Category Archives: Dayle Loves This

Dayle Loves This: Psych (TV)

By Dayle Loves This

This post was funded by my wonderful supporters at Patreon.

Welcome to Dayle Loves This, wherein I recommend books, TV, and movies (and maybe other things) that rocked my world.

If they don’t rock your world, that’s okay. We all have reader/watcher cookies as well as triggers. If you have questions, go ahead and ask. And please make your own suggestions, and discuss!

When the pandemic drove us into our homes in 2020, one of the first shows I binge-watched wasPsych (2006–2014, plus three movies). I’d seen most of them, although I’d missed some of the earlier episodes when I was watching the show as it aired. (Remember doing that? How quaint.)

I watched Psych because I needed gentle and funny, cozy mysteries that kept me reasonably guessing, and an overall sense of the ridiculous. Plus I love the various relationships on the show.

The premise of Psych is that Shawn Spencer grew up with a police officer dad, who constantly drilled in him the need to pay attention to things—he’d quiz Shawn when they were in a diner, for example, asking him to close his eyes and then count all the hats in the room. Most episodes started with a flashback with Shawn, his father, and/or his best friend, Burton Guster (aka Gus).

In the present day, Shawn eschewed joining the police, and isn’t really holding down a job. He’s still best friends with Gus who, by comparison, is straight-laced and serious, wearing suits to his job as a pharmaceutical sales rep. Then Shawn discovers he can use his deductive abilities to convince people he’s psychic. At which point he promptly rents a storefront to start a new business, Psych, as a psychic detective, with Gus his somewhat unwilling partner.

Unsurprisingly, barely controlled mayhem ensues.

One of the things I love the most about the show is Shawn and Gus’s relationship. It’s the perfect example of a bromance. Shawn may tease Gus about being so serious (one of the running jokes is that every time he introduces Gus, he makes up a ridiculous name for him), Gus may be exasperated by Shawn’s antics. But in the end, they’ve always got each other’s backs.

Among the whimsical features is the pineapple. In the first episode, there’s a pineapple, and the actor playing Shawn ad libs a line about taking the pineapple with them. Thereafter, there’s a pineapple in every episode, and websites devoted to where it appears each time. The pattern on a shirt, slices in a fruit mix, a pineapple-shaped lamp…. (Ken and I still joke about finding the pineapple in other shows or in real life. Probably one a year I take a picture of one in the grocery store and text him.)

Then there are the regular recalls and jokes about the 1980s, whether it be guest stars (Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, etc.), episodes honoring the TV show Twin Peaks and the movie Clue, or Shawn’s devotion to the band Tears for Fears.

Now, the actual math of Shawn and Gus’s high school reunion having a 1980s theme doesn’t work. They would have graduated in mid-1990s, and not been so obsessed with the 1980s. But as a fan, I don’t care, and given the popularity of the show (eight seasons), other fans didn’t care either.

(It’s a good learning experience for me as a writer: You can get away with things like this if your project is solid and fans love it. I mean, look at James Bond movies—they stunts are completely unbelievable—but does anyone care? No.)

Warnings: The first few episodes aren’t quite in the same tone as later ones (Shawn is more of a womanizer early on, for example). The show finds its delightful groove fairly quickly, though. Also, the side character of police detective Carlton Lassiter makes a few jokes about wanting to go out and shoot criminals. In current times, this is cringy to the point of offensive. However, remember that the show started airing 16 years ago, and trust that jokes like those do fade away as the show goes on. It’s an unfortunate blip in an otherwise great show.

Dayle says if you need an escape from the current world, give Psych a try. She thinks you might love it, too.

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I’m able to continue writing and publishing thanks to my wonderful supporters on Patreon.

Dayle Loves This: The Inheritance Games/Truly Devious (novels)

By Dayle Loves This

This post was funded by my wonderful supporters at Patreon.

Welcome to Dayle Loves This, wherein I recommend books, TV, and movies (and maybe other things) that rocked my world.

If they don’t rock your world, that’s okay. We all have reader/watcher cookies as well as triggers. If you have questions, go ahead and ask. And please make your own suggestions, and discuss!

