SUMMARY

Shirley Jackson meets The Twilight Zone in this riveting novel of supernatural horror—for readers who loved Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children A village on the Devil's Moor: a place untouched by time and shrouded in superstition. There is the grand manor house whose occupants despise the villagers, the small pub whose regulars talk of revenants, the old mill no one dares to mention. This is where four young friends come of age—in an atmosphere thick with fear and suspicion. Their innocent games soon bring them face-to-face with the village's darkest secrets in this eerily dispassionate, astonishingly assured novel, infused with the spirit of the Brothers Grimm and evocative of Stephen King's classic short story “Children of the Corn” and the films The White Ribbon by Michael Haneke and Village of the Damned by Wolf Rilla.

Not horror. General fiction. Boring small [german?] town and its xenophobic misogynist antics. Shart.

Hang on.

"Shirley Jackson meets The Twilight Zone in this riveting novel of supernatural horror—for readers who loved Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children "

I... don't think any of this is related to this novel.

SUMMARY

Tenderly, I Am Devoured is a moody, monstrously Gothic romantic folk horror in which a young woman must bind herself to a dangerous chthonic god with the help of the son of a rival family to save her family's legacy—and herself—from ruin. Expelled from her prestigious boarding school following a violent incident, eighteen-year-old Lacrimosa Arriscane returns home in disgrace to discover her family on the point of financial ruin. Desperate to save them, she accepts a marriage of convenience… to Therion, the chthonic god worshipped by Lark's isolated coastal hometown. But when her betrothal goes horribly wrong, Lark begins to vanish from the mortal realm. Her only hope is to seek help from Alastair Felimath: the brilliant, arrogant boy who was her first heartbreak, and his alluring older sister, Camille. As the trio delve into the folklore of gods, Lark falls under the spell of both Felimath siblings. Ensnared by a fervent romance, they perform a bacchanalia with hopes the hedonistic ritual will repair the connection between Lark and her bridegroom. Instead, they draw the ire of something much darker, which seeks to destroy Therion—and Lark as well. Featuring a polyamorous bisexual romance, lush prose, and flower-threaded horror, Tenderly, I am Devoured is a romantic folk horror that is intoxicating as chthonic liquor, and as unstoppable as the haunted tides.

SUMMARY

When a demonic presence awakens deep in a Mexican silver mine, the young woman it seizes must turn to the one man she shouldn't trust.

In 1765, plague sweeps through Zacatecas. Alba flees with her wealthy merchant parents and fiancé, Carlos, to his family's isolated mine for refuge. But safety proves fleeting as other dangers soon bare their teeth: Alba begins suffering from strange hallucinations, sleepwalking, and violent convulsions. She senses something cold lurking beneath her skin. Something angry. Something wrong.

Elías, haunted by a troubled past, came to the New World to make his fortune and escape his family's legacy of greed. Alba, as his cousin's betrothed, is none of his business. Which is of course why he can't help but notice the growing tension between them every time she enters the room…and why he notices her deteriorate when the demon's thirst for blood gets stronger.

In the fight for her life, Alba and Elías become entangled with the occult, the Church, long-kept secrets, and each other… not knowing that one of these things will spell their doom.

A slow paced book that switches between the titular Alba Diaz, and the love interest, Elias Monterrubio.

The horror was great. You can see traces of it circling them like a predator, and the subtle suspense was amazing. It was very well done, especially in conjunction to natural horror of being a woman in the 1700s: a marital bargaining chip.

Alba has a spine and I love that. She's reasonably constricted to her station and 'purpose' in life, to marry someone she doesn't care a bit for. She manages to investigate what she can, with the threat of impropriety and the marriage being called off. I appreciate a historically accurate but nonetheless strong women character.

The plot is suitably complex. It isn't a matter of a young woman potentially being possessed by a demon. Nor is it a question of if it's possession or a woman acting out against being a breeding mare for a husband she cares not for.

I loved the inclusive of lgbt characters. Yes, that's a major spoiler. It isn't just that people want to go with the flow because it suits them socially and financially. That are forcing themselves to do so, lest they too lose everything.

The author is very much able to torture [so to speak] her characters, and I appreciate that. There's nothing serendipitous or fairy tale about this romance. But nonetheless, the romance is well fought for, and it's satisfying to see.

The mythos is a little thin but we don't need a lot of explanation. The writing fulfils all the desire for horror we could want for.

This is a must read demonic possession horror novel. It is very much horror novel first, with romance second. Just in case anyone thinks this is a 'horrormance' type novel.

SUMMARY

A horror anthology edited by the genre's greatest, Ellen Datlow, with one side featuring stories about what haunts the night while the other side showcases the terrors that can exist in the light of day in this new addition to the Saga Doubles series.

This anthology contains stories from some of the most evocative and bestselling writers of horror and speculative fiction.

• Night—Dreadful Dark: Tales of Nighttime Horror
  Trash Night by Clay McLeod Chapman
  We Take Off Our Skin in the Dark by Eric LaRocca
  The Door of Sleep by Stephen Graham Jones
  At Night, My Dad by Dan Chaon
  The Night House by Gemma Files
  The Night-Mirrors by Pat Cadigan
  Fear of the Dark by Benjamin Percy
  The Picknicker by Josh Malerman
  Secret Night by Nathan Ballingrud

• Day—Merciless Sun: Tales of Daylight
  The Bright Day by Priya Sharma
  Faire by Rachel Harrison
  Trick of the Light by Brian Evenson
  One Day by Jeffrey Ford
  The Wanting by A.T. Greenblatt
  Hold Us in the Light by A.C. Wise
  Dismaying Creatures by Robert Shearman
  Bitter Skin by Kaaron Warren
  Cold Iron by Sophie White

A satisfactory anthology which is coherent and maintains the theme.

Particular fave: The Door of Sleep by Stephen Graham Jones

◆ The Bright Day by Priya Sharma

Major grief, torture,, murder, violence,

Medium animal death, dogs,,

◆ Faire by Rachel Harrison

Minor alcohol use,

◆ Trick of the Light by Brian Evenson

Medium injuries, arm trauma,

◆ One Day by Jeffrey Ford

Major body horror, gun violence, animal death, dogs, gore, murder, parent death,

Medium police,

◆ The Wanting by A. T. Greenblatt

Major sexual harassment, sexual assault,

Medium drug use, drugs smoking cannabis,

◆ Hold Us in the Light by A. C. Wise

Major hoarding, unsanitary,

Medium mass murder, live burial,

◆ Dismaying Creatures by Robert Shearman

Major sexual content, marital rape,

Medium asphyxiation, body horror, animal death, blood, death,

Minor child abuse, domestic violence, physical abuse,

◆ Bitter Skin by Kaaron Warren

Major body horror, domestic violence, violence, physical abuse,

Medium death, child death, car crashes, domestic violence, rape,

◆ Cold Iron by Sophie White

Major misogyny, domestic violence, childbirth, death, gore, unsanitary, confinement, child death, grief,

◆ Trash Night by Clay McLeod Chapman

Major unsanitary, child death, drug usr, drugs prescription drugs, body horror,

◆ The Door of Sleep by Stephen Graham Jones

Major mouth trauma, murder,, suicide attempts, death,

Minor rape,

◆ At Night, My Dad by Dan Chaon

Major drug abuse, addiction,

◆ The Night House by Gemma Files

Major cults, child abuse, gore, bone fractures, whipping, torture,

Minor miscarriage,

◆ Fear of the Dark by Benjamin Percy

Major body horror, gore,

Medium alcoholism, , car crashes, grief, , rape, csa, date rape, pedophilia, , suicide attempts,

◆ The Picnicker by Josh Malerman

Major body horror, death,

◆ Secret Night by Nathan Ballingrud

Major police, car crashes,, body horror,

Medium child death, gun violence,

SUMMARY

They call it the King's Breakfast. One bite and you can understand the full scope of the universe; one bite and you can commune with forgotten gods beyond human comprehension. And it only grows deep in the Pamogo forest, where the trees crowd so tight that the forest floor is pitch black day and night, where rumors of disappearing hikers and strange cults that worship the divine feminine abound.

Sarah is a trans woman who makes her living growing mushrooms. When a bad harvest leaves her in a desperate fix, the lure of the King's Breakfast has her journeying into those vast uncharted woods. But as she descends deeper, she realizes she's not alone. Something in the forest is waking up. It's hungry—and it wants her.

To the surprise of no one, this is a trans woman story about the trauma of transmisogyny, navigating through a world of unceasing transmisogyny, and the hypervisibility and social isolation of being a trans woman. Thankfully, a lot of these books are being written and published more often these days. And I don't mean that in a 'thank goodness we have these trans women to teach us not to be transmisogynistic!' way. I mean, it's great to finally have some goddamn variety in the lgbt horror. I do get tired of everyone but trans women jumping in with their version of this sort of story.

And, Resident Evil voice, holy shit what a story!

Ok we get Sarah. Sarah is broke. Sarah grows and sells shrooms to supplement / outright pay for her living expenses. Someone sends her on a snipe hunt to get a sample of 'King's Breakfast'. Along for the ride is the guileless, open minded but largely ignorant forest guide, Andy.

I loved the forest. It very much reminded me of the trek through / into the House of Leaves, combined with trekking up Mount Everest. I don't know how familiar the general public is, but hey, did you know on Mount Everest they use the corpses of past hikers to mark where to go? Or perhaps not so much mark a trail as to remark this is where the trail is. They did also die on the trail and there aren't that many trails to take up to the summit. Depressing and digressing!

Meet the cult.

If you are at all familiar with tumblr or online lgbt spaces, you can probably recognize a couple of, not all the terfs, radfems, transmisogynists, and their propaganda present in the forest cult. I'm honestly surprised to see them in a widely published book, but I suppose it was only a matter of time. Transmisogyny isn't limited to real life spaces.

The cult is fucking wild. I wish I could remember the real life [not cult] commune of trans woman only members that are often in the online public eye for questionable choices. Unicorn ranch? It kinda reminds me of that. Actually a more accurate book would be Herculine by Grace Byron. Digressing!

