At it's best when it's being creepy, weird and just a little off. The reveal, while kind of interesting, takes a little bit away from the creepiness IMO. ( )

Not my thing, but quite brilliant. I admire the courage of the author and publisher to put something so short in paper - sometimes concise & crisp is the way to go! ( )

If Don't Worry Darling was actually good ( )

Comfort Me With Apples is another very short book (coming in around 100 pages). It follows a woman named Sophia, a housewife living in a gated community, who is perfectly content with her day-to-day life until she finds something that does not belong to her in her bedroom. It gave me Don't Worry, Darling vibes the whole way through. There is a twist that becomes a bit obvious, but being able to guess it didn't take away my enjoyment of the story.


What I Liked:

‣ I like how effective the quick story is and how obvious the foreshadowing was after you get to the "reveal". A reread would be fun with this book - for one, because it's so short, and for two, because you know the twist, you have a new appreciation for the other characters.


What I Didn't Like:

‣ I don't really feel strong enough about disliking any part of this book. Maybe that it didn't really feel like a "horror" story - I never quite got those uncomfortable or unsettled feelings that I usually relate to reading horror. I guess it would be more fair to call it like a "cozy thriller". Something that (probably) won't give you nightmares, but just enough to give you goosebumps. ( )

It’s a fairytale retold, a myth re-examined. It’s a mystery, a thriller, a horror story. It’s so much more.

Sophia lives a perfect life, in a beautiful house, in a perfect subdivision of a gated community. Everyone loves her and her husband. She is so happy. And then… She is curious and finds something. Something that changes everything. Something that makes her deeply unhappy.

This is a short book, easily read in an afternoon. It gets progressively weirder and scarier and yet, it remains easy to follow. I kinda figured it out before the great reveal, but that wasn’t a disappointment because Valente just keeps spinning the plot tighter and tighter as Sophia unravels more and more.

It’s a frightening story in it’s implications and insinuations. There are no jump scares or gore-filled frights, but it is a creeping kind of dreadful. And Valente doesn’t pull her punches. I was really mesmerized by the book. Trying to understand what was going on, then understanding too much, with a dawning sense of horror at how it would all end. ( )