The Birthing House

The Birthing House
By Christopher Ransom

They were in the house a week before it came for him...

About the Author
After studying literature at Colorado State and managing an international business importing reptiles and other exotic creatures, he worked at Entertainment Weekly in New York. He also worked as a copywriter in Madison, Wisconsin, but now lives near his home town in Colorado. After moving into a 140 year old birthing house in Wisconsin, Ransom began to write his first best selling novel The Birthing House.

The Story
The Birthing House evolves around the history of a 140 year old Victorian birthing house located in Wisconsin. When Conrad and his wife Jo move to the birthing house with the hopes to start a fresh with each other, Conrad starts to feel like something is wrong. When Jo suddenly leaves to go on a business course in Detroit, Conrad notices things are starting to get weirder. One day he is handed an old, torn up photo album by the gentleman that owned the house before him. When Conrad is looking through it he notices a photograph within the first few pages that catches his eye. Its his house. Someone took a photograph of the birthing house, but at least 100 years ago. There are lots of women in the picture. Old and young, tall and short. as he is scanning over the faces in the picture, he is struck with a feeling of deep fear. For in the back of the group of women, is one tall figure staring in to the camera with a look of evil and hatred. Only after focusing on the figure does he notice that it is his wife.
The Birthing House is a story following Conrad's very fast spin in to madness and how he handles the house trying to control his thoughts and actions, along with trying to keep up appearances with the neighbours daughter. What will become of Conrad? Is the house haunted or is he simply mad?

Characterisation
Baring in mind the fact that our story is based upon Conrad and his wife Jo moving in to the Birthing house, the story is a main focus on Conrad and his pregnant teenage neighbour, Nadia.
Conrad, being out main protagonist in the story, is a big fan of exotic reptiles and cares for them in his garage after moving to Wisconsin with Jo. But when Jo goes to Detroit for a business course, Conrad is left to fend for himself in the house he feels is pulling him into oblivion. Conrad meets his neighbours, and that is nice. And then he meets Nadia. The neighbours daughter who is a typical attitude filled teenager, but with a baby on the way. Conrad and Nadia start to bond after Nadia tells him that she is scared of his home.
Eventually Conrad talks her into telling him about her experiences in the birthing house. They share a few meals, she falls asleep on the couch a few times and he leaves her to her daily routine. Except she is doing it in his home. Until one day they get a little closer than they should.
I loved how Christopher Ransom has made sure that he hasn't pushed the boundaries between Conrad and Nadia, even though she is still a teenager, but legal. The relationship that builds between them is wrong, and you feel it in your gut, and yet you don't want it to end.
Jo, Conrad's wife, spends most of the story in Detroit, until she suddenly arrives home covered in dirt and with black bags under her eyes. Something is wrong with her and Conrad doesn't know what it is.
Jo is a strong and independent woman who feels she doesn't need the help of a man. There are many parts of the book where we are believing she is being unfaithful towards Conrad, and Conrad does believe it himself. But it doesn't help that Jo doesn't deny the accusations. Nobody has the perfect marriage. And this shows one of the more normal marriages in the world. Not including the ghostly goings on of course.

Plot Lines
As I have grown up, I have become accustomed to watching more scary movies or horrors. However I still find it hard to watch the occasional ghost film. Its just something I find hard to focus on. But when walking through my local book store I was looking at the usual books I would read. And I felt I needed to try something new, that way I had something new to review. I needed a scare in my imagination. And that is exactly what The Birthing House did to me. Many times. I am only going to write about one of my favourite plot lines in this story, because I don't want to ruin it for anyone that decides to read this in future.

