The blog of author Stacy Kingsley - Stacy Kingsley

Book Review - THE LYING GAME by Ruth Ware

2/1/2020

*I want to start by apologizing for not writing anything last month. It is the first month since I started this blog in April of 2014 that I haven't written a single thing in one month. I will update everyone on my life this week, but for today, here is a new book review. Can't say I loved it.

The Lying Game by Ruth Ware was not the best book I've read of hers. The main character, Isa, is a new mother who is unable or uncomfortable leaving her new child, Freya, and who continually states she isn't sure she loves her partner. One night she gets a text, one she dreads, and she finds that she in entangled in something with friends from her childhood, something that is a secret she doesn't want to deal with. Her friends, Kate, Thea, and Fatima, all were in on the secret, something that happened and caused all of them to leave the boarding school they were attending together.

The entire point of this game was in part the title, the lying game, a game the girls play and enjoy while in school. This game was something they did to entertain themselves and something they used to combat the boredom they felt. However, the secrets were all mostly harmless, until they weren't. When Kate's father disappears things go to hell, and her step-brother, Luc, is sent back to live with his drug addict mother. Kate, at sixteen, is unable to take care of both Luc and herself.

I didn't find the main character, Isa, to be very interesting or very entertaining. She was annoying and I thought she was not at all likeable. There were times during my reading that I wanted to switch to another character, I begged for one of those books that followed more than one character. This novel did go back and forth between present day and the past, but it wasn't anything special. None of the characters were very interesting, and the rest, to be honest, weren't very developed. I would have liked more about Thea and her alcoholism, or about Fatima and living a Muslim life with her husband and children, or Kate and how she had been living in the house she had grown up in, the one where bad things happened.

The biggest issue I had with this book was that it was obvious pretty early on what happened, and it wasn't what the author was trying to lead you to believe. While I have enjoyed one of the three books I've read by Ruth Ware, I feel that she tries too hard to try making things "surprising" but in reality they never are.

This was not a great book, in my opinion. I understand others enjoyed it, and I will admit that Ruth Ware isn't a terrible author, I only think her sense of disbelief is misplaced and that she should try a little harder to write a cohesive and appealing story, and not try as hard to mislead the reader as to what is happening.

Book Review - PHANTOMS by Christian Kiefer

10/22/2019

Phantoms by Christian Kiefer is told from a recent Vietnam Vet's point-of-view. John Frazeier comes home from Vietnam not knowing what to do with his life. A broken young man, like most who came back, and has decided to spend time with his Grandmother and a distant Aunt. The story floats through several decades, from before World War II to 1983. It also includes the lives of several different families, the Takahashis, who were displaced and sent to an interrnment camp during the second world war, the Wilson's, who owned the land the Takahashis lives on and rented a place on, and Frazier himself, as a war hero who wonders what happened to another war hero, of a different time. Ray. Ray Tahahashis arrived home after serving in WWII to find that his family had been removed, and that he was no longer welcome. Then he disappeared. After losing friends, John finds that he can't let the story go, and finds himself obsessed later in life with the outcome.

As a story that involved different time periods it was interesting how these stories intertwined. Seeing a man coming home from the Second World War to find his family and everything he loved gone, then to find out later what happened and how much life had screwed him over, was upsetting and fascinating. Most won't think of the repercussions of the life some leaves behind and the life they return to, especially given the time some soldiers spent away, and still spend on deployment. After most wars, the man or boy sent away is not the man or boy who comes back, and often the lives they are coming back to is not the same either.

Ray finds this to be the truth when he returns to what he thought of as home, only to find that everything has changed and he is no longer welcome. As the story moves on the reader gets to see how unwelcome Ray is when the woman he loves and the people of the town react to him in an unexpected way. Decades later, when John returns from Vietnam with the same kind of feeling about where home is, he find himself embroiled in discussions between his distant Aunt, Evelyn Wilson, and Ray's mother Kimiko Takahashi, who only want to know where her son is. Evelyn Wilson however is full of secrets that she is unwilling to share, keeping a family in the dark, and creating more and more unnecessary heartache.

John, is dealing with his own issues, memories and ghosts from his time in Vietnam. He spends some time with another soldier who was with him, Chigger, but in the end, no really gets their happy ending.

