ARC Review: The Dark Beneath the Ice by Amelinda Bérubé

Book info:

Title:  The Dark Beneath the Ice
Author:   

Amelinda Bérubé

Genre:  YA Suspense/paranormal
Release Date: August 7th, 2018
Publisher:  Sourcebooks Fire
Source:  ARC requested from publisher for review, which did not influence my opinion
My rating:  3 stars

Synopsis:
Something is wrong with Marianne. 

It's not just that her parents have split up, or that life hasn't been the same since she quit dancing. Or even that her mother has checked herself into the hospital. 

She's losing time. Doing things she would never do. And objects around her seem to break whenever she comes close. 

Something is after her. But a first attempt at an exorcism calls down the full force of the thing's rage. It demands Marianne give back what she stole. And Marianne must uncover the truth that lies beneath it all before the nightmare can take what it think it's owed, leaving Marianne trapped in the darkness of the other side.

My Review:
This was a book that caught my attention when I first heard about it.  I am a big fan of paranormal stories, and I love a good ghost story, especially possession or even poltergeists.  In fact, when I was a teenager, I used to check all the nonfiction books on poltergeists and other ghosts out from the library all the time.  While there were points in this that were spooky, all in all I wasn't blown away.  I get that part of the author's plan was to leave us wondering the whole time just what was real and what wasn't, hence the reference to the movie Black Swan on the back cover.  However, it also references Paranormal Activity, and that made me expect some more jump in your seat type of moments.  It's possible that this is a story that just would need to be on screen for the effect of losing time and creepiness around the edges to do anything really for me. And I could totally see this as a movie.  I feel like in this case, I'd probably appreciate it more.  For a book it just didn't grab me enough, soon enough, for me to be blown away by it.  I still gave it 3 stars, because as I said, I could see it as a movie doing a good job at scaring me.  And I'm sure there are others who enjoy that kind of story in a book, so I don't want anyone to not pick it up because of my issues with it.  I think if you've been interested in reading it, you should just think about whether the things I look for in a story are the same as what you look for, and if not, then you should definitely give it a try!  That's what so great about books, there are so many different types and different stories and different writing styles out there, there is something for everyone.  

Review: Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix (TBR Challenge #1)

First I'd like to thank vvb32reads for this book which I won on from a giveaway on their blog.   This was a book I just knew I had to read, as well as own, as soon as I saw it. It was almost fitting for where I live because we just got an IKEA store in town and the book looks like an IKEA catalog and takes place in an IKEA knock-off store.  The book was a pretty original idea in the way it was formatted.  However, the story itself wasn't that original.  In a way it was similar to the background story of the Poltergeist movie, or any other story where a new building was built on top of an old prison/asylum/burial ground/you get the idea.  That doesn't mean it wasn't a good story, don't get me wrong, I just wasn't as blown away as I had expected I would be.  Still, I love the format of the book so much that I won't ever get rid of it even if I don't intend to read it again.  It will be fun to look at the ads and other pictures in it again.

Basically we have the main character, Amy.  She is an employee at the Orsk store, but is hoping to get transferred back to the Orsk store she had worked at before, mainly because she's not a fan of her boss.  Her boss's name is Basil.  And she feels like he is always pushing at her, like he doesn't think she can do her job.  On this day it starts with some weird things happening as the store gets ready to open.  Some doors aren't opening, the escalators don't turn on right away, a couch is found with what looks and smells like someone took a dirty diaper and smeared it all over.  And when Amy tries to sneak around a back way to avoid Basil, she sees a man that she doesn't recognize as an employee in the store before they have opened.  When she gets called to the office, she assumes she is going to get fired.  But another employee, Ruth Anne is also sitting by his office waiting to talk to Basil. And since Ruth Anne is like "the" model employee, Amy thinks maybe something else is going on.  It turns out that the district manager wants them to figure out what is happening to cause these weird things before corporate people stop by.  So Basil asks Amy and Ruth Anne to stay at the store overnight to help him catch whoever might be causing these issues.

The night starts out pretty uneventful.  Other than when Amy keeps going to the bathroom to get away from Basil's annoying talking, she notices graffiti showing up that is new.  And then when they go out to do their rounds, they find that one of the doors won't lock.  When they split up to continue the rounds, Amy and Ruth Anne run into two other employees, Trinity and Matt, who have snuck in to do their own investigating, only they are there to look for ghosts.  Part of the reasoning behind their search for the paranormal is all the people who have received text messages from unknown numbers saying "help" whenever they've had their phones in the store.  Also, Trinity has done research showing that the store was built on land that was once a prison with a bad history.

Of course all kinds of scary things begin to occur, they get separated, and things go from bad to worse.  When Amy tries to call 911 to get the police there, against Basil's initial wishes, the cops can't seem to find the store, their GPS tells them there is no such location.  In the end, not all of them will make it out, and those who do will not know how to go on as if the night never happened.

When I say scary things, I mean extremely creepy things.  I could totally see this as a horror movie, the descriptions of what happen were definitely pretty detailed and like I said, scary.  The catalog pictures go from being pretty realistic seeming types of furniture to horror/torture contraptions that go along with the story.  A fun, scary read, as well as a quick one.