I love Autumn. It’s back to school time, the beginning of fall sports, and pumpkin spice…everything all rolled into one great season… But, most of all, Fall makes me think of sitting outside in the crisp air, that keeps you cool while the sun still warms you up. It’s the time for chunky sweaters and even chunkier books.  

This year, I am all about one genre: Dark Academia. 

And what exactly is Dark Academia, you ask?

According to Google: “This genre can be defined broadly, but generally speaking the books have an academic setting and feature characters exploring darker urges, navigating crimes or dark secrets, or exploring dark speculative elements.”

A couple of my favorites have been The Discovery of Witches Trilogy by Deborah Harkness. This is a wonderful example of Dark Academia. I highly recommend it.

Another one is The Darkling Bride by Laura Andersen. This book will always be considered one of my favorites. 

In No Particular Order, here is a list of books I plan on reading this fall. Hopefully, I will get to them while I work on getting ready for NaNoWriMo! 

• Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder
• Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
• Burden of an Ancient Oath by Joshua Brown
• A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
• The Secret History by Donna Tartt
• Dead Poets Society by NH Kleinbaum 

I can’t wait to see what else will make it on the list. 

Do you have a favorite Dark Academia-themed book/series? Have you read any of the ones above? What did you think?  Let me know in the comments.

Cheers,

Alex

Today, I am reviewing  A Tip for the Hangman by Allison Epstein

This is what Amazon said:

England, 1585. In Kit Marlowe’s last year at Cambridge, he receives an unexpected visitor: Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster, who has come with an unorthodox career opportunity. Her Majesty’s spies are in need of new recruits, and Kit’s flexible moral compass has drawn their attention. Kit, a scholarship student without money or prospects, accepts the offer, and after his training the game is on. Kit is dispatched to the chilly manor where Mary, Queen of Scots is under house arrest, to act as a servant in her household and keep his ear to the ground for a Catholic plot to put Mary on the throne.

While observing Mary, Kit learns more than he bargained for. The ripple effects of his service to the Crown are far-reaching and leave Kit a changed man. But there are benefits as well. The salary he earns through his spywork allows him to mount his first play, and over the following years, he becomes the toast of London’s raucous theater scene. But when Kit finds himself reluctantly drawn back into the uncertain world of espionage, conspiracy, and high treason, he realizes everything he’s worked so hard to attain–including the trust of the man he loves–could vanish before his very eyes.

Pairing modern language with period detail, Allison Epstein brings Elizabeth’s privy council, Marlowe’s lovable theater troupe, and the squalor of sixteenth-century London to vivid, teeming life as Kit wends his way behind the scenes of some of Tudor history’s most memorable moments. At the center of the action is Kit himself–an irrepressible, irreverent force of nature. Thrillingly written, full of poetry and danger, A Tip for the Hangman brings an unforgettable protagonist to new life, and makes a centuries-old story feel utterly contemporary.

This is what I think.

Spoilers—Spoilers—Spoilers—Spoilers—Spoilers—Spoilers—Spoilers—Spoilers—Spoilers—

I loved this book. I couldn’t read it fast enough, so I also got the audible version.  Folding laundry be damned.  

A Tip for the Hangman by Allison Epstein has taken historical fiction to a new level, a level which includes mystery, suspense, intrigue, espionage, intricate plots, and fascinating characters. I could not put this book down. It’s said that a good book makes you want to live in the story. A great book gives you no choice.  From the first page, I was literally yanked into the book.

Allison Epstein geniusly wove real life events with an alternate artistic flair that makes you think, “It could have happened that way.”  

This book takes you into the parts of Elizabethan London that we rarely get to read about. Those below the royals but successful in what they do.  It was fun to hang out in taverns as the author brought the sights and smells to life with her words.

I am such a sucker for the Tudor and Elizabethan eras and characters like Christopher Marlowe (Kit), Mary Stuart, and William Cecil, as well as events such as the Babington Plot and the Executions of Mary, Queen of Scots that I knew I was going to love this book just by reading its description. The love story between Kit and Tom is so sweet and so pure that you just kind of want to go out and buy them a place setting. 

