeful, What My Bones Know is a brave narrative that reckons with the hold of the past over the present, the mind over the body--and examines one woman's ability to reclaim agency from her trauma.

MY REVIEW: 3 Stars 

I am appalled at what the author had to go through with her mother and father. No child should be treated that way but we know it happens all of the time. 

She got to grow up and become something through it all. 

*Thank you to Netgalley and Ballantine Books for a copy of this book. 

The Woman Beyond The Attic by Andrew Neiderman

 

This celebration of the woman who took us to the heights of a secluded attic and the depths of our own dark psyches reveals an intimate portrait of the famously private V.C. Andrews—featuring family photos, personal letters, a partial manuscript for an unpublished novel, and more.

Best known for her internationally, multi-million-copy bestselling novel Flowers in the Attic, Cleo Virginia Andrews lived a fascinating life. Born to modest means, she came of age in the American South during the Great Depression and faced a series of increasingly challenging health issues. Yet, once she rose to international literary fame, she prided herself on her intense privacy.

Now, The Woman Beyond the Attic aims to connect her personal life with the public novels for which she was famous. Based on Virginia’s own letters, and interviews with her dearest family members, her long-term ghostwriter Andrew Neiderman tells Virginia’s full story for the first time.

The Woman Beyond the Attic is perfect for V.C. Andrews fans who pick up every new novel or for fans hoping to return to the favorite novelist of their adolescence. Eye-opening and intimate, The Woman Beyond the Attic is for anyone hoping to learn more about the enigmatic woman behind one of the most important novels of the 20th century.

MY REVIEW: 2.5 Stars 

I didn’t realize when I requested this book that it was written by V.C. Andrews ghost writer. I would have preferred the book have been written by some family members years ago. If I’m not mistaken, there is no one left 

Some of the few tidbits I felt were truly about V.C Andrews were really good to learn about. Overall, the book just didn’t feel right to me. 

5 full stars for the lovely V.C. Andrews herself