I can't spoil the plot. It is a bizarre fucked up trip involving cult horor, fungi horror, trans woman main character, and the power of love. And by love I mean dying. Death. A whole lot of death.

SUMMARY

To be a warlock in this age is to trade in powers and promises and poisons, to bind demons and men to your will, to break them as you see fit...

Viveca Hua is the warlock of her era, and she has finally obtained her enemy's greatest weapon—the demon Yves, an entity powerful beyond imagining... and far more alluring than any mortal woman.

But each ritual has a price. Yves has her own past, one brutally intertwined with the nemesis that killed Viveca's mother. Her secrets will make or break the hunt.

Whatever the risk to her heart or her soul, Viveca is sure of one thing: she will have victory at any cost.

The Grace of Sorcerers is a lesbian urban fantasy of smoldering shapeshifters, brooding demons, and the bloodthirsty char-images who engage their services in both vengeance and lust.

Maria Ying Maria Ying is both a fictional character and the joint pseudonym of Devi Lacroix and Benjanun Sriduangkaew, who have challenged themselves to write fiction with no speculative elements for once.

SUMMARY

Married couple Celia and Martin are brutally attacked on their drive through the Irish countryside. The attack leaves Celia with a violent schism in her mind, seemingly existing in two places at once: one the "real" world, the other a howling maelstrom of abstract monstrosity. Of her husband, there is no trace...until weeks later, when Martin is discovered in a hospital for rare and abnormal diseases, his body spliced together with that of an unknown woman. And they are very pregnant. PUPPET'S BANQUET is a "diseased Gothic"; a hallucinatory treatise on medical abuse; the systemic disease of colonialism and patriarchy; and the limits of human perception.

Gruesome gory convoluted. Hellpulp wishes it was this philosophical and #deep. If you like complex, literary, philosphical horror, this one is for you. Think Violent Faculties by Charlene Elsby. Not for the faint of heart as there is vast amounts of explicit medical abuse and medical experimentation and its related gore, blood, and unsanitary situations.

SUMMARY

Sequel to Blood Like Mine.

Rebecca Carter is back from the dead. Lost and terrified, she is gripped by two desperate urges – to find her daughter, and to sate her ravenous hunger.

Alone in the wild, Monica Carter survives on whatever small prey she can hunt down. But she needs more. One night, drawn by the maddening scent of human blood, she encounters two young brothers, who call to her as Moonflower and tell her that if she comes with them, they will keep her safe.

Blood Like Mine was a solid action horror (copaganda) novel about vampires. Which is normally two subjects I hate--copaganda AND vampires. It ended on a conclusive shot, maybe pun intended. The sort of bad guy died [mom], the definitely bad guy [cop] died, and we're left with an open wound of more grief and loss. Very in theme with the concept of vampires, eternally living and eternally lost.

That's not all to say it was a waste of time. The first book did well, setting up the concept, worldsetting, and various characters and relationships. All while speeding up through a tumultuous game of cat and mouse, of a desperate mother trying to protect her daughter. It was charming as it was heartwrenching, as it was gorey and violent.

This continues the story a few weeks to month(s?) after. As the summary mentions, mom is a vampire now, changed by her daughter. Spoilers for the first book's climax. The daughter is trying to survive solo, and also as mentioned, runs into two brothers. Herein the book expands upon the world and we get a look at other vampires. Not to mention a obscured look at the fbi subdivision that knows vampires exist and are monitering them for excessive murdering.

I don't know if we're getting a third. Probably considering it's called a trilogy, but that hardly guarantees anything thanks to flighty publishers. At this point I wouldn't object, though I have concerns of jumping the shark. I really hope it doesn't go into a whole ye olde vampire heirarchy of Old Blood [rich people] and New Blood [recently turned, probably poor people]. I think the fractious, infrequent bands of vampires or solo vampires are pretty interesting on their own. Obviously the digestion time and lack of viable, long term food sources makes living with other vampires a problem.

It is fascinating how the Government™️ is aware of vampires enough to have a FBI agent / sub division dedicated to tracking and monitering them. I suppose not that bizarre considering they do that already with various political dissidents and lgbt people.

I do like the question posed by the book: Who'd want to live forever, and why? What is worth this?

Anyways, a solid, fun action horror novel. I'd rec it, even if you don't like vampires like I do.

SUMMARY

 I've never been so angry to finish a book. See, I had looked up when the next novel(las) the author would publish and it's an entire year away?? FUCK. I want more. I desperately need more, oh my god. This book.

[side note: ok she has published short stories in various anthologies. I have a few things to tide me over.]

Horror often thrives on ambiguity. Seeing bigfoot in broad daylight would be terrifying yes. But catching a glimpse of a 7 foot tall, hugely muscled, fur covered, distinctly animal faced biped cloaked in shadow? Even Arnold Schwarzenegger would piss himself, and he probably could take a decent swing at Bigfoot. [or, at least, Bigfoot's BigRoot. Eggplant emoji. Short joke.] [well, in his younger body building days].

This novella situates you within the POV of the MC who wracks his brain, counting and recounting. See, there are eleven campers. It's supposed to be ten. But there are solid, logical reasons why it can't be eleven. But we know it's eleven, we distinctly remember every last one. The MC and his co leaders furtively ruminate on this every chance they get away from their charges. Who is the extra, and what do they want? How do we get the normal charges back home safely? Excellently shows their work. The thought process of reasoning and navigation through denial and acceptance of a bizarre situation. It's a well paced examination that is neither rushed to the exciting dangers or horror, nor is it excessively retreaded.

Now, there's a lot of symbolism and metaphors you can read into the plot. Racism, capitalism, antisemitism, antiblackness, anything which involves 'you' and the 'other'. I am curious what other people think. How the dog fits into it. Obviously non human from the start, and in this case abandoned. Was the dog an abandoned victim? Hmm. I also wonder if Perfect Victim sentiment is also in play. If the dog, which is a symbol for an Other, didn't negatively react to the MC, what would have happened? We'll never know, I guess.

The ambiguity is unceasing. We the readers expect the happy ending. Either via action [committing violence] or outsmarting [figuring out the Other and subverting its intentions]. It's familiar and safe to know there is a solution. We arrive simultaneously at the end of the trop and the book. We know hints of what is going on, but nothing is ever confirmed, we don't get the heroic intervention. Real life doesn't work that way. In a way, it's cosmic horror. We have see something beyond comprehension and struggle to survive the knowledge and proximity to the unknown. It's a fantastic novella, perfectly fits the shorter page count, never overstays its welcome. I have reminders in my calendar to check on their author's future works. I'm so excited to have a new author to follow.

SUMMARY

One of the better cursed instrument stories I've read. But still suffers from white cishet male author writing. The sub plot of enslaved poor woman by rich man who then murders her because surprise! she fell in love with someone who wasn't a raping abuser was tedious, unsurprings, and excisable. Frankly it did detract from the book. The viola is evil, we know. Having the backstory explained didn't really matter in the main plot. And besides, what impact did it have? Was it a commentary on role reversal? OMG! What if the genders were reverse and a FEMALE tricked a man, sexually and mentally! That doesn't really work. This is a purely patriarchal society. Women will never have the same amount of power that man have. It's bunkus, guvnah.
Also the fact that the poor woman is brown, or at least very sun tanned due to being a field worker, is hamfisted. The one distinctly not white person gets raped and murdered? Steupes.

The writing was sufficiently historically accurate, or at least in theme with the time period. The horror was pretty scary and I can appreciate the attempt at depth with the father / son relationship struggles. I don't know if I'd recommend this. It's novella so it wouldn't take too much time to read if it's truly interesting to you.

SUMMARY

When Jen Monroe hears her father's remains have been found, she returns home to disprove his death, only to find the forests of rural Washington are hiding something ancient and dangerous.

Seven years ago, Jen Monroe left behind her hometown of Barrow, Washington after her father, a forest ranger passionate about protecting old trees from the aggressive logging business that runs their small town, vanished seemingly into thin air. She vowed never to return...until she gets a text from her estranged mother. Her father's remains have been found.

It seems impossible to Jen who has always believed her father is still alive, and she returns home, determined to find out what really happened. When her ex-boyfriend proposes a camping trip into the woods in her father's memory, it feels like the opportunity Jen had been hoping for: to find her father. To find the truth.

But what she finds lurking in the forest may be deeper, darker and deadlier than she could have ever imagined. And it has no intention of letting her leave.

Unsettling, tense, and atmospheric, this is a feminist suspense novel for those who have always known there's something hungry waiting in the woods.

The infrequent and brief mentions of historical colonization in this book reminds me of those land acknowledgement blurbs some authors like to do. Ok and? Are you donating some of the book profits to them? Have you donated any money, or done any work towards supporting them? No? You're just doing the bare minimum before immediately forgetting they exist and talking about your [probably] white characters in your [probably] white novel. Alright. And oh I know it's supposed to combat the social amnesia of indigenous history in the locale. But is that all? Like, are you replacing colonized names with indigenous names as well? Sighs.It's almost hilarious in a 'Wily Coyote runs into a cliff side painted to look like a car tunnel' way. We all know it's going to happen. The humor is stretched to the breaking point. But if we don't laugh, what else is there to do? Acknowledge you've been colonized, your culture and people raped and genocided? What a spoilsport. You're ruining the birthday party. Ugh.

Some good things about the book.

Lesbians are the way, the truth, and the light.

The perspective of a low empathy, potentially autistic MC is an interesting choice. In a good way. I think it's a refreshing change from the usual hyper empathetic, morally good Mc who desperately tries to keep everyone alive.

Loved that the trees were the monsters. Kinda wish they were simply freaky trees and not fucking colonizing European nymphs.

Actually let's talk about that. They are colonizing European nymphs. They explicitly mention they go where they are needed. So uh. Where are the indigenous forest spirits, huh? What land is this? What Nation lives or lived here? Why can' they. Actually I don't want to see a white author try to use indigenous culture as a plot point. These hams are already fisted, no need to shadow box another shadow. But no seriously, why the fuck are they white european fairies in the USA? WHO INVITED Y oh right you did, you invited yourself here. This is just an continuation of the white supremacist cottagecore dogwhistle concept of supplanting indigenous people because whites can steward the indigenous lands better.

