Sager Slam Dunk

November 1, 2024 by ajcwrites ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hello, readers! I just missed being able to post this one on Halloween, but such is the way when you have seasonaI depression.

If there’s one thing you’ve gleaned about me from this blog, it’s that I am a Sager fangirl. I’m willing to give just about any of his books a try. This book doesn’t dither or dally, and it jumps straight into the action.

I listened to this one and read a physical copy and I was glued to the edge of my seat. There were times when I was just sitting there listening to the story while not doing anything else to keep my hands busy.

This is another Sager book that begs the question, “Is it a ghost story or a thriller?” And honestly? I’ll let you figure that out. Sager has done the ‘haunted house’ trope before and in this one he took another shot at it and it was a slam dunk.

The book is a solid 4/5. First of all, it’s about Ethan, a 40 year old man who has recently moved back home, where a tragedy occurred 30 years ago.

When Ethan was 10 years old, he and his friend Billy camped out in his backyard. When Ethan woke up the next morning, Billy was gone. Ethan’s parents and the entire neighborhood searched for him, but their efforts were in vain.

Billy was never recovered.

Survivor’s guilt and anxiety have plagued Ethan for years. When he moves back into his childhood home after his parents have decided to move to Florida, he’s reminded of that one summer night on a near-constant basis.

Old friends reconnect with him as the secrets of his old culdesac reveal themselves. In true Sager fashion, you won’t see (or at least I hope you won’t see) the twist(s) coming.

You can snag this one on Amazon here. Or, if you feel that Amazon has enough money (they do), then you can visit your local library, chat with a librarian, and borrow a copy of Sager’s latest.

I look forward to checking in after my next read, and if there’s something you think I should review, either comment or email me at alicia@ajcreads.com.

Also!

If you have recently published a cool book on Kindle Unlimited, I’d love to read it! And I also might review it! So, hit me up, fellow indie writers.

Till next time.

Alicia

I Don’t Know, a Ghost Maybe?

April 20, 2024May 18, 2024 by ajcwrites ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hello! Welcome back to ajcreads. I’m back after a month or so, and going forward, I want to try and at least post biweekly for you guys. I’ve been busy writing my YA fantasy novel (more on that in a few weeks), and reading, and working my daytime job. Anywho, I can’t wait to tell you about Home Before Dark by Riley Sager.

If you read one of my previous posts, Creepy, Creaky Houses, you would know that I am a Sager Fangirl. Sager doesn’t miss, struggle, or falter. Home Before Dark is another slam dunk in Sager’s catalog. Did you know that Riley Sager is actually a pseudonym ? Well, now you do.

So, let’s get into it. Home Before Dark, is a heart pounding thriller that may or may not be a ghost story. I had plenty of fun guessing in between feeling my spine tingle from all of the spooky scary stuff going on in the book.

The story centers around Maggie Holt. She is the only daughter of infamous writer Ewan Holt, and Ewan has recently died due to an illness. Upon his deathbed, Ewan asks Maggie to never return to the subject of the book that made him so famous: Baneberry Hall. Maggie and her family fled Baneberry Hall, a massive estate, when she was five. Ewan wrote about the estate in his wildly successful book, House of Horrors.

The legacy of the book and the controversy surrounding the infamous house where several random and grisly deaths have occurred has followed Maggie her entire life. So much so that she can hardly get away from questions from a nosy receptionist at the lawyer’s office that tells her what Ewan left her in his will.

Ewan has left not only a sizeable amount of money for Maggie, but to her absolute shock, he’s left her Baneberry Hall. Maggie had assumed that her father sold it, but he’d kept it all these years. She ultimately goes back on her promise to not go back to Baneberry Hall due to a burning curiosity to visit the place that her parents fled from when she was so young, but to also fix it up and sell for a profit since she’s a designer.

When Maggie returns to Baneberry Hall, things are instantly sketchy. I mean, some of the stuff happening is an instant hell no for me (for real, like pack it up, turn around, no amount of money is worth this, send me my check) Ghostlike activity keeps happening in the house, people may or may not be breaking into the house to say they did for bragging rights, and Maggie is never too sure who she can trust while she investigates the past and tries to learn the true story of what happened 25 years ago at Baneberry Hall.

This novel was absolutely addictive. I listened to it on Audible and I read the physical book from my library (ahem, go to the library, go right now). This story is a spine chilling mystery that constantly begs the question, are ghosts real? Sager almost instantly drops you into Maggie’s body, and every emotion is so visceral and just fucking scary. So creepy, so good, so compulsively readable.

I would advise you to find out by picking up a copy of the book here or you can find a library in your city and borrow it from there. Beware, it might be difficult to get your hands on a copy of this title.

Have you read this one? Let me know in the comments! Are there any other books that you guys want me to read so that I can do the hard work of finding out if it’s good or not? If it is good, it will appear on the blog. I make a point to keep this a book recommendation blog and I only post about what I liked.

Keep it weird until next time (I know I will)

Creepy, Creaky Houses

December 25, 2023 by ajcwrites ♥ 1 Comment

Hello and welcome back to ajcreads! I’ve been gone for a while, right? I was waiting to finish a book that truly energized me. I read all the time, but finishing books is not my strong suit during a certain time of year.

Anyways, let’s get to today’s book recommendation: Riley Sager’s The Only One Left.

Horror and thriller lovers will lose themselves in this eerie tale that reads like a ghost story, but really takes place in a topsy turvy 1980s setting that will leave you white knuckling the edge of your seat.

You will immediately fall for Kit, a caregiver accused of murdering her last patient and as a result she’s been ostracized by everyone in her oceanside town in Maine. Kit finds a potential kindred spirit in Lenora Hope, the septuagenarian she has been assigned to care for who has been accused of a triple homicide at her massive estate, Hope’s End, in 1929.

The question hanging over the book is: Did Lenora really kill her parents and sister? Will Kit untie the knots that make up this mystery and possibly see Lenora (now a disabled, paralyzed and mute stroke victim) brought to justice? With a cast of characters surrounding Lenora and Kit, all playing their own part in the mystery of that night when most of the Hope family was slain, it’s almost impossible to tell who’s really telling the truth. That is, until what is a satisfying and heart pounding end is delivered to the reader.

Riley Sager has no business writing something this good because now she has an obsessed Forever fan. You can expect to see her on this blog a few more times once I start reading her other novels.

It is skill like hers that as a fellow writer, I feel that I am way out of my league writing any kind of novel. Sager’s mind churns in a way that I can only dream of, and I hope to catch up someday.

You can read The Only One Left via Kindle or you can visit that beautiful brick (or cement) building we need to protect–the library. You can buy it here.

Merry Christmas to every single one of my readers. Be sure to leave a comment and like this post. And please be so kind as to subscribe for more book recommendations where I fangirl for about 500 words and fall into the depths of a book hangover. Sigh. I do this for you.

See you soon!