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Abandoned by Booklikes

Government drone by day and book lover and geek girl by night!

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This Time Next Year
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Alyssa Cole
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Alyssa Cole
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Johnny Halloween: Tales of the Dark Season

Johnny Halloween: Tales of the Dark Season - Norman Partridge Well the cover is cool. And honestly it's short. I was done with this within an hour, I just didn't have time to get on my computer to post reviews until now. I read this for the "Pumpkin" square for the Halloween 2016 Bingo.

I skipped over the introduction and got to the first story (7 percent) and after that most of the stories I felt were way too short. I felt a few times that things were cut off. There were only two stories that I actually thought were more than okay, the rest I didn't really care for at all.

Johnny Halloween (2 stars)- A man looks back and comes face to face with the man he blames for his brother's death. I really did not like this story at all. The author had the whole a woman goes off to get an abortion and is left barren trope which I hope dies off soon. I hate it when authors do that. They are essentially punishing the woman for daring to be in charge of her own body. In the end you find out the reasoning behind some things we are told as readers and pretty much it can be summed up that woman are sluts and it's not a man's fault when he responds in an angry manner. I hated this story the more I think of it and am actually going to lower the initial star rating I gave it.

Satan's Army (1 star)- This made absolutely no sense to me at all. I am still trying to wrap my head around anyone's justification for what goes down in this story. And we have the author switching between too many people and an old couple obsessed with apples and I don't know. I just didn't care and was relieved to get to the end.

The Man Who Killed Halloween (3 stars)- This is not a short story the author created. It's just his recollection about growing up where the Zodiac killer was finding and murdering young people back in Vallejo, California in the 1960s. It was interesting to read about. But the author provides some autobiographical details about himself, the town, and how ultimately this affected the whole community when the Zodiac killer was out on a rampage.

Black Leather Kites (3 stars)- This baffled me a bit because there is no explanation to how these people came to be or how they found the one character's brother in law. I also had to laugh at the backstory to Nardo. And I thought it was really weird he kept obsessing about designer ice cream (Haagen- Dazs) and foil covered beer. I did like the ending to this story. The preceding ones endings fell flat.

Treats (1 star)- There is no explanation to anything that is going on. I am guessing that little scary monsters of some kind took over a kid's body or something. It would have been great if things had been more explained.

Three Doors (4 stars)- I liked this one a lot. The reveal in the middle part of the story was great. And though the author acknowledges that it is like The Monkey's Paw, I still liked it.

The Jack O'Lantern: A Dark Harvest Tale (4 stars)- As much as I just felt okay towards Dark Harvest, I did like this prologue to one of the characters we read about in that book, Officer Jerry Ricks. I think the only reason why I enjoyed it was because I know what is coming for the town in the end.