Also the european tree nymphs have grey skin which kinda maybe? looks like tree bark? There is a body horror thing going on. But I just must question why grey? Is this like a 'black white green purple: I don't see color!' situation? Are they stand ins for indigenous people? I don't know. What indigenous Nation is supposed to be here? I forget if we even know where this takes place.

sighs. If you can turn off the racism detector in your brain--not a difficult feat for many--I guess you'd enjoy this book. The more I think about it, the madder I get.

SUMMARY

A woman must confront the demons of her past when she attempts to fix up her childhood home in this devilishly clever take on the haunted house novel.

Clio Louise Barnes leads a picture-perfect life as a stylist and influencer, but beneath the glossy veneer she harbors a not-so glamorous secret: she grew up in a haunted house. Well, not haunted. char-imagesed. After Clio's parents' messy divorce, her mother, Alex, moved Clio and her sisters into a house occupied by a demon. Or so Alex claimed. That's not what Clio's sisters remember or what the courts determined when they stripped her of custody after she went off the deep end. But Alex was insistent; she even wrote a book about her experience in the house.

After Alex's sudden death, the supposedly char-imagesed house passes to Clio and her sisters. Where her sisters see childhood trauma, Clio sees an opportunity for house flipping content. Only, as the home makeover process begins, Clio discovers there might be some truth to her mother's claims. As memories resurface and Clio finally reads her mother's book, a sinister presence in the house manifests, revealing ugly truths that threaten to shake Clio's beautiful life to its very foundation.

Do you ever read a gothic novel and wish it was less ambiguous? Well this one is for you, no spoilers. A fascinating look at grief/trauma as a metaphor for horror. That's not to say there's no subtlety. It abounds, but it also gratifyingly confirms the supernatural aspect.

Fascinating in a meta level. You know you're reading a horror novel so instinctively you know the mother character who witnesses the phenomenon will be dismissed as per tropes and plot conveniences. So you sympathize as a reader. But within reason as she is also supposed to be an abusive unreliable narrator of the trauma she caused in addition to this alleged paranormal trauma she's witnessing.

There's a part where the MC tries to bully her lover by saying something like 'who wears fuckboy chains?' and he responds by sayings 'it was my [dead] dad's'. Which is just a fantastic little encapsulation of the entire book. He mourns his dad by carrying a object of affection to remember him by. It's voluntary and for the most part healthy. It being a chain is visual symbolism of grief and connection to one's parents. Meanwhile she too is chained. Financially to the house, and to the grief and trauma she does not remember. It's such a good brief scene. The author is exceptional at metaphors and horror as a stand in for grief / trauma. PS the bullying is a lover's tiff, it isn't domestic violence or a red flag. Ok it's a red flag but they work through it, like a normal healthy couple does.

The author is aware of the usual horror tropes and plots, and makes and effort to put an intelligent twist on it. For example, during the time in the allegedly haunted house, the youngest child acts out. The could be demonic possession, sure, but realistically it is also a child acting out due to the abuse and trauma she's experienced, because that's the only outlet that she has. I loved that it was revealed the older children lied, in order to be removed by authorities and placed fully into their father's care. Nobody in this story is a saint, they're just doing the best they can with the resources and opportunities afforded to them, respectively.

It's a creative look at domestic abuse and child abuse through the lens of horror and demonic possession. And dare I say addiction related trauma, as well.

SUMMARY

Drawing on the creatures and horrors of Irish folklore, The Burial Tide unearths our darkest truths: how far we'd go to win our freedom, and how quickly our desires can become monstrous.

A woman who can't remember her death.

On an eerily quiet island off the coast of Ireland, a woman with no memory claws her way out of her grave and back to life. But not everyone welcomes the return of Mara Fitch.

An island with a terrible secret.

Inishbannock. Where strange misshapen figures watch from the trees and the roads are covered in teeth. Where two brothers gamble for nothing, the doctor only treats one patient, and the pub owner speaks in riddles. Where a poet loses and finds his soul. And a man without a heart claims he's the key to unlocking Mara's secrets.

A past that refuses to stay buried.

As Mara returns to her life on this upside-down island, her memories begin to leech their way back to the surface. The more she remembers, the more the village will do anything to stop her…

But the sea remembers it all.

If you got the same book cover as I did, you can probably guess this is a selkie story. And yeah, there is marital rape / rape. But it's off screen, so hopefully that isn't a deal breaker for people.

Tbh, behind vampires and werewolves, selkies are one of my more disliked supernatural myths. Oh great, a story about a raped / kidnapped / torture victim who inevitably [and maybe justifiably] abandons her children to escape back home. Yes, it's complex and interesting to think about, both in historical context and modern interpretations. I know I've said it before, I just don't care for rape in stories. It's boring. But like I mentioned, the rape torture isn't a big part of this plot. It's certainly there and a side effect of what's going on.

It's a pretty standard locked room mystery. The twist is that the murder victim herself is doing the investigating. With some support from a local outsider, an artist doing a residency. There's great tension and you really fear for the poor woman who's clearly living in a nest of vipers. The antagonist(s) are varied and complex, and the plot lines intersect neatly until everything comes to a thrillingly violent head.

Everything is explained satisfactorily, but never in a hand hold-y way. Granted, there's enough clues set out that the reader can put it together. Like 'Knock Knock', the author can put together a multi generational mystery without fumbling or forgetting something.

All in all, a pretty fun horror mystery. I think I liked the previous book, 'Knock, Knock', better. But that was due to the gimmick of 'cursed children's television'.

SUMMARY

Latrine Technician vs. Dark Carnival?

Yep.

After his mother is diagnosed with dementia, Sunday McWhorter needs a job with flexible hours and a company vehicle. It just so happens that the local porta-potty company is hiring.

The job stinks, but it's a solid paycheck that allows Sunday to take care of his mom. Everything goes smoothly until Autumn and the beginning of county fair season, when people start going missing and body parts start being found…inside the very tanks of the porta-potties Sunday is charged with cleaning.

Is there a serial killer? A human trafficking ring? An epidemic of haunted toilets? Sunday finds out the hard way when the simple job of vacuuming sewage becomes a tussle between worlds.

Previous book: a touching, horrific, wild ride of unreliable narration, fucked up abuse, horror as / is grief, and paranormal, cult shenanigans.

This book: haha guy goes into poop bucket of portapotty and teleports to hell carnival to save mommy XD

Ok ok I'm being mean. But it is a little jarring between the very somber debut novel and this one. nonetheless, it's quite heartfelt and touching. Yes, the MC does go into a poop area of a portapotty and goes to a hell carnival. [not the be confused with dark carnival, a JuggaloTM experience.] It's gross, and weird, and most people would not voluntarily do that. But MC? For his dementia-addled mother? Yeah he would. Balance is critical to any genre, especially horror. The difference between slasher and splatterpunk is the camp, the comedy. The difference between gothic and general paranormal horror is the tone and inclinations. [also the incest, no joke.] This isn't grimdark stuff, there's enough humor and off kilter shenanigans to balance the dread and desperation. See, there's a bad man trying to revive it capitalist, anti union hell carnival, and MC's mom gets caught up in it. It's not quite adult Coming of Age type plot, despite the group of underdogs coming together to fight for the sake of goodness and humanity.

If you just finished a really heavy book with darker themes, go read this. It's charming, fun, you'll enjoy the tomfoolery that the group of misfits go through to save the world.

SUMMARY

LIFE IS TEMPORARY. THE REST IS INFINITE.

Recently deceased, Oscar rises from his grave and discovers a barren world where the dead face a desolate, never-ending existence. No one can escape, no one can die, and the only way to adapt is by abandoning one's sanity and humanity.

Desperate to find meaning in this new reality, Oscar joins forces with Nathaniel, a man broken by this dog-eat-dog world. Together, they embark on a perilous journey through Hell in search of Dean Theodore, a figure who may hold the answers to eternity's deepest secrets.

As they battle the Hell around—and within—them, they learn that even in the most uncaring corners of the cosmos, the faintest glimmer of hope may be just enough to keep the darkness at bay.

Hell Pulp is a grounded exploration of the afterlife myth, unbound by religious traditions. For readers craving adventure, horror, and philosophical reflection, Hell Pulp offers a harrowing vision of a world just beyond ours.

Wildly disappointing. A genuine shocking let down. What a fucking waste of my time. Ok. Ok let's see.

"Hell Pulp is a grounded exploration of the afterlife myth, unbound by religious traditions. For readers craving adventure, horror, and philosophical reflection, Hell Pulp offers a harrowing vision of a world just beyond ours. "

Oh, philosophical, huh? So that means a plot with themes and subtext about life, death, in the context of non religion.

Nope. It's still wildly white. It's got white European philosophy, except not really. The most we get are conversations and then it's dropped. What's it dropped for, you may ask?

RACISM!

Yeah that's right, this is wholly interchangeable with two white European colonizers shipwrecked on a desert island with a evil brown savage cannibal tribe who do not speak a shared language, much less any language at all. The cannibal savages in this book are people who live in 'tribes' in a forest area who hunt and eat travelers or anyone who trafficks people into the area as sacrifices to their TOTALLY for reals no lies NOT savage pagan religion.

Oh also one savage cannibal is described as white or light skinned. Which does not alleviate the fact that this author chose a extremely dated and racist plot. Also it just makes me think this white Finnish author has never seen a black person or person of color in real life. Like they just don't have not-white friends at all. And adding them to a fictional story would be bizarre because, to them, we don't exist. Does that make sense? Like, if I imagine the population of my hometown in a fictional abstract sense, it's populated with people who look like me. People of color and Black people. They're inherently part of the landscape because that's what I see on a daily basis. Anyways. That's the 'adventure, horror' part of the summary blurb.

▪ After all, what is punishment if not a promise of forgiveness?

This strikes me as the Christian philosophical bit. That punishment for any error is automatic and required for every offense. You don't have to die for your sins, bruvnah.

So anyways. Deep sigh.

