BLOG TOUR AND GIVEAWAY: The Fall

The Fall is a perfect Halloween read, one that I LOVED, and so I couldn't be more excited at the opportunity to be part of the blog tour, so here I am! As it's nearly Halloween, and this book is Halloween material, I have a suitably Halloween-y guest post from the author herself, as well as a nice little giveaway for a copy of the book courtesy of the publisher! How much do you all love me?! Yeah yeah, I know, "get on with it!" I hear you all cry, so without further ado......

Madeline Usher is doomed.

She has spent her life fighting fate, and she thought she was succeeding. Until she woke up in a coffin.

Ushers die young. Ushers are cursed. Ushers can never leave their house, a house that haunts and is haunted, a house that almost seems to have a mind of its own. Madeline’s life—revealed through short bursts of memory—has hinged around her desperate plan to escape, to save herself and her brother. Her only chance lies in destroying the house.

In the end, can Madeline keep her own sanity and bring the house down?The Fall is a literary psychological thriller, reimagining Edgar Allan Poe’s classic The Fall of the House of Usher.

You can check out my review of The Fall here. 

Bethany Griffin is the author of the post apocalyptic The Masque Of The Red Death sequence as well as The Fall! She was born in Louisville and she teaches English Literature, History and Creative Writing. 
http://www.bethanygriffin.com
@_bethanygriffin

And now for the moment you've all been waiting for! In the spirit of Halloween, Bethany has provided me with a guest post to fit the occasion! So read on for Bethany's Top 3 Gothic Stories.... 

My top 3 Gothic Stories

1. The Fall of the House of Usher. I know, big surprise, right? But I’ve loved this story since I first read it at the age of 12. I’m sure I didn’t understand a good bit of the story, possibly most of it, but the sense of danger, the scary house, the storm outside, the realization that Roderick has buried his sister alive, it all came together to form a huge impression on me as a young reader. Later, when I revisited the story—and I don’t think I would be exaggerating if I said that I read it dozens of times as I worked out the story for The Fall—I found that I loved it just as much. The Fall of the House of Usher is a dense story, it wraps you up and suffocates you with words and images, one after the other, so much you aren’t sure if you can hold all of it in your mind. And…that’s what the House of Usher became to me, as I wrote it into my own story, something so vast and evil you couldn’t fully comprehend it. Poe gave me that vision, and for that reason this story will always be my favorite.

2. The Yellow Wallpaper- a perfectly perfect unreliable narrator, or a woman whose forced seclusion drives her mad? Our main character is the wife of a physician who has no imagination or time for fanciful things. To counter her hysterical nature, she must remain on bed-rest, alone for most of the day in a room with barred windows at the top of a rented manse. She must not read, or write, or do anything with her mind, only rest. And slowly, we watch her go mad, fixated on the yellow wallpaper that covers the walls of the room. The last line of this story is creepy perfection.

3. The Pit and the Pendulum- there is nothing that isn’t scary about this story, but like all of Poe, it’s the creepy menace of the unknown that is the reader’s undoing. The narrator wakes up and is filled with terror and uncertainty, where is he? A dungeon filled with instruments of torture. He narrowly escapes death several times, but each time the next fate designed for him is even worse. And then, there’s the pendulum, razor sharp, descending slowly, slowly…and there are the rats…and there are the walls that close in around you…

Giveaway time! Perhaps this was the moment you'd been waiting for?! So, I imagine most of you, if not all of you, know the drill by now! Standard rafflecopter, do the little tasks, as many or as few as you like, knock yourself out. I have ONE copy of The Fall to giveaway to one of you lovely readers! 

Time to get (momentarily) serious. 

The Rules. 

1. Fill out the Rafflecopter boxes, you HAVE to fill in the one with your email, not only to unlock the others, but ya know...so I can actually contact you if you win. UK ONLY 

2. I will pick a winner on the 31st, so you have until then to do as much as you want towards entries. Short I know, but Halloween! 

3. Winner will be notified by email, from me, the day I have drawn the winner, and I will TWEET the winner's name on Twitter. So check there, but ya know....if I haven't emailed you then you haven't won. Sorry folks. 

4. I love talking to all of you, I really do, but please don't spam me begging me to pick you! I will be using a generator to do that and therefore have no control! Likewise please don't send me upset tweets if you don't win, it will make me sad :(

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good luck guys, and have a spooktacular Halloween! 

Pssssttt....check out the rest of the dates for the tour! It's coming to a close but there's three more stops, and tomorrow is the lovely Uncorked Thoughts! 

The Fall

The Fall
Rating: 5/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the Publisher!

The Ushers of Usher House die young. They are all cursed, doomed thanks to a greedy and bloodthirsty ancestor. You see Usher House is different, some say it's haunted, but the Ushers know that the house has a mind of it's own. Ushers can never leave the House, it won't let them. They feel what it feels and it thrives on suffering and pain. At first, Madeline was seduced by the House, when you have a mother as cruel as  hers, who loves her twin brother more than her, the affection and the love brought from being the House's favourite, meant everything to her, especially when her mother saves her brother from the curse by sending him away. Soon enough, Madeline is alone in the House, the House the only thing that cares about her, it even sends her a dog to keep her company, although she is wary of gifts from the House. But being the House's favourite doesn't mean you're safe.

Through bursts of Madeline's memories over the years, we learn about the House, her life and watch as she makes the first friend in her entire life, watch a doctor become a murderer and watch Madeline finally hatch a plan to escape. You see, she has to destroy the House. But when she wakes up in a coffin, it seems the House has won. Can Madeline be strong enough to destroy the House to save herself and her brother?