The title lies a little. The Inheritance Games is the first book in an eponymous trilogy (the third book isn’t out yet, argh!) and Truly Devious is the first book in an eponymous trilogy plus a standalone with the same main character.

But that was too long to put in the title.

(Also, “eponymous” is a really nifty word.)

I’m grouping these together because the books have similarities, I discovered them at about the same time, and I devoured the first in each series so quickly I had to reread them to catch all the things I missed, before I could go on to future books.

The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes has been compared to the movie Knives Out, the book We Were Liars(previously recommended here), and the works of Maureen Johnson, who wrote…the Truly Devious books! The blurb:

Avery Grambs has a plan for a better future: survive high school, win a scholarship, and get out. But her fortunes change in an instant when billionaire Tobias Hawthorne dies and leaves Avery virtually his entire fortune. The catch? Avery has no idea why – or even who Tobias Hawthorne is.

 To receive her inheritance, Avery must move into sprawling, secret passage-filled Hawthorne House, where every room bears the old man’s touch and his love of puzzles, riddles, and codes. Unfortunately for Avery, Hawthorne House is also occupied by the family that Tobias Hawthorne just dispossessed. This includes the four Hawthorne grandsons: dangerous, magnetic, brilliant boys who grew up with every expectation that one day, they would inherit billions. Heir apparent Grayson Hawthorne is convinced that Avery must be a con-woman, and he’s determined to take her down. His brother, Jameson, views her as their grandfather’s last hurrah: a twisted riddle, a puzzle to be solved. Caught in a world of wealth and privilege, with danger around every turn, Avery will have to play the game herself just to survive.

So many Dayle Reader Cookies: puzzles, riddles, and codes, oh my! Secret passageways! A smart, competent, kind, but flawed heroine! ::munches through the books like Cookie Monster::

That’s about all I can say without giving things away. Just writing about the book makes me want to read it a third time (and I first read it in November or December).

Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson also contains the above Dayle Reader Cookies (unsurprisingly), but the setting is an isolated private school just outside Burlington, VT, an area I’ve been to numerous times, having grown up across Lake Champlain from Burlington. Here are the deets:

Ellingham Academy is a famous private school in Vermont for the brightest thinkers, inventors, and artists.

 It was founded by Albert Ellingham, an early twentieth century tycoon, who wanted to make a wonderful place full of riddles, twisting pathways, and gardens. “A place,” he said, “where learning is a game.”

 Shortly after the school opened, his wife and daughter were kidnapped. The only real clue was a mocking riddle listing methods of murder, signed with the frightening pseudonym “Truly, Devious.” It became one of the great unsolved crimes of American history.

 True-crime aficionado Stevie Bell is set to begin her first year at Ellingham Academy, and she has an ambitious plan: She will solve this cold case. That is, she will solve the case when she gets a grip on her demanding new school life and her housemates: the inventor, the novelist, the actor, the artist, and the jokester. But something strange is happening. Truly Devious makes a surprise return, and death revisits Ellingham Academy. The past has crawled out of its grave. Someone has gotten away with murder.

The only thing I’d argue with in the above blurb is the list of housemates. They can’t really be each summed up with one word. As the letter in The Breakfast Club says, “Each one of us is a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. Does that answer your question?”

The novelist, for example, is an introvert with an aversion to being touched, which Stevie respects, always asking before she gets too close to him. He’s also screwed up because his first book, written when he was in his earlier teens, was an instant bestseller, and he hasn’t been able to write since. (Oh, I understand that pressure!)

Anyway. An important thing to mention is that the mystery/ies are not resolved until the end of the third book. I found the first two perfectly satisfying, but I got suspicious towards the end of Truly Devious when it became obvious there weren’t enough pages left to solve things. However, I was delighted there were more books! Just buy them all or get them all out of the library at the same time, so you don’t have to wait to read the next one.

By contrast, The Inheritance Games books each have a different mystery that builds on the previous ones (at least, the second book does. Did I mention the third book isn’t out yet? Argh!)

If you share the same reader cookies, Dayle says to get these books into your hot little hands and plan ahead for the time to read them voraciously.

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I’m able to continue writing and publishing thanks to my wonderful supporters on Patreon.

