NLW Staff Picks: Tonia & Andrew

 

Tonia

 

Annie Bot by Sierra Greer

I knew I wanted to read Annie Bot after spotting a review in a magazine—especially with artificial intelligence being such a hot topic right now. What drew me in was the way this sci-fi story doesn’t feel all that far-fetched anymore. The idea of a robot girlfriend sounds like something out of The Twilight Zone, but the way Sierra Greer tells it, you start to realize how close to reality this could actually become.

Annie Bot is more than just a machine—she’s learning, evolving, and developing feelings that seem anything but robotic. The story has a creepy, unsettling feel that gets under your skin in the best way. It raises big questions about emotional and psychological risks, consent, and control in relationships where one partner was literally built to please the other. I found it to be a fun, thought-provoking, and yes—definitely disconcerting—read. It’s one of those books that stays with you and keeps you thinking about the strange directions our future could take.

 

 Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

 

Mexican Gothic is another favorite in my collection of horror stories that center around unsettling old houses—and this one truly delivers. Set in the remote Mexican countryside, the story revolves around a crumbling mansion full of disturbing secrets and a family that gets creepier the more you get to know them. I loved the eerie atmosphere—it reminded me at times of The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters and Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. It has that same haunting, slow-burn suspense where the truth feels just out of reach.

This book is full of vivid nightmares, hallucinations, twisted family dynamics, and a thick gothic vibe that settles in from the very first pages. It’s deeply unsettling in the best way. If you’re a horror fan or someone who enjoys stories where the house feels like a character in itself, this is a perfect choice.

 

Andrew

 

Lord of the Rings, or any books that we have by or about J.R.R. Tolkien.

The Lord of the Rings audiobooks the library has that are narrated by Andy Serkis are amazing.

 

I'm a fan of some older Stephen King titles, such as Firestarter, Carrie, Pet Semetary, and one of my all-time favorites is Needful Things.

 

The Game of Thrones series by George R.R. Martin are some of my favorites as well.

 

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is incredible, but unfortunately the sequel Ready Player Two does not capture the same magic the first book did.

 

Jurassic Park and The Lost World by Michael Crichton are up there as all-time favorites, as is one of Crichton's last titles before he passed away, Micro.

 

Lastly, just to mix things up a bit, The Walking Dead comics by Robert Kirkman are pretty cool, I know we have at least the first compendium.

Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

 

Reviewed by Andrew

 

Hex by Dutch author Thomas Olde Heuvelt is the story of a small modern-day New England town called Black Spring, which has been terrorized by the ghost of a witch for centuries. The witch has placed a curse on Black Spring, so that whoever lives there but tries to leave is overcome with suicidal urges. Because of this curse, the town goes to extraordinary measures to ensure that no one new moves there. In addition, over the years, the townsfolk have formed a special committee that attempts to hide the witch from visitors to Black Spring, and keeps track of the witch through security cameras that have been placed across town. It is strictly forbidden to interact with the witch in any way, with the committee doling out punishment to anyone who breaks the rules revolving around the witch. When several teenagers who live in Black Spring decide to film pranks performed on the witch for a social media site, it starts a series of horrific events that places the lives of everyone in Black Spring in mortal danger.

Personally, most “horror” books don’t really scare me that much (probably from being de-sensitized from watching too many horror movies), so I have been looking around for a while to find the scariest books ever. This book came up on several people’s top-ten horror lists, so I thought I would give it a try. The book does have a certain amount of suspense and dread, and as I read it, I was constantly reminding of Stephen King’s earlier, darker material. This book definitely has a very dark, grim tone, but its interspersed nicely with occasional humor and interesting fictional history about the town of Black Spring, and how the people who live there have dealt with the witch’s curse for close to 400 years. I also really enjoy when a story has multiple plots that all end up converging together towards the end, similar to Needful Things by Stephen King or Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, and Hex definitely had several interesting overarching plots. The story was also told in such a way that I had absolutely no idea how it would end.   I enjoyed reading as much of it as I could at a time, just to find out what happened in Black Spring next.

Something I wished the author had explored more is how the town of Black Spring deals with the outside world because of their curse. It was definitely touched on but I thought it would have been interesting to see more of the outside world’s view on the town. Maybe a scientific research team attempting to come to the town to try to discover how and why the curse works.  Still, I understood that the author wanted to keep the sense of extreme isolation that the people of Black Spring feel due to the curse.

