My Year in Books 2024: July

Time for my mini-reviews of the books I read in July. Only two books on this month's list, I'm afraid, but in case you're interested, here are my review posts from the rest of the year so far: January, February, March, April, May, June

Death by Laura Thalassa (2021)

In May, I posted about the first three books in Laura Thalassa’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse erotic romance series. You may remember, it was a bit of a revelation for me (pun intended). I loved the first three books, particularly Famine, and I was planning to wait to read the final one. I didn’t actually wait that long in the end. Death is, as I expected, a bonkers thing of beauty. The final horseman – the one we’ve been told is the worst of the four, and a ‘dour asshole’ (quote from Famine) – arrives on earth to make the Last Judgement. But Death isn’t quite the creature we’ve been led to expect. Yes, he’s terrifying. But he’s also the embodiment of the concept of Death, so his very existence is intricately connected to life. He’s also really sexy, of course, but why wouldn’t he be? Death is at once foreboding, apocalyptic, noble, melancholy, lonely and horny. And when he meets Lazarus, a woman who for some reason cannot die, he begins (of course) to question his purpose. I loved this one – Death is surprisingly easy to fall in love with, for all his utter oddity. But my favourite thing was when a familiar trio turned up to try and thwart their brother’s plans. I genuinely gave a little squeal when Famine arrived with characteristic drama. Which was embarrassing, as I was reading the book on the tram at the time. I can’t explain it, but I genuinely love this series.

The House That Horror Built by Christina Henry (2024)

The next book was one of the novels included in a recent Abominable Books box. The blurb sounded right up my street. Harry is a single mum who gets a job cleaning for Javier Castillo, a reclusive horror film director who lives an isolated life in his Chicago mansion. The house is filled with horror memorabilia, including props from Castillo’s own films. However, there is also a cloud of mystery around the director’s retreat from Hollywood and the nature of the scandal that led to it. When Castillo encourages a more social relationship, inviting Harry and her son Gabe to dinner at his house, it starts to become clear that there may be another presence in the mansion, and Harry starts to become anxious about her and her son’s safety. The set-up for this one is really great, and the titular house is atmospheric and evocative. Harry is a well-drawn character, and her reasons for staying in a job that is both demanding and kinda creepy are plausible. However, the book runs out of steam in the final third, and the pacing starts to go off as we move towards the conclusion. The problem is that the mystery just can’t be sustained. Castillo’s retreat from Hollywood happened just a few years before the book begins, so it’s a matter of a simple internet search to uncover the scandal. From there, it’s fairly easy to work out what might be going on, and the book tumbles towards a rather abrupt ending.

My Year in Books 2024: May

I had quite a bit of my own writing to do this month, so I didn't read much for pleasure until towards the end of the month. I actually started the first book on this list at the beginning of May, but it took me a few weeks to read all of it, as I just couldn't find the time. In the final week of May, something very weird happened that meant I very quickly read three novels back-to-back, but more on that below!

In case you're interested, here are my reviews from the rest of the year so far: January, February, March, April

Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz (2024)

I started this month with the latest in a series that I’ve really enjoyed so far. Close to Death is the latest instalment in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series. The overall premise of the series is that the character ‘Anthony Horowitz’ has been tasked by his publisher to write books based on his escapades with former police officer Hawthorne. Together, they solve fiendishly complicated murders, with Horowitz playing Watson to Hawthorne’s Holmes. I’ve loved the meta-fictional fun of these books, with references to the ‘real’ author’s career scattered throughout. Close to Death is a little different to the other books in the series. In this one, rather than investigating a crime that has happened in the ‘present’, Horowitz decides to take another look at an old case on which Hawthorne advised the police. The murder is – supposedly – solved, with the culprit already identified. Horowitz’s task is to go through the case files and write it up as a narrative, but Hawthorne only gives him a little information at a time. I liked the set-up for the crime – it takes place in a small gated estate, with a cast of quirky characters. However, I’m not sure the formula works that well. The conceit (that Horowitz has to work things out as he goes along) doesn’t quite make sense, and the investigation keeps getting side-tracked by his determination to uncover the increasingly implausible secrets of Hawthorne’s identity. I enjoyed it, but it’s not as strong as the previous books in the series.