This novel not only shows a portrayal of what it looks like for a soldier to come home, but also what secrets can do when left unspoken. One family doesn't find out the entire truth, and another searches for something they let go of. In the end, there isn't justice for anyone, even John loses by not reaching out to someone he should have reached out to.

There are parts of this novel that were hard to read, especially as someone who has been military for most of their life and who has sent men off to war. Parts of this novel were hard to read because of the blatant racism and disgust that some of the character portrayed, Evelyn Wilson was not a pleasant person, and neither was her daughter, Helen.

In the end, the only issue I had with this book was the slipping of time forward and backward. There were moments that were confusing, and there were moments that were overdone, but overall, the book was pretty good.

Movie Review - NIGHTMARE CIRCUS (1974)

8/19/2019

The 1970’s pushed out a whole lot of interesting horror and science fiction movies, and a lot of real stinkers. Nightmare Circus aka Barn of the Naked Dead aka Terror Circus is a 1974 movie that falls flat, even thought the idea behind it is an interesting one. From the IMDb website the synopsis is as follows: Three showgirls on their way to Las Vegas have car trouble and are stuck all night out in the desert. The next morning cheerful Andre offers them help in fixing their car. However, Andre is really a maniac with a lot of family problems; his mother ran out on him when he was a child so now he keeps kidnapped women chained up in his barn and trains them to perform circus tricks. Andre's father is still around of course, but because the old homestead is next to a nuclear test site he has been transformed into a raving homicidal mutant that Andre keeps locked up in a shed.

I thought this movie had an interesting idea, as the idea behind imprisoning women to force them to perform in a sick, twisted circus is fascinating. However, there were so many holes and things I didn’t quite understand, or believe. For example, Andre has over ten women chained in a barn, yet none of them, when chained together and walking around, think to fight and attack him. He is the only one there, and if they had thought to attack him, and take his gun, then they might have freed themselves. Instead they cry and whine in the barn, they listen to him as he says they are his now, and they belong to him.

When they have the chance to escape, they realize the full extent of Andre’s abuse and anger. Even then, I believe that some of them would fight, or at least try to work together to escape.

A huge problem with this movie was that for a horror movie, it wasn’t frightening, just a little uncomfortable at times. It is kind of a mix of Psycho and The Hills have Eyes. Not a good movie, not a bad movie, more a fun 1970’s campy film. Some might enjoy it and some might become annoyed over and over by it (like me).

Book Review - 20TH CENTURY GHOSTS by Joe Hill

2/4/2019

I enjoy a lot of what Joe Hill writes, in fact NOS4A2 was a favorite of mine. I really enjoyed it, and decided I needed to read more of Joe Hill's works. I didn't care for Heart Shaped Box, but I have to say I did enjoy some of the stories in 20th Century Ghosts. The first and second stories were my favorite. The title of the first was "20th Century Ghost" and the second story title was "Pop Art." The first story was about a woman who haunted a movie theater, and the second story was about a boy whose best friend was an inflatable boy. Both stuck with me and were very good, very interesting, and made me wish I wrote at least the second one. There were some hits and misses among the other stories, but besides "My Father's Mask" and "The Black Phone" they weren't really spooky, frightening, or even suspenseful.

My issue with a lot of these short stories were that a lot of them ended by not ending. They were open ended or they suggested that there was more to the story. My least favorite story was "Abraham's Boys" which may or may not have been about vampires and Van Helsing. It was unclear if the father was a vampire, was somehow related to Drac, or how he might have been related to Mina. The two children remind me of the children in the movie Frailty, and how the father in the movie treated his two sons, one son who believed him, and one son who thought his father was insane. It was the same with Abraham's two sons. One son believes that there are vampires and believes that their father is a protector (maybe), and the other son, who doesn't know of the old country or doesn't remember things from the old country, and he believes in what is true for most American kids, that most monsters are the things of legend. Now, what happened in the end was a little startling, and I thought creative, but it lead to more questions.

I'm not sure I would recommend this, but since these are short stories, and it is a fast read, I'd recommend at least trying it. Sometimes, especially with short stories, people have differing reactions, or thoughts on a story. One person might like one story, while another person might hate that same story. So, if you like horror, or suspense, and you don't mind reading things that make you think a little, read this.

