Ellevirah’s Pages

I love Lucinda Berry’s books. They explore the psychological aspect of situations and she gives her readers a deep dive into her character’s heads. Her characters are often flawed, complex, and incredibly human, which makes them feel authentic and relatable. They navigate intense emotional and psychological struggles, often forcing readers to confront uncomfortable truths about trauma, resilience, and the darker sides of human nature. I posted my review of When She Returned on instagram, so if you’re curious about what I thought, you can check it out there! Some additional thoughts I have on the book are: that up until 60% of the book, I hated Meredith (the new wife), and I was thoroughly convinced that she was ruining everything. But after that, I started to see things from her POV and honestly, I get how the whole situation made her feel. It seems that while Scott and Abbi were caught up in their emotions, Meredith was the only one seeing things logically. Now, at first, it seems it’...

A couple tries to save their relationship through… unconventional means that are, quite literally, out of this world. Cosmic horror has never really been my thing, but it was really the characters that drew me into this read. The main character, Carmen, teetered on the edge of annoying me, but something about her situation made me feel bad. She was struggling with feeling disconnected, unable to be satisfied sexually by just about  everything . And Blanca, her partner, who is desperately trying to please the one she loves, had me wondering why she was holding onto this relationship she wasn’t getting anything out of. Smoke was probably my favorite character because she was the one who kept everything real. She always told it like it was.  Blanca finds Smoke, who is in the possession of a mind bending play: The King In Yellow. Anyone who consumes too much of the text are often driven mad, however, taken in doses, it is said to ignite passion and ecstasy. Since poor Blanca is co...

About a year ago, I read “The Treatment” by Mo Hayder and it destroyed me. I’m not just saying that. It was, in fact, incredibly brutal and disturbing. I’m talking pedophilia, rape, incest, abuse of a disabled person etc. And the ending was merciless. So, when Bonehead came across my Facebook feed in the Books of Horror group, it piqued my interest immediately. The person who posted it had nothing but good things to say, so I went straight to my kindle to download it and well… it wasn’t available. Checked Audible, not available… Apparently, it is not available in the United States, period. And one thing about me is that, the harder it is to find, the MORE I want it.  Fast forward, I got it on eBay from a company in Canada and read it (yay). The story is about a woman who returns to her hometown where she is one of the few survivors of a horrific crash that occurred years prior. She hasn’t been able to get that night or what she saw, out of her mind. After receiving a picture of her...

I finished reading Dial-up and die a couple days ago and I don’t know if it’s because I’m a millennial or what, but these creepypasta type stories get me every single time.  There is something truly unsettling about what we used to do on the internet colliding with reality. I don’t know about you, but I was 12 years old, in AOL chatrooms, talking to people I had NO business talking to. I mean, there weren’t really any rules that I remember. Obviously we knew not to talk to strangers and give out personal info, but on the internet, we felt invisible didn’t we? I know I did. But thinking back on all that, I feel lucky as hell. I mean ANYTHING could have happened. Remember that movie, “Megan is Missing”? THAT was terrifying. If you haven’t seen it then do so, expeditiously.  The book follows a group of friends who, one by one, die mysteriously. I mean, these high schoolers were all up in the internet. Playing games, chatting, hacking, sharing stories, investigating websites and c...

The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno really surprised me. I got an ARC of Silver Nitrate I think it was, last year? And at first, I was so interested in the story because it’s about a “cursed film” of sorts and the story was rich with information and history, but it lost me in the end honestly. So when I was invited to read and review The Bewitching through NetGalley, I cautiously accepted. The story sounded interesting enough; a multigenerational story about 3 women’s encounters with witches. Minerva, living in 1999, Beatrice Tremblay in the 1930’s and Alba (Minerva’s grandmother) in the 1900s.  Minerva is a fan of witches and the unexplained. She is a graduate student at a school in Massachusetts writing her thesis on the life and stories of the author Beatrice Tremblay. Minerva is fascinated by one of Beatrice’s stories inspired by the disappearance of her roommate Virginia. The cool thing is that Beatrice attended the very school Minerva is currently studying at and is the place whe...

Every once in a while, certain themes in books stick out to me more than others. And these could be themes explored 100x over in other books, but for some reason, this particular one called my attention. The book I’m listening to is Wounds by Nathan Ballingrud. It’s an anthology, including six stories from the border of hell. I’m about halfway through and one of the many themes explored in a number of these stories is “music in hell“. Now I know you’re probably thinking, duh, music and the absence of it could set the mood in both movies and books. But in this book, it’s not just noise or a simple sound like a door creaking or wind blowing, it’s harmonious and almost beautiful sounding.  He creates a hellish soundscape using metaphors and musical terms like “a symphony of despair”, “infernal harmonies”, and in one story the cries of the tormented are described as a “dirge (which is like a funeral hymn) of hunger”. It really shapes the mood and suggests an eerie beauty and terror. An...

Hi! Thanks for stopping by! Allow me to introduce myself: My name is Dalia Elvira and I’m an NYC girl through and through.  I started reading at a pretty young age as I’d always seen my mom reading her Daniel Steele novels and Oprah Winfrey books. She’d also encouraged me to read books like “Bodega Dreams” and “Down These Mean Streets” by Latino authors. She’s a very proud Nuyorican and so am I. I also grew very interested in Poetry and she took me to see shows like “Def Poetry Jam” and to the Nuyorican cafe. But the one book she read that really got my attention was “A Child Called It”. I remember being so absolutely destroyed by this book at around age 12 that I wanted MORE. Which led me to reading memoirs about abuse victims and true crime novels. The more disturbing, the “better”.  During my teenage years, I branched out to reading Urban novels by Zane and Noire which were more on the erotic side.  I spent a huge amount of time in bookstores as a teen and young adult....