Horror writer Gavin Corlie moves to a secluded house on Lake Caldasac after his wife dies, and befriends a thirteen-year-old boy Finn Horn, who loves fishing, uses a wheelchair and is obsessed with killing the Lake’s legendary monster. Mannheim Rex reads like a monster movie, a contemporary combination of Moby Dick and Jaws,  and it’s full of action and suspense that monster movie fans will enjoy watching on the screen.

Finn’s hunt for the monster is made especially urgent because of his condition. He only has a few months or years left to live, and he wants to do something extraordinary in that time. At one point, he admits that he wants to kill the monster so he’ll be remembered forever, and while his doctor Laurel tries to reassure him that he’ll be remembered regardless, he’s a bit more practical and points out that to most of the world, he’s nobody. Killing the monster, and thereby also proving its existence, will ensure his place in history books. Finn is also wisecracking and fun, and so determined in his quest that he’s at the lake before 4 am every morning, so it’s fun cheering him on and hoping he does catch the monster.

While Finn and Gavin hunt for the lake monster, a very real monster also resides in their town, Sheriff Pope. He likes killing people (often in bloody, brutal ways) and sexually assaulting young children. More than the lake monster, Pope emerges as the villain of the story, particularly as he becomes obsessed with Gavin and Finn, and their friendship. This had the potential of turning really dark and creepy, but Pobi keeps the tone brisk and continues with the monster movie feel, so it’s more about cheering on the good guys as they stay out of Pope’s crosshairs and waiting to see if and how the sheriff will get his just desserts.

One thing that did stand out and that I loved is the romance between Gavin and Laurel. In many ways, Gavin is a fairly typical horror story / monster movie hero — young, (39 years old) handsome, fighting his own demons — and one can easily imagine any number of actors filling the role. In movies, the love interest would likely be an actress much younger than he, likely in her 20s. So I love that Laurel is actually older than Gavin, and at 56, almost two decades older. It’s a neat reversal of the usual Hollywood practice, which is pretty awesome. I do wish we saw a bit more of her age in her description, which mostly says she has small breasts and is a size 4 but makes no mention of any marks of age, but regardless, it’s a pretty cool thing to happen in this book.

Overall, Mannheim Rex is a fun, quick read about the hunt for a monster, with a subplot about the monsters in our midst. The characters are nicely fleshed out, and at times, Pobi seems more interested in Gavin, Laurel and Finn’s family dynamic than in the hunt for the monster, which is nice. Recommended reading for the cottage, preferably one with a lake.

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Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for an advance reading copy of this in exchange for an honest review.

The advance reading copy of The Couple Next Door began with an editor’s note that set up pretty high expectations:

Did it meet the expectations? Not quite, but to be fair, it’s still a good, solid mystery with multiple twists. I just wasn’t blown away, but to be fair, I was expecting the unreliability and twists of Gone Girl, the emotional resonance of The Girl on the Train and a big reveal to rival The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, so to be fair, my expectations were really high.

The story begins with every parent’s worst nightmare: Anne and Marco Conti return home from a dinner party to find their six month old daughter Cora missing. As the search for Cora continues, we learn that not all about Anne and Marco are as they seem, and in both cases their secrets raise the suspicions of Detective Rasbach, who is investigating Cora’s disappearance. Other characters include Anne’s multi-millionaire parents who hate Marco, and Anne and Marco’s flirty next door neighbour who may or may not be interested in an affair with Marco. All of the characters are compromised in some way, and red herrings abound as Detective Rasbach tries to figure out what really happened to Cora.

Like I said, it’s a good, solid mystery, and even when we think we have it figured out, Lapena brings out another twist that complicates the case and keeps Cora from safety. I was curious about the kidnapper’s identity, but not as emotionally caught up as I wanted to be, especially considering that a six month old baby was missing. There was something workmanlike about the reveals; we often found out about intriguing wrinkles only shortly before they are resolved, and suspects are suggested only to be summarily dismissed fairly quickly. The kidnapper’s identity is kept hidden throughout, but the most intriguing possibilities are revealed and/or debunked fairly quickly and the eventual reveal is unexpected but not that surprising. Despite their secrets and their clearly heightened emotions, Anne and Marco weren’t really unreliable as narrators, and both kept the reader fairly well grounded in what really was happening. The descriptions of emotions were perhaps realistic, but also a bit melodramatic, with Anne’s repeated screaming, for example, reminding me more of the damsel in classic detective movies than a real mother in distress. Finally, the twist at the end felt unnecessary, and while the elements for this were well set up in advance, the emotional build up could have been better laid out.