Underwhelming ending. I guess splatter punk genreists may enjoy this. But imo Elias Witherow's 'The Black Farm' would be more their speed. Black Farm has more interesting but familiarly Christian mythos, albeit with a cosmic horror twist of Brian Hodge's ilk. Black Farm's ending is also better because it feels like you feel vindicated, you joined the MC in terrible trials and survived. This novel's ending was a big wet fart.

SUMMARY

A darkly seductive tale of beautiful rock stars, sinister cults, and a magical oasis where dreams come true for a price.

Angelina Yves is a struggling singer/songwriter offered the chance of a lifetime to join the experimental luxury compound sponsored by the most famous band in the world, Black Idyll. With her every need accommodated, she finally has the time and space to perfect her music. Her muse? Reclusive rock star Jesper Idyll, who lives up to her every high school daydream. But this paradise has a haunted underbelly heralded by screaming horses, mysterious figures in the night, and dreams too twisted to be real. When people start to disappear and Jesper's ex turns up dead and hideously mutilated, Angelina begins to suspect that something malevolent lurks behind the cult that's grown around the band...

A disturbing, decadent and wickedly compelling tale of a Hollywood dream turned nightmare, Delilah S. Dawson's darkly delicious prose will seduce you, tie you up, and never let you go.

Disappointing as it is disjointed. There are bones of a plot and some tendons and meat connecting them. But the whole is a half formed beast which, sadly, should have been put down with God's Revolver and remade.

Ok see the monster is a unicorn. It's on the cover, ok. We all know it would be a unicorn or equine beast and that the music band is involved. Probably a deal with the devil or demon, which is how things usually go.

And they do go just that. There's grooming, cult abuse, manipulation, victims popping up left and right but, of course, dismissed because hindsight is twenty twenty.

There's not much to say about the middle of the plot. She's immediately enthralled with the artist compound cult and very quickly inducts into the Inner Circle. This is where the plot starts to fall apart. It's not poorly paced, per se, but barren. What I think detracts from the plot is the lack of hints that something supernatural or bizarre is going on. Sure there's a few stormy days but people not caring that you're talking about stormy weather isn't a sign that monsters are afoot. There are horses which act funny or maybe don't because we're in the MC's POV and she doesn't know anything about horses to say if they are acting funny.

Could have gone deeper into the mythos. I honestly thought the women were being transformed into horses because the unicorn minster was rejecting the offerings for some goldilocks reasoning. And then they'd be a part of his 'herd' forever being raped and enslaved. But no that didn't happen. Or I guess they were being rejected via murder.

The climax. The MC gets intentionally overfed (drugged?) wine, the singer puts her into a bdsm situation that she immediately safewords out of. Except she's given no safe word so I guess realistically she immediately retracts her consent.

The MC escapes her bonds, fights back, stabs the singer and then all the bad guys give up. I guess because the singer is fatally wounded? Which is weird because the unicorn demon is there. Surely some demonic magic to stitch him back together isn't out of the question? Well whatever. I'm not the fucking uni-demon. Anyways one of the band members hands the MC a contract. I guess it's the same one they / the singer signed years ago. Which is why Vivian, the then girlfriend of the singer, was murdered. This is a decade renewal of the contract? So the MC signs it with the singer's blood. THE END. No, yes, really, that's it. Barely a few paragraphs later and we get the epilogue where she is now the lead singer of the band.

What irritated me is that none of this was particularly foreshadowed. We don't know who Vivian is. Why don't know why the other women in the compound were murdered. I'm honestly not sure if the band members killed them or if it was the demon? There's no particular consistency. There's no investigation done by the MC. It's like the author knows the puzzle pieces, but doesn't know how to fit them in fluidly. There's not really hints to demonic or supernatural influence on the band. Hey you know what would be useful? If there was a scene where she eavesdrops on the band members and hears a mysterious latin name. Or if she accidentally uses a band members phone and snoops on a text message chain talking about a ritual they need to do with a woman who ends up mysteriously murdered'. Or is that too hand hold-y? I don't know. There is a explicit scene of rape by deception but that can be chalked up to horrific but mundane cult abuse. I'm underwhelmed at a story claiming to be horror genre and largely lacking in horror flavor.

I wouldn't recommend this. It's a serviceable novel, but it doesn't deliver anything particularly satisfactory regarding cult horror, supernatural, or demonic.

SUMMARY

The coral reef rose from the seas, spreading across the land with incredible speed. A rapidly evolving invasive species.

It transformed the landscape.

Mutated every living creature of the surface world.

 I hate when publishers say shit like 'for fans of author!' or [paraphrasing] 'this book is just like Southern Reach series!'. Because 99.999 to infinity percent they aren't. [But at least they aren't reducing shit to tropes like 'enemies to lovers' shit]

This is certainly not Southern Reach. But there's enough weirdness that I'd say if you'd like a ambiguous entity but more straightforward protagonists, maybe this is for you? It's got body horror, weird non human [maybe] malicious entities colonizing, interpersonal relationships, maybe generational abuse?

Unfortunately there is the ecofascism sub plot point. Which doesn't necessarily mean the author shares the same sentiment. But at least it's not a main, recurring plot point. Full offense but author's pushing a pro ecofascism agenda in this moment in history is tactless and, well, makes them a fascist. Like ok, not everything has to be a morality story. But take a look around you and consider how that will be taken.

SUMMARY

Seth's life until now has been a product of a diabolical, evil Truman Show, his entire upbringing a façade orchestrated for malevolent purposes. After his beloved dies, he undergoes a demonic metamorphosis, which causes the world's fictitious walls to crumble.

As he tries to piece a semblance of his life back together and move on, he meets friends who inspire, but even more harsh truths are revealed, perhaps too difficult to cope with.

The very existence of life and reality is exposed as a machination of grotesque gods. And to defeat them, Seth will have to fill his emptiness, for which there's only two options...

Bring the world to ruin, or learn to transmute his pain into strength.

white cishet male author main pain impulsions via a girlfriend getting abducted and maybe raped. Poor writing very show not tell.

"Seth's life until now has been a product of a diabolical, evil Truman Show, "

Truman Show was absolutely different than this plot. Also it's doing a LOT of heavy lifting here. Also it's a very minor plot point.

SUMMARY

From the backwaters of the Universe came two Beings-radiant, terrible-to challenge the love of a mortal man and woman! Dorothy Quick was a regular contributor to Weird Tales. She wrote more than a dozen books but was best known for her non-fiction book Mark Twain and Me which recounted her childhood friendship with Twain. Poignant and powerful reflection of the human experience.

 More realistic summary: a woman marries man knowing she'd always be the Other Woman in her own marriage because he has a perpetual boner for a mysterious lady in his dreams. Religious nonsenes ensures.

"Poignant and powerful reflection of the human experience."

Is it? For whom? White women? Not me, certainly. I do not have the human experience of being trapped by, well, not even good dick. Mediocre dick. Dick which settled for you and not the dream pussy he really wants. Generic in every sense of the word. Sexist. Kinda maybe racist. Wholly dated.

SUMMARY

Festering masses of worms and flies have taken root in dark corners across Appalachia. In exchange for unwavering loyalty and fresh corpses, these hives offer a few struggling humans salvation. A fresh start. It's an offer that none refuse.

Crane is grateful. Among his hive's followers, Crane has found a chance to transition, to never speak again, to live a life that won't destroy him. He even met Levi: a handsome ex-Marine and brutal killer who treats him like a real man, mostly. But when Levi gets Crane pregnant—and the hive demands the child's birth, no matter the cost—Crane's desperation to make it stop will drive the community that saved him into a devastating spiral that can only end in blood.

Basically traumaporn but pregnancy flavored with a trans man protagonist. I guess if you like misery porn, you'll enjoy this.

I get it though. The hive is a symbol for the MC's internalized mental illness. The sperm donor and adjacent prison guard is MC's fear of failing to be considered a 'real' man and the general dehumanization. The other women characters are either dysphoria, transphobia, or the general abandonment and cycle of abuse. It excels at misery and unsanitary. The pacing is decent. You will empathize with many in this book. The ending was decent. I don't really have much to say about it.

ok actually if I can be tactless for a moment: it was kinda funny. The MC was very much a ragdoll in a rabid dogs mouth, getting shook up and shaken like a cartoon. Unceasing bad things kept happening and at some point I got bored and then I got tickled on my funny bone. It was almost like walking through a rube goldberg machine of tossing the MC into bad situation after bad situation. Or in cartoons where the coyote trips and falls off a cliff and hits every jutting rock and tree and bush before hitting the ground and the dynamite he was holding explodes. Yeah yeah domestic violence sucks but this became comical due to excess, you know what I mean?

It is well written and coherent and handles heavy themes excellently. I don't mean to be a entire dick about it. I just don't care for traumaporn. Or at least excessively heavy, never ending trauma. Give me a lil breather.

SUMMARY

British Fantasy and Bram Stoker-nominated author Gemma Amor brings together a unique line-up of 13 authors to explore heritage and horror.
It's a bedtime story, ancient family lore, a secret passed down from generation to generation. Stories that have deep dark roots, ever-growing, ever-creeping. 
This anthology explores stories of heritage and horror. The tales we grew up on, hometown rumours and legends. 
The things we pass down through our bloodlines. 
TOC

Lamb Had A Little Mary by Elena Sichrovsky

The House That Gabriel Built by Nuzo Onoh

The Faces at Pine Dunes by Ramsey Campbell

In Silence, In Dying, In Dark by Caleb Weinhardt

One Of Those Girls by Premee Mohamed

The Saint In The Mountain by Nadia El-Fassi

Crepuscular by Hailey Piper

Laal Andhi by Usman T. Malik

The Woods by Erika T. Wurth

Unsewn by Ai Jiang

To Forget and Be Forgotten by Adam Nevill

The Veteran by V. Castro

Chalk Bones by Sarah Deacon

I thought the first story was the weakest of the bunch. If you feel the same, skip it for the rest. The strongest and my fave of the bunch was Laal Andhi by Usman T. Malik.

