Book Review: "Bless Your Heart" by Lindy Ryan

You can imagine my surprise when I found this book for a cheap price on my Kindle. Bless Your Heart blends urban horror and folk horror together to create this strange hybrid. I think we should remember the rule of horror: if there's too much going on in terms of story and characters, it can lead to the reader being taken out of the atmosphere, thus failing to actually experience any of the horror in question. I would say that in the backstories which happens during the beginning, especially the one concerning the youngest Evans woman, this is true. But the author quickly picks this up and gets on with showing us the true horrors that await us in the funeral parlour.

The prologue starts with an old man named Edwin Boone who finds someone trespassing on private property. He's described as a courageous man who has since, begun to lose his affects about him. His old age is giving him quite the cognitive decline and though he knows this, he still ventures forth and asks whatever man or animal is awaiting there what they think they're doing on private property. Edwin Boone is relieved to see that it is actually only his friend Clyde. But there's something wrong with Clyde. His cheeks are sunken, his skin is pale and he is inching towards Edwin with a strange intent. The author definitely peaks our interest with this prologue and it opens up questions as to what exactly happened to Edwin Boone out there.

We then move on to looking at a funeral parlour in which the Evans women are making up a woman who has recently died from cancer so that she may be displayed for her funeral. The youngest, Luna, is kept out of most of whatever is happening but pushes on stating that she is grown up to at least try. A policeman enters the room and tells the older women that Edwin Boone has died and yet, he doesn't look like Edwin Boone at all. The women agree that because there is no family to claim the body, they will cremate it. It is during this period that our woman, dead from cancer, sits up in her coffin. Of course, the author wants to give us a story about the undead but one thing I did enjoy is that there is a whole family history with this one family and their dealings with these kinds of monsters. We learn about this quite early on in the book and yet, it doesn't feel like it is just being randomly fed to us. There is purpose here.

I think that the main criticism I would have of this book is that it keeps introducing characters to explain away different plot holes. There are actually so many characters at points that it is difficult to keep up and so, this in turn has a negative impact on the atmosphere of the text. I know that you are aware about how I feel about lots and lots of dialogue - I'm not a fan. So this one is a bit more personal but I feel like the novel lacked atmosphere sometimes. Especially as we are getting underway with the main meat of the book, it didn't really have the same creeping atmosphere of dread that we get in the first few chapters. This might be because of the amount of characters and thus, there becomes a requirement to explain who each of them are, give them a role in the story and make sure that they are used well when the time comes.

All in all, I did think this book was actually pretty good and my criticisms are more based on personal taste rather than anything the writing does 'wrong'. The book is lively and fun, something someone who loves a fast-paced towns-wide urban horror would enjoy. Personally, I would have loved more darkness and more atmosphere. It definitely felt like it would give the reader a good time and most of all, the writer's actual writing is free from clichéd tropes, yet understands itself enough to link in with more well-known folklore of monsters and the undead. Though it was not for me personally, I think a good job was done here.