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booknook(I think today was my day. Here have two reviews at once)
Title You Have Gone Too Far
Author Carlene O'Connor
Genre - Mystery
CW - kidnapping, murder of pregnant women, pregnant women being held until they give birth, child kidnapping
So yeah, this is dark content. Set in Dingle, Ireland, the book darts back and forth between three main point of view characters Dimpna Wilde veterinarian, Detective Inspector Cormac O'Brien and Shauna a young deaf ready to give birth woman. If I'm honest there were a few things about the beginning and ending that bothered me but I rounded up from a 3.5 here.
Even though an amateur sleuth is part of this, it's definitely a police procedural in feel. Dimpna is there because she is smartly drawn in by helping with the lambing and calming the young son of the rancher (as birth is traumatic) which is important later and one of the former cult members comes to her clinic.
Because yes, this does tie into a cult that was in the area some decades before that Cormac's Detective Sergeant Barbara Neely had worked and while they jailed 2 people not all the cultists were caught (we also get to see the journals of those women). The disappearances of pregnant women now (and the death of one) looks so much like what happened decades ago and the men they put away have been released because they served their sentence.
Dimpna is also worried about her dementia ridden father, her psychic mother, her newly adult son without much direction in life, her frayed friendship with someone else, Sheila, potentially mixed up in this as her cousin is also 9 months pregnant and Dimpna's relationship with Cormac that's starting up. So there's a lot going on in this.
I like Dimpna and Cormac (but I didn't feel I got to know him as well, he has some serious quirks that I might have known better had I read the first two books) I also liked Shauna, the kidnap victim who sums up what the cultists are looking for (I don't want to spoil that) but at the same time has a strength to her that I liked.
What i didn't like so much was a couple of the clues/red herrings in the first 40 pages because they seemed heavy handed, a little too obvious but that was fine. However the ending bugged me a lot more. Without spoiling it, I can say it felt like it would have played out the same with or without Dimpna and Cormac and that was annoying.
Overall, though, I liked it a lot. I would definitely read more in this series.
Title Stitches
Author Junji Ito & Hirokatsu Kihara
Genre horror (illustrated short stories with bonus manga)
The blurb says it all. In this slender volume of nine 'stitches' (i.e. short stories) you have two power houses the horror manga great Junji Ito teaming up with author Hirokatsu Kihara. These little stitches are treasure boxes of a short story, theoretically true, but definitely with an urban legend feel to them and each are lushy illustrated in Junji's typical style which has become iconic in horror. There is also a bonus manga by Junji at the end.
We have tumors with a face, little girls haunting libraries, frightening lights, dead neighbors, unphotographable beauties, puppets with phantom puppeteers (which is the one that got me as puppets freak me out) haunt kimonos, barefoot girls in the snow and disembodied lips (which was the only one I didn't care for) and then Junji's bathhouse bonus manga.
I very much enjoyed this. I was a little torn about the hard cover though it wasn't much more than most manga volumes these days because of it (but is much less pages).
Title You Have Gone Too Far
Author Carlene O'Connor
Genre - Mystery
CW - kidnapping, murder of pregnant women, pregnant women being held until they give birth, child kidnapping
So yeah, this is dark content. Set in Dingle, Ireland, the book darts back and forth between three main point of view characters Dimpna Wilde veterinarian, Detective Inspector Cormac O'Brien and Shauna a young deaf ready to give birth woman. If I'm honest there were a few things about the beginning and ending that bothered me but I rounded up from a 3.5 here.
Even though an amateur sleuth is part of this, it's definitely a police procedural in feel. Dimpna is there because she is smartly drawn in by helping with the lambing and calming the young son of the rancher (as birth is traumatic) which is important later and one of the former cult members comes to her clinic.
Because yes, this does tie into a cult that was in the area some decades before that Cormac's Detective Sergeant Barbara Neely had worked and while they jailed 2 people not all the cultists were caught (we also get to see the journals of those women). The disappearances of pregnant women now (and the death of one) looks so much like what happened decades ago and the men they put away have been released because they served their sentence.
Dimpna is also worried about her dementia ridden father, her psychic mother, her newly adult son without much direction in life, her frayed friendship with someone else, Sheila, potentially mixed up in this as her cousin is also 9 months pregnant and Dimpna's relationship with Cormac that's starting up. So there's a lot going on in this.
I like Dimpna and Cormac (but I didn't feel I got to know him as well, he has some serious quirks that I might have known better had I read the first two books) I also liked Shauna, the kidnap victim who sums up what the cultists are looking for (I don't want to spoil that) but at the same time has a strength to her that I liked.
What i didn't like so much was a couple of the clues/red herrings in the first 40 pages because they seemed heavy handed, a little too obvious but that was fine. However the ending bugged me a lot more. Without spoiling it, I can say it felt like it would have played out the same with or without Dimpna and Cormac and that was annoying.
Overall, though, I liked it a lot. I would definitely read more in this series.
Title Stitches
Author Junji Ito & Hirokatsu Kihara
Genre horror (illustrated short stories with bonus manga)
The blurb says it all. In this slender volume of nine 'stitches' (i.e. short stories) you have two power houses the horror manga great Junji Ito teaming up with author Hirokatsu Kihara. These little stitches are treasure boxes of a short story, theoretically true, but definitely with an urban legend feel to them and each are lushy illustrated in Junji's typical style which has become iconic in horror. There is also a bonus manga by Junji at the end.
We have tumors with a face, little girls haunting libraries, frightening lights, dead neighbors, unphotographable beauties, puppets with phantom puppeteers (which is the one that got me as puppets freak me out) haunt kimonos, barefoot girls in the snow and disembodied lips (which was the only one I didn't care for) and then Junji's bathhouse bonus manga.
I very much enjoyed this. I was a little torn about the hard cover though it wasn't much more than most manga volumes these days because of it (but is much less pages).
no subject
Date: 2024-10-15 01:23 am (UTC)The magna anthology also sounds promising. Thank you for sharing!
no subject
Date: 2024-10-15 02:25 am (UTC)I would like to read more of hers but yes, there is a lot of trauma revolving around pregnant women over two generations so this is some heavy crap
no subject
Date: 2024-10-22 09:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-23 02:35 am (UTC)