Movie Review - THE AXE MURDERS OF VILLISCA

8/27/2018

Where do I start with The Axe Murders of Villisca? I think I will start with the most interesting tidbit about the movie, there really were axe murders in a house, and they happened on July of 1912. Another little bit of interesting information is that the murderer was never found. This movie is supposed to take place in the house of the murders, and it revolves around three misfits who all have something dark in their past.

The main character somehow was never convicted of being complicit in the robbery his father took him along to commit, even after both his father and the clerk were killed. Apparently his best friend took the fall for him, but it still doesn’t make sense. His best friend is a young gay man who lost his entire family in a car accident. And the day they decide to go visit the house for their small time, and small town, show about the paranormal, they meet a young female peer who has made friends with the wrong men.

This movie is honestly just a huge mess. It doesn’t delve deep enough into the reason behind the horrors that happened at the house, where apparently eight people died. This in itself makes things hard, because if I have no idea what causes the evil to happen, then I am not going to care much about why it happens. It might involve something about regret, guilt, and possession, but it isn’t really given much credence or thought.

There were no really scary moments, and for a movie about ghosts or possession I would have liked something to be frightening or suspenseful, but there was neither. In the end I don’t have much to say about this movie except, don’t waste your time. It isn’t even a movie that you’d watch simply because it is on streaming. No matter how you watch it, it will feel like a waste of time. So, if you heed my review, and listen to what I am actually writing here, then you will skip this movie and find something else to watch. There are several movies on this blog that I have reviewed better than this movie.

Book Review - OUR LITTLE SECRET by Roz Nay

8/26/2018

SPOILERS!!!

In Our Little Secrets by Roz Nay, the scene starts in a police interrogation room. A young twenty-six year old woman, Angela, is being questioned in a police station by a Detective Novak about her relationship with a young man named HP and his wife. During her time in the police station, Angela continually goes back, beginning her story in the formative high school years of her life, when she first met HP. Throughout their years HP and Angela were friends, but eventually they become more involved after being very close friends for years. When Angela finds that she is being forced to go to England to go to university they make an agreement that they will see how things happen, but they both apparently want their relationship to continue.

In all honesty this book wasn't bad, but I didn't believe what was going on. I didn't believe that Detective Novak would continually let Angela run her mouth off about what life was like as she grew up and grew closer to HP. Every officer I know would have more aggressively brought her back to the subject at hand, what has happened and where is the missing wife? Being able to ramble through her life, meeting HP, inserting herself into his life later, and basically lying about everything, seemed to be a little to much. She was given more time than anyone would have been given to talk about her past relationship.

The one thing that I did take away was the narcissistic nature of the main character, Angela. She was obviously either mentally ill or had antisocial personality disorder. This book did remind me a little of the book The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve. The stories had similar main characters, woman who were in love with a man who they weren't sure loved them, or a love triangle.

The ending of the book did surprise me. Although there were characters I wanted a little more information about, like Angela's self-involved mother, her new best friend Freddy, and her absent but intelligent father. I even wanted more information about Saskia, the wife of HP. I don't feel she had enough of her own personality and character, which I do understand since she is being represented through Angela's eyes, and Angela is obviously biased.

I do think this book was interesting, and I do recommend that if you liked books like Girl On a Train and Gone Girl this might hit some of the right spots for you. While I enjoyed it, it did seem to stretch a little long, and I wished that it had gotten deeper into the story earlier. After a certain point I didn't care what was going on between Angela and HP. I just wanted to get to what happened after HP and Saskia were married.

Series Review - 13 REASONS WHY

4/21/2017

Okay, so I know that there is a lot of controversy around this Netflix series, but I decided to watch it, in fact I binged it yesterday and today. I have to say I didn't like it.

I will be honest, the teenage years are hard for a lot of us, as humans, puberty, and learning who you are and what you like or want, it is not only confusing but there is zero guidance. We do the best we can, and some of us make it through the teenage years, while some of us struggle through or don't make it at all. I am not saying that these years are hard for everyone, but in all honesty, it is, if nothing else, confusing and questioning.