I don’t want to spoil the ending, so I’ll shut up now, but  Oh My God, this is one to read.  

I give this one five stars. 

Run, don’t walk to your nearest bookstore and read this book. 

Cheers and Happy Reading,

Alex

It seems there’s a show on Netflix, based on the novel by Caroline Kepnes’ You. If you haven’t seen the show or read the book….you might want to skip this post because there will be spoilers…  You have been warned…XOXO Gossip Girl

I don’t usually write posts like this but I have had one heck of a week. This was supposed to go up yesterday but my not so good friend Lupus decided I needed to feel so fatigued that I literally slept for almost 20 hours straight. I can live with the pain, it’s the not being productive that brings me down. So… Let me fill you in.  I went to my rheumatologist for hip pain. He found out that I had bursitis, so he gave me a shot of cortisone. It didn’t hurt when it happened but by the time I left his office I was dizzy and nauseous.  I shouldn’t have driven home yet but I did. Needless to say for anyone who has ever had a cortisone shot. They hurt. Like stepping on a Lego level pain. Monday I had another doctors appt. to get tubes and tubes of blood drawn and x-rays taken. Again I shouldn’t have driven home, but I did. Well, they found something interesting on the x-rays. It now appears that I have some kind of Spondyloarthropathy. So basically the antibodies in my body are attacking the connective tissue that connects the bones of my spine with the muscles in my back. This is what has been throwing my hip off kilter. We aren’t sure what the doctors are going to recommend as I just found all this out on Friday. So to make a long story less long. I was in terrible pain throughout the week and just got more bad news on the medical front…not going to lie, it bummed me out. So what did I do? I binged watched “You” on Netflix because I had read the book and I was skeptical that it would be as good. Well, it wasn’t the book I had read but…it was really really good. So I thought. Well, I did vow to share the good, the bad and the ugly on this blog. So this is part of the ugly. Well not so much anymore because now I get to do this… and to me, this is great fun.

I was one of the lucky people to get Caroline Kepnes’ You as an ARC (advanced readers copy), and I have read a lot of books that were supposed to scare me, but didn’t, this one scared the bejeezus out of me. Not because it was overly violent, it wasn’t. Not because I was in suspense as to what was going to happen and who was going to get killed next. I knew who was going to get it and I knew when it was going to happen. Normally if a show had that much predictability I would have turned it off and ended up watching something else. But in “You”, it totally works. What makes is scary is Joe. Joe works in a book store, he has a great personality, and in the show, he is played by a very familiar face, Penn Badgley from Gossip Girl. That alone I think adds to the whole “this is really scary” feeling. Joe is just likable. I couldn’t help but like him. Yes, he was stalking, imprisoning, and murdering people, he was a total psychopathic monster. But I liked him anyway.  I couldn’t help it, and by the end of both the book and the series, I found myself justifying the horrible things he was doing. And that, my friends, is what scared me shitless.

If you haven’t read the book, read it.  If you haven’t watched the show, watch it. Do both because the show was different in so many ways, that I will point out below, but each will leave you with the thoughts I had after watching, and reading, You.  The fact that I was sitting there mentally justifying the crimes committed by a psychopathic murderer, scared me. What kind of person does that make me?  Kudos to you Miss Kepnes, you used Joe to scare us into realizing that inside we all have the potential to be scary.

So let’s look at the differences between the book and the movie, shall we?

In the book, Claudia, Ron and their son Paco didn’t exist. Which is good because it allows Joe to murder one less person.

In the book, Joe merely burns Benji’s body, in the show he has Paco run off to get supplies to do just that. So either way, Benji was toasted to a crisp.

In the book, Mr. Mooney is coherent and allows Joe to borrow his car so he can go stalk Beck in Bridgeport. In the show, Joe takes Beck to meet Mr. Mooney who is unable to communicate. Both the book and the movie show the life that Mr. Mooney raised Joe into.

Now the Bridgeport scenes in the book have Joe following her to a Dicken’s Festival, in the book this festival was held on a boat. In the book, she (Beck) never finds out that Joe is there, in the show she runs into him and they end up having dinner with her father and his new family.

