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Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill (audio)

November 3, 2020 by

Source: Purchased

Audible, 11+ hours

I am an Amazon affiliate

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill, narrated by Stephen Lang, is a ghost story from the beginning to the end, but Judas Coyne (formerly Justin Cowzynski) is an unlikable character with a penchant for collecting macabre items. This penchant is what gets him into a big mess — all of his sins come to roost as he battles the unseen man tied to a suit he buys online in a heart-shaped box. He has effectively retired from public life after his bandmates have either killed themselves or died, but little else has changed with his life — still moving from woman to woman and collecting oddities on the underground web.

Lang is a decent narrator no matter the character and he has the timbre to create a creepy atmosphere.

Jude and his latest woman (like all his women are called by their former state of residence) find that they are locked together in a battle against a ghostly man who is out for revenge. It’s clear this ghost hasn’t had a lot of practice with revenge from beyond the grave, but Jude gets some help from his former girlfriend who has been dead for some time. Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill, narrated by Stephen Lang, is a dark tale of beyond-the-grave revenge.

RATING: Quatrain

Filed Under: audiobooks, challenges, fiction, New Authors Challenge, purchased, Read in 2020, reviews Tagged With: , , ,

Mailbox Monday #601

October 19, 2020 by
Mailbox Monday has become a tradition in the blogging world, and many of us thank Marcia of The Printed Page for creating it.

It now has it’s own blog where book bloggers can link up their own mailbox posts and share which books they bought or which they received for review from publishers, authors, and more.

Leslie, Martha, and I also will share our picks from everyone’s links in the new feature Books that Caught Our Eye. We hope you’ll join us.

Here’s what we received:

Mistaken by Jessie Lewis, purchased on Audible.

A tempestuous acquaintance and disastrous marriage proposal makes it unlikely Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet will ever reconcile. Despairing of their own reunion, they attend with great energy to salvaging that of Darcy’s friend Mr. Bingley and Elizabeth’s sister Jane. People are rarely so easily maneuvered in and out of love, however, they follow a series of misunderstandings, both willful and unwitting, that complicates all four star-crossed lovers’ alliances more than ever before.

A witty and romantic novel that delights in the folly of human nature and also honors Austen’s original Pride and Prejudice and holds appeal for listeners of all genres.

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill, purchased at Audible.

Judas Coyne is a collector of the macabre: a cookbook for cannibals…a used hangman’s noose…a snuff film. An aging death-metal rock god, his taste for the unnatural is widely known. But nothing he possesses is as unlikely or as dreadful as his latest discovery, a thing so terrible-strange, Jude can’t help but reach for his wallet.

I will sell my stepfather’s ghost to the highest bidder.

For a thousand dollars, Jude will become the proud owner of a dead man’s suit, said to be haunted by a restless spirit. He isn’t afraid. He has spent a lifetime coping with ghosts: of an abusive father, of the lovers he callously abandoned, of the bandmates he betrayed. What’s one more? But what UPS delivers to his door in a black heart-shaped box is no imaginary or metaphorical ghost. It’s the real thing.

And suddenly the suit’s previous owner is everywhere: behind the bedroom door…seated in Jude’s restored vintage Mustang…standing outside his window…staring out from his widescreen TV. Waiting – with a gleaming razor blade on a chain dangling from one hand.

What did you receive?

Filed Under: mailbox monday, meme Tagged With: , , , ,