◆ Lamb Had A Little Mary by Elena Sichrovsky

Major child abuse, physical abuse, parent death, drowning,

Medium pregnancy,

Minor unsanitary,

◆ The House That Gabriel Built by Nuzo Onoh

Major rape, child birth,

Medium anti miscegination, murder, rape,

Minor castration, self harm, immolation,

◆ The Faces at Pine Dunes by Ramsey Campbell

Major drug use, drugs lsd, fatphobia,

◆ In Silence, In Dying, In Dark by Caleb Weinhardt

Major transphobia,

◆ One Of Those Girls by Premee Mohamed

Major pregnancy, abortion, racism, suicide ideation, infidelity, victim blaming, teacher student relationship, sexual abuse, medical content, miscarriage,

◆ The Saint In The Mountain by Nadia El-Fassi

Major child abuse, menstruation,

Minor fake food,,

◆ Crepuscular by Hailey Piper

Major body horror,

Medium animal death,,

Minor confinement, child abuse, torture, hand trauma, injuries,

◆ Laal Andhi by Usman T. Malik

Major death, gore, murder,suicide, terrorism,

Medium infidelity,

Minor child abuse, physical abuse, homophobic f slur, suicide threats,

◆ The Woods by Erika T. Wurth

Major infidelity,

Medium car crashes, miscarriage,

◆ Unsewn by Ai Jiang

Major misogyny, trafficking,,

◆ To Forget and Be Forgotten by Adam Nevill

Major paranoia,

Medium ableism,,

◆ The Veteran by V. Castro

Major alcoholism, classism, gun violence, kidnapping,

Medium self harm, eye trauma,

Minor infidelity,,

◆ Chalk Bones by Sarah Deacon

Major child death, suicide, live burial,

Minor car crashes, death, prison,

SUMMARY

Disjointed but not in a good way.

Sighs. See, earlier this year [this month?] I read The Unseen by Ania Ahlborn. The title is spoilered because a major plot point of that novel is revealed by its association to this novel. Anyways. Aliens. This book has got 'em.

This book is like a episode of Outer Limits. Remember that series? The scifi / fantasy / horror anthology series that was the successor to Twilight Zone? Albeit a very low budget one. Maybe call it a b or c movie, actually.

The copaganda is grating, though it balances itself with how incompetent the lady cop turned out to be. Her fiance is a one note 'wife guy' caricature. No wait, most of them are one note caricatures. You got the crazy paranoid guy who somehow has the money to live alone in his house. Granted it's the family house, so most of the mortgage was probably paid off.] You got the sister of the kidnapping victim who is an belittled alcoholic. The mother who is a 'boy mom' if I may use a tiktok word. The dad is a football player. Who is a Black man, by the way, and retired due to an injury. Though he does get more characterization. He cares about his daughter, still sort of cares for his Oedipal flavored jerk of an ex wife. There's the naughty cop who is banging the Oedipal boy mom but still has the heart of gold that all cops have and tries to do the right thing. [barf]. There is not much more to the characters beyond these one line descriptions.

The pacing is weird. It's rushed but not quite rushed. We get a fake out climax and then the real climax is some goofy multi way stand off on a fucking alien spaceship.

By the way. Colonization. <- That's it, that's the plot of the book. The aliens are going to do to earth white white european people did to the rest of the world. YAWN x one million plus infinity.

I was expecting and hoping for something like Ahlborn's book. An examination of a traumatized family, the impact of grief and eternal suspension in a moment of loss. And maybe some ambiguous alien stuff. I didn't like this. That's not to say every book has to be like the above. It's just that this tried to be action scifi and didn't quite hit the mark. I think with some work and time, the author can do better. They do have the skills to create a coherent plot. It's just that they could do better. And I hope they do. Someone probably enjoys this sort of plot, and they deserve a good book.

I'd suggest Ahlborn's book, or Hunting Snipe: And Other Notes on the East Texas Cattle Mutilations by Paul Avery Tindol.

SUMMARY

Stumbles in, fumbles for a chair and drops heavily onto it. This book... gasps audibly... is amazing. Ohmy god. Oh my fucking god. I wish I was popular with a mega huge infinity audience so I can spread word how fantastic this book is. Oh jusus christ.

If any book deserves a 'for fans of Hellraiser movies', this is it. Now don't get it wrong, this isn't a rip off or one-to-one or even an hochar-image. But it's the tone they share.

Hellraiser: 'You opened it, we came'.

Imaginary Houses summary: '...convinced that the paintings hold answers about what she saw, Stephanie sets out to hunt down the other paintings in the series, along with more information on the artist, whose life has eerie parallels with her own."

Another obvious, similar story would be Dionaea House creepypasta and House of Leaves. Not just because of the shared architecture horror, but the fact that they choose to look into the abyss.

This is such a unique concept. Flayed man. It reminds me of the Rake copy pasta in addition to the Army Man creepy pasta via the sa forums ghost stories thread. A supernatural entity with obscure intentions…. Creepy as hell.

The food is a fascinating detail. Mostly or always pre-made by strangers, another separation from connecting to others. The Mc is forever unmoored in a sense despite her itinerary. The prose is fantastic, introspective and considerate, but also echoes the detached sensation of the MC.

I love this book and I wish I could read it again for the first time. I'm thrilled to read more from this author.

SUMMARY

A terrifying locked-room mystery from the author of William—this time set on a remote outpost on Mars.
The human crew sent to prepare the first colony on Mars arrives to find the new base half-destroyed and the three robots sent to set it up in disarray—the machines have formed alliances, chosen their own names, and picked up some disturbing beliefs. Each must be interrogated. But one of them is missing.
In this barren, hostile landscape where even machines have nightmares, the astronauts will need to examine all the stories—especially their own—to get to the truth.
Exiles is a terrifying, taut, one-sitting read, and Mason Coile once again blends science fiction and psychological horror to engage some of humanity's deepest questions.

It's a coin toss, really, when it comes to sexism and misogyny in novels. It is pointless? Is it inherent ignorance on the author's part? Is it necessary to the plot or worldsetting that it happens to the women characters? Ok I said coin toss but it's really more like an open lament configuration and we're tossing it up in the air and hoping it does or doesn't auto complete its own puzzle on the way down.

I suppose it was done tactfully and informedly enough in this book. It is, in fact, a plot point and serves a purpose. And despite the author being a white dude, I think it was pretty interesting. See, it is a locked room mystery, with a twist of dead robots and isolation induced psychosis. OR IS IT??? It has decently futuristic trappings. Nevermind the robots,

When the author started in on the sexism theme, I may have rolled my eyes. But either he's done a lot of internal thinking and personal growth, or he had sensitivity readers [plural]. Which is nice, I'm surprised a man author broached this subject at all. And he did it fairly well in a way that wasn't preachy or hamfisted or as a soap box or anything. Wow.

Anyways, hey, locked room mystery? This is what it's sold as. Scifi Locked Room mystery. I liked the realism. Ignore that robots like that would not feasibly exist. But there's a corporate tinge to it, the sense that human life is incredibly expendable.

As a novella, it was a fairly quick read, and I enjoyed the mystery. I thought the plot twist was pretty cool, too.

SUMMARY

PART OF THE NORTHERN WEIRD PROJECT

Richard's sister Julie returns home from a mysterious wellness facility in remote Cumbria in 1994. He's convinced that this place was a cult and was the cause of his sister's eventual suicide. Finally, after years as an unaccomplished academic, he decides to investigate the disturbing accusations against the Hartman Retreat Centre. Then he meets Lucy, a young woman whose story is eerily similar to his sister's decades before. Richard is determined to unearth what's really been happening at the Hartman Retreat Centre but more importantly, who is Charles Hartman, the celebrated healer who casts a powerful hold over all who come to the retreat. Told through letters, interviews and found texts, lovers of Gemma Fairlcough's Bear Season will be swept up in a sinister world of wellness gurus and mystery.

I had read 'Bear Season', the author's debut, and ok. I see what's going on here. See, Bear Season had a fair amount of unfiction-esque ambiguity to it. And so does this one. While this is stronger on the implication of something supernatural going on, we never get a particular confirmation. Which is a strength and weakness. The author can write an interesting plot with decent prose and excellent characterization. I don't think I wasted my time with a 'ghosts.... or was it?!!?' sort of story.

I enjoyed the epistolary aspect, and appreciate it flowed into an easier to read recounting in a simple novel form. I thought the mythos was a little bare bones, but fairly tantalizing. I think if you enjoyed Bear Season, you'll probably enjoy this one. Or hell, even the Six Stories series by Matt Wesoloski, which admittedly isn't outright horror [genre spoiler for that series, by the way].

SUMMARY

Some trees bleed. Others hunger.

When twelve-year-old Liam carves his initials into an ancient tree deep in the woods, he awakens something older than the town itself—something that remembers blood, bargains, and betrayal. As sap seeps red and voices whisper from the branches, a night of terror begins.

Blood Sap is a horror novella that blends creeping dread, body horror, and psychological suspense in a story about guilt, legacy, and what waits in the trees. A haunting blend of folk horror, body horror, and psychological dread, Blood Sap is a brutal, atmospheric novella.

Shallow. Fast paced to the point of tripping over itself. Paper thin mythos. Almost a list of tropes and no connective tissue. Misogynistic in having the mother and sister graphically murdered on screen for the man pain of the young boy mc. The father is murdered similarly, but off screen iirc. Acceptably written in that it's a coherent story that clearly goes from a to z. I don't feel like reading anything else from this author.

SUMMARY

Move over Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Lovecraft—it's time to let the Scream Queens howl. In Sadie Hartmann's follow-up book to the Bram Stoker Award-winner 101 Horror Books to Read Before You're Murdered, horror fans will be delighted to discover a whole new list of horror recommendations—all by women writers.

Taking a cue from the popular practice of mood reading, the most common requests she gets on social media, and the overwhelming positive reaction to the icons included in her first book, Sadie has carefully curated and organized her 200+ recommendations into reading lists based on, well, vibes. Are you in your “Gothic Era?” Sadie has a list for that. Going on vacation and need some good dark beach reads? There's a list for that. Just finished Mexican Gothic and need more “Sporror in your life?” You guessed it, there's a list for that too! Each book on every list will include its title, author(s), date of publication, publisher, page count, theme, a spoiler-free description alongside Sadie's recommendation.

