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X = The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

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  “The sun sinks to rise again; the day is swallowed up in the gloom of night, to be born out of it, as fresh as if it had never been quenched.”― William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist I would like to start by saying two things: 1. I know using Ex instead of X isn't quite the same thing, Ex being a sound and X being an unloved letter of the alphabet...And at least on my blog, this year, it's going to remain underappreciated because Ex was the best I could do. 2 Do not read this book before bed, unless you're the kind of person that enjoys sleeping with the lights on. The story opens with Father Merrin, who is working on an archaeological dig in Iraq and is overcome with a feeling of foreboding as he discovers a statue of the wind demon, Pazuzu. Miles away, in Georgetown, Washington DC, Chris MacNeil is finishing up the filming of her next movie with director Burke Dennings before going home to her daughter, Regan. A normal life in the day of an actress except for the Jesuit pri
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W = Wanderers by Chuck Wendig

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  "Your assumptions are windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in." Nessie gets up one day and leaves her house in a walking coma, seemingly impervious to all external stimuli. Soon Nessie is joined by others like her, as they begin their journey to God knows where. They are the flock. Shana, Nessie's sister, gives up everything to care for her sister and is soon joined by other devoted friends and relatives of the flock. These are the shepherds. Both shepherds and flock are closely monitored by Benji Ray and his coworkers from the CDC as a secondary outbreak occurs, more deadly and insidious than the first. I loved certain things about this book. The mystery of the flock: what happened to them and where are they going and why are they going there. The shepherds' dedication and sacrifice, the forging of bonds in the time of mass hysteria, as the caravan travels in blind faith. Equal parts suspense and cautionary tale, it
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V = Vicious by VE Schwab

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  "The hotel room was pain and noise and chaos. Victor came to, dazed, trapped between the school lab and the hotel room, Angie's scream in his head and Sydney's in his ears. Sydney? But the girl was nowhere to be seen..." The book blurb for this story, describe Victor and Eli as "brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys..." but that's an understatement. Victor and Eli are psychopaths who meet in college; they're both geniuses, top of the class, with the world at their fingertips and they're both hungry for power. Victor is a loner, who's world famous psychologists parents have abandoned him for book tours, leaving him to his studies in neuroscience. He doesn't try to fit in, he doesn't want to... But he finds himself drawn to Eli- a charismatic, athletic, pre-med student, who enjoys being the center of attention. Working together, they figure out that the key to having all the power they want is surviving. I love an antihero story, and here
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U = Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

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“Perhaps the logical conclusion of everyone looking the same is everyone thinking the same.” ― Scott Westerfeld, Uglies In this futuristic world, there are Uglies and there are Pretties. Main character, Tally is an Ugly, who can't wait for her sixteenth birthday, that magical birthday when all newly 16-year-olds get to undergo plastic surgery to become a Pretty. Once Pretty, she gets to go to New Prettytown, where a Pretty's only job is to have fun. Everything looks like it's going to go according to Tally's plan, until her friend Shay, decides to run away rather than become pretty...And Tally is given the task of tracking her down and bringing her back to civilization. I didn't love this book from start to finish, but some parts were definitely more lovable than others. At first, the story was hard to get into: Even though the story is told by Tally, who is almost sixteen, her voice seemed to belong to someone much younger than a teenager approaching adulthood. In
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T = A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

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  “Tell your secret to the wind, but don’t blame it for telling the trees.” ― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns This book was very moving. It chronicles the lives of two women Miriam and Laila, who will become child brides under very different circumstances, to the same man. Takes place from the time of Soviet occupation to Taliban and finally Al-Queda. I feel like I want to focus on some of the more abhorrent character interactions for this review, the things that sensitive readers are bound to hate (and there's nothing wrong with that, if it isn't your cup of tea). Miriam is given to a man significantly older than herself by a family who is ashamed of her, while Laila chooses to marry this man to cover up that she had a family that loved her. Rasheed then proceeds to consummate the marriage, which by our modern day, first world standards, is a crime. By basic humanitarian standards, this is a crime. It's statutory rape, it's legal pedophilia. This is also a th
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S = The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

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  "'It wasn't rabies, if that's what you're worried about," Grace said. "She had some kind of blood poisoning...'" This is the story of Patricia Cambell. Belittled and patronized by a distant husband, subject to the typical abuse that only moody teenagers can dish out, and sick of keeping house and caring for her mother-in-law whose rapidly declining mental health is making life difficult for everybody. She's become a bit of a bored housewife, tired of her regularly scheduled day to day. Looking for a change, she joins a book club that only reads trashy true crime novels and dreams of a mystery in her sleepy little neighborhood...Until she gets one. Believing that there is now a serial killer living in her own backyard, she becomes fixated, so much so that her friends and family write her off as suffering from some sort of hysteria, leaving her to fight the evil alone. I thought that this would be straight up, non-stop horror. And while it o
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R = The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith

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  "I'd rather face an honest skeptic than a hundred who believe they know God, but are really in thrall to their own piety."  In their latest adventure, Detectives Strike and Robin are hired by a worried father to find dirt on the Universal Humanitarian Church (cult) so his son can be freed. Robin chooses to go undercover at the local branch, Chapman Farm, subjecting herself to, and witnessing first-hand the abuses of the church. Meanwhile, Strike is trying to keep his other active cases progressing forward without the help of his trusted partner and discovers his job under threat by his usual too beautiful, scorned lovers and an incompetent surveillance team of unknown origin.    The book starts slow, with a series of letters between Strike's client, his son, and his lawyer. So slow in fact, I doubted the book would ever speed up. But speed up it does, making 900+ pages read like a hundred. I couldn't put the book down once it got rolling. The concept of a cult i
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