Book Review: Knock and You Will See Me by Andrew Cull

This book was my 2018 December Book Cover of the Month.

Spoiler Free Summary: In  Knock and You Will See Me by Andrew Cull Ellie Ray is still morning the death of her father when he delivers her a note. The crumpled, hand-written letter just asks, “Why?” This classic style ghost story gives chills in all the right places as creepy escalates to flat-out scary. Will Ellie find whatever it is that’s terrorizing her family? When she does, will she be able to stop it?

Character:  In too many horror stories (regardless of medium), the character always has some sort of moment of stupid. It’s a flaw of the genre that, thankfully, Cull doesn’t exploit. Ellie isn’t a genius or even particularly clever. What she is, is a realistic, thoughtful woman at her wits’ end. Some of the choices she makes have negative consequences, but they’re never just idiotic decisions just to move the plot forward or prompt a boringly telegraphed jump scare.

Exposition: First-person narrative sort of emphasizes the exposition in this story. There is some info-dump here and there, but I’d say it’s better than the average first-person story. The plot moves pretty quickly, and that is key in a good page-turning horror story.

Worldbuilding: You have to grade this on a curve. Horror is all about keeping information back until the right time. So while this isn’t full of detailed scenery and scope, it’s not supposed to be. The timing is great for the story. It does a great job of building suspense. Yeah, the ending is open-ended, and that always frustrates me, but it was honestly hard to put down.

Image of Mr. Cull taken from his Amazon page for review purposes under fair use doctrine.

Dialogue: The good news is, I don’t remember it being bad. The bad news is, I don’t remember it at all. It didn’t bug me. There are a few conversations with the local sheriff (or law person) that provided some solid tension and sympathy, but I wouldn’t call it snappy or anything.

Description:  This was perfect, especially for the genre. It was creepy in all the right places. I was prevented detail when it built tension, but when that tension peaked, the description was vivid. I’d like to put a special note to the description that implied emotions. This is an area of weakness for me, and reading this book helped me add a few “show don’t tell” tricks to my bag. Cull does a great job evoking emotion without paragraphs of information or ham-handed descriptors.

Overall:  This story was fantastic and pretty hard to put down. I tore through it in about a week. I’d recommend it to any thriller or horror fans. This was just a great, classic horror story that I think would make Hitchcock proud. 

Thanks for reading

Matt

The 2018 M.L.S. Weech Book Cover of the Year Bracket Starts Now!

Hello all!

I’ve been building to this for quite some time, and I’m so excited to kick things off. This is it! Twelve Book Covers of the Month join four Wild Card Book Covers to comprise a sixteen-book tournament to determine which one will rule them all!

If you like, you can take a look at each book cover’s winning announcement: December, January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, and November.

365 book covers. 53,047 votes. All leading to this tournament! The covers were ranked 1-16 by the number of total votes each received. That means the cover that received the most votes (Until Nothing Remains) is going up against the Wild Card that received the fewest votes. (Age of War), and so on and so forth.

You can vote all the way through the tournament, supporting the covers you like best through each round. I like to make sure people get the credit they deserve, so please show your support. Please vote and share as much as possible to get people a chance to pick their favorite.

As always, I’d appreciate it if you tag the authors and artists if you know them. I try to tag or friend every author I can, but sometimes it’s hard to track someone down. Max participation is a huge deal to me. The more people who vote, the more recognition these authors and artists receive, and I want this to be as legitimate as possible.

Image taken from Pixabay.

If you are the author, let’s remember to be good sports! 1) Please feel free to message or contact me at any time. 2) Please feel free to like, share, text, ask for support, and call everyone you know. I absolutely want max participation. However, if you’re going to offer giveaways or prizes, please offer them for voting, not just voting for you.

Also, while your summoning your army of voting soldiers, please make sure you ask them to vote in every match. Part of the idea of this is to get exposure to as many artists and authors as possible. By all means, if you can get 1,000 people to vote for your book, do it. Just please also send some eyeballs to the other matches.

A final note to authors and artists: I currently have links to the books’ Amazon pages. If you’d prefer I switch that link to sign up for your newsletter or like your social media page or whatever, just send me the link and let me know. I want this to help you. I want this to be as helpful as possible, so whatever you need me to do to facilitate that, just let me know.

It’s been fun! I’d like to end this tournament on a high note. I’m trying to get 10,000 total votes. Please, tell everyone. Get people to vote. I want this trophy to mean something, and it’ll frankly mean more as more people vote.

I hope you keep having fun. Please, vote, share, and discuss as much as possible.

All you have to do now is head over here to vote!

Thanks for reading,

Matt

Announcing the December Book Cover of the Month!

Hello everyone,

I think this year started off on a fantastic note!  The December Book Cover of the Month bracket has just wrapped up. This month had outstanding participation from several of the authors and artists.

We had 4,608 votes this month.

This month had one winner who came out swinging and never really backed down. There were a few threats here and there, but each day let the winning cover pull farther away.

The December Book Cover of the Month is…

 

 

 

 

Knock and You Will See Me by Andrew Cull! If you’re curious about how I felt about the book, check out the Facebook post that I posted when this book first landed on the bracket, here.

Let’s look at the stats!

Cull received 306 total votes. He edged Eaves out of the sweet sixteen by two votes.

The runner up, who gets a second shot to get into the 2018 Book Cover of the Year Bracket, was The Saint’s Rise by Michael John Grist.  Grist came on late, but he got a second shot for his efforts.