Guys this is seriously right up there as a Halloween read, I was going to save it until closer to the time, but I kept looking at, and I watched all the other reviews roll in and I couldn't stop myself. I cracked. And I'm soooo glad I did, I zoomed through this in a couple of hours and I was hooked the entire way through! I seriously couldn't put it down.

The Fall is fantastically, creepily atmospheric. The House can be pictured so vividly you feel as if you've been there before, and this book is so incredibly unique. You find yourself transported in to the incredibly eerie house, breathing in the dust and the decay and quite honestly, I should REALLY not have been reading this as late at night as I was, because I was completely creeped out, yet I couldn't simply close the book and put it down. I mean, I have been known to watch Most Haunted and then be able to sleep properly for a week, and the mentions of ghosts in this where so very eerie and creepy, yet, like the glutton for punishment I am, I carried on. (In case anyone was wondering, I did sleep perfectly fine after a couple of hours of mindlessly reading peoples crap on Facebook)

I keep capitalizing House in my synopsis and so far in this review, to me, I feel it should be, as the House isn't just a building, it feels like an actual character in the book. It prevents the family from leaving, I'm fairly certain the house is what causes their "illness", and ya know...it threw an axe at Madeline. The House feels incredibly vengeful, incredibly.....malicious? It enjoys grief and pain and cruelty, and so it enjoys taunting and terrorizing it's inhabitants. This really adds to the incredible atmosphere of the book, you can feel the foreboding, the fear, the dread, the hopelessness of everyone from the House that has ever tried to beat it, to leave. It feels like no-one in the House is truly living. There's incredible moments of disorientation, particularly when the House seems to be making Madeline think she's gone mad, I mean it could have been the Doctor drugging her, that was a contribution, but the House would make things disappear. Stairs go nowhere, doors open on to walls. It was astounding.

The story is strange, in that the pace is fairly slow, but you're still gripped, compelled to keep reading. The POV switches from current Madeline of 18 year's, to younger Madeline, from 8, I think the youngest was, to 17. The chapters are fairly short, but it's sufficient enough in length to give you a glimpse in to Madeline's past, to keep you reading as you try to put the pieces together. It's through these flashbacks, as well as the diary entries of Lisbeth Usher, scattered throughout Madeline's narrative? POV's? I'm not sure how to put it, that we learn of Madeline's family history. I will admit I worked out who Lisbeth was fairly quickly, but I was not expecting the conclusion of Lisbeth's story, as it where, I had assumed she was someone's mother and was very wrong!

I loved the first chapter, with Madeline in the coffin, almost the end at the beginning, you knew it was going to happen, as you read you work out why it must have happened, but  you can't wait to find out what happens next, and when it reaches the tie in, as the book is racing towards the end you're frantically turning pages, and realizing how few there are left, which is mildly worrying.

I loved the ending. If you want a definitive ending, this will probably vex you. I liked how Cassandra was there, I'd quite like to know what the deal was with the tentacle monster and how she survived! You're left wondering if Madeline and Roderick are alive, I would like to think they are, from the ending, I really do think they are, but you're left to draw your own conclusion and for me, I felt like it was the perfect ending to the book. Keeping some mystery and intrigue.

Madeline I felt for from the beginning with how her mother treated her as opposed to Roderick, and I could understand each and every feeling she had, including when she felt some resentment to him. I mean I resented him and more than once wanted to smack him one, I mean who could leave their sister alone, all by herself, on Christmas Day just because he didn't like the House. There where a few moments like that where I really hated him. But Madeline I connected with.

When you're reading you see and feel what Madeline see's and feels, for example with Emily, like Madeline, I really did think she'd taken the money and scarpered, just used Madeline with no intention of coming back, I did not, at all, expect what had really happened, I mean I knew he was cray-cray but I didn't think he was THAT bad. The Fall for me, was a good mix between being able to guess some things, and being totally shocked and surprised by others. You constantly create theories as you read and have them totally destroyed in an unexpected way.

Also, like Madeline, you doubt everything and everyone. Is Cassandra really Madeline's ally? Is Emily trustworthy? Is Dr.Paul? You question everyone and their motives, particularly the doctors. Pretty much everyone in the House has some Usher blood and was drawn in by the House so everyone is suspect, I can't imagine living questioning everyone and never trusting everyone like Madeline did every single day.

The characters and their transformations where particularly fascinating. The young Doctor being a prime example, in the beginning there where hints of genuine romance, from a young man who just wanted to solve the family illness/curse and cure Madeline, who became infected by the House and it's evil spirit, although, having said that, i'm not sure how innocent he was in the beginning after a conversation was overheard, I was starting to think he had ulterior motives for going there. He did a total 180. Then there was Roderick, who seemed to escape the curse, but changed entirely when he came back and spent a certain amount of time with the House, not to mention the House's rather (very well done) skeevy desire to have Madeline and Roderick be a liiiiiiiittle bit incestuous. They don't, because ya know...they realize it's the House.

I was very intrigued by Noah, and his relationship with Roderick, I assume he was the friend the "incident" happened with, and with how he was treating Madeline, I was very curious to see more of him, but again, you can draw your own conclusions.

The Fall is spooky, creepy, eerie, spellbinding, enchanting, mesmerizing, haunting, I could go on and on, but you get my drift. It was so fantastically vivid and atmospheric that it sucked you in to the story and in to the House along with Madeline, it's an incredible read, with fascinating characters and constant mystery and intrigue for you to work through, putting the pieces together, trying to come up with theories and trying to work out, along with Madeline, how to beat the House. I had very high expectations for this book and I wasn't disappointed, it's one that I will read again and again, particularly around this time of year! The Fall will really give your imagination a work out, from tentacled creatures and ghosts, to those times when you get no definitive answer and have to decide for yourself what happened!