Slaughter Lake by David Viergutz and Jay Bower Slaughter Lake by David Viergutz and Jay Bower For a group of friends, Slaughter Lake is about to earn its name… It’s been years since Rebecca and her closest college friends vacationed at Slaughter Lake. What once was an annual trip became a distant memory filled with … Continue reading “Robin’s Review of Slaughter Lake”
Slaughter Lake
by David Viergutz and Jay Bower
For a group of friends, Slaughter Lake is about to earn its name…
It’s been years since Rebecca and her closest college friends vacationed at Slaughter Lake. What once was an annual trip became a distant memory filled with campfires and the peaceful serene landscape of their exclusive vacation spot.
Robin's Review: Slaughter Lake is a freaking trip. It starts all nice and all, and then boom. Blood, guts, gore, oh, and death! Wow, just wow! I read this in one night (yes, at night but with the lights on). It’s funny how you root for the characters, but you know some will die. This well-written freaky horror show will make you squirm in your seat but still turn the page. The descriptions were so vividly written that I gaged a few times. Or maybe that’s just me. I absolutely loved this book. Excellent job, Gentlemen.
Girl in the Reflectionby Monica Arya
What happens when our dreams and reality begin to blur together?
Serena Indigo has the perfect life. A handsome husband, a beautiful daughter, a gated home, and a rewarding career as a physician, specializing in obstetrics and gynecology. She’s helped hundreds of people complete their families, which means all that more to her considering the lengths she went through for her own child. She even has a private practice with her best friend, Parker Sully, who is easy on the eyes and kinder on the soul. Sure, she sets herself to extremely high standards and is obsessed with perfection—which triggers a darkness of her own—but she’s managed to keep it under control.
She’s always in control.
When suspicious things start to unravel, Serena begins to lose control over the perfection she thrives off of. Her husband breaks the vows he promised her, her neighbors aren’t the sweet family next door, and her perfect life seems more like the perfect lie. Her world crumbles in front of her eyes as she tries to piece it all together, but what happens when we look into our reflection and the pain of our past haunts our present?
After all, you can’t piece together a broken mirror and expect to see the same reflection….
Finally, there are some trigger warnings. This is a psychological thriller with themes of: child loss, self-inflicted harm, infertility, toxic relationships, mental health issues such as anxiety are also present. I poured my heart and soul into this story and hope you enjoy it as much as I did telling it.
Robin's Review: Wow just wow. This was an extraordinary story. It was so well written with a plot that had twisty turns. The characters were outstanding and thoroughly written. It was easy to read and fast paced. No part of the book was useless or wasteful. It meshed cohesively and was a real page turner, as evidence of me staying up all night to finish it in one sitting. A must read for most genres. This is Monica Arya’s first psychological thriller and she nailed it. I can’t wait to read more of her work.
Psychological Thriller
Suspense
Thriller
Mystery
Every Waking Dream by Laura Eason
Having to adjust to a new town, school, and friends were not what Aislin Smith had expected after spending the summer locked inside a rehabilitation center. After getting busted for taking drugs to stay awake, her psychiatrist learns the real reason behind Aislin's fear of sleeping—she experiences a phenomenon known as dream telepathy.
Afraid to expose her secret to anyone else, she tries to live an everyday life after being prescribed a sleeping aid with the convenient side effect of having dreamless nights of sleep. But once her chance at peace is taken away, Aislin finds herself in the odd dream of a mysterious girl. She thinks nothing of it until she sees the girl's face again plastered on the front-page news as a missing person in a string of unsolved cases. Struggling to keep her reality together, Aislin decides to take matters into her own hands and find the missing children. If there's one thing she's sure of, it's that the dead don't dream.
Aislin and Raven are in rehab together where they form a friendship. Aislin is there for drug addiction from a sleep disorder. Raven is there for an eating disorder. Upon completion of the program Aislin finds out that they have moved to the same town as Raven lives in. Aislin and her sister, Jess even go to the same school as Raven. Adjusting to life outside of rehab is hard and complicated for both of them. But when kids start disappearing from the area including Jesse’s friend they are then pulled into the mystery.
Robin's Review:
This was an easy read that was a real page turner. The plot was quite intriguing with a mystery “who done it” and an exceptional paranormal power. The characters were young and flawed which made them more honest and relatable. I liked this book and found it fascinating and a must read.
Psychological Fiction
Suspense
Thriller
Mystery
Young Adult
Paranormal
Hellrose
by Emma M. King
Over the past 150 years, HELLROSE psychiatric hospital has become one of America's most feared establishments.
After being plagued by flashbacks to a terrifying past, a psychiatrist, Dr. Lisa Williams, tries to repair her life by helping a new outlandish patient who has his own horrifying history.
Hellrose is a psychiatric hospital in Nevada where criminally insane convicted patients live out their sentences. It is also a place to evaluate patients to see if they are criminally insane or just lying criminals.
It is up to the main character, renowned psychiatrist Dr. Lisa Williams to do these evaluations.
After a horrific accident, Lisa is plagued with flashbacks. Going back to work she is assigned a new patient, Harvey Power that needs to be evaluated for the crime of murdering his family.
I will not give spoilers to the rest of the story.
This story had a chilling atmosphere with great character development and a twisted plot. Aside from the proofreading errors, this story is filled with tension, suspense, anxiety, and terror.
Thriller
Suspense
Psychological
Horror
Murder
Mystery
The Tens
By Vanessa Jones
Every night since Sophie’s thirtieth birthday, she has been jolted out of her sleep by the same nightmare. The rock nightmare was so repetitive that sometimes Sophie yearned for any other kind of nightmare. It was always the same. Never changed. A nightmare she’d had since she was little. It started off infrequently. Perhaps four times a year when she was a teenager. Its frequency increased over the years, more so when she was stressed. Then, her husband inexplicably vanishes. Leaving only a note. But then she read the sparse words of Alex’s handwriting: I have to leave you. I’m so sorry.
It didn’t take long for Sophie to begin to plummet. It wasn't living alone that saw her change. Sometimes she doubted it was even the fact that the love of her life had abandoned her. It was as if something greater was happening to her. Something that had been threatening to break the banks her entire life, undulating underneath the surface of her skin and she had been clever and strong enough to keep it at bay, really well in fact, until now. Emotional distress had taken off a layer of her armor and now she was exposed without an inner barricade to keep back that torrent of emotional sludge.
Oh, my what a twisty turned book. I felt that the character, Sophia was going insane and I thought I was right there with her. I almost put the book down because hello creepy clown (my phobia), but I kept on reading it. I’m so glad I did. The ending is so twisted…it was a fantastic book. It was done well by Jones. I will read anything else she writes and go back and read anything she has written.
The Tens is a psychological thriller that tackles the theme of mysticism versus madness that won’t stop until you’ve uncovered the truth about Sophie…
