Chuckles Mini Reviews Catchup

I review everything I read, on my blog and on Goodreads. Most reviews are of a decent length but sometimes you don't have much to say about the book because of its length or you DNFed it or various other reasons. In cases like that it makes sense to write a few mini reviews in one post and clear them out your way! 

This week I'm jumping ahead to a few reviews from March before I write out the four full length reviews from February to post next week. I decided to get a couple of horror authors with mixed reviews of their work and tackle them.
 

1) Ray Garton-Trailer Park Noir
Welcome to Riverside Mobile Home Park. Marcus watched the love of his life blow her brains out and then dove to the bottom of a bottle of vodka. Now he's living in Riverside Mobile Home Park and trying to pull his life together...until a powerful temptation comes his way. Steve Regent is an internet pornographer who has moved to Riverside Mobile Home Park to work on a new website-Trailer Park Girls. He's looking for beautiful women...but instead, he finds something very ugly. Sherry Manning is a drug addict living in the trailer park with her boyfriend, Andy Winchell, who's a dealer. Anna Dunfy is trying to make ends meet by doing temp jobs and stripping at night to support her mentally handicapped daughter, Kendra...an astonishingly beautiful girl with a woman's body, a child's mind, and a dangerous urge to do something naughty. 

I hated pretty much every character in this book. Marcus becomes obsessed with Kendra despite her age and her mental handicap and starts plotting how to seduce her, after becoming friends with her mother. Sherry is a junkie with a boyfriend who is a dealer and they are trying to deal with a dead body in their trailer after a party, someone with important connections. I'm really not a fan of having drug addict characters as MCs in the books I read and this was no exception. Steve takes advantage of desperate women who need extra money and takes video and photos which go onto his new porn website. He is pretty much a worm but for me Marcus is worse as it isn't clear if Steve is aware of Kendra's mental age. Marcus knows and doesn't care so I hated him the most. 

Some readers will have difficulty with a mentally handicapped teenager being a sexual object for two men so read with caution. The content didn't greatly offend me-it takes a lot to do that. I just didn't like the characters or care what happened to any of them. Anna was the only decent character who was trying to do her best for her child but even her decision making is questionable. I just thought it wasn't a great story and I never got engaged with it in any way. It's hard to like a book when pretty much every MC bugs you. This isn't the first Ray Garton book I've read but it is the third that I've abandoned. Maybe it's time to admit that this author isn't for me.

Read March 2020
DNF 1 star.

2) Ray Garton-Lot Lizards
A "lot lizard" is a female hooker who works a highway truck stop as her territory. When trucker Bill Ketter looks for a little relaxation and release, he discovers, too late, that he has bitten off more than he can chew. In fact, his lot lizard is the one that does the biting--she is a vampire, one of number who move from one truck stop to the next under the watchful and vicious eyes of the repulsive Carsey Brothers. Against his will, Bill becomes one of the undead. He follows the brothers and their cargo to another stop where he meets his ex-wife and children and Bill finds himself battling the vampires and their age-old leader for the life of his teenaged son. 

Our MC Bill is depressed at his wife having left him again because of his truck driving job. It appears this time that she isn't coming back so Bill decides to take advantage of the hookers that hang around truck stops. In this case, the hooker is an underfed vampire who manages to turn him by accident while feeding from him, as well as robbing him. Bill decides to follow the truck that she gets into to try and try to get some answers. 

I didn't really get far with this one.There was nothing really wrong with Bill as a character and I understood his mission to follow the truck and then stop the evil brothers. However the 'coincidence' of just Bill just happening to bump into his wife and kids at the truck stop where the vampires are at is just a bit annoying. I get that it's fiction but it wasn't the kind of plot twist that I was looking for. I'm not a fan of relationship angst and I suspect that there is going to be a lot of that when Bill meets his family again, though I quit before getting to that stage. I couldn't get into the book at all and decided to DNF it.

Read March 2020
DNF 2 star. 

3) Jeff Strand-Benjamin's Parasite
Benjamin Wilson was having a lousy month even before the stomach pains began. He was about to turn forty. One of his students had been shot while on a homicidal meat cleaver rampage. And shortly after the funeral, Benjamin didn't feel so good...Now everything is changing. His body is being affected in some very unpleasant ways. His personality is developing a few "quirks." But the biggest change is that he has a bunch of evil and/or psychotic people trying to hunt him down to acquire the parasite. His only hope is Julie, a gorgeous bounty hunter who may or may not have Benjamin's best interests in mind, and who may or may not be competent enough to help him anyway.


