From Crime Reads:
Over two months ago, I commuted to work for the last time. On the way home, I stopped for gas and groceries. That night, I cancelled a vacation planned for the next week and watched the Project Runway finale with my mom. Since then, I’ve been hunkered down with Mom and three dogs, making only essential trips to the grocery store and the vet. It feels like two years have passed. When the publication date for They Did Bad Things was set last year (which is about a decade in pandemic-time), I didn’t think my book about old college frenemies trapped in an isolated house trying to not to die (or kill each other), would be as fitting for the times as it is. As I prep to launch a book while most of the nationwide shutdowns and restrictions remain in place, I started thinking about the best crime/thriller/horror books to read in quarantine. If you’re stuck with your college roommates, They Did Bad Things might be for you.
Have a different quarantine situation? Want to lift your spirits by reading about someone whose situation is worse than yours? There’s a book here for you.
. . . .
Books for About-to-be-Divorced Quarantining Couples
Ready to set your partner’s belongings on fire if they won’t stop videobombing your Zoom calls in their underwear? Read Jac Jemc’s The Grip of It instead. Forget your partner’s irritating habits by losing yourself in the story of Julie and James, who suffer from nervous breakdowns as a result of the creepy child-like drawings that appear on the walls and the secret passages that keep manifesting themselves inside their newly bought house. You’ll forget all about the dirty underwear on the floor when you start checking out your own window to see if the shouting of the never-seen children outside really are getting closer.
Planning on some couples therapy in the near future? In SJI Holliday’s The Lingering, Jack and Ali Gardiner thought leaving London for a commune in the English countryside would help solve their marital problems. But they probably shouldn’t have chosen a commune housed in a former Victorian mental asylum on land once used for a witch-burning.
Link to the rest at Crime Reads
That cover for Jac Jemc’s “The Grip of It” is absolutely horrible. It was so bad I looked up the publisher, and it seems to be one of the “professional” publishers, MacMillan. I could draw like that in 2nd grade. No wonder that the big 5 (4 or 3 or whatever they are today) are losing market share. I don’t care how good the contents are if they’re in a book with that cover on it. And the big 5 and their defenders always complain about Indie covers! I wonder if the web site LousyBookCovers would be willing to offer some constructive (and snarky) criticism of the cover?
Well, if the book is about “creepy child-like drawings,” then I think they nailed it. It catches my attention and invites further inspection. To each his own.
I have to agree, not a bad cover at all. It wouldn’t make me want to buy the book, but then no cover true to its genre would. I’ve certainly seen much worse – there’s always a few in any list of prize winning covers.