#CBR13 Book 42: "Through the Woods" by Emily Carroll

Page count: 208 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

CBR13 Bingo: Shelfie

In five creepy stories ranging from the historical to more recent times, writer and artist Emily Carroll gives us her take on proper spine-tingling fairy tales. Accompanied by her absolutely beautiful art, the tales are all the more chilling because of the illustrations. This absolutely qualifies as a graphic novel, or probably more accurately a graphic short story (or fairy tale) anthology. Some of the stories are short, some are longer, all managed to truly unnerve me, while also entertaining me greatly. 

In Our Neighbour's Place (this one is probably my favourite), three sisters of varying ages are left alone at home in their cabin in the woods while their father goes hunting. His final instructions are to take refuge in the neighbour's house if he is gone for more than three days and nights, which he is. As the food and water supplies dwindle, both the elder and younger sister disappear from the house, after talking dreamily about a man outside in a wide-brimmed hat. In the end, the middle sister, the tale's narrator, has no choice but to follow her sisters out into an unknown fate.

A Lady's Hands are Cold sees a young woman married off to a rich man and goes to live in his big house, where she wanders the beautiful rooms and the manicured grounds and every night hears a sad, plaintive and unnerving song. None of the staff seem to understand what she is asking about, although all are clearly upset by her questions. When her husband leaves for a hunt, the lady decides to go looking for the source of the mysterious singing. She quickly realises she should possibly have left matters as they were.

His Face All Red is a tale of brotherly jealousy and a hunting accident gone terribly wrong (the hunt seems to be a common motif in these stories). One brother is haunted by his actions, and try as he might, he cannot undo what he has wrought.

In My Friend Janna a young woman recounts the tale of her best friend from childhood, a woman she was so close to they might have been sisters. Janna worked as a spiritual medium and our narrator was the hidden figure in the walls that assisted her in making the crowd believe in the supernatural. One day, the young women find a dead hare at the side of the road. Janna touches it, her friend doesn't, and after that, Janna is never quite the same. She appears genuinely haunted, but there's no such things as ghosts and supernatural spirits, are there?

While all the previous stories have a much older historical setting, the final tale, The Nesting Place, appears to be set in the early 20th Century, where Bell, a teenage girl goes to stay with her adult brother and his new fiancee Rebecca while on holiday from boarding school. Rebecca is beautiful and gracious, but there seems to be something slightly odd about her. The elderly housekeeper tells Bell that when Rebecca was a girl, she disappeared in the woods and was missing for three days. She warns Bell to be careful when wandering alone in the forest. Since everyone tells her that Rebecca never goes into the woods anymore, Bell is surprised to see her soon-to-be sister-in-law wandering there one day. She follows, and discovers exactly why her brother's intended doesn't seem entirely like everyone else.

I was given this beautiful hardback as a Christmas present by my husband back in 2014, and it has graced my bookshelves entirely ignored and overlooked since. It's been packed up and moved from one flat to another, all without me giving it a chance because I wasn't sure I was up for a horror collection. Nevertheless, when this year's bingo came around, and there was a square for a shelfie, I figured this gorgeous hardback would finally have its day. More like a few hours (I could have finished it quicker, but I needed a break between each story to process the words and the art and savour the pleasant unease each story evoked in me).

Ms. Carroll's art style, especially some of the ways in which she depicted people as similar to that of Kate Beaton, although while Ms. Beaton does most of her work entirely in black and white, Ms. Carroll uses colours, if mostly a mix of muted browns and dramatic black, white and red. 

Now that I finally read the book, I tried to find out what else Ms. Carroll has published. She doesn't seem terribly prolific, although there is a horror comic from 2019 that I may have to try to track down. Through the Woods is well worth checking out, both for the scary stories and the wonderful art. 

Judging a book by its cover: A simple, yet effective image in stark black, white and red, with the moon front and centre makes the cover of the book very striking. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR12 Book 68: "Viscount Vagabond" by Loretta Chase

Page count: 228 pages

Rating: 2.5 stars

#CBR12 Bingo: Shelfie

Official book description:

Catherine Pelliston simply would not abide by her father's wishes and marry the slovenly Lord Browdie. But her escape through the streets of London only seemed to lead her from bad to worse. First, she was robbed. And then, her supposed "rescue" by a kindly old woman stranded Catherine in a bordello -- where the handsome Viscount Rand was intent on sampling her wares! A dire predicament indeed-especially when the dashing aristocrat decided to assume full responsibility for the ravishing runaway by taking her, quite against her will, into his home. But little did Catherine know that her struggle to preserve her virtue had inflamed the debauched gadabout's heart ... and might well net her a husband worth desiring!

This is one of Loretta Chase's early romances, originally published in 1988, and later re-issued in e-book format in 2012. One of her most famous novels, Lord of Scoundrels, didn't come out until 1995. This book is both shorter, and a lot less sophisticated than her later, more famous works. It's also not terribly memorable. I finished this book in mid-August and even now, reading through the blurb, I can only barely remember plot specifics. 

Chase's early writing really doesn't have the same wit and spark as many of her later novels. There are no classic, bad-ass heroines like Jessica Trent, charming rogues like Rupert Carsington, or enigmatic spies like the Comte D'Esmond. Catherine is pretty painfully naive and very lucky that the nobleman she appeals to doesn't in fact ravish her, but rather takes pity on her, rescues her, and promptly deposits her with his very respectable sister, who can act as her chaperone. See, I remember that much. I also recall that the sister's husband has a much better grasp of the various notable families of the ton, and therefore knows immediately who Catherine actually is and which family she's run away from, and happily aids his wife's matchmaking attempt for the rest of the book. I remember there was a potential of scandal when someone (not entirely sure who now), possibly Catherine's not-quite-fiancee, figured out that she had spent some time in a brothel - but it all comes right in the end - natch, this is a romance novel.

Checking my records, I actually bought this e-book back in 2012 (when I was still discovering Ms. Chase's back catalogue) and it's been sitting on my shelf ever since. I could have used it for the White Whale square, but it's one of those books that I've had for so long, I'd more or less forgotten about it when I was planning my Bingo Card. It did, however, fit in my Alphabet Soup reading challenge for V, and once I looked it up on LibraryThing, I was surprised at how long it had been on my digital shelves, unread. It's not exactly easy to take a photo of a digital book, but here is a screenshot of the LibraryThing shelf - which is the best I can do to fulfil the demands of the Shelfie square. 

In conclusion, if you're not a true die-hard completist about Loretta Chase, this is a book that is entirely skippable. If it didn't fit into a number of my reading challenges (I can cross off a bingo square, it fits in my historical fiction challenge, in my two TBR challenges, as well as the alphabet challenge) and I already owned it, I doubt I would have ever read it. 

Judging a book by its cover: This is the rather generic cover given to the new digital edition when I got the book. The original 80s cover is a true marvel of pastels, a very brooding hero and a swooning heroine in his embrace (but wearing historically appropriate outfits, which is more than one can say for a large majority of more modern historical romances published today - Lisa Kleypas' Ravenel series and Tessa Dare's Girl Meets Duke, I am especially thinking about you right now. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.