The book also tends to be very bleak at times (I know, I know, I asked for a VERY scary horror book!)  It made me want to go read something much more light-hearted afterwards.

Overall, I did really enjoy this book. The plot was fast-paced, and always kept me engaged and wondering what was going to happen next in the small town of Black Spring. I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of Stephen King or Dean Koontz, or someone who is looking for a good extra-scary book to read right before Halloween.

Cold Storage by David Koepp

 

 

Reviewed by Andrew

 

Cold Storage by David Koepp is an exciting, fast-paced science-fiction thriller, with some elements of horror as well. The book starts with two government agents tasked with investigating some type of biological threat in Australia.  When they arrive at the site, they find a pod from a space shuttle that has crash-landed to Earth. In the pod is a type of fungus that scientists were attempting to experiment with while in outer space, and as a result, has mutated into something far more lethal than anyone could have imagined. The fungus has been released from the pod and has decimated an entire Australian village at an alarming rate. The government agents are able to contain the spread of the fungus, and manage to bring a sample back to the U.S., where it is sealed in an old nuclear bunker. Fast-forward several decades, and the nuclear bunker has been converted into a civilian storage facility, and everyone has all but forgotten about what is contained several stories below ground.  Now it has managed to break loose from its containment…

I quite enjoyed the fast-paced action in the book.  The author managed to keep the story accelerating at a break-neck pace. The characters are fun and memorable, but the book doesn’t get bogged down with too many details about them. The book is written well, and is surprisingly funny considering the subject matter. This was a relatively quick read, and it felt like the book equivalent of watching an action-packed summer blockbuster.

The main criticism I have about this book is that it felt very similar to certain other stories. Cold Storage seemed to borrow heavily from Michael Crichton, and certain plot points felt eerily similar to the well-known video game, The Last of Us. I also think the book could have been scarier, not holding a flame to Stephen King or Michael Crichton, the latter of whom I consider to be a master of science-fiction horror.

All in all, I still really enjoyed this book. While not on par with other similar stories that manage to do it better, this book still has a story of its own to tell, and is written in a way that is fun and engaging, making you want to keep reading to find out what could possibly happen in the next chapter. If you enjoy science-fiction or thrillers, I would definitely recommend this book.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

  Please welcome Andrew to our bookblog! We're looking forward to having more reviews from him.

Reviewed by Andrew 

Recently, I read the book Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn. This book is about a husband and wife who begin to see different, darker sides of each other through the first several years of their marriage. You are slowly introduced to these characters, learning how they were each raised in different ways and eventually how they meet each other and fall for one another. As you learn about the couple’s past through the wife’s diary, you are thrown into the present where, from the husband’s point of view, the wife has gone missing on their fifth anniversary.  It looks very suspicious and all signs point to the husband as the culprit.

The book’s chapters flip back and forth between the wife’s diary entries, and the husband’s personal narration, with each narrator not giving an entirely full or accurate portrayal of the story.  Instead, each twists the narrative to make the reader support their side of the story.

I greatly enjoyed the back-and-forth of this book, with the author’s writing depicting each of the main characters’ two drastically different points of view. It was difficult to “like” either of the main characters, as they each exhibit horrible qualities in their own different ways. This book has a way of keeping you in suspense, with the wife’s diary dropping subtle hints about how she is afraid of her husband, followed by chapters of the husband’s side of the story as the police begin to question him in his wife’s disappearance.

The one thing I could say about this book that I did not like was the paranoia of wondering how well you really know the people closest to you in your life (which could be said is the entire point of this novel!). The book has a way of its grittiness and doubt seeping its way into your life, the author is so good about conveying the characters’ emotions, it almost makes you feel them yourself. As a recently married man myself, this book was especially terrifying to me. Be sure to have a whimsical happy book to read lined up after this one!

Overall, this suspenseful crime thriller will keep you re-evaluating these main characters well into the story. It is interesting to follow through the couples’ past, learning about how they get to the present of the story, and then following through the investigation of the wife that has gone missing, and wondering whose story to believe. For those of you who enjoy movie adaptations of good books, there is an incredible 2014 movie version of this novel directed by David Fincher (Fight Club, The Social Network, and Se7en), starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike in the lead roles, and an amazing soundtrack by Nine Inch Nails front man, Trent Reznor.