Pestilence by Laura Thalassa (2018)

Right… time for something a little unexpected. I stumbled upon a series of books by accident while I was looking up something else online. I’ve got a bit of a thing for representations of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in popular culture, and I was searching for a horror book that I vaguely remember having some cool horsemen in it. Instead, I stumbled on Thalassa’s series… of erotic dark romance novels. I can’t pretend I wasn’t intrigued… erotic Horsemen of the Apocalypse? This I have to see. (And disclaimer: I do not generally read either erotica or romance.) The first in the series was available to read for free on Amazon Prime, so I thought I’d read it for a bit of a laugh. I’m sure you can imagine what happened next. I genuinely couldn’t put Pestilence down. The apocalypse in it is horrible – the premise is that the horsemen arrived on earth a number of years earlier, laid waste to human technology, and then disappeared. Now, the first rider has returned, bringing with him a devastating plague to complete the destruction of humanity. A hardy band of survivors draw lots to see which of them is going to attempt to kill the horseman and save mankind, and young firefighter Sara draws the short straw. But the horseman can’t be killed, and in his anger at being attacked, he takes Sara prisoner. Things… erm… develop from there. It’s brutal, violent, funny, sexy and utterly weird. And I’m inexplicably hooked.

War by Laura Thalassa (2019)

So, obviously, the next book I read was War. Of course it was. I bought it the second I finished Pestilence. The premise is kind of similar to the first book. After Pestilence relinquished his role in the apocalypse, his brother War awoke and returned to earth. If anything, War’s attack on humanity is even more horrific than Pestilence’s, not least because this book is set in Palestine and Israel, giving it a truly unsettling quality (and the book doesn’t shy away from reminding us that the Horsemen of the Apocalypse may not be any worse than humanity itself). However, War is a different type of romance character. Where Pestilence was an otherworldly being who became fascinated by the human experiences being with Sara offered (he is a virgin when they meet, though obviously not by the end of the book), War is more the swaggering, sexually dominant alpha male type. When he meets Miriam (the female lead), he announces that she is his wife, and we have something almost along the lines of forced-to-marry-the-billionaire erotica, except with the added horrors of warfare in all its pitiless cruelty. And zombies. This one has a lot of zombies. The romance here was less to my taste, partly because of the ‘you’re my wife now’ plot and partly because of a pregnancy storyline that took things in a different direction. It turns out, if I’m reading about horny horsemen, I want it to stay horny and not get all domestic. Who knew?

Famine by Laura Thalassa (2020)

I’d seen a couple of reviews – and there are suggestions in the first two books along these lines as well – that said Famine is the least human of the four horsemen. Reviews referred to him as ‘a psycho’ and ‘sadistic’, the only one of the horsemen who is torturing humans for his own personal agenda, rather than a straightforward divine plan. I was fairly certain this one would end my love affair with this series, as that doesn’t sound romantic or erotic to me. Well, here comes another plot twist… I just couldn’t get enough of Famine. The third horseman has returned after the previous two have left the scene to be all cosy with their new families, but the book doesn’t begin with his return. Instead, we’re several years into Famine’s destruction of the world. And his destruction is certainly crueller and more sadistic than anything that has come before. He seems to really be enjoying himself. Step forward Ana, a young prostitute who, it turns out, has met Famine before. The reveal of Ana’s previous encounter with the horseman, and the explanation for Famine’s particular brand of sadism, is beautiful, heartbreaking and devastatingly human. Their relationship is funnier and sweeter than in the other two books, and it manages to be both a slower burn and way hotter than in the previous two books. Turns out, when it comes to agents of divine destruction, I’m a sucker for a broken pretty boy with a thing for supernatural plants.