Dayle Loves This: Freaks & Geeks/The Goldbergs (TV)

By Dayle Loves This

This post was funded by my wonderful supporters at Patreon.

Welcome to Dayle Loves This, wherein I recommend books, TV, and movies (and maybe other things) that rocked my world.

If they don’t rock your world, that’s okay. We all have reader/watcher cookies as well as triggers. If you have questions, go ahead and ask. And please make your own suggestions, and discuss!
I’m a child of the 80s—or more accurately, a teen (and early 20s) of of the 80s. The MTV generation, even though our small way upstate New York town didn’t get the channel right away. At any rate, I obviously feel huge nostalgia for the time period.

MTV. The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo’s Fire. Labyrinth. Cheesy sword-and-sorcery movies in which Richard Lynch was always the bad guy. Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson. Neon colors, big hair. Malls. Styx’s Kilroy Was Here album. (You didn’t think I’d forget to mention Styx, did you?!)

::fond sigh::

Two TV shows send me back to that time on a blissful nostalgia trip: Freaks & Geeks and The Goldbergs.

Freaks & Geeks (1999­–2000) is a highly acclaimed show from Jude Apatow, that lasted only one season (the network didn’t get why anyone wanted to watch “normal” teenagers) and launched the careers of Linda Cardellini, James Franco, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, Busy Phillips, and more. It’s billed as a comedy, but it has a great deal of heart and truth.

It follows two siblings, Lindsay and Sam Weir. Teenage Lindsay was a smart, “good” girl until her beloved grandfather’s death (and some other incidents), and now wearing his oversized army-green military jacket, starts hanging out with the “freaks” (a group of slacker stoners). Meanwhile, her younger brother, Sam, is navigating middle school with a couple of fellow “geeks.”

We see that the freaks can’t be lumped together as losers and each one has their own, sometimes difficult, story. We learn (as if we didn’t know), that the geeks might not want to be geeky, but they’ve got each other’s backs. The storylines and people aren’t prettied up—this is no Beverly Hills 90120—and the sets feel real for the early 1980s. When I first watched the last episode, I felt bereft: I’d known these people, and kind of felt like I was losing friends. Definitely a show I rewatch every few years.

By contrast, The Goldbergs (2013–present) is a sitcom and the characters are often larger than life, but it’s seen through the lens of the youngest kid, Adam, so that makes a certain amount of sense. Plus, the creator/writer, Adam F. Goldberg), is basically telling his life story as he remembers it. Both real Adam and TV Adam were the first kid in their neighborhood to get a video camera, and many episodes end with a side-by-side of the TV snippet and the original video. The dads may look different, for example, but they have the same blustery voice.

In one episode, Adam and his older brother, Barry, recreate a New Kids on the Block video, and at the end, we see the original video along with the TV version. It was so perfect I was rolling on the floor laughing.

Rounding out the family is older sister Erica, who wears 80s fashions so well and perfectly that my nostalgiac heart aches; and Adam’s mom, a big-haired, ugly-sweater-wearing powerhouse who doesn’t want to admit her children are growing up.

I may have been closer in age to Erica back then, but Adam is a science-fiction-loving geek, and I relate strongly to that, too. (Remember, this was before being a geek was cool.)

I’m only on the second season of nine (so far), but it’s a great watch for me when the current world is feeling bleak.

If you’re not nostalgaic for the 80s, these shows might not resonate with you as strongly as they do with me. I’d say check out Freaks & Geeks anyway.

Either way, Dayle is an 80s girl at heart, and she recommends these shows.

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I’m able to continue writing and publishing thanks to my wonderful supporters on Patreon.

Dayle Loves This: The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper (book/series)

By Dayle Loves This,

This post was funded by my wonderful supporters at Patreon.

Welcome to Dayle Loves This, wherein I recommend books, TV, and movies (and maybe other things) that rocked my world.

If they don’t rock your world, that’s okay. We all have reader/watcher cookies as well as triggers. If you have questions, go ahead and ask. And please make your own suggestions, and discuss!

Almost every holiday season, I feel the urge to read mythic fiction, which is described as “rooted in myth, folklore, legend, and fairy tales.” The word “rooted” feels particularly apt, because when I read mythic fiction books, I feel drawn to the earth, to the imbued truths that speak to my core. The collective unconscious. The books themselves may be set in modern times, but are firmly attached to these universal magic.

