Tag

review

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Let’s Talk #Horror Movies… IT

We, here at The Midnight Society, are big Stephen King fans. When we heard IT was being made into a movie...we freaked out a little. Okay, a lot. The book is a monster, published in 1986 it stands at 1138 pages. The story flips between the late 1950s and the mid 1980s...27 years in-between. A great look at life as a kid versus life as an adult, how our fears change, but never leave us. I've read the book twice. Scared the crud out of me, infected my brain with ideas that creatures in the drains were going to kill me. Then the mini-series aired in the fall of[...]

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Mary Unleashed Review

(If you're unfamiliar with my book reviews, then check out my review of Mary the Summoning here you've been warned.) (Disclaimer: the success of a writer is wholly dependent on the internet critic prognosticating about said writer, and has remotely nothing to do with the talent, work ethic, long hours, determination, years spent honing their craft, or intelligence of the writer. Obviously.) I supported Hillary Monahan from the moment Mary the Summoning hit shelves. While all other YA horror kept walking itself off a cliff from either outright stupidity, heavy-h[...]

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Review: Welcome to the Dark House by Laurie Faria Stolarz

So last week, while reading the young adult horror novel Welcome to the Dark House by Laurie Faria Stolarz, I couldn't help but to gush to everyone who would listen about how much I loved this book. I loved it so much. that last week I even wrote a post where I dream-casted the main characters in this book. It was a blast! And to top it off, the person I used to cast the main character Ivy, happened to be the same person that the author envisioned for the role. How cool is that? She did a great job with characterization for the reader to envision the right person[...]

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Dark Heroes: What Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children Teaches Us About Good and Evil

When Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children came out, most of the reviews focused on the clever and interesting use of the vintage photographs. Multiple imitation books have emerged since, with varying success, and a visit to Amazon’s “recommended for you” page gives me several titles based on my love of the developing Peregrine series. However, as much as I like the vintage photos, they are not what propels my continuing interest in Ransom Riggs’ stories. When I was thirteen, I discovered Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising series, and fell in lov[...]

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Paper Valentine by Brenna Yovanoff

Brenna Yavanoff’s Paper Valentine is an intriguing mixed-category book: part ghost story and part murder mystery. Someone is killing young girls in Hannah’s suburban town of Ludlow, and Hannah feels compelled to solve the case because the ghost of her dead friend Lillian keeps pestering her to find out who it is before they kill again. When I first started reading, I thought that Hannah’s ghost friend would be one of the murdered girls. So I was troubled to learn that, like the ghost of Cassie in Laurie Halse Anderson’s Wintergirls, Lilian was the victim,[...]

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The Last Halloween By Abby Howard

Creepy dolls, brilliant storytelling, and wasp monsters exploding out of people’s brains-- Abby Howard’s new web comic, The Last Halloween has it all. I suggest you get caught up on the first couple dozen updates immediately, because this is something that everyone who reads the Midnight Society really ought to be following. One of the things I love about The Last Halloween is that Howard has thrown the usual webcomic pacing out the window, giving readers a whole page worth of panels in one weekly update. This pacing really works for the story, allowing her ti[...]

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Ghostly Graphic Novels

How much can we really know about the thoughts and motivations that go through another person’s head? Particularly if one of the individuals in question is already dead? These are the questions posed by two graphic novel ghost stories: Friends With Boys by Faith Erin Hicks and Anya’s Ghost by Vera Brosgol. Maggie has always been haunted. But since her mother left, Maggie’s ghostly friend has been hanging around even more than usual. The Reaper’s Widow doesn’t talk, just stares at Maggie with big haunted eyes. Which leaves Maggie wondering—what does th[...]