As voted on by our readers, the selection for October’s Book Club is . . .
From giphy
The Grip Of It (2017)
Written by: Jac Jemc
Pages: 288
Publisher: FSG Originals
Premise:
Touring their prospective suburban home, Julie and James are stopped by a noise. Deep and vibrating, like throat singing. Ancient, husky, and rasping, but underwater. “That’s just the house settling,” the real estate agent assures them with a smile. He is wrong.
The move — prompted by James’s penchant for gambling and his general inability to keep his impulses in check — is quick and seamless; both Julie and James are happy to start afresh. But this house, which sits between a lake and a forest, has its own plans for the unsuspecting couple. As Julie and James try to establish a sense of normalcy, the home and its surrounding terrain become the locus of increasingly strange happenings. The framework — claustrophobic, riddled with hidden rooms within rooms — becomes unrecognizable, decaying before their eyes. Stains are animated on the wall — contracting, expanding — and map themselves onto Julie’s body in the form of painful, grisly bruises.
Like the house that torments the troubled married couple living within its walls, The Grip of It oozes with palpable terror and skin-prickling dread. Its architect, Jac Jemc, meticulously traces Julie and James’s unsettling journey through the depths of their new home as they fight to free themselves from its crushing grip.
Discussion of this book will go live on October 27, so get reading!
I would really like to suggest choosing books that are more likely to be available through the library for the book club selection. I participated in Down Among the Sticks and Bones, but I’m not reading Bannerless because the library didn’t have it and I wasn’t interested in it enough to buy it. The Grip of It isn’t available through my library, either. I’m a maybe on purchasing it. I think more people will participate if they don’t have to buy every book.
That’s a good suggestion, thank you. Bannerless was available at my library and I was able to get it immediately. The Grip Of It isn’t, but I’ll definitely start suggesting older books that have more of a chance of being available.
My library did have a large selection of Carrie Vaughn’s books but juts not Bannerless for some reason.
Weird and also vexing.
The Grip of It is available at my library in both e-form and in paper, though the waiting list for it is LOOOOONG. So I think it’s just going to be a mileage may vary thing? Or maybe if we plan a little further ahead, we can just share a book or two?
We’ll be announcing November’s pick the first Friday of October, and December’s pick the last Friday of October. Ideally, now that we’re getting our feet under us, the idea is to announce the books so that people have two months to get their hands on and read them. Do you feel two months is enough time, if you’re dealing with a LOOOOONG wait-list library situation?
Two months is fair. And I may cave and just buy it, if the eight people in line before me don’t read quickly.
Yeah, I’m having to buy it. I was really pulling for Girl From Rawblood to win.
Two months is normally enough time for my library’s wait-list. I actually got The Girl From Rawblood from the library to read because it sounded so good.