Featuring five brand-new essays from popular and rising voices in the genre—Alma Katsu, Alexis Henderson, Christina Henry, Rae Knowles, and Laura Purcell, this illustrated reader's guide is perfect for anyone looking to get out of a reading slump or diversify their TBR pile.

SUMMARY

Bad Things Happened In This Room is a chilling psychological horror that descends into madness where the walls whisper, and secrets are buried in the garden; perfect for fans of Carissa Orlando and The Yellow Wallpaper, exploring motherhood, grief, and the thin line between reality and delusion.

In this haunting psychological horror, Willow's life has become a fever dream, her days lost in a twisted loop where time no longer flows as it should. Is she held captive by her husband Liam's iron rules—or by the insidious darkness of her own mind?

Her only connection to the world beyond her walls is a young girl named Sarah, whose unexpected visits to Willow's garden spark a glimmer of hope. But as cracks form in her carefully controlled existence, horrifying truths seep through, twisting the familiar into something sinister. The floral wallpaper peels back to reveal haunting messages carved into the walls, and the house itself pulses with malevolent life.

When Sarah suddenly vanishes, Willow is forced to confront the dark shadows of her past and the horrors lurking within her fractured psyche. The question remains: is Willow truly a prisoner of her home, or of her own mind?

Some doors, once opened, can never be closed. And some truths are better left buried in the garden.

publisher's genre: horror suspense

realistic genre: rape torture domestic abuse gaslighting gets done to sad pathetic white woman which is very sad and horrible.

Also the characters are very flat one notes. Also there's a ghost girl who may or may not be symbolism for all the stillbirths.

Yeah yah this is insensitive but I really don't care about sad white women wallowing in sad white women traumas.

SUMMARY

A group of Victorian women, shipwrecked on an island in a parallel universe, fight for change.
Thirty "surplus" mothers from asylums, workhouses, and the streets of Victorian England are shipwrecked on an island in an alternate universe. To survive, they must create a new society amid the lethal black sands and mysterious beasts. How will they shake off the patriarchal chains that bound them and raise their children to be free? How will Betty, who longs to be back under the guidance of her master, survive, as the community evolves? And who is watching them?

Wildly racist, extremely light on the scifi and horror. An interesting character study, I guess. I'm not impressed. It just seems like wish fulfillment.

RE: Betty

LISTEN. I know white women. They do not to about-faces like this unless they seriously and genuinely interrogate ALL of their internalized misogyny and tranphobia. You could say it was done off screen but that's some bullshit. It just feels mainly like the author both ran out of time, and does not understand unlearning internalized prejudices is not a one time revelation.

That 70 percent of the book is literal 'jive talk' does not give me hope the author understands any of that. And it is antiblackness. The dialogue turns into speech signifying low class and poor grammar. It's supposed to symbolize the lower class women rejecting social trappings, including the excessive flowery, upper class proper grammar. Which is bullshit. AAVE [or African British Vernacular English, in this case] is often seen as lower class and improper speech. It is a legitimate dialect with its own grammar. Just because it doesn't sound like the british queen's english doesn't mean it's lower class and less valuable or proves the speaker is of low intelligence. I would have preferred if there was a better blend of ABVE and upper class speech. Have the lower class contractions, ABVE speech pattern, and lengthy flowery prose coming from them. But that would mean the author making an effort to understand the complexity of ABVE.

Also hold on. There was BARELY time for Betty and her employer to get married. Idk if she's preggo with his baby, there's no way ye olde england society and laws would let a random unmarried woman inherit all that wealth. I can accept the magical island but not this, ok. The ending is too damn rushed.

I'm not reading anything else from this author. They blew it.

SUMMARY

It begins at night. People vanish from parks and city streets. Then in broad daylight, they're dragged screaming into the woods, into the water, into the sky. People take refuge in their homes, but still the invisible creatures come, ripping people away from their horrorstruck loved ones. Spouses. Parents. Children. Nowhere is safe and no defense can stop them. Because nothing can save you from what you can't see.

High school teacher John Calhoun loses his son the first night. A day later, they take his wife. For two months, he and his thirteen-year-old daughter manage to survive, but in the end, she is abducted too. In John's darkest moment, he meets a motley group of survivors who have a secret: a near-fatal car accident has given one of them the ability to detect what normal human eyesight cannot.

The survivors believe they can replicate the brain injury that will enable them to see the creatures. To discover how they're invading our world. To fight them. Desperate to save his family, John volunteers. And after the veil of invisibility is lifted, he and his new friends will risk everything to achieve the impossible: enter an alien world and bring their loved ones back.

Better than the other book. Fun action scifi. Not horror. Surprisingly good? Ok I tried out the author's previous book, Nightmare Girl, which was stupid and misogynistic and very white cishet male author flavored. This one? Also kinda misogynystic in that all the women in the man mc's life die horribly on screen. Now granted, it makes sense. It's a story about a family. And yeah, his son also dies. It's just that every time a woman dies to give a man character propulsion, I roll my eyes. Moving on.

Fun action?! Well, eventually. The author can tell a pretty good story. It was well paced, neither rushing to the fun action parts of playing Daddy Rambo [the sequels] nor failing to develop emotional connections which better give depth to characters personalities.

The monsters were pretty cool. There was some science behind them, though I'm not too sure how feasible or realistic is it. I can appreciate they weren't mindless foreign savages [racist] or generic grey aliens.

All in all, a fun beach read. Yeah ok author, I'd give you a second chance.

SUMMARY

A dinner party in a beautiful Notting Hill townhouse turns into a sinister game as six old friends are forced to spill their darkest secrets...or else.

Six friends reunite in London to celebrate the life of their recently deceased ex-employer, a professor that brought them together in 1999 to help build a dating website based on psychological testing.

But what is meant to be a night of bittersweet nostalgia soon becomes a twisted and deadly game. The old friends are given an ultimatum: reveal their darkest secrets to the group or pick each other off one-by-one.

It soon becomes clear that their current predicament is related to their shared past. The love questionnaire they helped develop in 1999 for the dating site was also turned into a tool for weeding out psychopaths: The Wasp Trap. This experiment and the other tragic events of that summer long ago may help reveal the truth behind a killer hiding in plain sight.

Alternating between the past and present with a colorful ensemble of characters, The Wasp Trap is a fast-paced and twisty thrill ride that is perfect for fans of Lucy Foley and Alice Feeney.

It was ok. The plot was interesting and writing decent. The characters were varied. Though if you read a 'dinner party murder fest' story, you kinda know this story already. It does change it up in having a side plot of a missing child. All in all, things were tied up nicely and explained without feeling like it was holding your hand.

The whole psychopath test was a bit goofy. But it was the early 00s, so I can chalk it up to stupid pseudoscience meets capitalism.

I don't know if I would recommend this, but it was an ok beach read.

SUMMARY

Shit ass white cishet author complete with bad writing and bad plot. Ok so basically it's a nazi who did real fucked up nazi shit, escaped to american, revealed himself to be a nazi who did fucked up shit. And his coworkers--he work(ed) at the hotel in the summary btw--brutally murdered him. Then something happened and now he's a golem. Yes, golem, as in that Jewish folk tale. Idk if the author is Jewish or not, but this seems pointlessly tactless. So basically the nazi golem is going around murdering people, murdered the girlfriend who had 5 seconds of screen time, which is why the boyfriend and his stupid friends go to the hotel. To find who and why the girlfriend was murdered.

Oh by the way, when I say 'boyfriend and his stupid friends', I do mean just that. Because the girlfriend gets immediately killed off for the man pain angst. Yes, really. She's the final girl, she had the most interesting thing happen to her in the entire story, and yet she gets fridged via suicide. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

Like, listen. She has post traumatic amnesia. Totally understandable. So why the fuck can't we see her also go the hotel and confront a) her trauma and b) the murderer of her friends? That sounds so interesting. A scooby doo gang of friends investigate a haunted hotel days before it gets torn down in order to find hidden SD cards that had recorded the final night of the deceased friend's lives.

btw that's the motive for this book. To find SD cards hidden in the hotel by the dead girlfriend. Idk, I usually store my SD cards in my house.

▪ Did you know that Sharon's also a stripper? I mean, an exotic dancer. Or is it just a dancer? I keep forgetting, no matter how many times Heather tells me.” “You serious?” “Yep. Heather's been trying to talk her into quitting. She was on her way to an Ivy League school. Did you know she wanted to be a molecular biologist? But then it all went to shit and now she's just out to make money. It's sad how one tragedy can make a whole family unravel.”

LEAVE SEX WORKERS OUT OF THIS MESS!!!

Quote from book: Sheri, her body bathed in blood, had been broken in so many ways, the Wraith had simply balled her up, leaving her in the middle of the lobby, her head pushed into her crotch, arms wrapped around her body and wrists wrapped with wire to keep everything in place.

The violence against the women characters is hyper sexualixed. Nearly every woman character is like this.

The male Mc is written better than the woman Mc. HOW. 

The one woman character fridges herself to give man pain impulsions to not just one, but two entire men characters. Wow.,

Quote from book: More tears came. Ash let them roll down her face, the comforter absorbing the wet droplets of her DNA.

Absolutely how I describe crying.

Quote from book: She lay on the comforter, the chill wind hardening her nipples.

Not even 4 pages in and we get breasting boobily type shit. It's written soo poorly oh my god.

SUMMARY

After a betrayal shatters her life, Celeste retreats to northern Michigan to start over. But a letter to her Dear Celeste advice column pulls her straight into someone else's nightmare.

Andi, a woman haunted by her childhood, believes the farmhouse she now lives in is cursed. Sixteen years ago, her best friend died after a childhood prank—and she's convinced the woman who lived in the house had something to do with it.

Now, the house is stirring, and Andi is terrified.

As Celeste investigates, she's drawn into a chilling puzzle of buried memories, twisted truths, and a presence that refuses to rest.

