M. M. Dos Santos

I put this on my To Read list years ago when I started writing my book – It's a first-person POV with lots of death and murder so of course sounded perfect for all the right and morbid reasons. I never picked it up, though – I felt like it might influence me too much – yea, I read the little blurb by Stanley Kubrick, and my expectations were that it was gonna be evil and insightfully real. And it is! The whole book has this sweet, small town, bumpkin-y feel to it, which like

How could anyone hate this book? It’s classic, it's endearing, it’s 100% lovable! Amityville Horror has all the classic horror elements; An Italian Catholic priest, haunted house, demons and ghosts, scary little girls – It even has a red room of pain. But those aren’t even my favorite parts. What are, you may ask? Five little words, in print, up on a screen, the game changer: Based On A True Story Oh you know the shit is about. To. Go. Down! Again, how could you not love this

King Rat is a good book. A fucking fantastic beginning for China. He's an intelligent writer, who calls for an intelligent reader, his prose are rich, and this was only his first book. The truth of it though, is that his story, although well written, emotional and action-packed, didn’t stay with me. I found his main hard to relate to? The biggest disappointment for me was totally personal - King Rat didn’t put me on the streets of anywhere in London; it didn’t share any secr

This review is hard to write. I’m used to loving all things Barker, but Mister B. Gone was a hard one - a really hard one - to love

Anticipation almost always makes everything suck. It’s my own fault, I put this high expectation on this book to be a serious read, something to be remembered. I wanted to like this book more than I actually did though. This book was Hank Moody’s game changer, put him on the map, was critically acclaimed, was even responsible for him having his own TV show... Read: I just wanted the cheat notes on how to do this myself obviously. I like David Duchovny I like Californication.

Another book by Barker that made it onto my short list. The Thief of Always quickly turned into a childhood fantasy I never knew I had. The story is clear n simple. A could-be child’s read. Harvey Swick is bored – so he leaves to somewhere better. To do something more exciting, to see something more exciting, to escape the Great Grey Beast that was February. The visuals are amazing, again Barker's prose are on point. As twisted and disturbing as the Hellbound Heart was, Thief

The Dirty South? Check. Civil War times? Oh I love me some historical fiction! Check! Three murderous (yet resourceful) sisters? Vertiline, Carolee, Mary. Check, check, and check! The Mortlow Sisters story starts with the three of them in their later years being hauled off to jail on murder charges. From this point, you hop between perspectives of each sister as they reflect on their lives growing up during the civil war. The good and decent part of me listened to the story b

Invisible Monsters was recommended by one of my readers. @kjayteaa / Instagram She knew I was a sometimes fan and recommended the book with these words: “You’re either going to love this, or you’re going to fucking hate it.” Isn’t that a truth of all things Chuck though? Said the sometimes fan. I sat around for a few days after reading the book and really thought about the messages I had read and understood, the ones t

Not a book that I would pick up on my own volition, it was recommended to me. I started reading The Bell Jar with the expectation that (based on the recommendation) it was “really fucked up.” So of course I went and bought that shit up. It’s not often that a book comes with that kind of statement. I read half of the book and nothing remotely fucked up had happened yet. As far as I could tell I was reading a story about a basic bitch in the fifties… This book almost went over

“Day in, day out. Used to try and dream the agonies away. But you can’t. Take it from me. You can’t. They have to be endured.” Holy crap, what did I just read, and where can I get more? The Hellbound Heart is an amazing book – 5 stars all the way. Take your time, don’t rush through the prose. After I finished reading the first chapter with an idea of what was coming, I put the book down just so that I could digest all that was laid out in front of me. This novella is packed w