Review | Chlorine by Jade Song

Chlorine is a debut literary fiction/horror novel by Jade Song.

In the vein of The Pisces and The Vegetarian, Chlorine is a debut novel that blurs the line between a literary coming-of-age narrative and a dark unsettling horror tale, told from an adult perspective on the trials and tribulations of growing up in a society that puts pressure on young women and their bodies... a powerful, relevant novel of immigration, sapphic longing, and fierce, defiant becoming.

Ren Yu is a swimmer. Her daily life starts and ends with the pool. Her teammates are her only friends. Her coach, her guiding light. If she swims well enough, she will be scouted, get a scholarship, go to a good school. Her parents will love her. Her coach will be kind to her. She will have a good life.

But these are human concerns. These are the concerns of those confined to land, those with legs. Ren grew up on stories of creatures of the deep, of the oceans and the rivers. Ones that called sailors to their doom. Ones that dragged them down and drowned them. Ones that feasted on their flesh. Ones of the creature that she's always longed to become: mermaid.

Ren aches to be in the water. She dreams of the scent of chlorine--the feel of it on her skin. And she will do anything she can to make a life for herself where she can be free. No matter the pain. No matter what anyone else thinks. No matter how much blood she has to spill.

Wow - I have so many feelings about Chlorine! I will start with the most important since that's why we are all here - I loved this book.

Chlorine is a debut coming-of-age novel that follows Ren Yu - a swimmer who grew up loving tales of mermaids and the water. I could really relate to Ren and her obsession with being in the water. In fact, the synopsis for Chlorine sounded like a perfect read for me, and it was.

The comparison to Han Kang's The Vegetarian had me curious about what kind of horror I would find in Chlorine (In the vein of The Pisces and The Vegetarian, Chlorine is a debut novel that blurs the line between a literary coming-of-age narrative and a dark unsettling horror tale...). I find sometimes a book that is strange or unsettling gets labeled as horror because there's not really another marketing box to put it in. I wondered if this was the case with Chlorine and for the first 150+ pages I feared I was right. Chlorine is a wonderful work of literary fiction. The character building was incredible, and I was heavily invested in the story. I was side-eyeing the claims of "horror" in Chlorine until Jade Song spelled out for the reader exactly what horror was going to take place, and I absolutely could not look away.

So be warned. This book is wonderful. I loved it, and it will be one of my favorite books of the year, but the last 100 pages are disturbing. They're amazing, but they're disturbing. I had to put the book down, take some breaths, and pick it right back up again.

I loved these characters, and I miss these characters already. Chlorine is a really great coming-of-age story, and I highly recommend it if you can handle having horror in your literary fiction. I think I'm going to buy this one for my mom for Mother's Day, and you should treat yourself, too.

5/5 stars
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Book Review | The Fireman by Joe Hill

The Fireman was released in paperback today so I decided this would be the perfect time to do some catch up and finally post a review for it.

The Fireman is a horror novel from Joe Hill.

From the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of NOS4A2 and Heart-Shaped Box comes a chilling novel about a worldwide pandemic of spontaneous combustion that threatens to reduce civilization to ashes and a band of improbable heroes who battle to save it, led by one powerful and enigmatic man known as the Fireman.

The fireman is coming. Stay cool.

No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it’s Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies—before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.

Harper Grayson, a compassionate, dedicated nurse as pragmatic as Mary Poppins, treated hundreds of infected patients before her hospital burned to the ground. Now she’s discovered the telltale gold-flecked marks on her skin. When the outbreak first began, she and her husband, Jakob, had made a pact: they would take matters into their own hands if they became infected. To Jakob’s dismay, Harper wants to live—at least until the fetus she is carrying comes to term. At the hospital, she witnessed infected mothers give birth to healthy babies and believes hers will be fine too. . . if she can live long enough to deliver the child.

Convinced that his do-gooding wife has made him sick, Jakob becomes unhinged, and eventually abandons her as their placid New England community collapses in terror. The chaos gives rise to ruthless Cremation Squads—armed, self-appointed posses roaming the streets and woods to exterminate those who they believe carry the spore. But Harper isn’t as alone as she fears: a mysterious and compelling stranger she briefly met at the hospital, a man in a dirty yellow fire fighter’s jacket, carrying a hooked iron bar, straddles the abyss between insanity and death. Known as The Fireman, he strolls the ruins of New Hampshire, a madman afflicted with Dragonscale who has learned to control the fire within himself, using it as a shield to protect the hunted . . . and as a weapon to avenge the wronged.

In the desperate season to come, as the world burns out of control, Harper must learn the Fireman’s secrets before her life—and that of her unborn child—goes up in smoke.

Why did I read The Fireman?

Joe Hill. After NOS4A2, I'm a fan for life.

The Strengths

Joe Hill. Joe Hill inherited some hella good genes. There is a lot of Stephen King in Joe Hill and that's a great thing.

The Fireman is original and a lot of it has stuck with me even though it's been months since I read it.

Dragonscale - the virus - is more than just a cool premise. I thought "OK, this is one of those times I'm just going to have to go along with the imagination of the King family", but it went and got all science-y on me which made me love it even more.

