A Book by Tiffany Daniel
The Summer That Melted Everything
A brief intro…
The review lives below!
Even when I was a young guy, I could always read scary books at night. Mostly Stephen King… always Stephen King. I would press through for hours, knowing that I needed to be up early, but was unable to put the book down. The crazy part was, I had such a vivid imagination that everything scared me. I could imagine things in the room with me. Hands creeping up the side of my bed to grab me by the foot and drag me down into the abyss where they did whatever they do to you in the abyss. I never got that far. The hand was enough. I didn’t even know what the thing that was going to drag me under looked like. But that black charred claw with hanging flesh and crusty scabs, I had that down. It was horrific. And yet, still, I could read the books.
Sometimes, depending on the reason, like when I had seen The Exorcist too young for instance, I would sprint down the hall and jump onto my bed from the doorway, which was no easy feat, to avoid said hand snatching me under while I pulled the covers back to enter the warm safe sanctuary that comes from rather thin sheets. Yes, I had quite the imagination.
As I’ve gotten older, and my book tastes have changed… I still read a lot of King… I found myself not necessarily scared of the hand or of the stories themselves. I wondered if I had been all scared out. Like you’re born with a certain amount of scare in you and when it’s used up, you don’t get that scared anymore by the same scary stuff that once scared the sh*t out of you. Or… you realize that it’s just you and the hand never existed. That, and if something was that powerful and skilled at dragging people into abysses, you were facked anyhow, and you might as well just surrender to your fate. Yeah, I think that’s it.
Nick Cutter’s book, The Troop didn’t scare me. It was just friggin’ horrific. Not scary. Disturbing. Horrifically disturbing. That’s the last book I didn’t read at night. For a long time. I read it on lunch breaks. Sometimes I would read a sentence before bed, say, “fack this” and pull out something else.
You might be thinking The Summer That Melted Everything is a horror story at this point. Or why else would I be writing about not reading certain books at night? It’s not a horror story… or is it?
Nick Cutter’s book, The Troop didn’t scare me. It was just friggin’ horrific. Not scary. Disturbing. Horrifically disturbing. That’s the last book I didn’t read at night. For a long time. I read it on lunch breaks. Sometimes I would read a sentence before bed, say, “fack this” and pull out something else.
You might be thinking The Summer That Melted Everything is a horror story at this point. Or why else would I be writing about not reading certain books at night? It’s not a horror story… or is it?
Here's the review...
The Summer that Melted Everything Book Review
Tiffany McDaniel debuted with this book. I remember reading Gillian Flynn’s, Sharp Objects, and thinking how tasty her sentences were with tone for salt and story for pepper. Just resonated with me. I admired it. Tiffany McDaniel writes every sentence like a poem. Her sentences are like a rich dessert, not like a salty steak, and the story starts to go down just like a cheesecake too rich to finish… but you must.
Rich dessert.
Too rich.
I took to not reading this book at night. Not because it was scary. But because the language was so vibrant you could smell it, and I didn’t want to miss a word. I write. I use metaphors. Not like Tiffany McDaniel. I want to look through her eyes for five minutes out at the world. Could be anything. A damn junk yard, and I’m telling you, I’d probably see a whole other dimensional universe in there that didn’t exist before. She would describe it as something… I’m not going to even try, and you would come out with a whole new appreciation for junk yards. And probably learn a thing or two about yourself.
I’ve known all of the characters in this book. “Oh, yeah, that’s like, so and so…” and “I know that lady…” and “Yup, I do that…” They’re in there. We’re in there. We’re all in there.
Maybe though, it was too scary to read at night. Maybe I’ve changed as to what scares me. There are no more claws reaching for my foot from under my bed. Or there are, they’re the ideas I’ve concretized. Maybe there is something lurking in the shadows waiting to drag me to hell… my attachments. Maybe the monsters we read about that keep us up at night are metaphors for the real monsters out there. Or in here.
Maybe, The Summer That Melted Everything really was a horror story. One that was told by a poet. One that read like licking the frosting off the edge of a scalpel. It’s tasty, but you’re gonna get cut.
The book affected me. I could feel it in my chest. I think you should read this book. I hope Tiffany McDaniel is proud of it. I loved it. I just couldn’t read it at night.
Pick it up from Amazon today.
Go to Tiffany’s Website to learn more about her work.
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