(I’m drawn to British-based mythic fiction, but there are books that touch on a variety of other places’ stories. Wikipedia has a beginning list.)

Particularly, I almost always reread the novel The Dark is Rising. It’s set at the winter Solstice in the Thames Valley during an unprecedented snowfall, it and resonates within me no matter where I am or what the weather’s like. I’m there. It drags me down into a deep magic I can’t begin to explain.

When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back;
Three from the circle, three from the track;
Wood, bronze, iron;
Water, fire, stone;
Five will return and one go alone.

Iron for the birthday, bronze carried long;
Wood from the burning, stone out of sound;
Fire in the candle-ring, water from the thaw;
Six signs the circle, and the grail gone before.

Fire on the mountain shall find the harp of gold.
Played to wake the sleepers, oldest of the old;
Power from the green witch, lost beneath the sea;
All shall find the light at last, silver on the tree.

This poem, which encompasses the five-book series also called The Dark is Rising (TDIR novel is the second in the sequence), stops me in my tracks and makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up and brings tears to my eyes. Again, it’s a feeling so deeply entrenched in me that I can’t find words for it.

I’m not saying everyone will have the same reaction. I hope you do, though, because it’s…well, magical.

The novel, which was a Newberry Honor Book, tells the story of Will Stanton, who on his eleventh birthday learns that as a seventh son of a seventh son, he has a major part to play in the war between Light and Dark. He’s guided by someone I don’t want to spoil for you, and meets others I don’t want to spoil for you.

The Dark is Rising can be read on its own. There’s no need to read the first book in the sequence, Under Sea, Over Stone, which is directed at a younger audience than the rest of the book. But if you want to read all of the books, start with that one, because it introduces key characters.

Dayle Loves This, even as she fumbles and fails to accurately describe how it makes her feel. She hopes you tap into the magic, too.

[And if you want more mythic fiction recommendations, let me know! xo]

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I’m able to continue writing and publishing thanks to my wonderful supporters on Patreon.

Dayle Loves This: Practical Magic (movie)

By Dayle Loves This

This post was funded by my wonderful supporters at Patreon.

Welcome to Dayle Loves This, wherein I recommend books, TV, and movies (and maybe other things) that rocked my world.

If they don’t rock your world, that’s okay. We all have reader/watcher cookies as well as triggers. If you have questions, go ahead and ask. And please make your own suggestions, and discuss!

I don’t know about you, but I have comfort movies and books and TV shows that I rewatch/reread regularly, often at certain times of the year. For example, I love mythic fiction in the darkest days of winter.
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I don’t necessarily watch the same movie every year at the same time, because that would end up feeling more like checking off something on a to-do list. (Although goodness knows, I fucking love crossing items off to-do lists. Yes, I’m one of those people who will do something and write it down just so I can cross it off.) Plus every year is different; I might be busier, or away from home, or whatever.
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All that said, Practical Magic is my October movie.
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I remember when I saw it in the theatre, where I was and who I was with (visiting my bestie in Virginia). I still get weepy during the same scene near the end. I’ve read the book, which added some helpful details, but the movie is my jam, a million times over. I remember buying the soundtrack, and how every song evoked a moment, a scene, an emotion—and still does.
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It’s about two women—Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, both utterly luminous—who grew up under the care of their aunts—Stockard Channing (embodying everything I want to be) and Dianne Wiest—all of whom are witches. The house they live in is beyond glorious. (The exterior was built for the movie and then torn down, which shatters me. I would be happy just living on the porch.)
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Gillian (Kidman) can’t wait to escape the small island she’s been raised on. Sally (Bullock) loves it, and falls in love…only to hear the death beetle beneath her floorboards. She and her daughters move in with the aunts, proclaiming things will be different.
They are, and they aren’t. Gillian comes back to save her, but then Sally has to save Gillian.
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There’s romance, yes, but the movie is primarily about women’s relationships with and love for each other. It’s about sisterhood, both by blood and by heart. It’s about grief and healing and living again, made possible by the love and sisterhood. It’s about prejudice, love, magic, darkness and light, prophecy both positive and negative.
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Some people are magic.
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All people are magic.
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Dayle’s heart needs this Practical Magic almost every year, and she hopes your heart is also taken with it.

