fuonlyknew

Freakin Fridays!

Freakin Fridays is my own little meme. I’ll be posting about books, movies, and all things scary.

Feel free to join in and do your own Freakin Fridays posts!

Tune in every Friday. Get your scare on!

Let’s have some fun!

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With the new year here, I’ve started  implementing my new plans for my blog.

While I’ll still be doing my memes and posting for book tours and giveaways, I’m going to be doing a lot more reviewing.

 I asked you to help me with this. Below are the 5 books I’ll be reviewing for the 5 Fridays in January. You’ve let me know which one you want me to review first. The book with the most votes for my first 2014 Freakin Fridays review was The Little Mermaid of Death!

There is a link further down in the post for my review if you missed it.

Your next pick was Spooky Short Stories. So here is my review.

Don’t forget to explore the next three books afterwards and choose which one I should review next week! Just leave me a comment:)

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Spooky Short Stories

by Kathryn Meyer Griffith

Four contemporary spooky short stories:

Ghost Brother… So what happens after you die? Do you go to heaven, or hell? Or do you go to a special place fashioned just for you based on the life you’d lived in the real world? Based on how you treated people? What you did to them? And do ghosts exist? Do they roam the earth and plague the living, persuade them to do things they shouldn’t do? Two brothers and their tale follow; their journey through life and death. Do you believe in ghosts? Some do.

Running with the Train… Sarah has always been lonely. Searching for a love she’s begun to believe will never come. Her family and friends depend, need her…but they can’t give her what she wants. True, eternal love. Like the wolves have. So she goes on an adventure of a lifetime to the Grand Canyon; rides the train from Williams to the South Rim and sees these huge wolves running alongside in the evening twilight; scurrying unbelievably below on the Canyon’s ledges among the trees. She’s told there are no wolves but she hears their haunting cries. No one else sees or hears them. Just her. Has her loneliness made her crazy?

The Banshee and the Witch… What would you do to live forever, stay young forever? To find true love again? And if you were a white witch with the magical powers to make it happen…and the secret of how to do it, would you? So when the banshee comes calling for you one rainy dark night you’ll do what you have to do to get what you desire the most. More time.

Too Close to the Edge… Artist Penelope had been looking forward to going with her husband, sister and brother-in-law to see the Grand Canyon…even though she was terrified of heights and, when she got there, couldn’t bear to get too close to the edge. She watched people balancing on one foot, acting foolish, taking photos, oblivious of the death waiting below them. It scared her. Especially when a woman relates a story of a small child that fell into the Canyon the day before. Over the edge. Then she sees a young girl go over the rim and no one will believe her. For there was no child that had died–that day anyway. Was she seeing things that weren’t there, or was there another explanation?

My Review

At first I was thinking Running with the train was my favorite. Then I thought the Banshee and the Witch. Then I thought..well you know how that goes. I can’t pick a favorite as each of these stories are unique unto themselves and very, very good.

Ghost Brother

A man wakes up in a graveyard one night. He has no memory of how he got there or why.

He trudges home but finds he can’t get in his house, so he sits and contemplates, trying to recall what happened.

Bobby’s dead brother, Gerald, has haunted him for a long time. He’s evil incarnate and goads Bobby into doing some really bad things.

Now Bobby’s done something truly horrid and it’s time to face the music.

I’m always up for something dark and twisted. This story sure is. I tried to guess ahead as to what had happened to Bobby, but when I reached the end of the story, I was way off.

The author pulled one over on me. Not bad Kathryn, not bad at all.

Running With The Train

This one has a mystical feel to it.

Sarah is unlucky in love and all she does is work. Wanting something, but not knowing what, she takes a vacation, going to the Grand Canyon by herself.

Things start getting mysterious while she’s on the train. She sees something, shadowy figures, running alongside the train. But nobody else sees them.While enjoying the view at the South Rim, just before dark, she meets a compelling, and very handsome man. Something about him draws her and she talks with him, telling him about herself. As quickly as he appears, he is gone.

