Fairy Tale by AK Nevermore, The Perfect Bitch (The Perfect Fate Book 3) by Tom Kane, Our Own Authors by Brian Baleno

Fairy Tale by AK Nevermore 

 AK Nevermore’s Fairy Tale is a suspenseful enchanting tale that gives us a fairy tale in a bleak postmodern urban setting.

Charlie Peel is having a rough time since she has been dumped and lost her job. She is not interested in the claims from the mysterious Nikodem “Nikos” Wisniewski who believes that she fits his grandmother's psychic visions of a wila, or a fairy. Nikos abducts Charlie and entices her to be his fiancee despite their growing attachment towards each other and her curiosity wondering whether his claims of her being a fairy are true.

This short novel favors dark energy and atmosphere over fantastic moments. It creates a strange but effective amalgam of crime thriller and dark fantasy.

The book starts out gritty and harsh like a typical dark urban contemporary thriller featuring two characters at their most frustrated and vulnerable. Charlie is feeling disenchanted by her lost job and break up. She is a woman ready to explode. Nikos tries to do his assignment and cover his tracks. He is aware of his family’s powerful legacy breathing down on him and that he has to live up to their expectations.

Nikos’ family’s control over his actions and Charlie’s fierce despair foreshadow the eventual violence. In fact when Nikos takes Charlie, it reads like a psychological thriller about a stalker or serial killer taking his victim to a remote location. His plan of her posing as his fiancee while Charlie cowers because he has the decapitated head of his previous hunting assignment has a dark comic edge to it. 

The fantasy aspects begin when Nikos recognizes Charlie’s fairy lineage through psychic impressions. They are somewhat subdued since we don’t actually see Charlie use magic or even fully believe that she is a fairy. She just knows that she’s in a Gothic situation surrounded by a potentially dangerous family with unspoken powers, both natural and supernatural. She knows that she has to play their game for now to survive.

But within Charlie lies the unspoken possibility that if she is a wila, then the Wisniewskis are permitting someone made of potent and dangerous magic, a dour outlook on life, and anger at the world including at the man and family holding her against her will into their lives. They could be turning her into the very demon that they are afraid of.

The first story creates suspense by atmosphere. The second could potentially destroy that atmosphere when Charlie discovers the powers that have been lurking inside her and takes it out on her treacherous captors and the desolate world surrounding her. 

The Perfect Bitch (The Perfect Fate Book 3) by Tom Kane

Tom Kane’s book, The Perfect Bitch is a Gothic Historical Paranormal Horror about a movie star whose obsession with fame, youth, and beauty becomes a horror.

Lovella Benjamin is a movie star from the 1930’s-40’s known for her glamor and difficult reputation, both of which earn her the moniker “The Perfect Bitch.” As she ages, she is anxious about her fading career and rivals. Her ambition reached the attention of a stranger, David Garland who has an enticing offer for her.

This book combines early Gothic works like Faust and The Picture of Dorian Gray with the remote allure of Old Hollywood. While the horror elements are eerie, the majority of the book is a character study of Lovella. Her personality including arrogance, fears, and insecurities is fully displayed.

When we first meet Lovella, she is 17 and already aware of how attractive she is and how she can control besotted men with just a look and a hair flip. However, what they don’t realize is that Bella is no ingenue. She is cunning, brilliant, and ruthless. It is quickly shown in the first pages when she turns the casting couch on its head in front of an associate producer. She reveals that she can not only play the Hollywood Shuffle but succeed at it too.

Lovella is a perfect actress because she is willing to play the part on and off the screen. She subjects herself to painful treatments, excessive beauty care regiments, diets, diction lessons, and especially a fake biographical profile to hide who she really is. It’s routine for all actresses but for an actress who is already receptive to deceit and manipulation, it confirms that she’s in the right place. Like other notorious bad girls in the past like Vanity Fair’s Becky Sharp, she doesn’t defy the society around her, she embodies the society around her. She is the worst qualities of Hollywood wrapped up in human form.