 

For Cull, he doesn’t have to stress over another “tryout” bracket. He’s in the main Book Cover of the Year Bracket.  Let’s look at the summary for his book.

Amazon:

(START BLURB)

“We buried Dad in the winter. It wasn’t until the spring that we heard from him again.”

Knock and You Will See Me is a new ghost story by award winning writer-director Andrew Cull.

When grieving Ellie Ray finds a crumpled, handwritten note from her recently deceased father, hidden behind the couch, she assumes that her middle boy, Max, left it there. It has a single word written on it: WHY. But, as more and more letters begin to appear throughout the house, Ellie and her three boys will find themselves dragged into a deeply sinister mystery surrounding her father’s death.

“Dad? I looked down at the scribbled note in my hand, at the words torn into the paper. What had started as a whisper had grown louder, more desperate. The words had been screamed onto the page. Dad? Please. What’s going on?”

Also by Andrew Cull: Hope and Walker, Did You Forget About Me? and The Trade.

(END BLURB)

I’ve added Knock and You Will See Me to my TBR. (For those who are new to the deal, I buy the Book Cover of the Month to read and review in the future. I bought all of last year’s covers. I’m currently reading a book cover of the month from last year.

Here’s Baron’s Facebook page. Give it a like if you’re curious about him and his work.

I’ll try to find out who did that cover. I’m frankly behind my interviews, but I’m hopeful my vacation can give me a chance to get caught up.

The January Book Cover of the Month is all set, and that contest will launch Feb. 1. I needed just a bit of breathing room between months, and thankfully things will be back to normal after that January bracket.

I will continue to identify and select covers for each day from Amazon’s New Release section for fantasy and science fiction. If you follow and like my Facebook page, you can see what covers will make the bracket.

Thanks for reading

Matt

A December Book Cover of the Month Update

Greetings all,

With just seven days left in this month’s bracket, it’s time to update you all on how things have been progressing.

As I type this, we have 2,890 votes so far. That’s a bit slow, but there’s still room to get to what’s normal.

Knock and You Will See Me, by Andrew Cull took an early lead and hasn’t let it go. I’ve seen this a few months in a row now. Most hold that lead, but some covers have managed to catch up. Besides, it’s not nearly as dramatic a lead as it might appear.

Most Voted on so far: Knock and You Will See Me has the most total votes so far with 200.

Least Voted for: A Glitch in the World by BAlex Drozd. This cover has 47 votes. I’d like to see it get a bit more support.

Cull has a commanding lead in the Finals, but his lead in other rounds isn’t so comfortable. He only has a 10-vote lead over Whichwood by Tahereh Mafi. His lead over Weave a Circle Round by Kari Maaren is a bit more comfortable, 13.  If either of those books overtake Cull in the earlier rounds, Cull loses his place as the champion. If Either book overtakes Cull, Maaren would actually become the leader.

A quick reminder of how the tournament works. The easiest way to win is to have the most people vote for you in every round. The trick is you have to have the most people vote you through in each round, all the way to the final.  As an example, 100 people could vote someone through to the finals, but that doesn’t do a cover any good if he doesn’t win the first round. It’s not total votes. It’s not simple championship votes. The winning cover has to have the most votes in each round of the competition.

This will be the only update for this type of bracket. It’s been an amazing tournament to watch thus far, and I hope readers continue to support their authors by voting, liking, and sharing the bracket with as many people as possible.  You can vote at this address!

I’ll announce the winner is just seven days!

Thanks for reading,

Matt

The December Book Cover of the Month Begins

I’m typing this in advance because it’s the holidays, and I want to stay on top of things as we have a bunch going on. I want to thank you all (assuming the Book Cover of the Year went even half as well as I think it will) for your participation in that bracket, and I hop you have a bit more left. I promise, once we get through the January bracket, things will slow down to their normal pace.

December’s bracket has 32 new books. I started fresh and picked all 32 covers, but this month’s runner up will get the final slot in the January bracket.

You can vote all the way through the tournament, supporting the covers you like best through each round. I like to make sure people get the credit they deserve, so please show your support. Please vote and share as much as possible to get people a chance to pick their favorite.

As always, I’d appreciate it if you tag the authors and artists if you know them. I try to tag or friend every author I can, but sometimes it’s hard to track someone down. Max participation is a huge deal to me. The more people who vote, the more recognition these authors and artists receive, and I want this to be as legitimate as possible.

Image taken from Pixabay.

If you are the author, let’s remember to be good sports! 1) Please feel free to message or contact me at any time. 2) Please feel free to like, share, text, ask for support, and call everyone you know. I absolutely want max participation. However, if you’re going to offer giveaways or prizes, please offer them for voting, not just voting for you.

Also, while your summoning your army of voting soldiers, please make sure you ask them to vote in every match. Part of the idea of this is to get exposure to as many artists and authors as possible. By all means, if you can get 1,000 people to vote for your book, do it. Just please also send some eyeballs to the other matches.

A final note to authors and artists: I currently have links to the books’ Amazon pages. If you’d prefer I switch that link to sign up for your newsletter or like your social media page or whatever, just send me the link and let me know. I want this to help you. I want this to be as helpful as possible, so whatever you need me to do to facilitate that, just let me know.

I hope you keep having fun. Please, vote, share, and discuss as much as possible.

All you have to do now is head over here to vote!

Thanks for reading,

Matt