When I was in 8th grade I was horribly bullied, and it really started in 7th, but got worse in 8th. I was called names, I was shunned from groups, and I was teased endlessly. Painting a picture of myself, I was a scrawny girl, with glasses too large for my small face, and brownish curly hair that at this point I did not know how to handle. I was quiet and artistic, and when I tried to make friends I was told that I was stupid and should just go away (which a child can take many ways). Things got a little better when I went from a christian school to the public high school. The people I met there were just as cruel, but there were more students, so it wasn't all focused on me. Girls were often called sluts, and teenage angst meant many of us fought, internal and external struggles. We made out with each other because we were curious and scared. We were scared that no one would understand why we were still virgins at seventeen, and we often wondered what was wrong with us. Today the only thing that has changed is we can go after each other through multiple layers of social medial.

So back to 13 REASONS WHY. The biggest problem with this is that the suicide is portrayed as everyone's fault but the actual person who committed suicide. Everyone else in the show is blamed by the deceased girl as someone who caused or contributed to her death. My opinion: suicide is a selfish choice people make when they feel like they have nothing left to offer or any other avenues to get help. It is no one's fault but the person who has taken their own life. No one is to blame for a suicide but the person who has actually committed suicide. Yes, there may be warning signs, but then again there may not be signs.

Suicide is NEVER the answer to solve your problems. It is a final decision, and you can never turn back from that. I know people who have attempted and been unsuccessful and I know people who have been successful, I hurt for them, but there is nothing I can do, or could have done, to change their minds. The only thing left after a suicide is pain, and it isn't even something I can fathom explaining.

Another thing I disliked about this show in particular, none of the characters were likeable. The main character, Hannah, is possibly the worst human being. And - SPOILER HERE SO STOP IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT - the fact that she watched her friend being raped and did absolutely nothing was utterly disgusting. As a human being I was so angered by this I almost stopped watching there, because who does that? Who sees someone being assaulted and doesn't say anything? I know a lot of people witness crimes and don't report it, but none of the characters were likeable, and this was just one thing. Another character I hated was the other main character, Clay. He kept listening to the tapes Hannah left behind like a big idiot and he did nothing. One of the other students has been seen stalking and photographing female students and he doesn't go to the police. He just lets it go, even though he tells the stalker kid that he doesn't want to see him, he doesn't report it, meaning that other students might still be stalked by this student. And I have seen teenagers, what teenager has seven, yes, seven, visible tattoos. I mean, some of these students seemed like they were in their twenties at least.

None of the characters were likeable, and I felt that the students portrayed were only a small section of students. Teenagers, like every other freaking person on Earth, can be cruel. You have offices where women judge other women by the length of their skirts, or the tightness of their clothes. You see men judging men on the brand of shoes they wear or the types of cars they drive. And honestly NONE of it matters. You know what does matter, humans. We matter to each other and this television show not only shows the worst side of EVERYONE, but it also glorifies suicide. No one, well almost no one, in the entire show says that Hannah's death is Hannah's fault. It is entirely Hannah's fault. No one is to blame but Hannah. Her death isn't an answer to anything, it didn't solve any of her problems, it was literally just an end, a stupid end to a person's unfulfilled life.

This show has no redeeming value. There is no point. It doesn't say suicide is bad. It doesn't say there is help out there for people who are struggling. It doesn't even offer help for teenagers who might be struggling through some of the issues involved in the show, like: Alcoholism, substance abuse, parental abuse and neglect, depression, rape, bullying, teen sex, and I could go on!

I do not recommend this show to anyone. It has no redeeming value. There is no point to it, except to say that if someone commits suicide it is not there fault, because someone out there should have noticed, and someone out there should have done something. If someone really wants to commit suicide, they are going to do it. Plus, the scene of the actual suicide, while some may be disturbed by it, it wasn't actually very realistic.

So, skip this Netflix original series. It isn't worth it. It has zero purpose except to place the blame of someone's suicide on anyone but the person who is dead.

Movie Review - SUSPECT ZERO

3/29/2016

Parts of this movie were quite disturbing, such as the view of a FBI agent who beats a man to death. Sure, he might have deserved it because he was a serial killer of children, but that isn't the point, the law doesn't murder because it can. And why is the main character willing to kill one serial killer and not another. Because he can, he needs to work on who is justice.