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I’m able to continue writing and publishing thanks to my wonderful supporters on Patreon.

Dayle Loves This: Kill the Boy Band (novel)

By Dayle Loves This,

This post was funded by my wonderful supporters at Patreon.

Welcome to Dayle Loves This, wherein I recommend books, TV, and movies (and maybe other things) that rocked my world.

If they don’t rock your world, that’s okay. We all have reader/watcher cookies as well as triggers. If you have questions, go ahead and ask. And please make your own suggestions, and discuss!

The friend who recommended Kill the Boy Band by Goldy Moldavsky to me did so hesitantly. She thought I’d like it, but there was also a chance I’d be deeply offended by it.
I love it. It’s a book both about how loving a band can bring friends together, and a book about how teenage fandom is seriously unhinged. (Given that I’m an über-fan of Styx, I can see why my friend worried about recommending it to me.) The book is also incredibly funny.
I remember when I first read it: Ken was asleep and I was reading in bed beside him, shaking silently, trying desperately to not let out howls of laughter.
The boy band in question is an English quartet called the Ruperts…because they all have the first name of Rupert. They came together because of a show called So You Think the British Don’t Have Talent? If that doesn’t make you laugh, this may not be the book for you.
Our heroine—I’m not sure if her real name is ever mentioned because the book is in first person and whenever she’s asked, she uses the names of 1980s movie teen characters*—and three other teens finagle their way into booking a room at the same hotel where the Ruperts will be staying in NYC. They’re each a fan of a different Rupert.
The book starts in their room, where they have one of the Ruperts tied up with stockings in a chair. They’ve kidnapped a Rupert.
How that happens is howlingly funny, but I don’t want to give too much away.
But I will say that when our heroine meets her idol, she says, My face at the moment was the Heart Eyes emoji.
What really works is that the author understands fandom. When confronted as to why she loves the Ruperts, our heroine ponders whether it’s the music (catchy, mindless pop), the fact that they’re hot, for who they are, “…but mostly I love them for how they made me feel. Which was happy.”
Later, she thinks:
Other people may have seen fangirls as crazy teenage girls obsessed with a fad, but they couldn’t understand the small but important joy you get from indulging in these fandoms. They didn’t understand that a new gif of Rupert K. grinning at you could be the difference between a crap day and a beautiful day. They didn’t get the friendships that formed, the community of people who shared in your same joy. Maybe it was obsession, but it was also happiness; an escape from the suckiness of everyday life. And when you find something that makes you happy and giddy and excited every day, us fangirls know a truth that everyone else seems to have forgotten: You hold on to that joy tenaciously, for as long as you can. Because it’s rare to get excited about anything these days. Ask your parents.
Did I choke up when I read that?
Hells yeah.
Kill the Boy Band is a page-turner of a book, funny and dark and layered. The ending is…it could give you any manner of feels. I don’t want to influence that.
Still, Dayle suggests that if you’re a hardcore fan of anything, this is a book for you.
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*Lydia Deetz, Sloane Peterson, Samantha Baker, etc.

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I’m able to continue writing and publishing thanks to my wonderful supporters on Patreon.

Dayle Loves This: Dark (TV series)

By Dayle Loves This

This post was funded by my wonderful supporters at Patreon.

Welcome to Dayle Loves This, wherein I recommend books, TV, and movies (and maybe other things) that rocked my world.

If they don’t rock your world, that’s okay. We all have reader/watcher cookies as well as triggers. If you have questions, go ahead and ask. And please make your own suggestions, and discuss!

We live in a time of bounty when it comes to visual media. I remember the days of three TV channels (four if you could get PBS on UHF or something), and you had to watch it when it aired and run to the bathroom or get snacks during commercials. I know I ended up watching a fair amount of dreck just because it was the only thing on—especially if it had a SF or fantasy element, which was by comparison rare in the 1970s and 1980s. (I’m looking at you, Manimal.)

One of the things I love even more now is the ability to watch TV and movies from around the globe. Netflix in particular has partnered with a number of countries for their content, and it’s a refreshing change.

