Permanent Objects

A collection of miscellany

Horror

52 IN 52, Book #1: Don’t Let the Forest In by C.G. Drews

Another year, another 52 in 52 challenge! I’m starting this year off strong with Don’t Let the Forest In by C.G. Drews, a book that has been on my radar for quite a while and which I never got around to picking up until I saw a TikTok from the author illustrating the depth of the yearning going on between the two main characters. As a huge sucker for yearning, I was immediately sold, and now here we are.

I’m also trying a new rating system, which I also lifted from TikTok (and if I ever find the video again I’ll link the creator here). This rating system involves rating a book on five different topics (pleasure, purpose, prose, plot, and personal) and then taking the average of those five sub-ratings as the overall rating for the book. I’m not sure whether I’ll stick with this long-term, but at least for now it does seem like a good way to organize my thoughts on a book, so I’ll give it a try for at least a few books to see how it feels.

…
Read More

52 IN 52, Book #48: Hinterland by Logan Spurgeon

As much as I really wanted to like this, for me this was a book that had crazy vibes but didn’t fully deliver on them in a way that satisfied me as a reader.

I want to start by saying that the premise is fascinating—we have an amnesiac protagonist who wakes up in some unknown woods with a cultlike group of cannibalistic individuals he doesn’t seem to know, and is immediately drawn into their plot to reach the top of a sacred mountain and resurrect the old gods of the world. The language and word choices that create setting are gorgeous, and they paint a vivid picture of the stark, claustrophobic, unfamiliar landscape through which the characters are moving. The way the cannibalism scenes (of which there are many) are described in a way that genuinely turned my stomach a couple of times, and I’m a pretty unflinching reader in general.

…
Read More

52 IN 52, Book #30: Diavola by Jennifer Marie Thorne

After I read Come Closer, my chief complaint was that I was tired of women protagonists in horror novels who are unable to recognize their own haunting or who, rather than fight against the entity, just accept their fate and let it do what it wants. I know that this is a common theme in horror for a reason but I guess at a certain point I’d just like the women to take a W, you know?

And for that reason I am super glad I read Diavola. While a lot of the plot beats are very classic for a haunting story — a big old house, a mysterious force, unexplained happenings that people around the protagonist are willing to write off — and there is an element of the entity following Anna home to haunt and attempt to consume her, there is also a huge thread of Anna being unwilling to just let that happen. Or rather, she does to an extent, enough to do some damage to her life before she gets her ass in gear and goes back to kick some ghost butt.

…
Read More

52 IN 52, Book #19: Come Closer by Sara Gran

For a short book this was well-paced in my opinion, and I think Gran does a good job of letting the narration reflect Amanda’s declining mental state. It was a quick read but an impactful one.

However — and I recognize that this is maybe a petty complaint — I do wish that Amanda had a little more agency in this book. I think maybe I’m just tired of horror stories where women get the short end of the stick.

Like, on the one hand I recognize that part of the horror element of a book like this is that the narrator isn’t powerful enough to resist the entity that’s trying to take them over, and to that end, as I said, I think Gran does a really good job of letting the actual language and narration reflect the way that Amanda’s mind is fracturing. You really do get a sense, while reading, that the words themselves are being used to reflect the way the demon is taking her over, and that’s a gorgeously unsettling experience to read through! 

…
Read More

52 IN 52, Book #11: We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer

I liked this! It was a spooky read that was well-paced for the length, and gave House of Leaves vibes without all the turning the book upside down to read. It wasn’t the most satisfying ending in the world, but the acknowledgements said he got a three-book deal so maybe there’s a sequel?? Anyway, I enjoyed reading this despite my momentary confusion about why this girl in Oregon was pumping her own gas. (Which is legal now anyway so I don’t know why it threw me off so bad lol)

Rating: ★★★☆☆ – I enjoyed the read and would recommend it to people who enjoy this genre and subject, but at this time I feel I’m not likely to re-read.