We Sold Our Souls

Okay, I'm actually obsessed with this book.

Grady Hendrix has a love for "music saves" as a theme and honestly, I love it. Now I'm not going to pretend like we haven't heard all the Illuminati conspiracies when it comes to the music industry. We Sold Our Souls does a deep dive into a world of conspiracy turned reality. The horror genre and metal music collide and it is so freaking fantastic.

Washed up, Durt Wurk guitarist, Kris leads us through the nightmare that is now her life. She's getting pissed on while working the front desk of the Best Western. This wasn't supposed to be her life, she was supposed to be legendary. But The Blind King took everything from her. One time friend and frontman of Durt Wurk, Terry Hunt ruined her chance for infamy. He took the money, he sold out, and left them all in their own personal Hells.

But that's all about to change.

 

Koffin announces a Farewell Tour, followed by Hellstock '19, a music festival for the lost, lonely, and pissed off souls. Hundreds of thousands of people flock to Vegas for this once in a lifetime opportunity, including Kris. If he's going to play his entire discography beginning to end, he's not going to do it without Kris dragging their "lost album," Troglodyte back out of the grave. She has a score to settle with Terry, might as well do it on stage.

 

There's so much happening in this book....murder suicides, cross country road trips, more murders, a cult-like camp, and the worst of all, record execs. It put the music industry and consumerism on blast and tied it all together with a graphic gory bow.

 

This might actually be my favorite of his books.

 

Looking for other Grady Hendrix books?

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

My Best Friend's Exorcism

Horrorstor

The Final Girl Support Group

How to Sell a Haunted House

BadAsstronauts

Our Book of Awesome

This was a great book to start my year with.

Within the last week, my life has all but fallen apart.

Which is why I grabbed Our Book of Awesome off my TBR shelf.

I needed some peace, happiness, and awesomeness.

If you haven't figured it out yet, The Book of Awesome and all it's subsequent titles detail all the little things in life that we take for granted. It's literally just a list of all the awesome things we as people get to experience and live through every single day.

Some of my favorite things from Our Book of Awesome include:

-Being so obsessed with books you read every single word on the copyright page

-Driving down an old road with trees that touch and form a canopy over everything

-Watching your fav movie with someone who hasn't seen it before (would also like to add, listening to your fav album with someone who hasn't heard it before)

-Dogs hanging their heads out of car windows

-Singing the guitar solo

 

These are all great examples of things that I love and would love to share with other people.

Our Book of Awesome did it a little differently this time, instead of Neil Pasricha just sharing his awesome thoughts, he included comments and entries from people all over the world!

 

AWESOME!

 

Looking for the other Awesome books?

The Book of Awesome

The Book of (Even More) Awesome

The Book of (Holiday) Awesome

Kingdom of the Feared

It's hard to review Kingdom of the Feared for a few reasons. I mean, it's the last book in the series and it honestly ties up all the questions from the first two books.

Now, I don't read smut at all but Kerri Maniscalco said this was going to have some explicit scenes, more so than Kingdom of the Cursed. So I was preparing myself for the ick. Even reviews I've read talk about how this book is straight sex and I'm just wondering if we read the same book???

 

Yes, there's sex and some explicit scenes I could have gone without. But the story itself really launched itself into new and exciting dimensions, literally. The Shifting Isles revelation made my jaw drop. The secrets, the curses, the First Witch, all of that drove this story home.

What's even more exciting is that Kerri Maniscalco announced a spinoff series where each brother is getting his own book!!! Prince Envy's is set to come out in October and I am READY.

Looking for the rest of the series?

Kingdom of the Wicked (KOTW #1)

Kingdom of the Cursed (KOTW #2)

 

Looking for other books by Kerri Maniscalco?

Stalking Jack the Ripper (SJTR #1)

Hunting Prince Dracula (SJTR #2)

Escaping from Houdini (SJTR #3)

Becoming the Dark Prince (SJTR #3.5)

Capturing the Devil (SJTR #4)

A Cigarette Lit Backwards

Words cannot describe to you how much I love this book.