Much of our television offerings, especially that on regular ol’ cable, is kind of dumbed down. Did you miss it when the camera lingered on a clue to make it super-obvious it was important? Well, let’s show you again. Whereas the foreign shows are more likely to assume you caught it, you remember it, and if you don’t, you will when the mystery is revealed.

Or, just, it’s assumed you’re following along and noticing details.

With Dark, an amazing show from Germany, there’s a cave. I’m not really giving away spoilers to say the show deals with time travel, as that becomes obvious very early on. What they do is have different things outside the cave at different times. That old beat-up sofa? Boom, we know what time we’re in. We don’t need a year splashed across the screen in big letters.

But that’s not the only reason Dark is amazing.

It’s hard to say much about it without giving too much away. Set in a somewhat remote town surrounded by forest, the show starts in the current time when a nuclear power plant that started in the 1980s is being decommissioned. Is the power plant responsible for the strange things that are happening? Is someone their own grandpa? Is there a wide cast of characters each with their own strong backstories and problems and motivations? Will there be women’s power suits from the 1980s? Does anyone really know what time it is?

The show is dark (hence the name) and a bit creepy, but it’s not horror, and the few truly awful moments are there for a reason, not gratuitous (and no real gore that I recall).

I watched the first couple of episodes, realized Ken would like it, and then we watched the first season together. When the second season came out, we roped our lodger into watching the first season with us, and then we all were glued to the TV for the second and third seasons.

Two important notes:

1.  IMO, the best way to watch this is in German, with English subtitles. Ken and I watched the first season dubbed into English, and it was kind of awful. The voiceover actors were flat, with little inflection, and they all sounded alike—which made it really hard to remember who was who. I’ve read reviews from people who preferred it that way, but having watched it both ways, I strongly suggest the subtitles.

2.  When rewatching the first season, I found a website with a flow chart of all the characters, which helped immensely. The particular site I found had two for the first season: one with spoilers and one without. Obviously, use the non-spoiler one if you’re watching this for the first time. (Because I was rewatching it, I used the spoiler one and picked up some stuff I’d missed the first time around. Hell, just watch it twice like we did! It’s worth it!)

Dark is on Netflix, and Dayle says if you like time travel and weirdness and shows that make you think, you should check it out.

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I’m able to continue writing and publishing thanks to my wonderful supporters on Patreon.

Dayle Loves This: We Were Liars (novel)

By Dayle Loves This,

This post was funded by my wonderful supporters at Patreon.

Welcome to Dayle Loves This, wherein I recommend books, TV, and movies (and maybe other things) that rocked my world.

If they don’t rock your world, that’s okay. We all have reader/watcher cookies as well as triggers. If you have questions, ask. And please make your own suggestions, and discuss!

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

The tag line for this book is: If anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.

It’s brilliant because it grabs your attention. It also highlights why this is a tough book to talk about—give away too much, and it won’t have nearly as much impact.

Cadence (Cady) Sinclair knows she lives a life of privilege. Her mother is one of three daughters of a very wealthy man, so wealthy that they summer on their own private island off Martha’s Vineyard. Despite the family’s wealth, Cady’s pretty normal (something I appreciated, because it made her relatable), and the island summers are a glorious getaway with her cousins and, eventually, her aunt’s boyfriend’s nephew, Gat.

At the end of the summer Cady’s fifteen, she has an accident she can’t remember. Suffering from migraines, she takes a summer away, but insists on returning when she’s seventeen. Everything is normal, except for her pain and memory loss.

Because it had been a few years since I first read We Were Liars, I grabbed an ebook from the library (since I was out of town—I bought a copy to study). Turned out, knowing what happens made it a completely different reading experience, which was fascinating. I was gripped in an entirely different way.

Dayle Loves This, and hopes you read it so we can discuss it.

 

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I’m able to continue writing and publishing thanks to my wonderful supporters on Patreon.

Dayle Loves This: Local Hero (movie)

By Dayle Loves This,

This post was funded by my wonderful supporters at Patreon.

Welcome to Dayle Loves This, wherein I recommend books, TV, and movies (and maybe other things) that rocked my world.