What begins as a search for answers soon becomes a fight for survival.

A well written book, but the subject matter and the way it's presented didn't appeal to me. It's definitely for people who enjoy and believe in tarot and astrology and would enjoy a cast of characters who are also into that. It's a very endearing, tight knit supportive group, one of whom has found herself involved with supernatural shenanigans.

The subject matter which I object to is the kinda cheesy, kinda tasteless, was that the demon causing the haunted house phenomenon was summoned by a teen girl who was being serial raped by her father. It felt very tacky, like it was conveyed as a shocking twist whispered by two nosy neighbors gossiping over a picket fence to each other.

This is the second book in a series, but I don't think I'll be reading anything else from this author.

SUMMARY

No one cares when Lila Carson's ten-year-old brother Beau disappears. He can't speak. He throws tantrums. He's a useless Carson, one of those kids in a broken-shuttered house that lost its glory when his father died. When the sheriff and his good ol' boy deputies show up to investigate, they eye up Lila and call her twin brother, Quentin, names. A closeted bisexual girl in the South, she's terrified.

Lower Congaree recites it like an eleventh commandment: Don't go in that swamp. But as the long night drags on, it's clear Beau disappeared behind those ancient trees. The sheriff's deputies won't risk going back there.

Lila might not have a choice.

the summary spends more time investigating the missing child, much less the mysterious swamps, than the novella does. No really. 59 pages into a 85 page novella and we finally get to the investigation part of finding the missing kid. The novella is like, 'shit. I'm a horror genre, I need to be horrific. So here's a bunch of shit about southerners being low class inbred hicks but also police brutality and incest and bioessentialism.' And it completely forgets its own summary because it's busy crawling up its own ass about being shocking.

Buddy, incest and csa is rampant throughout usa. This isn't shocking, you are a generic white conservative american man. Incest is the highest searched porn term online. Nobody is shocked. This isn't victorian england where anything sexy, much less incest, is a surprise.

Anyways. Swamp is a microscopic character in the novella. Don't read it for a mysterious freaky cursed place. Scariest things in the swamp: compass that don't work, albino alligator, and the dumbass bitch who didn't bring food with her. Oh no wait I'm not done yet. The autistic child mentioned in the summary has magic autism powers that let him commune with wildlife and animals.

Oh also there's a wrapper of someone doing a study about this? This story? I'm not sure what or how. Ok the novella is being recounted to some lady and I guess she wrote it down and SOMEHOW this mysterious paranormal research org is studying it because....... don't. Don't ask me why. I assume it's part of a series? Just going by the book cover.

Well. This is well written but largely disappointing.

SUMMARY

"Adam Godfrey hails from Chesapeake, Virginia, where he lives with his wife and three daughters. He holds over twenty years of experience working for the United States Department of Defense in information technology and cybersecurity risk management. He holds a master's degree in cybersecurity, and his professional contributions to the field have been internationally featured across a variety of media platforms."

ew. a war criminal. well good think I pirated this.

The antagonist is a severely fat woman [think lethally obese in the 500 pound range] and is still mobile enough to run after the man mc like a scooby doo villain.

There's also an intersex character who is a caricature that's basically a h*rm*phrodite with perfectly formed internal and external genitalia who's there for shock value. Also she is an elderly woman so there's the misogynist ageism of 'oh no, this woman has the audacity to be OLD'. Also she's a pedophile.

All in all, not great. I'm not sure who the audience is for this book.

Basically the plot twist is that the male MC grew up sorta an orphan sorta not in a nun foster home and got [repeatedly?] molested by a family member(s?). There's victim blaming and disregard of the CSA. This makes the house haunted by ~*TRAUMA*~ and thus the victim [the mc] is forced to return via magical means in order to be trapped in the house forever. Either because he's now the head of the family and I guess might be the next head molester or ignorer of csa? I don't care. I was severely checked out.

It also tries to be Deep and Philosophical. Keyword: tries.

The writing is decent but it doesn't excuse that it's an incoherent mess of stale tropes, retreads of scarier horror related themes, and superficial caricatures and stereotypes.

If the remainder of your life was only as long as your ability to avoid your own reflection, how long would you last? An hour? A day? Perhaps a week? It's been said that at the core of every legend lies a seed of truth. For four American tourists vacationing in Greece, this is a lesson learned the hard way. When the group sets out to find a subterranean pool that's rumored to be the one by which the demi-god Narcissus once wasted away in self-obsession, what started as a fun excursion quickly escalates into a full-blown nightmare. After looking into the waters of the pool, they come to find their own reflections have become infected by an ancient evil. As they're picked off one-by-one by a malevolence that resides in the reflective world, those remaining race to find a way to bring the nightmare to an end before it takes them all. In the meantime, all they'll have to do is avoid their own reflections.

You know. I underappreciate competence, and it's good when a novella like this reminds me of that. See, maybe it's a chicken and the egg scenario. But sometimes, for authors or publishers, it's hard to fit a summary to a novel(la) and vice versa. This book manages to accomplish that.

Now, it is anything to write home to? Did it blow my mind? Was I compelled to rush to social medias* and gasp about this novella? No, not really. It's a perfectly serciveable, enjoyable novella about a group of friends who fuck around in a scary cave and get killed off one by one. I enjoyed it. It was cohesive, coherent, the mythos was reasonable and believeable, well written, the characters didn't feel like stereotypes even though they were basically 'white tourists'. [ok I forget, multiple weeks after having read it, if there was Black characters or characters of color. But considering I didn't record any in my notes, I'm going to say nah to that. White Tourists, they are]

*lol I have none, but you know what I mean

Metaphors and Themes: besides the obvious Narcissus plot? Not necessarily. There's some obvious delineations between the usual tourist locales and where the locals live that aren't party destinations. It's sort of slasher minus the usual slasher genre decor. It's no summer camp with a cursed killer.

All in all, I had fun reading this.

SUMMARY

Gripping, atmospheric, and off-putting, The Red Knot is the perfect blend of occult mystery and small-town horror.

On a tiny, isolated island off the southern Alaskan coast, three girls have vanished without a trace, and Audra's close friend—the island's therapist—has been found murdered. A recent storm has severed all communication with the outside world, leaving Audra, the town's lead detective, trapped and at the head of a very personal case.

Her lead suspect, Valorie, the daughter of a notorious cult leader and the town's outcast, was discovered blood-covered and dazed at the crime scene. Valorie's memory is a gaping void, a dark well hiding traumatic secrets, including the truth about the teenage kidnappings that haunt the island.

As Audra digs deeper into the town's twisted history, it becomes clear other murders on the island, dating back decades, might be connected. The clock is ticking for the missing girls, and every clue leads Audra to question even those she's known her whole life.

Valorie must confront the horrors of her past while Audra's investigation becomes a descent into madness. On this cursed island, the line between neighbor and nightmare blurs, revealing that true horror often wears a familiar face.

SUMMARY

Spread Me is a darkly seductive tale of survival from Sarah Gailey, bestselling author of Just Like Home. A routine probe at a research station turns deadly when the team discovers a strange specimen in search of a warm place to stay.

Kinsey has the perfect job as the team lead in a remote research outpost. She loves the isolation and the way the desert keeps temptations from the civilian world far out of reach.

When her crew discovers a mysterious specimen buried deep in the sand, Kinsey breaks quarantine and brings it inside. But the longer it's there, the more her carefully controlled life begins to unravel. Temptation has found her after all, and it can't be ignored any longer.

One by one, Kinsey's team realizes the thing they're studying is in search of a new host—and one of them is the perfect candidate

A woman horny for bacteria gets courted by a lichen based virus. By courted I mean it assimilates a la The Thing all her coworkers and tries to seduce her by trying different ways of body horror.

It was fun. Tense, I suppose, at times. I suppose it feels more superficial a plot compared to her other works. It was a short read. If the summary and idea of weird sex interests you, give it a shot. In the least, this wasn't a The Thing rip off.

SUMMARY

Nell has curated a perfect museum of the self: a successful career in archaeobotany, a pastel Instagram filled with flowers, and an uncompromising manicure routine. She's convinced that her veneer of perfection will mask the parts of her she'd rather not think about.
When two 'bog bodies' are discovered in elaborate floral graves in a Somerset fen, Nell seizes the opportunity to excavate their secrets. But the deeper she digs into the fertile, waterlogged earth, the more she uncovers memories of her unsettled childhood and strained relationship with her sister… and the more her body manifests her own wildness in ways she can't ignore.
Under the pressure of a blazing summer, Nell whirlwinds into toxic romance, intense friendships, and the brutal process of reconciling her past and her future before the weight of it all buries her, too.
Blending folkloric horror with explorations of womanhood against a backdrop of eco-anxiety, Tender burrows into the quiet violence of overcoming and accepting our darkest sides.

Similar to Meet Me At The Surface by Jodie Matthews, but also Beta Vulgaris, in concept. An introspective kinda scifi, maybe horror, mostly literary story full of turmoil and tension just below the surface.

Imagine going to a family dinner as a stranger and picking up on the stilted conversation and tension but not knowing why until someone snaps about turkey being unfaithful with the peas, and then 30 years of collective grudges comes pouring out. This book is like that.

Also horror. Also the fucked up sort of folk horror murder ritual involving someone growing thistles inside their body?

I can't find another book to fully compare it to. It's a strange, disassociative wild ride. Call it literary horror, if that makes sense. I'd read more from this author, certainly.

SUMMARY

At the height of lockdown, a group of flailing twenty-something friends makes an illicit break for freedom.
A grand country house stands empty. Once the home of Theo's great uncle, it seems like the perfect place to get high and hang out in the spring sunshine, as they eschew adult responsibilities.
Since meeting as teenagers, rifts have grown amongst the group. Even as they are determined to enjoy themselves, tensions cast shadows between them – politics, sex and lies. The house, too, has its own dark history and exudes a palpable sense of menace.
Where do the drugs end and the supernatural begin? Will anger and jealousy tear the friends apart, or will it be more ominous forces? Their stay at Holt House will change them all

Sighs. So they didn't lie, this is horror. But all the horror happens in the climax / very tail end. The rest is a tale of toxic group friendships / relationships and getting drunk / high. It was an interesting read, for the most part. I just wished there was more paranormal shenanigans instead of a stupid lesbian horny for her best friend who is dating / engaged to a man. And ok I guess there's metaphorical depth. I just don't care about the characters.