Sir Ben Kingsley is an actor who I am willing to watch in pretty much anything he has done, he is up there with William DeFoe and Gary Oldman. Kingsley is a serial killer killer. He hunts down and kills other serial killers, leaving watercolor paintings and chalk drawings behind, but the real question is - does he have a gift or is her just crazy?

Aaron Eckhart play the FBI agent who is hunting Kingsley. He his a little crazy himself and must tame his inner monster.

This movie was released in 2004 and was an interesting take on serial killing at the time. Not many movies were about serial killers killing other serial killers. One of the serial killers is a very interesting killer, who keeps a trunk full of well organized trophies. One annoying part of the movie, however, was the sound effects and the buzzing they kept replaying in the background. It was terrible, and got on my nerves. It was so grating I almost turned the movie off, but I wanted to see where things were going to go.

Another annoying thing in this movie was the red tinted views that were used every now and then. It actually gave me a slight headache. I don't recommend watching this movie if you are already nauseous or if you are experiencing a headache or migraine.

This is a short review, but it says as much as I can about this movie. It was an interesting movie, and I'd recommend watching it once. Not as gritty as SEVEN, although that may be what it was trying for, but a good movie nonetheless.

Movie Review - THE MIRROR

3/28/2016

Another "found footage" type of movie, yay (I say this sarcastically). From IMDb - "Three intrepid flatmates who purchase the supposedly haunted antique on eBay and set up round the clock cameras in the hopes of capturing evidence of something going bump in the night." This movie was released in 2014, and I don't think it was new when it was released, meaning I am pretty sire there were several others like this when it came out.

Three young people, two men and a woman, are trying to win a chance at a million dollars, and yet nothing much happens. The first 40 minutes of the movie are dull. All it involves is a mirror, a GoPro, a possibly haunted mirror, and the insanity of a young man walking around at night not knowing what he is doing. Again this was another dull movie about a haunted or possessed object, that infects those around it. Really, what it seems to do is make the two dudes and the girl depressed. Which I totally understand since they aren't doing anything but watching television, and watching a mirror, while videotaping everything. The shaky camera angles have already been overdone, especially by 2014, and there really isn't much new that can be done.

These "flatmates" just wander around their flat, hoping to catch the mirror doing something, when of course it isn't the mirror that actually does anything, it's the mates who are infected by whatever the mirror is possessed by.

It goes round and round, and in reality it is just dull. The knife welding young man just gets annoying and it is so obvious by the end what is going to happen. Movies like this should try to be just a little less predictable.

Movie Review - ASYLUM

3/28/2016

Asylum was released in 1997 and I am so glad I missed it. According to IMDb this movie was about "A private investigator, mentally disturbed by his father's suicide, goes undercover in a mental institution to discover the murderer of a friend who was a doctor at the clinic." It starred Robert Patrick of TERMINATOR 2 fame as the main character Nicholas, and had other actors (such as Malcolm McDowell) in minor and unexplored roles.

I often look forward to movies set in asylums, but this movie just didn't deliver in scares or interest. The viewer isn't told much about the suicide of Nicholas's father, and it only comes through in flashbacks. The "friend" is actually Nicholas's doctor, who called the night before because he wanted Nicholas to investigate the disappearance of several patients. I knew almost right away who the bad guy was, and this movie didn't strike me as different from any other movie set in an asylum. There were crazy characters, one female character who was often in trouble or being used by male orderlies, and the one crazy person who was crazy but maybe not crazy.

This movie was dull, in fact it was so dull I din't actually pay a lot of attention as people were murdered. I was utterly disappointed because I like Robert Patrick and Malcolm McDowell, and this was just a waste of their talent. None of the characters were that interesting to me, and I was actually not invested in any of them. I didn't care about what happened to them, and as the main character was a private investigator, I was surprised how clueless he seemed to be. He wandered around the asylum like a bonehead, almost everyone knew who he really was, and there was no one taking care of anything. It was just annoying and boring.

So, do I recommend this movie? Absolutely not. Was it at all scary? Absolutely not. Was it worth an hour and a half? Nope.

So don't waste your time. Skip this one.