If they don’t rock your world, that’s okay. We all have reader/watcher cookies as well as triggers. If you have questions, ask. And please make your own suggestions, and discuss!

I can’t believe Local Hero wasn’t my first Dayle Loves This entry. This is one of those movies I watch about onc a year. It’s the second movie Peter Capaldi appeared in (in 1983), and when he was at the Rose City Comic Con a couple of years ago, I asked him a question about this movie. Many people applauded; however, I was the only one not to ask him a Doctor Who–related question.

I’ve been to the town in Scotland where the movie was filmed. (The town shots, not the beach shots, which were elsewhere.) That’s how much I love this movie.

I love it because it’s surprisingly simple and yet surprisingly complex. Every time I watch it, I pick up another detail.

In the early 1980s, “Mac” MacIntyre (Peter Riegert) works for Texas company Knox Oil and Gas. He’s summoned to the office of the eccentric company owner , Mr. Happer (Burt Lancaster) and sent to a remote village Scotland to buy the entire place because oil has been found off the coast.

Mac is being sent because of his Scottish name. He’s actually of Hungarian descent. If that level of humor is your jam, you’ll love this movie.

A New York Times review says, “Genuine fairy tales are rare; so is film-making that is thoroughly original in an unobtrusive way. Bill Forsyth’s quirkly disarming Local Hero is both.”

Forsyth also directed Gregory’s Girl and Comfort and Joy. The former hasn’t worked for me, but the latter is also charming.

Local Hero is subtle, sweet, often ridiculous, and tugs at my heartstrings and makes me cry. If you have the chance, check it out. Dayle Loves This, and wants you to, too.

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I’m able to continue writing and publishing thanks to my wonderful supporters on Patreon.

Dayle Loves This: The Call and The Invasion (novels)

By Dayle Loves This,

This post was funded by my wonderful supporters at Patreon.

Welcome to Dayle Loves This, wherein I recommend books, TV, and movies (and maybe other things) that rocked my world.

If they don’t rock your world, that’s okay. We all have reader/watcher cookies as well as triggers. If you have questions, ask. And please make your own suggestions, and discuss!

I don’t remember how I got my hands on The Call by Peadar O’Guilin. I know we’d moved into Hedgewick, our charming 1929 English cottage, and that I found the book at the wonderful library across the street.

The cover isn’t one that would have grabbed me, so that’s not it. Maybe it was on display, with a tag line that grabbed me? I don’t remember reading about it somewhere, either.

But I’m ever so glad I did pick it up. Because it’s phenomenal. It’s also, in some ways, the most terrifying book I’ve ever read.

Here’s the blurb:

3 MINUTES

 You wake up alone in a horrible land. A horn sounds. The Call has begun.

 2 MINUTES

 The Sidhe are close. They’re the most beautiful and terrible people you’ve ever seen. And they’ve seen you.

 1 MINUTE

 Nessa will be Called soon. No one thinks she has any chance to survive. But she’s determined to prove them wrong.

 TIME’S UP

 Could you survive the Call?

The quote on the back is “A must-read for anyone who’s been sleeping too well at night.” (Danielle Vega, author of The Merciless.”)

Agreed.

It’s hard to explain The Call without giving away things. Even the basic information, which is relayed in the first two chapters, is best read without knowing anything ahead of time, which make it all the more chilling.

I can say this: many, many years ago, the kings of Ireland made a pact with the Sidhe. And then broke it.

And the Sidhe are beyond furious.

Previously I recommended Holly Black’s trilogy about the Fey folk, and how capricious and cruel they can be. Those Fey have nothing on the Sidhe in these books. The Sidhe in these books might be beautiful, yes, but cruel doesn’t begin to describe it. They’re psychopaths. The Call is about revenge in the most fucked-up possible way.

I recommend starting the book early on a day when you have time, because you won’t want to put it down until the end.

When I grabbed The Call out of the library recently to reread it before I wrote this, I discovered there was a sequel, The Invasion. While it didn’t grab me in the same way that The Call did—which I think is due to more shifting viewpoints—it’s still gripping, and necessary for emotional closure.

This duology will haunt you for a long time. I’m not promising that, because promises…well….

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