#paranormal star reviews

[books-in-a-storm]

Paranormal Star Review

Title: Shadow Beast Shifters #4 Deserted

Author: Jaymin Eve

Pages:396

Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐(4/5)

Synopsis:

Melalekin "Angel" of the Honor Meadows has been a warrior her entire life. Battle. Death. Loss. They were her constant companions until the day she met Mera Callahan. A shifter who ended up being so much more. A shifter who changed her life, and now... she has been reborn. The scars of her past are gone. Her losses muted under the new life she plans on living.

There's just one being standing in her way. A grudge holding desert deity who has made an art form out of making her life hell.

Reece of the Desert Lands is a god unused to being defied, and he has a very long memory when it comes to those who wronged him. Angel is the one he blames for the worst loss in his life, and he'll never let her forget it. Their history is tragic and bloodied, and the pair are set to clash one more time, especially when they end up trapped in the very spot where they lost it all. A meeting of the dynasties in the Delfora, the ancient desert lands, will force them to the place it all began.

Here they will learn that sometimes the past defines your future. And that there is a fine line between love and hate.

[hannahwatcheshorror]

INSIDIOUS (2010) + REWATCH

An underwhelming horror movie that relies heavily on jumpscares and musical stings for its frights. What can I say? It’s just not for me. Sure it has a lot of good elements to it, spooky characters, good pacing, great actors, but this film just falls short of my standards. Above all else, it was boring. Nothing really memorable happened and that is why I think I have to stick with my guns and keep this at a 2 star rating.

⭐⭐

Hot dad from The Conjuring series is forced to go into the upside down when his loser kid goes into "not a coma." The reactions to the horrors are believable but the horrors themselves flip from demons to creepy old lady's to an old time-y horror picture show… For a movie with so much build up I was expecting something much more exceptional. The pace of the movie was pretty good, starting with spooks pretty much off the bat but… I'll watch the others in the series I just can't say that I'm excited to.

REWATCH REVIEW

A child of the house falls into what is certainly not a coma but is a very long sleep and the mom is very quick to blame ghosts which, I mean, good for her, but also, damn, she’s crazy. A psychic comes in to inform us that this little kid is a terrific astral projector so much so that he went into a different dimension of sorts (bring back Gabbie while you are there, why don’t ya) and left his body to be possessed by any number of demons… Seems wack. Because they buried the lead that the dad also is “a traveler” so his mom had to go through this same demon spiel with him when he was a kid. They do some automatic writing which I think is pretty neat but that makes more ghosties come. Finally it is decided that the dad has to astral project to save the boy (who didn’t see that coming?).

The astral projection is BORING. It is a black empty space, the two houses, or a dungeon. That is it. Nothing fresh, new or exciting. Nothing “Astral.” Anyway, hot dad gets his kid and makes it out, or does he? I don’t know that I believe a child is strong enough to fend off a demon that is basically Satan but a grown man isn’t able to beat an old woman. I get she was his nemesis or whatever but wow did they just throw that in at the very end. You would think Elise would notice sooner given that she is a psychic… She didn’t actually use her “abilities” she just was there and saw things everyone else who was a non-psychic could see. I guess she did talk to the son for them but that just invited more chaos into the home. Whatever, all's well that ends up setting us up for the sequel, I guess.

----------------------HANNAH WATCHES HORROR---------------------

[yourfavebooklrsfavebooklr]

Dying Inside by Pete Wentz & Hannah Klein, illustrated by Lisa Sterle

3.5 stars

This was a fun read! Lisa Sterle's art was beautiful, I liked the story for the most part but thought some bits seemed a little random (why did they have a friend breakup for like 3 pages which literally affected nothing...). I liked the twist and ofc witchy stories are always a fun time. I thought the romance was sweet, I thought they saw each other as best friends a little too quickly for my taste but it developed well after that. I also like how this book combined ideas of autonomy with mental health and different forms of ethics, and I really liked the happy ending. I also thought the darker humor came across well in my opinion, it was pretty funny at times.

I'd recommend this for people who want a fun paranormal read for Halloween, fans of witchy books, and people looking for graphic novels with dark humor. However, if you struggle with mental health, definitely check the content warnings first!