She encounters this man again, and he tells her why he came to her and what he wants. Now she has a choice to make. But what about her family. They need her.

I felt some folklore in this one. The author built up the mystery, making me anxious to see the wonder she would reveal to Sarah and to me.

I couldn’t wait to get to the end and find out what choice Sarah made.

The Banshee and the Witch

Another good one.

Cleona is a witch. The most powerful witch. She has lived a long time.

She’s loved well and lived well, but she’s not ready to leave this world yet. She wants more time.

When the banshee comes calling, she knows she doesn’t have much time left. She’s able to use her magic and send the banshee away several times, but soon that won’t work anymore. There are consequences to using her magic this way. Her familiar, her cat, warns her of this.

So the next time the banshee comes, she has to try something else, something clever.

This was such a fun story. I really like witches. And Cleona’s familiar,Precious, has attitude and all the sass and independence of a cat too. Their exchanges were comical and gave me a few chuckles.

The ending was unexpected. The author caught me completely by surprise. I think you’ll like it too.

Too Close To The Edge

This tale isn’t scary as much as it is haunting.

Penelope has always been afraid of heights. She gets close to the edge and vertigo sets in, along with an irrational fear.

The trip with her husband, along with her sister and brother-in-law, to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon was a step toward getting past her fear. It proves difficult as she sees others clowning around, teetering near the edge, with this it can’t happen to me attitude.

When she spies a little girl, alone, leaning out to clutch a flower, her fears are confirmed when the girl teeters, then slips over and out of sight.

I liked that Penelope tried to get past her fear, to confront it and vanquish it for good.

What she experiences on the rim is haunting and wonderous at the same time.

The very end of the story made me smile. It was perfect.

5 Stars

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Last weeks choice!

The Little Mermaid of Death

by Kevin Richey

Tired of her life with the other swamp hags, Ariel strikes a bargain to obtain a mask so realistic she could pass for human. But can she trick anyone into marrying her before the mask deteriorates—and all without saying a word?

My 4 Star Review

Here are the books to choose from for next week. Let me know which one I should review next!

#1

The Monster Man of Horror House

by Danny King

Local oddball, John Coal is the town oddball. Old, crotchety, pungent and solitary, he lives in a scary old house that is almost as rundown as he and sees out his days shuffling around the streets harvesting his neighbours’ skips for scrap.

The local kids take great delight in plaguing him morning, noon and night but they’ve chosen the wrong old coot to mess with because John Coal is no ordinary man. He knows where the bodies are buried. He’s been to the outer limits. He is a keeper of dark secrets. Murder, monsters, demons and bi-polar vampires, he has seen them all and lived to tell the tale.

Now, if he is to rid himself of his woes he must dig into the deepest recesses of his past and use these terrible experiences to convince his tormentors he’s not just an old man to be pushed around.

He is John Coal – the Monster Man of Horror House.

***

#2

Cold Blood

by Donna Ansari

As the winter holiday season descends on New York City, vampire Emma Hammond is anticipating celebrating with Tammy and David, her witch and werewolf roommates. But when an odd Christmas ornament unleashes waves of the undead from her neighborhood graveyard, Emma finds herself as an unwilling shield between ravenous zombies and an unsuspecting city. Even worse, despite having everyday dealing with supernatural creatures, Emma finds that she has an unnatural aversion to the shambling dead, and must get to their source and stop the invasion before she’s forced to cancel her holiday party!

**

#3

Days with the Undead

by Julianne Snow

It’s a journal of survival.

Five people set out to escape the Undead who have risen too close to home. Join the emotional and physical struggle as they began on the third day after the awakening of Brooks VanReit, as they are recorded from the point of view of Julie, a former pathologist and part-time survivalist.

Each entry is geared toward helping those who want to help themselves and maybe give a few that don’t a swift kick in the ass.

Join our group of survivors on their journey through these Days with the Undead.

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So tell me. Which one should I review next?