Have you ever noticed that in a good ghost story, there is always going to be a possession of some sort. Whether it be a demon or a ghost. And they are either going to take over the whole body and control its everyday life, or it just wants to deliver a message to someone particular.
Well there was one chapter in particular that had me shaking, being too scared to even look up from my book in-case there was someone standing at the end of my bed too.
Nadia has fallen asleep on Conrad's bed and he is wandering the house and hears all sorts of noises and goes to investigate. Things happen, but I shall not go into them now. Anyway, he makes his way back up into his bedroom and Nadia is still asleep. A little while later Conrad wakes to find Nadia sitting up in bed, staring at the wall talking to someone that wasn't there. He turns on the light and can see something about her eyes has changed. They are flat. Dead. And when she spoke it was like someone else was speaking. The voice was sore and old. Jilted sort of. And then Nadia says "Thread through a needle cannot men a young girls broken heart."
Conrad is confused and moves around the bed to sit with her and asks her questions. He then realises it is no longer Nadia in the room with him. After realising he is speaking with the ghost of a woman called Alma, the woman from the photograph that looks like his wife, he freaks and starts to ask questions about the house. When Alma/Nadia reaches out to touch his throat, Conrad slaps her hard across Nadia's face, and both Nadia and Alma recoil and turn back with a murderous grin. After a exchange of words, Nadia starts to come back into her herself and Conrad must hold her to the bed while her mind returns. Conrad falls asleep next to her, only to be woken again a few hours later by Nadia again claiming someone is in the room with them. And that is when Conrad knows things are getting real personal.

OVERALL

Story: 8/10

Characterisation: 6/10

Re-readable: Yes (If you can handle it again)

Recommendable: Definitely 

When I bought this book, I remember looking up what other people had said about the book and how many stars that had given it. Amazon had awarded it only 2/5 stars. So when I started to read it, I felt like I had made a mistake. But after finishing it, I wondered why only 2/5. I thought the story was amazing. The way the author was able to actually have me shaking in my boots and too scared to turn of the light at night. Following the decline of someone's madness and them testing what is actually their reality made me want more and more.

I also bought Christopher Ransoms The Haunting of James Hastings, which shall be one of my next reviews. I recently completed reading The Haunting of James Hastings, and that received 4/5 stars on several review sites. Yet I felt that The Birthing House was definitely the better if the two. But I am not going to put The Haunting of James Hastings on a bad review, because it was yet another book that I loved very much.

I felt that Christopher Ransom really touched a nerve when writing the Birthing House. It made me physically scared to leave my room in the night. I didn't want to even think about seeing peoples faces in blacked out windows and eyes staring at me over the end of my bed. Lollipop stick dolls and kitchen knives suddenly arriving with notes attached in the most random of places. I praise Christopher Ransom for The Birthing House.

I recommend you also read The Haunting of James Hastings, it is very hard to put down.

I look forward to writing my review to that in the near future. But I also look forward to carrying on reading other stories by Christopher Ransom, including The Orphan.

Red Hill

Red Hill
Written by Jamie McGuire

When the world ends, Can love survive?

About the Author
Jamie McGuire was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She was raised in Blackwell, and graduated High School in 1997 where she then went on to attend Northern Oklahoma College. She later graduated with a degree in Radiography. She now lives with her husband and 3 children in Enid, OK.

The Story
After a mad scientist finds a way to recreate the dead, a virus overtakes the world and slowly works its way into peoples bodies. Quickly spreading from one victim to another, the dead start to take over the world in large numbers. 
But when Scarlett goes on a dangerous mission to find her daughters in the outbreak, she meets survivors who are on the road to find their loved ones and find a safe place away from the Shufflers. Scarlett makes her way to the one place she knows that many people wouldn't think to hide. In the countryside. She makes her way to Red Hill, a cabin farm house that she would clean for her boss during the holidays. She makes her way there with the hope that her children will one day find her there. Instead more people start to arrive there to find shelter; including the two daughters of the gentleman that Scarlett worked for, and their boyfriends Bryce and Cooper. Miranda and Ashley find their father is gone and there is no way of bringing him back. But with them they bring Nathan and his young daughter Zoe. All looking for a safe haven, the group of survivors start to work together along with the help of their Military Officer survivor, Joey. Working together to keep alive and help Scarlett's daughters to find her at Red Hill, they meet new people and some old friends. whilst also making new connections, finding new loves, meeting enemies and finding out deadly secrets.


Characterisation
Red Hill has a large group of characters that are involved in the building of this wonderfully thrilling story. They are as follows;

• Scarlett - One of the 3 characters in which this story is told by. She is an X-ray technician who is desperately trying to find her daughters in this messed up, apocalyptic world.
• Nathan - The second character the story is told by. Nathan is running with his young daughter Zoe whilst trying to keep her from having another turn.
• Miranda - The final character who tells us her events. She is running with her boyfriend Bryce, her sister Ashley and Ashley's boyfriend Cooper.
• Joey a military officer who has survived thus far, running with Miranda and her group of survivors to find a safe place to hide.