The Weaknesses

You won't hear me say this very often, but The Fireman was too long. I love me a chunky read, and I really love a chunky read from Joe Hill, but I felt like The Fireman was chunky for chunky's sake. It didn't need to be that long and that ultimately hindered my enjoyment of the book.

Would I recommend The Fireman to others?

Yes! The Fireman was one of my favorite reads last year.

8/10: Great Read

Review copy provided by publisher

Book Review | A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay

A Head Full of Ghosts is a horror novel from Paul Tremblay.

The lives of the Barretts, a normal suburban New England family, are torn apart when fourteen-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia.

To her parents' despair, the doctors are unable to stop Marjorie's descent into madness. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest for help. Father Wanderly suggests an exorcism; he believes the vulnerable teenager is the victim of demonic possession. He also contacts a production company that is eager to document the Barretts' plight. With John, Marjorie's father, out of work for more than a year and the medical bills looming, the family agrees to be filmed, and soon find themselves the unwitting stars of The Possession, a hit reality television show. When events in the Barrett household explode in tragedy, the show and the shocking incidents it captures become the stuff of urban legend.

Fifteen years later, a bestselling writer interviews Marjorie's younger sister, Merry. As she recalls those long ago events that took place when she was just eight years old, long-buried secrets and painful memories that clash with what was broadcast on television begin to surface--and a mind-bending tale of psychological horror is unleashed, raising vexing questions about memory and reality, science and religion, and the very nature of evil.

I really enjoyed A Head Full of Ghosts. It's part creepy possession horror / part psychological thriller, and it's all very meta. The story is being recounted many years later by Merry, one of the sisters involved in the possession, in a personal interview as well as through a series of the Merry's pseudonymous blog posts that are reviewing the reality show that documented the possession. Did I lose you? Amazingly enough, the book does a great job of making it work. I found myself forgetting about the blog entirely until it popped back up again.

It got even more meta once you realized the blog commentary was basically the book criticizing the tropes in it's own story.

But meta stuff aside, there was some horror going on worth reading. Whatever was actually happening with this family, one thing is for sure - it was creepy.

By the end of A Head Full of Ghosts, there were so many questions as to what was really going on that I got a little bored. And a little annoyed.

But! It was still a fun read and one that I would recommend to others.

7/10: Recommended Read

Horns by Joe Hill | Audiobook Review

I hate when everyone loves a book but me!

Book Description

At first Ig thought the horns were a hallucination, the product of a mind damaged by rage and grief. He had spent the last year in a lonely, private purgatory, following the death of his beloved, Merrin Williams, who was raped and murdered under inexplicable circumstances. A mental breakdown would have been the most natural thing in the world. But there was nothing natural about the horns, which were all too real.

Once the righteous Ig had enjoyed the life of the blessed: born into privilege, the second son of a renowned musician and younger brother of a rising late-night TV star, he had security, wealth, and a place in his community. Ig had it all, and more—he had Merrin and a love founded on shared daydreams, mutual daring, and unlikely midsummer magic.

But Merrin's death damned all that. The only suspect in the crime, Ig was never charged or tried. And he was never cleared. In the court of public opinion in Gideon, New Hampshire, Ig is and always will be guilty because his rich and connected parents pulled strings to make the investigation go away. Nothing Ig can do, nothing he can say, matters. Everyone, it seems, including God, has abandoned him. Everyone, that is, but the devil inside. . . .

Now Ig is possessed of a terrible new power to go with his terrible new look—a macabre talent he intends to use to find the monster who killed Merrin and destroyed his life. Being good and praying for the best got him nowhere. It's time for a little revenge. . . . It's time the devil had his due. . . .

Review

After Ig Perrish's girlfriend is murdered, he wakes up with horns coming out of his head. He also notices that those around him openly share their deepest secrets and desires. Does everyone have such horrible thoughts? I don't know if it was because I was listening to it on audio, but uncensored people are not fun to be around. I fear how many wrinkles this book may have caused me.

I think part of my problem with this book is the humor was lost on me. All of the horrible thoughts people were having seemed like shock value to me. I love horror so it's not that I mind horrible thoughts or bad people, I was just having trouble getting behind everyone being that way. Every person Ig came across was worse than the last. I started wondering if my library had punked me.

This book wasn't entirely without merit. Ig is trying to discover what happened to his girlfriend the night she was murdered. He learns that his horns also yield power over others. I found myself getting sucked in, but then inevitably something would force me back to thinking I hate this book and I can't wait for this to be over.

Part of what made Horns so unlikeable was the characters were so unlikeable.

I forgot there was going to be a movie with Daniel Radcliffe until someone mentioned it in a comment earlier this week. I guess my relationship with Horns isn't over yet as I will likely still watch the movie. I'm too curious not to see Harry Potter with horns. I'll just get drunk before I watch it.

So, I'm obviously not recommending this to anyone. If you want to read Joe Hill, and I recommend that you do!, Heart-Shaped Box was a great debut and NOS4A2 was awesome. I'm apparently the only one who didn't enjoy Horns, but I still can't bring myself to suggest you give it a try for yourself.

3/10: Didn't Like it