The special night that Joe plans for Beck, the horse-drawn carriage, the whole nine yards are ruined by Peach before it can happen in the book, in the show, she calls during the special date and ruins it then.

The scenes in the show where Peach introduces Beck to a publisher friend and then he (the publisher friend) tries to get fresh with Beck in the limo… none of that happened in the book.

Peach’s little trick of having Raj show up at their vacation house and then getting them all wasted hoping to get Beck into bed with herself and Raj, just didn’t happen in the book. Peach makes a pass at Beck while they were in dressing gowns and was swiftly rebuffed. Now that did happen in the book.

After Joe hits the deer on his way to find Beck, he is taken to the hospital and gives the hospital staff a fake name. This is what happened in the book. In the show, he has a conversation with the police officer and the officer lets him go, but not without suspicion. He (the cop) later runs his plates.

In the scene where there is a confrontation between Peach and Joe, where they are fighting over a handgun, the gun goes off and Joe retreats home to his neighbors who help him manage his wound. Hate to say it, but none of that happened in the book.

In the show, we see a few times where Beck notices that Joe if following her, especially in the central park scene where she confronts him and accuses him of stalking and not trusting her. Yeah again…didn’t happen in the book.

In the show, Joe starts dating his neighbor’s friend Karen Minty (ok I admit this name cracks me up) but in the book, since the neighbors didn’t exist, neither did Miss Minty (fresh).

In the book Curtis a book store employee (who isn’t in the show)  is the person who beat Joe up, in the show it’s Ron. Yep, the nonexistent Ron beats the heck out of him in the show.

Beck didn’t have a book deal in the book, because while she was locked in the cage, Joe made her read The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown, and not write a book on an old typewriter that we saw on the show.

Ok here’s another difference, Beck’s death. In the book, there were two whole chapters dedicated to just that. Her death included sex, ice cream, her pretending to be dead in an attempt to escape when Joe is choking her.  It’s a messy business where she dies on the floor in the bookstore, not in the cage like in the show. Also, there is no hope of Paco saving her in the book because he simply doesn’t exist.

And lastly, at the end of the first season of the show, Candace walks in, which couldn’t have happened because, in the book, she was already dead.

Those are basically all of the differences I could find and most of the articles on the subject confirm and added too what I had found.  If there is anything I missed. Please let me know.

Either way, I loved both of them, and the still the scariest part of both the book and the show was that I not only liked Joe, but I also found myself justifying his actions. Now that is scary.

Let’s hope tomorrow is a better day so that I can get back on my newly minted schedule.

Just a few more things.

If you want to read “You”, which of course you do. You can get it here.

If you want to sign up and join me in the 24in48 readathon next weekend…you can do so here.

I am working on a Special Addition Newsletter, and my next planner centric blog post. Those should be up this week. Also I am writing an article for another blog…I will give you the details when I can. The whole keeping my mouth shut is probably the hardest.

Keep Reading, Planning and Writing.

Cheers,

Alex

I literally just finished reading “The End of Temperance Dare” by Wendy Webb in two days. I couldn’t put it down. It was so creepy, but not in a way that would leave you with nightmares but in ways that you didn’t want to read it at night while you were home alone.  I was so glad that my husband was home and I have a mini book light, because many times while reading this book in bed, I shot my leg out to touch his just to make sure that he was still there. That was the level of creepiness this book achieved.

Let’s talk a little about it.  I received this book in one of my book subscription boxes. This one is the Once Upon a Book Club box. This is a service that sends you one book and three to five bookish gifts that actually apply to the story you are reading.  As you read the story, there are post-it notes on certain pages that tell you to open the wrapped gift with a sticker designating that page in the book.  For example in this book’s box, the main character Eleanor Harper is just about to take a bath using the retreats signature bath salts. When you open your gift for that page, you find a packet of the same bath salts in a package that is specific to the retreat in the book. It’s really cool. These items are just another way that this book subscription box brings the story to life for you. It’s around 29 dollars and month and in my opinion worth every penny.

