BAD MAKES BAD
ILYN WELCH (A Cherry Orozco Mystery #2)
Shotgun Honey Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now
Rating: 4.25* of five
The Publisher Says: Cherry Orozco keeps slapping women—in her dreams. And she’s a sleep-deprived mess. Free group therapy at a neighborhood mental-health center steers her to confront issues of past and present trauma, including those about childhood frenemy Lana Picasso, a one-psycho hazing factory. Adding to her angst is the fact some monster is on the loose, booby-trapping area playgrounds with razor blades among other crimes.
The support sessions appear to help, plus Cherry clicks with a kindred smart-ass named Parvati who devours serial-killer paperbacks and clashes with the indifferent therapist. As group members bare their souls and work on coping strategies, the razor-blade incidents escalate outside the center’s walls. When the villainy is brought up at therapy, Parvati goes overboard relishing the gory details, making her Cherry’s number-one suspect—until she disappears.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Book 2 of two so far, and what a weird find it is! Book 1 is Signs of Pain, which I have not read...yet...but, as this is a development from it, I think I get the drift.
I've said often enough that horror only scares me when it's about people. This weirdly cozy story is in the vein (!) of Dan Wells's I Am Not a Serial Killer. Only this time it's queer and female-centered, which renders (!) it an even-more relatable process of struggle against urges one is not wise to give in to...to put it mildly. And Cherry Orozco, on Ilyn Welch's storyrelling hands, still finds a credible way to harness the energy of the urges in her group therapy sessions.
Given the nature of those urges, she's got a rough go to get something good out of it. The story's got the absolute weirdest cozy vibe imaginable. I was expecting something along the lines of Dexter's hyperbloody quirkiness, and instead got something that vibes like Joan Hess's Maggody. (Though I don't want to mislead you: there is gore. Just, well, cozy gore.) That's a compliment of a high order as Arly (short for "Aerial" as in "photo") and her mom Ruby Bee (short for Rubella Belinda, as in the thing we get our kids vaccinated against) are genuinely fun to hang (!) with.
I've got to stop.
So Cherry has to get, and keep, her head in shape to find the rotten-souled responsible party behind a series of horrible mutilations of kids who encounter the razor blades left on playgrounds. As this is so horrifying to me I wanted a revenge-fantasy ending with all kinds of screaming and blood spurting as the perp was dismembered slowly. (I disapprove of traumatizing children.) Buuut noooo we got a...much more sane, more proportional if less condign ending. Dammit!
Honestly, though, do you need a better reason to pick these up than the fact they're set in Raptor Flats?! I mean! Raptor. Flats. I've about got my trunks half-packed for the move. The side characters all have a well-settled feel, so I'm guessing they's mostly brought along from book 1. Crucially I felt more like I wanted to go get to know them, not like I was trying to make new friends in high school.
The oddness of the idea is what makes my response to the book so welcoming, I think. I'm delighted by Cherry and her inner monologue; I'm charmed by the folk of Raptor Flats; I'm ready to go back already. I'm not going to tell you it's an intricately plotted puzzle. Instead I'll tell you that, every step of the way, Ilyn Welch told me a story I enjoyed reading and believed (within my scope of suspension of disbelief) was completely true to the people it involved.
I even accepted the villain's heinous villainy, and what a genuinely detestable villain indeed!, and thus child-endangering actions. Though I won't again. Once is all you get.
Fun #Deathtober romp, well worth your time and such a truly minimal amount of your treaure.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.