It felt like this book was written for me. Like it was written about the teenage version of myself. The girl who wanted to be cool by standing out. I know this book is not going to hit with everyone, because it takes place during a time, a scene, and era that I still hold onto very tightly.

A Cigarette Lit Backwards follows a group of teens in the early 2000s. Not just any teens though, a group of burnouts, nobodies, punks, and poseurs. Main character, Kat freaking resonated with me. She read books, went to concerts, and hung out with the party kids without going too far herself. She still had dreams of art school saving her from herself. But that didn't stop her from shoplifting, dealing drugs, and dating the bad boys. If anything, she felt like her life finally had meaning.

At 16, Kat was everything I wanted to be.

At 27, she made me cringe.

This book was just all too relatable. I was constantly reading my own teenage shenanigans and texting my friends who made it out of it alive.

I have nothing but good things to say about this book.

I love it.

The Houseguest and Other Stories

I was walking through the bookstore last week when this cover caught my eye. I flipped to the back cover and took it all in; "Like those of Kafka, Poe, or Shirley Jackson," "a writer obsessed with obsession," "nightmares come to life." It was everything I was looking for.

It's essentially a book of short horror stories. There were a few that stuck out to me, Fragment of a Diary, Musique Conrete, Tina Reyes, The Breakfast, and The Funeral. For some reason these stories spoke to me the most. Fragment of a Diary really resonated with me. It was raw and uncontrollable. Each of these stories spoke on love, lust, isolation, and fear. I've been in an incredibly vulnerable place lately so I can't even begin to describe the emotions I felt while reading all 122 pages of this book.

This is Amparo Davila's first book to be translated into English. It's my understanding that all of these desperate themes are found throughout her work. If more of her work isn't translated soon.....I'm going to pull out my high school Spanish lessons and do it myself!

Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing

Could I be more excited for this book?!

I know, I know, Matthew Perry is tired of that cadence but I just couldn't help myself.

I pre-ordered this book as soon as it was announced. As a die hard Friends fan, I knew I needed Matthew Perry's book in my life. But if you're looking for a celebrity tell all, this is not the book. While Hollywood has been such a big part of his life, there was always something bigger. He calls it "the big terrible thing," but the rest of the world knows it's his lifelong battle with addiction.

What I enjoyed about this book was the honesty. He didn't shy away from the fact that he had everything, literally everything. The biggest television show on the planet, the biggest movie, the best life that money could buy but that didn't stop him from wanting to escape. An escape that he could only find through drugs an alcohol. Addiction is no joke and it was absolutely heartbreaking when he joked about how this disease is going to kill him.

I went into this knowing that he wasn't going to be sharing fun antidotes from his time on set. I knew he wasn't going to be the fun loving version of Chandler Bing that we all know and love. But I wasn't prepared for the absolute terror that he endured while trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

He mentions hoping that his story will bring addiction into a different light and hopefully it will help others get clean and stay clean. He's one of the lucky ones who actually made it through.

Looking for other books about Friends?

I'll Be There For You

Just Like Home

I love book boxes. I had my eye on Just Like Home for awhile, so I snatched up a Halloween themed box from Once Upon a Book Club!

I'm not going to lie, I thought this was going to be soooooo much darker than it actually was.

The premise is simple; a man builds a strong, sturdy house for his family, his daughter starts hearing noises from the basement, the cold, distant mother calls said daughter on her death bed to come home.

Oh, but maybe I should mention, the dad is a serial killer and the daughter was witnessing all of the deaths through a peep hole under her bed. Which in itself is weird, but obviously there's something more supernatural lurking beneath the surface.

I thought maybe it was a slow burn, but it really just never picked up.

It's worth reading, especially if you're new to the supernatural horror genre. But overall, I got kind of bored with it. However, I feel it's important to tell you that I read the first half of this book in a day and then hit such a slump in my personal life that reading kind of fell to the back burner for me and that may have swayed my opinion a little bit.

The book box was super cool though. It came with a Ouija Board throw, a cute ass water bottle, and a handy dandy floral pattern screwdriver (super excited because I can use it at work!!)