The story evolves around all of these characters including new survivors and old friends.

All of the characters above have made it safely to Red Hill with the help of others, whilst trying to help more survivors on their way.

One of the characters that I really found to make an impression on me the most, was Scarlett.
When the story began she was a divorcee with two daughters and a job she enjoyed. By the end of the story she was still a divorcee, with no job, but a new love in her life. One thing I loved about Scarlett is the fact that she was spending the story making a clear way for her daughters. She believed with all her heart and soul, deep down inside, that her daughters Halle and Jenna would find her message left at their fathers home, and join her at Red Hill one day. She prayed every day they would return to her. She would patrol the fields on the farm, walk to the nearest town and take out as many zombies as possible, so that she felt better and knew her daughters had a chance to find her. But do they?

Plot Lines
Writing this part of a review is always difficult. When reviewing any book, it is difficult, especially when you love it so much that you just want to tell the world everything that happens. When describing it to my friends I find it difficult not to blurt out everything that happens. So lets try it with this one.

Now, we all know that zombie apocalyptic stories are, very commonly, the same in one way or another. For example; A spread of a virus? Or an experiment gone wrong? Nowadays, many zombie stories start the same. A sickness is spread. Which is Red Hill, yes, a sickness is spread among the world, passing it through bites from a zombie to a living being. But to start the story, Jamie decided to give us a background view of a crazy scientist from Europe. He wanted to find a way to reanimate the dead. Which he successfully did, but it went all wrong. That was what made Red Hill interest me the most. It wasn't just the usual sickness. A crazy scientist decided he wanted to make a difference, little did he know that he would cause the end of the world instead of making it better by keeping the living, well... Living.
Throughout the story characters come and go. Survivors are met and leave again. And the best couple of survivors that I believe made the story different to others was the strangers who walked over the hill to the farm. A father and his daughter are arriving at the farm and are invited into the house by Scarlett and Nathan. Everyone is very wary. The father is very controlling over his daughter and wants her by his side at all times. Now, it is obviously understandable under the circumstances they are in, however, he really wont let the girl be by herself unless he is in the bathroom, pretty much.
But once a revelation is made about the pair, things turn dangerous. Scarlett is out for blood and she wont stop until she gets it. 
I won't be the one to ruin the story, but the way that Jamie McGuire has written about this event, it really makes your realise the dangers of the world. Its not just the dead you should be afraid of. But the living too.

But with the end of the world still in play, what will the group decide to do when the Military starts to take control of the problem at hand?

A Wonderful story that needs to be enjoyed by all audiences. Well, maybe not the young ones.

OVERALL

Story: 7/10

Characterisation: 7/10

Re-readable: Yes

Recommendable: Yes

The wonderful thing about Red Hill, is that apart from the fact it is like many Zombie Apocalyptic stories or TV shows, it allows for a little humour in some parts. Not only that, but the group of survivors seem to be very alike in the interest of readers, yet different at the same time. When watching TV shows like The Walking Dead, characters are very different and come from very different backgrounds, that way there is diversity. For example, different ethnic origins, different careers, skills and languages. It helps with the building of a new life and survival. Whereas with Red Hill, Miranda and Ashley (being sisters) are very alike and scared of nearly everything that stands in their way, and wont allow certain things to go ahead. Scarlett acts like she isn't scared of what is out there, but Nathan puts her in her place about it because he really is.
The story is deeply immense and has you on your toes at the end of many cliff hanging chapters, whilst always keeping you interested in the relationships being built.

After reading many peoples reviews about this book too, I found that not many people were fans of the characters. They found that they were "Scaredy Cats" many times. Well what do you expect? The dead are walking the streets looking to eat your face... Its only natural to be scared. But on the other hand, yes they do need to be a little braver if they are going to make it in the world.  I personally found the characters to interest me deeply.

Read Jamie McGuire's Providence and see if you can carry the series with you.

Jamie McGuire is a wonderful writer, and I may be being biased, but she has written wonderful love scenes in the past, wonderfully beautiful books and stories, that I have just had to read them again and again and AGAIN. So after finding this book on shelves across the country, I just had to get my hands on it. Baring in mind the fact that it is very different from Beautiful Disaster & Walking Disaster, she still manages to put in the wonderful love story that we all wish we had. I praise her.