[melaniem54]

Review:  A Highland Gargoyle's Lucky Star (Tales from the Tarot story) by Chloe Archer

Rating: 4🌈 A Highland Gargoyle’s Lucky Star, while definitely in the Tales from the Tarot multi-author series, is firmly rooted in Chloe Archer’s Monster Hollow universe and her latest novel from that, The Gargoyle and the Romance Writer.   The main gargoyle characters here (and an unfortunate member under going punishment here), are met for the first time in that book. And in a delightful…

[giannabooknook]

Attention: New Blog Post!!!!

All the books you've never stumbled upon before…

[somewherelostinbooks]

The Witch Queen of Halloween- Review

The Witch Queen of Halloween By Kresley Cole Genre: Paranormal Romance Series: Immortals After Dark #20 Publisher: Valkyrie Press Publication Date: March 26,2024 Source: Received an ARC in exchange for an honest review Rating: 4.75 Stars Amazon Description: Take a spooky Halloween tour of the mysterious Lore in this stand-alone installment of the Immortals After Dark series by #1 New…

[alexislunacreations]

Tomorrow is the official release day for Love in the Occult Traumatic, and the first review is five stars. I couldn't be happier 🥹 Stay tuned for tomorrow's announcement to find out where you can get your own copy!

[lifesarchive]

THE BURNING GIRLS by C. J. TUDOR (REVIEW)

quickly: a woman of the cloth relocates to small-town England and uncovers a long-kept community secret. (single mom with a repressed past and a rebellious teen daughter / creepy blair witch stick dolls / ghostly apparitions / family secrets turning into community secrets / rich men controlling local government / a random spree killer).

quaint, quiet English towns are some of the most dangerous places on Earth. this is what The Burning Girls confirms in a story that feels like the UK version of a Fear Street novel. the chapters are short and quick, often ending with a cliffhanger. ‘good vs. evil’ and ‘nature vs. nurture’ are major motifs in this story, sometimes stereotypically so, sometimes uninspired. i wish there was more thrill and horror… with the lore behind what a ‘burning girl’ represents, there was the potential to go so much further. while i love the author’s tone and style, the substance lacked.

★ ★ ★

more thoughts: SPOILERS!

Some personal context… I picked this book out based on a search I did for ’theological horror’. I was trying to decide whether or not I was going to read the non-fiction book “Heathen: Religion and Race in American History”. As I’m already reading a non-fiction book on Indigenous American history, ”Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America”, and I just completed the lengthy “The Books of Jacob”, I was hesitant to read another lengthy non-fiction book.

My thought process was… I can soothe my horror itch and my religious history itch by reading a book that combined both. If the book was intriguing enough, then I’d move on to Heathen by Kathyrn. I found several books that fell into the theological horror genre, and ‘Burning Girl’s’ was a newer one, so I picked it. Sadly, it did not inspire me to reach for non-fiction theological history. While not bad, it didn’t capture what was interesting about the religious lore of Sussex England that the title and cover art so openly refer to.

The title is what truly caught my eye: THE BURNING GIRLS. That, paired with the promise of uncovering church mysteries, pulled me in.

The story opens with Reverend Jack, short for Jacqueline, who is being informed that she is being relocated to a distant Sussex community after an unfortunate occurrence at her church in Nottingham. Essentially, she wasn’t able to save an abused child from their parents and was partially blamed when the parents murdered the child. 

She moves to Chapel Croft with her 15-year-old daughter, a small village where everyone knows everyone, and her arrival is big news. Immediately, both mother and daughter have separate encounters with appearances of ‘burning girls’, ghostly apparitions who appear to be on fire, and missing bodily limbs. Reverend Jack is coincidentally informed that the creepy stick dolls everywhere are to commemorate the girls and families burned during religious wars back in Olde England. She’s also informed that seeing a ghost of a burning girl is a warning of impending danger.

As the story goes on, Revered Jack’s back story is unfurled. She comes from an abusive home with a psychotic spree-killing brother who is responsible for the death of her husband (who was also a pastor). Just before her move, she was informed that her brother was released from prison. While she thinks she is evading him by moving to Chapel Croft, unbeknownst to her, he is ruthlessly and methodically making his way to her and leaving a trail of bodies in his wake.

All the characters are dealing with some form of ‘good vs. evil’ struggle, most evident in Reverend Jack’s brother, who seems to have a voice within that he compels him to do evil deeds. There are also several references to the great question of whether or not people can be born bad, and what it means to be bad vs. being a good person doing a bad thing. To be honest, the word count could’ve been better spent exploring the wild history of the burning girls. 