Take a look a the description on Amazon.

Haunting and atmospheric, The End of Temperance Dare is another thrilling page-turner from the author reviewers are calling the Queen of the Northern Gothic.

When Eleanor Harper becomes the director of a renowned artists’ retreat, she knows nothing of Cliffside Manor’s dark past as a tuberculosis sanatorium, a “waiting room for death.” After years of covering murder and violence as a crime reporter, Eleanor hopes that being around artists and writers in this new job will be a peaceful retreat for her as much as for them.

But from her first fog-filled moments on the manor’s grounds, Eleanor is seized by a sense of impending doom and realizes there’s more to the institution than its reputation of being a haven for creativity. After the arrival of the new fellows―including the intriguing, handsome photographer Richard Banks―she begins to suspect that her predecessor chose the group with a dangerous purpose in mind. As the chilling mysteries of Cliffside Manor unravel and the eerie sins of the past are exposed, Eleanor must fight to save the fellows—and herself—from sinister forces.

As I read this description after I read the book I thought, wow this book is so much more than what is described here.  I would whole heartedly give this book a five star rating except for one thing. Twice, not once but twice, the phrase “releasing the breath I didn’t know I was holding” was used in this book. Unfortunately, it pulled me out of the story long enough to groan and bitch about it. Yes, this statement is used in almost every book I read and it really puts me off. I can’t explain why, because there are many times, and even in this book, where the phrase is not only the perfect description but it fits the narrative. It just bugs me to holy hell and like I said, it pulls me from the story. This phrase should be outlawed. So in lieu of that, I have to give this book a 4 1/2 stars.  I really did enjoy this book and I highly recommend it. The characters were believable, the story creepy as fuck, and the pacing was just perfect.

Just don’t read it alone at night, especially if its storming outside.

Cheers,

Laurie

PS: As always if you chose to buy the book from the link below, I will get a small stipend from the sale, at no extra cost to you.  Even if you don’t get it from the link below, get it, it’s well worth the read.

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I received “The Twilight Pariah” by Jeffrey Ford in my #PageHabit quarterly book subscription box and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I give it five stars not because it was the most amazing book I have ever read but because I read it in one sitting. I had to know how it ended.

Here is the synopsis from the back of the book.

“All Maggie, Russell, and Henry wanted out of their last college vacation were to get drunk and play archaeologist in an old house in the woods outside of town. When they excavate the mansion’s outhouse they find way more than they bargained for: a sealed bottle filled with a red liquid, along with the bizarre skeleton of a horned child

Disturbing the skeleton throws each of their lives into a living hell. They feel followed wherever they go, their homes are ransacked by unknown intruders, and people they care about are brutally, horribly dismembered. The three friends awakened something, a creature that will stop at nothing to retrieve its child.”

The thing I liked about this book is that it was both creepy and funny at the same time. I mean seriously who makes an appointment with an expert on cryptozoology and the only payment they are required to bring is a single doobie? I was laughing out loud at some points in this story and looking over my shoulder at others. It was a creep fest much like the horror movies in the ’80’s where you couldn’t help but like the bad guy. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a fast fun read with just the right amount of creep factor. Can you imagine being on an archeological dig and find buried under decades of beer cans the skeleton of a baby with horns and a tail?  I would run. These guys, they didn’t run. They brought it home.  Definitely one to read this Halloween Season

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If you enjoy my blog, then please use my embedded link when purchasing your copy of this book.  There is no additional cost added to your purchase; however, Amazon provides me with a little incentive for referring you.  This helps me continue to bring you great content and pay for the upkeep of my blog.

Cheers,

Laurie

1. While I was reading it I did not want to put it down. It flowed really well and kept me interested. Just not enough to obsess over it when I had to put it down.
2. The historical references and the detail written into the book about the Troubles in Ireland, and how Northern Ireland was a war zone, Irish against Irish.

I think if the characters had been more evolved and likable this book would have been fantastic, could not put down, five-star book.  Still even with that. I did enjoy it.  Give it a shot, you might feel differently.

You can get it here.

Cheers,

Laurie