Book Review: American Ghoul by Walt Morton

American Ghoul
By Walt Morton

Blurb: 
Seventeen-year-old Howard Pickman has some unusual problems: He comes from a family of ghouls with a long history of digging up corpses, and he’s just moved to a new school filled with kids that are scarier than he is. American Ghoul is the story of an exceptionally odd teenager trying to survive the most terrible time anybody has to go through -- senior year at high school

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Paul's Review: 

I like creepy.  I especially like creepy if it is really, truly creepy.  American Ghoul by Walt Morton is a great, really creepy, and, in some cases, hilarious read.

Morton tells the story of a high school student in New Jersey in the seventies who is a ghoul.  What, exactly, is a ghoul?  A ghoul is a supernatural creature who looks like a normal human, but who has two different colored eyes and who digs up freshly dug graves to eat dead human flesh - particularly the brain, pituitary gland, heart, adrenal gland, and the liver.  What if on top of all the normal high school worries like friends, grades, cliques (or not), sex, drugs, college looming in the future, etc. you also had to dig up graves and eat whom you found to survive?

This reviewer is a big fan of true horror stories and movies.  Comedy should not, as a rule, be included in the story or movie.  On the other hand, Walt Morton just proved me wrong.  Morton's subject matter is truly horrific (much to my delight), and there were also many instances of me laughing to tears (with my wife and niece looking at me as if I were crazy).  What a truly entertaining book.  As I have said there was horror and comic relief.  There was also a great friendship story, an underdog you rout for, tragedy, a love story, and (I am happy to say) a really great ending.  This book was dead on (no pun intended) when it comes to what the whole high school experience is like, and it reminded me of my own high school years - minus being a ghoul, of course.

If this book is the first in a series of six, then I cannot wait to read the rest!  I am very happy to give this book five stars out of five.  Creep me out completely AND make me laugh hysterically AND do it successfully will you, Walt Morton?  Creep on, Mr. Morton, creep on.  I dig it (ha, ha, ok now pun intended).

Rating: 5 Stars - 

Book Review (Guest Reviewer): Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
By Seth Grahame-Smith

Synopsis: 
When Abraham Lincoln was nine years old, his mother died from an ailment called the "milk sickness." Only later did he learn that his mother's deadly affliction was actually the work of a local vampire, seeking to collect on Abe's father's unfortunate debts.

When the truth became known to the young Abraham Lincoln, he wrote in his journal: henceforth my life shall be one of rigorous study and devotion. I shall become learned in all things—a master of mind and body. And this mastery shall have but one purpose."

While Abraham Lincoln is widely lauded for reuniting the North with the South and abolishing slavery from our country, no one has ever understood his valiant fight for what it really was. That is, until Seth Grahame-Smith stumbled uponThe Journal of Abraham Lincoln, and became the first living person to lay eyes on it in more than 140 years.

Using the journal as his guide and writing in the grand biographical style of Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough, Seth has reconstructed the true life story of our greatest president for the first time—all while revealing the hidden history behind the Civil War, and uncovering the massive role vampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of our nation.

Goodreads

Available for purchase at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

Paul's Review:

I was very skeptical when I first saw the title of this book, and I dismissed it muttering something to myself along the lines of ‘What a crock!’