I'd call this literary genre, with a hint of horror genre. Don't go in expecting a haunted hosue, though you will get it.

SUMMARY

You swore you'd never go back.

Not to Carver. Not to that house.

But when your sister texts that your mother is dying, you find yourself returning to Carver House, a decaying relic of your haunted childhood.

Inside, memories rot in the shadows, time twists, and something is waiting.

As you move through its halls, you begin to unravel not just the truth about your family but the dark machinations of life itself - a horror stitched into the past, present, and future. Evil isn't coming. It's always been her.

Welcome home.

The antagonist is a severely fat woman [think lethally obese in the 500 pound range] and is still mobile enough to run after the man mc like a scooby doo villain.

There's also an intersex character who is a caricature that's basically a h*rm*phrodite with perfectly formed internal and external genitalia who's there for shock value. Also she is an elderly woman so there's the misogynist ageism of 'oh no, this woman has the audacity to be OLD'. Also she's a pedophile.

All in all, not great. I'm not sure who the audience is for this book.

Basically the plot twist is that the male MC grew up sorta an orphan sorta not in a nun foster home and got [repeatedly?] molested by a family member(s?). There's victim blaming and disregard of the CSA. This makes the house haunted by ~*TRAUMA*~ and thus the victim [the mc] is forced to return via magical means in order to be trapped in the house forever. Either because he's now the head of the family and I guess might be the next head molester or ignorer of csa? I don't care. I was severely checked out.

It also tries to be Deep and Philosophical. Keyword: tries.

The writing is decent but it doesn't excuse that it's an incoherent mess of stale tropes, retreads of scarier horror related themes, and superficial caricatures and stereotypes.

SUMMARY

an author interview makes this dude sound obnoxious

When five friends retreat to a remote cabin in the woods, they're looking for healing, inspiration, and maybe a little fun. What they find is a wound in the earth that never stopped bleeding.

The land is cursed. The cabin is hungry. And the missing painter Edward Black left behind more than just canvases—he left a blueprint for hell.

As grotesque nightmares bleed into reality, Spencer Castlebeck begins to paint things he doesn't understand—visions of horror, godhood, and a war between ancient evils buried beneath the soil. Every stroke of the brush is a summoning, and every drop of blood feeds something that should have stayed dead.

For fans of Hellraiser, The Evil Dead, Event Horizon, and the grotesque visions of Cronenberg—Cabin Black is a brutal, mind-warping plunge into historical and artistic terror, body horror, and char-imagesion-driven madness.

Monster is a generic antler man. 

It's trying so hard to be hellraiser and keeps missing.

The characters are as intelligent as the people from alien prometheus but with less reason to be there or stay there.

This novel: SUBTEXT IS FOR COWARDS. 

A tired retread of generic horror tropes. Cursed indigenous land, colonization and the resulting genocide, magical brown savages warning whitey of the curse, the two woman characters being the virgin and madonna respectively, the rest a sausage fest of men characters, scary dreams of butchered humans, a crazy creepy local offering a solo warning to leave this place. It's a rehash and not a very interesting one. The only thing left is to see if this dumb ass author tries a w.nd.dgo monster plot twist. Nope. But that doesn't redeem anything.

Oh no wait there's a second magical savage woman who gets gang raped to death because that's all Indigenous characters and woman characters are for. BORING.

No seriously. Post indigenous village genocide, a random indigenous women shows up to say magical indigenous things to the white colonizers and then gets kidnapped and gang raped to death. There's a difference between grimdark splatterpunk plots, and hamfisted attempts to shock the reader. Clive Barker could do some scary shocking splatterpunk type plots. This author is a 3 yo slamming gee eye joe dollar store action figures together and calling it scary.

SUMMARY

In the cursed town of Potter's Field, the dead are buried with silver coins and recited sins.

K. Bengston's debut is a chilling blend of folk and religious horror set in the swamps of small-town rural America. Think The VVitch , The Blair Witch Project , and True Detective twisted together.

Father Boone performs the burial rites, though they were never properly passed down, only patched together from scraps of memory. One too many mistakes and now something beneath the town is stirring... and the old rites no longer hold.

Desiree, scorned and ignored, begins hearing children's voices in the rain. And Sawyer, a charming debt collector, vanishes into the woods... only to return changed.

As the veil between folklore and flesh tears open, all three are pulled into the truth behind their crumbling faith.

The rites are failing. Potter's Field is unraveling.

And The Boatman isn't just a ferryman of the dead.

Vaguely, distantly, x times removed cousin of Old Soul by Susan Barker. Tackles occult Rituals and eugenics but not as deeply imo. Tone is different, certainly.

"Think The VVitch , The Blair Witch Project , and True Detective twisted together."

I guess? I GUESS??? The only similarities I can see is small towns, colonizers, eldritch horror, bargaining with demons (so to speak), and supernatural. If you go in expecting anything similar to the above plots, you're going to be wildly disappointed.

Mythos is a little simplistic but we'll grounded. It's a fact of life for these people. And watching them stumble through a series of very bad days and nights is like watching a anthill scramble around a flood of soda some mean-spirited child poured on them. An interesting mythos that offers no explanation.

The concept of religions overlapping / erasing one another is fascinating. In the sense of how colonizers used that as a tool of oppression and genocide, and yet when utilized here.... I don't remember where I heard it, but, paraphrasing, the scifi [and horror?] genre is often what white people fear not white people would do to them. EG foreign inhuman alien monsters colonizing humans, usually white cishet american characters with the occasional token brown / racial stereotype getting killed along the way.

That what this novel reminds me of. That religion was used to subdue a unnatural force that threatened the colonizing settlers, but as some point the colonizers got lazy and / or disinterested in continuing it for whatever reason. So the unnatural force rose up again to full power and punished the colonizers. I don't think that's what the author intended, per se, but what I read from it as a nonBlack reader of color. It's hard to tell when white authors are trying to tackle colonization and similar topics or if they're retreading the same old, covertly racist tropes found in the horror genre. Or if, by writing what he knows, he is accidentally making commentary on his white christian american upbringing and the history of his country. See, it isn't just religious oppression, but natalism and eugenics. Each generation there's a token set of deformed children who are murdered to the eldritch god for continued safety and prosperity.

It's also rather stale and repetitive to say, but it makes for a pretty good metaphor for capitalism.

I don't think this counts as western horror. Sure does feel like it. Modern western. Small town sort a historical western. Eastern western? I say that half jokingly but I don't quite recall where this is meant to be located. I assume eastern, as there's swamps, but I don't know. Typically, lovecraft has a heavy claim to east coast supernatural shenanigans. And while there's eldritch forces afoot, this doesn't feel like a shoggoth cthulhu knock off.

SUMMARY

THE MAN OF HER DREAMS MIGHT BE HER NIGHTMARE.

In the heart of the bustling city, struggling restaurant server, Dani Kowalski, dreams of something more. Trapped in a loveless marriage, and plagued by the nightmare memories of her past, she yearns for an escape, a spark of something real. A chance encounter with Eric Gilman—a darkly handsome and brooding stranger—ignites a passion and the glimmer of possibility. Is he the key to her escape, or will the darkness consume them both?

Meanwhile, Detective Frank Hagen investigates a string of grisly murders, each one more chilling than the last. As he delves deeper, he begins to wonder whether the killer stalking the city is even human.

TERROR HAS COME TO FORT LAUDERDALE, AND IT WILL EAT YOU ALIVE.

B movie.. Well more like c movie that you find on a tv channel that's a knock off of the SyFy channel. It feels like a romance novel masquerading as a scifi novel. It can't decide which genre it wants to be and doesn't quite straddle the line.

Plot is simplistic and a little clumsy. At one point we get a single scene, but with different POVs of the same scene that are back to back, one chapter after the previous. That feels jarring and like a mistep on the author's part. It unpleasantly interrupts the flow of the novel and I'm surprised an editor left that in.

Weird racism of broken English for side character Hispanic gardener. I mean I guess it's accurate but cmon now.

SUMMARY

For months, Luke and his underground revolutionary group have been planning their biggest operation yet: kidnapping 23-year-old Adeline Woolsaw. They don't want a ransom—they want to expose the Woolsaw Group, the source of Adeline's parents' enormous wealth, a vast yet largely anonymous company that runs everything from military bases and mental hospitals to commuter trains, call centers, and prisons.

But the revolutionaries get a shock when they bundle Adeline into their van. She's about to go into labor. And she may not object to being kidnapped, if it allows her and the baby to escape her despotic parents.

It quickly becomes apparent that this is no ordinary child. He's capable of setting off deadly weather events and summoning plagues of vermin. And that's just the beginning. Luke discovers that Adeline's parents engineered the pregnancy as part of a dark bargain with an ancient evil of nearly limitless power. Now the Woolsaws and their henchmen will stop at nothing to get the infant back, so they can establish an infernal new kingdom on Earth with their grandchild on the throne.

Kit Burgoyne (pen name of Booker-listed author Ned Beauman) is a ruthlessly funny new voice in horror: witty, appalling, and as adept at skewering today's plutocratic overlords as he is at conjuring our most primeval nightmares.

"Kit Burgoyne is the horror fiction pen name of Ned Beauman, who was named one of Granta's Twenty Best Young British Novelists in 2013"

what I expected from the cover and summary was some misogynystic sexist action horror where a group of men kidnap an pregnant heiress and proceed to be misogynistic to her while her demon fetus makes life a living hell for them until its born and then the apocalypse happens.

Nope. There's more than one women, actually. It's still a sausage fest as they are out numbered by the men characters but still. That's one more than I expected.

This feels like a successor but also a modern day equivalent to Rosemary's Baby that stands in its own right as a commentary of class and the accompanying abuses. This was incredible and fun. Yes Rosemary's Baby is mentioned in the summary and yeah that's accurate.

SUMMARY