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darchildre) wrote2022-02-09 11:41 am
darchildre) wrote2022-02-09 11:41 am
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In other book-related news, I have finished the most recent book I've been reading, which has led me to add a column on my reading spreadsheet for "did this book lie to me about its genre?"
The Last House on Needless Street was a pretty good book - I enjoyed reading it - but despite all the marketing I've seen for it, it was not a horror novel. It's suspenseful at times, and deals (fairly obliquely) with some dark subject material, but that and a talking cat who isn't actually a cat do not a horror story make. It is an engagingly-written mystery with some effective misdirection, an interesting twist (which I won't spoil), and a satisfying conclusion - I would have enjoyed the experience of reading it a great deal more if I hadn't been waiting the whole time for the horror to show up.
ETA - This is the silliest addendum to this post, but it was going to bother me until I added it. This book is explicitly set in Washington state - I would guess western Washington from the descriptions of the setting. (Characters also spend some time in Oregon, which I'm less familiar with.) I live in western Washington and while I don't claim to be a wildlife/plantlife expert, I do know some things. Such as:
- northern flickers are common in Washington year round. No one is going to put that in a local newspaper as a rare bird sighting.
- there are native paper birches in some parts of Washington, but only up near the Canadian border - you don't see them often. If you want a tree with stark white bark that's native and common, you want an alder. I promise they resemble bones enough for your spooky purposes.
- okay, this one is moot if the book is meant to be set east of the mountains and I will freely admit that but if as I believe it's set in western Washington, there are no rattlesnakes here. There are no native venomous snakes west of the Cascades.
- there are definitely no cottonmouths oh my god. (The cottonmouth may have been misidentified/a hallucination but also its inclusion made me crazy.)
The Last House on Needless Street was a pretty good book - I enjoyed reading it - but despite all the marketing I've seen for it, it was not a horror novel. It's suspenseful at times, and deals (fairly obliquely) with some dark subject material, but that and a talking cat who isn't actually a cat do not a horror story make. It is an engagingly-written mystery with some effective misdirection, an interesting twist (which I won't spoil), and a satisfying conclusion - I would have enjoyed the experience of reading it a great deal more if I hadn't been waiting the whole time for the horror to show up.
ETA - This is the silliest addendum to this post, but it was going to bother me until I added it. This book is explicitly set in Washington state - I would guess western Washington from the descriptions of the setting. (Characters also spend some time in Oregon, which I'm less familiar with.) I live in western Washington and while I don't claim to be a wildlife/plantlife expert, I do know some things. Such as:
- northern flickers are common in Washington year round. No one is going to put that in a local newspaper as a rare bird sighting.
- there are native paper birches in some parts of Washington, but only up near the Canadian border - you don't see them often. If you want a tree with stark white bark that's native and common, you want an alder. I promise they resemble bones enough for your spooky purposes.
- okay, this one is moot if the book is meant to be set east of the mountains and I will freely admit that but if as I believe it's set in western Washington, there are no rattlesnakes here. There are no native venomous snakes west of the Cascades.
- there are definitely no cottonmouths oh my god. (The cottonmouth may have been misidentified/a hallucination but also its inclusion made me crazy.)