Brian is infected with a parasite that causes him to try and murder his mother, resulting in his neighbour killing him. After getting too close to Brian at the funeral, his teacher Benjamin becomes infected. He develops an uncontrollable urge to eat candy, and develops the sex drive and attitude of a teenage boy. When the doctors see the parasite inside him during an X-Ray it is decided to do immediate surgery but two groups of people want to get their hands on Benjamin's Parasite and that could be bad news for him as to these people it is more important than his own life.  

This book started nicely with Brian's rampage and Benjamin's infection. It was amusing to see the change in his behaviour and some of the dumb and inappropriate comments and thoughts that were coming to him. The first seventy pages or so were entertaining. For me, the book changed as soon as Julie came into the story and it became all about the people fighting to get hold of the parasite and less about Benjamin's old life. I had liked the interaction Benjamin had with his family as he changed so I was disappointed that the book then took a different path that I didn't greatly like. The writing itself was fine and the initial plot was interesting but the later changes just didn't appeal to me personally.

Read March 2020
DNF 2 star.

4) Jeff Strand-Graverobbers Wanted: No Experience Necessary
When you're desperate for money, searching for a little adventure, and aren't the most responsible person in the world, you can end up doing some outrageous things. Which is how Andrew Mayhem, an extremely married father of two, ends up accepting $20,000 to find a key ... a key buried with a body in a shallow grave. When the body turns out to not only be still alive, but armed and dangerous, he realizes that he should have held out for more money. His simple evening of morally questionable manual labor becomes a bizarre game of wits and courage played with an unseen killer with a twisted sense of humor. It's a game that will bring him to a group of filmmakers known as Ghoulish Delights, who are hiding a secret that will test every last bit of Andrew's nerve to discover. And it's impossible to find a babysitter. 

I'm going to keep this pretty brief. Andrew the MC is a complete loser. His wife works hard in her job while his idea of working for a living is to take the odd job that a qualified PI would do-spying on a cheating husband to get video evidence. The problem is, Andrew is an idiot. He is armed with his wife's video camera and climbs up a tree in broad daylight to film through a window and wonder why security catch him and give him a beating. I cannot for the life of me see why any woman would stay with such an idiot who provides nothing in the way of money, security or competant childcare. I didn't stick with this one for long as I wanted to throttle Andrew after just a couple of chapters.

Read March 2020
DNF 1 star.

5) Jeff Strand-Dweller
Toby was just a boy the first time he saw the creature in the woods. His parents convinced the terrified child it was only his imagination. The next time Toby saw the creature he was a lonely, unhappy teenager without friends. But the creature would be his friend. It would be there when Toby needed someone to talk to. And it would take care of the bullies who wouldn’t leave Toby alone. After all, the creature needed to eat. And during their macabre, decades-long friendship, there will be other meals... 

Owen, as Toby calls him, is a monster who lives in a cave in the woods, happily going about his life until Toby comes along and decides to be his friend. Toby has a decent homelife but is a bit of a geeky loner who is a target for school bullies. When he stands up to the bullies, it sets off a chain of events that will change life for him and Owen forever. Toby is determined to keep his forest friend a secret and learns how to communicate with him. Things start to unravel when he decides to introduce his girlfriend to Owen and Toby may have to pick who means more to him.

Honestly what is it with idiot MCs with this author! Toby is a slightly strange boy who is able to look past Owen's monster looks and make a friend. His decision to suddenly introduce his girlfriend to Owen with no warning or preparing the poor girl was always doomed to be a disaster. Everything Toby does for his own selfish reasons impacts badly every time on poor Owen! Dragging Owen into his fight with the bullies was predictable and I had little sympathy for what came next but bringing others to meet Owen for a range of reasons smacks of sheer stupidity. What was he thinking? I actually liked Owen a lot more than Toby and I felt sorry for the beast at times. There were bits involving Toby's job and relationships which dragged a bit and were less interesting than the interactions with Owen, so at times I lost interest. I didn't 'read' the whole book but I did skim through the final third to find out what happened. This wasn't a bad book really and I liked a lot of the ideas in it. It was just a bit hit and miss in places for me to finish it.

Read March 2020
2.5 star.