The Couple Next Door is not a bad book, but I caution against high expectations coming in. It’s a good, solid mystery and a quick entertaining read, and will keep you guessing.

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Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I think spiders are gross and scary, so the story Ezekiel Boone tells in The Hatching can pretty much count as one of my top ten nightmares. Prehistoric spiders begin appearing all over the world and all they seem to want to do is feed on humans. Blood drives them wild, and there are scenes where they literally chew their way out of a person.

The novel begins with a tour group in Peru, where the tour guide notices what looks like a black liquid stream engulfs a man nearby and makes him disappear. (Yeah, ew.) There are quite a few more, much gorier, details on what happens when one of the tour group members returns home, but you can probably imagine.

The spiders get US President Stephanie Pilgrim’s attention when China “accidentally” drops a nuclear bomb on one of their own remote provinces in order to stop the spread. Her Chief of Staff Manny’s ex-wife, Melanie Guyer, is a scientist who specializes in spiders. Guyer’s students have discovered an ancient egg sac that they bring to her lab for research, and it’s around this point in the story that you just want to tell the characters on a page that this is a really bad idea. FBI Agent Mike Rich rounds off the core team of protagonists when he is pulled in to investigate a mysterious plane crash involving the spiders.

There isn’t much to say about the story other than it’s exactly what you’d expect in a story about killer spiders. It’s scary and gross, and Boone has a penchant for describing the spiders’ eating habits in great detail, which is a fair warning to any readers with weak stomachs. The characters are also straight out of a potential Hollywood adaptation of this story — the brilliant and ambitious scientist, the detective who just wants to be a good dad, the no-nonsense president, and so on. That being said, I’m glad that the scientist and president were both women, and I especially liked that the National Security Advisor, Alexandra Harris, was a 73 year old woman who looked like a grandmother but was often the most badass person in the room.

I also liked that Boone calls out systemic sexism several times in the story. For example, when Mike asks a uniformed policewoman to watch his daughter while he investigated the plane crash, the policewoman doesn’t let him get away with it.

“Sorry, man. I’m on the clock and can’t play babysitter, especially for a suit.”

Mike shrugged. “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”

“Actually, it’s some kind of sexist bullshit.”

…He looked back at the cop. “And you’re right. I probably wouldn’t have asked a man. Not cool.” [p.94]

Good on the cop for calling him out, and good on Mike for acknowledging it, though ironically, the cop then recommends that Mike leave his daughter with the only female EMT on the scene.

Later, in the White House, when Alexandra disagrees with something that Ben, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, recommends, Manny notices that Ben “didn’t look pissed. He looked furious.” Manny attributes Ben’s overreaction to his discomfort with a woman in power. Manny observes,

Billy Cannon, the secretary of defense, didn’t react like that when Alex challenged him, but that’s probably because Billy looked at Alexandra Harris and saw the national security advisor, while Ben looked at Alex and saw a woman. [p. 116]

It’s an attitude that likely does exist even in such a high echelon of power, and good on Boone for calling it out.

Overall, if you like spiders or enjoy getting scared about spiders, The Hatching is for you. Fair warning: this appears to be the first book of a trilogy or series, and the story ends with Melanie making the kind of announcement that’s usually timed right before a commercial break or the end of a season. It’s designed to whet our appetites for more, and while I don’t know if I’ll keep reading (because the story really is gross), I am definitely curious to find out how humanity eventually defeats the spiders. (And I’m assuming they do, because that’s the type of story this feels like, and also because I really, really don’t want to imagine a spider version of Planet of the Apes in humanity’s future.)

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Thanks to Penguin Random House Canada for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.