Lovella’s complicated journey is probably why the book focuses more on her than the creepy paranormal stuff that happens to her. She is an eerie forceful presence of her own that can challenge any demon, sorcerer, or otherworldly being. She blackmails a former associate when he wants to destroy evidence implicating her. She steals close ups and spotlights from a rival. She starts a whispering campaign against an actor that she is attracted to when told that his presence is interfering with her popularity. She schemes to end the career of a young upstart. She uses a romance for publicity then strings her lover along for years afterwards. 

Lovella’s dominance has an almost supernatural aura on its own that goes beyond earthly means. She has an almost clairvoyant sense and potent energy that knows when and how to wound an adversary while keeping her career, beauty, and fame intact. She herself is sometimes the demonic presence in her book. 

When supernatural events start to happen. It’s not surprising. Instead it’s inevitable. Lovella is not so much being drawn in by circumstances that she can’t explain and is frightened of but welcomed by a presence that understands her and thinks of her as one of their own. The dark twisted otherworldly happenings are reflections of her own dark, twisted, and human soul. 

Our Own Authors by Brian Baleno 

Brian Baleno specializes in writing about people's internal and emotional struggles either in a confined or open setting. The first book that I read by him, Barside Manner is set in a neighborhood bar in Pittsburgh and deals with the internal conflicts of the bartender and customers.His recent work, Our Own Authors might have a wider and more glamorous setting but it isn't free of emotionally conflicted characters. 

In it, Josh is a location scout for movies. On the set of his latest project, a spy romance, he deals with various filming difficulties and his own feelings about being away from his wife and children. 

This is a fun slice of life short novel that strips away the glamor of filmmaking to focus on the tedium and minutiae of working on a movie set. It’s a lot of standing around, coping with script or location changes, adapting to the weather or local needs, arguing with volatile cast and crew, moving around, and being away from home for long stretches of weeks or even months to create something that you hope will resonate with audiences.

 Baleno treats movie making as a job like any other with positive and negative aspects. The only difference is that the results have to be seen and evaluated by a paying and hopefully appreciative public.

On this particular set, Josh has to arrange the exterior shots in Istanbul and Paris by capturing the beautiful locations but maintaining control of the filming area for the cast and crew. He also has to manage the average public that are walking by and going about their daily lives while art is being made right in front of them. 

This job sometimes takes a keen eye for detail, understanding of the local culture and values, finding the best places for atmosphere and lighting, and having the patience to manage so many people, personalities, and schedules. 

Josh also has to deal with the complications involving various personal lives of the people that he works with. Cyrus and Chloe, the lead actor and actress respectively, are having a romance that they want to keep private from the public so Josh is elected as their official secret keeper. 

Josh also takes the time to have interesting conversations with some long time colleagues, particularly the director Oliver over various discussions such as AI’s presence, marriage, children, and how long they can keep up this frantic pace that the entertainment industry craves. These moments make these characters real as they talk about their lives of living in the spotlight and surrounded by enormous pressure.

Their lives are contrasted with the story that the film crew are selling. Throughout the book, the reader is treated to various scenes from the script. It is an espionage romance between Julia and Anar, two operatives from different countries and worlds that can’t deny their attraction to one another. 

The script’s somewhat hokey dialogue, frequent betrayals, and elaborate conflicts are meant to satirize the finished products that Hollywood creates that are as far away and remote from the people working on them as they are from the people watching them.

Along with satire, Our Own Authors has a lot of heart. Many of the most touching moments are when Josh’s thoughts turn to his wife, Lexi and his kids, James and Chris. Thankfully, this is not a story packed with scandal and infidelity but instead with longing and separation. 

Josh misses the milestones with his family and thinks often of them. He is also feeling his age and considers whether he should change careers before he misses everything at home.

 It is nice to read a story about a happily married man who misses his family so much that he wouldn’t dream of stepping out on them and working in entertainment no less. Granted such conflicts keep such books interesting, but there can also be something meaningful found in quiet conflicts. The conflicts of deciding between work and family. Of deciding between the fast paced life that one is used to and the slower one that is longed for but not always able to be achieved. 

Even when one is in the profession of creating dreams and illusions for other people, the cast and crew often furnish their own dreams and aspirations away from the set.