Anyways, fast forward past two girls who went missing long ago being discovered in a well, the dead body of a missing priest being found buried under the church, a devious teenage boy found living with the dead body of his mother, and that same boy plotting the killing of Revered Jack’s daughter simply to please his equally devious killer girlfriend. Oh yeah, I forgot, did I mention that randomly, in the background of the main events, Reverend Jack’s brother has been traveling the countryside on foot and killing anyone who crosses his path?

The story ends in the loud gory cacophony of noise and violence that most B-level thrillers tend to end in. The psycho-killer teens confront Revered Jack and her daughter in the church for the big climax, which results in Jack killing the teens, and the church being set on fire in the process. At the last moment, just before Reverend Jack is engulfed by the flames, her psycho-killer brother rescues her. The people he killed to get to her kind of fade into the background as if his character’s sole purpose was to represent the bad person who does a good thing (in contrast to Reverend Jack being the good person who does a bad thing).

The miasma of “Good and Evil” that this story exists in is muddier than it is inspiring. Too many angels and devils in this garden if you ask me. And again, the gem, the burning girls, barely get any page time! Three stars. Not horrible, but not anything I am compelled to recommend. That said, I’d still love to try THE CHALK MAN, by this author, and give her another chance.

[gahmah-raan]

This is my art summary for 2023.

I made a lot more pieces than I did last year, and I gained some new tools to work with near the end.

[books-in-a-storm]

Paranormal Star Review

Title: Feathers and Fate #3 Wanted Angel

Author: Sadie Moss

Pages: 282

Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐(4/5)

Synopsis:

I’ve suddenly become extremely popular… in all the wrong ways.

You know that feeling when the entire supernatural underworld wants to kill you?

No?

Huh. Must just be me then.

Now the seven sins and I are in a race against time, desperate to somehow get the bounty taken off my head and stop whoever is behind the demonic portals before they strike again.

To make things even more complicated, the feelings brewing between me and these men are starting to feel real.

Permanent.

I care about them more than I ever thought possible. But when they find out about my mission, will I lose them forever?

[hannahwatcheshorror]

THE OTHERS (2001)

A nice little thriller. A little slow and old, but nice.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Nicole Kidman snapped, killed her kids and herself, and now haunts the house she lived in. But she doesn’t know she’s dead, and thinks the new residents are haunting her. It's a bit of a mind fuck but it’s a nice little thriller.

----------------------HANNAH WATCHES HORROR---------------------

[twochicksobsessed]

Love for the Reaper (The Elite Book 1) by Charlie Cochet: New Release Review

Love for the Reaper (The Elite Book 1) by @CharlieCochet: #NewRelease #BookReview #lgbtq #mmromance #gayromance #romanticsuspense #4stars

.                                       . Devlin “Dev” Espinosa lives in the shadows of the criminal underworld. As a Ferryman, his job is to safely transport “the dead” to their new lives, no questions asked. With no one to answer to, lots of cash, and access to The Anonymous–an exclusive club for the elite–Dev is loving life. Until Remy Corbin gets into his car. Remy is just a regular guy…

[bigheartedbibliophile]

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Read: April 2024 Summary: 😈😂💖 Spice Level: 🌶🌶🌶🌶

I LOVED this book! I loved the characters, the plot, everything. This is my favorite Ali Hazelwood book that I’ve read so far. Misery has a dry humor that I absolutely love. She’s sarcastic and witty, and she thinks much quicker than I do when it comes to witty retorts. I like that the book was mainly from Misery’s perspective, but we’d get a glimpse of how Lowe (the werewolf love interest) felt in each chapter. I don’t want to write too much more because this is one book I don’t want to spoil for anyone who hasn’t read it!

I figured I would share this post today since my best friend picked out her wedding dress this weekend! So beautiful!

[lilibetbombshell]

[fictional-horan]

Book Review: The Temptation of Magic by Megan Scott

The Temptation of Magic (Empyreal #1) by Megan Scott Published by HarperCollins on August 27, 2024 Genres: Contemporary fantasy romance, dark academia, paranormal Pages: 384 – hardcover, 373 – Kindle Edition Format Read: Hardcover Rating: 4 stars Source: Publisher Previous Books in Series: – PURCHASE LINKS Note: As a Waterstones associate, we may earn commissions from qualifying…

[thereadingcafe]