Unquiet
Things

The Midnight Muse by Jo Kaplan Metal band Queen Carrion returns to an Oregon cabin a year after their lead singer Brynn vanished in the woods, only to encounter fungal body horror weirdness that begins infecting and transforming them one by one. The premise had real potential – mycelium horror meets heavy metal in the Pacific Northwest, which should have been catnip for me – but Kaplan tries juggling seven different POVs while jumping between timelines, and it just never found its footing. The first half had some unsettling body horror and atmospheric moments that held my interest, but around the halfway point, it started dragging, and I found myself losing momentum as the characters kept making baffling choices (staying in a cabin with no reviews feels like extremely questionable judgment). What could have been a tight, nasty little horror novel needed serious trimming. I kept hoping it would pull itself together, but instead it just kept going and going until I was exhausted and resentful of the whole story and everyone in it. Publishing March 10, 2026

The St. Ambrose School for Girls by Jessica Ward A scholarship student with bipolar disorder navigates the toxic social hierarchy of an elite 1990s boarding school, where the relentless bullying from queen bee Greta Stanhope becomes entangled with her struggles to distinguish between reality and her own unraveling mental state. This isn’t the thriller the marketing promised, but rather a slow, heavy character study about mental illness and teenage cruelty that happens to include a death near the end. I found myself completely absorbed anyway. Ward’s portrayal of severe bipolar disorder felt convincing and unflinching (the way Sarah’s illness becomes its own unreliable narrator, the long dissociative tangents, the constant questioning of her own credibility), though I understand why some readers found those sections exhausting or distracting. I picked this up last year, bounced off after two chapters, then tore through it in one sitting this time; I think if you go in expecting a twisty dark academia thriller you’ll be disappointed, but if you’re prepared for something darker, sadder, and more interested in Sarah’s internal landscape than in plot mechanics, it’s pretty compelling.

Portalmania by Debbie Urbanski uses portals, sometimes literal sci-fi gateways, sometimes metaphorical escapes, to explore asexuality, difficult marriages, and the desire to be someone other than who you are. The stories share recurring characters and situations that feel like variations across parallel dimensions, which creates an interesting structural concept but also leads to a sameness that became overwhelming for me by the midpoint. I appreciated the unflinching examination of topics rarely explored in fiction (asexuality in conflict, coercive sex in marriage, the unglamorous reality of parenting neurodivergent children), and a few stories like the witch one and the AI replacement service really worked for me. The collection has ambition and Urbanski’s prose has real power, but ten stories covering such similar emotional territory felt like too much; I kept wishing for more variety or a tighter selection of maybe six or seven pieces instead of revisiting the same themes and character dynamics repeatedly.

Dollface by Lindy Ryan A masked killer starts slashing through a New Jersey suburb, targeting PTA moms one by one, while horror writer Jill tries to figure out who’s behind the murders before she becomes the next victim. Jill’s juggling her codependent relationship with her sister Kitty, trauma from her mother’s death, pressure from her editor for new pages, and desperately wanting to fit in with the Brunswick PTA despite her horror movie t-shirts and Final Girl coffee mugs. This had potential as a campy suburban slasher and the unhinged neighbor Darla (who calls everyone “dear” despite being maybe in her forties, which cracked me up) was mildly entertaining, but the killer and the twist were so obvious from very early on that I spent the rest of the book waiting for something I’d already figured out. Publishing February 24, 2026

Needle Lake by Justine Champine Fourteen-year-old Ida, neurodivergent and living with a congenital heart defect in the tiny logging town of Mineral, Washington, finds her quiet world upended when her charismatic sixteen-year-old cousin Elna arrives from San Francisco for the winter. Elna introduces Ida to shoplifting, drugs, and a kind of reckless confidence Ida has never experienced, but after the cousins witness a man drowning in Needle Lake on Christmas Eve, their relationship shifts into something darker and more complicated. I kept expecting some big dramatic reveal or confrontation that never materialized, only to realize in the final pages that the real story – Ida’s gradual understanding of herself, Elna, and their family’s secrets – had been unfolding quietly the whole time through Campine’s gorgeous, atmospheric prose. The pacing felt uneven (the ending rushed after so much careful buildup) and I wanted more resolution, but I found myself completely absorbed in Ida’s voice and the way she navigates a world that doesn’t quite make space for someone like her.

The Mad Wife by Meagan Church I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting from this 1950s housewife-slowly-unraveling story, but it turned out to be more slow-burn domestic drama than psychological thriller, following Lulu Mayfield as she struggles after giving birth to her second child and becomes fixated on her new neighbor Bitsy while everyone around her dismisses her concerns as hysteria. This was on the lesser side of fine for me. There were two twists I didn’t see coming – one genuinely heartbreaking, the other feeling like it tried to tie everything up with a neat medical explanation that somehow answered too much and too little at the same time – and while the exploration of women being gaslit and dismissed by doctors resonated (because yes, that still happens), the whole thing felt like it pulled its punches when it should have leaned into the bleakness it was building toward.

Tantrum by Rachel Eve Moulton Thea’s third baby Lucia is born with a full set of teeth, grows at an alarming rate, and announces she wants to eat her brother, which would be horrifying enough without Thea also grappling with dark memories from her own childhood and wondering if she’s passed some monstrous inheritance down to her daughter. I liked this even though it got weird and nonsensical; Moulton uses the “monster baby” setup as an extended metaphor for intergenerational trauma and maternal anxiety, and it works until suddenly it doesn’t (maybe? I can’t decide?) veering into bizarrely fantastical territory that seemed like it was aiming for catharsis but left me uncertain whether it resonated the way it was meant to. The dark humor against the heavy themes worked for me, and I appreciated how short it stayed (173 pages) rather than dragging the metaphor out past its usefulness. It’s inventive and original in ways that don’t stack up predictably, which I found compelling even if I’m still not sure how I feel about where it all went.

If You’re Seeing This, It’s Meant For You by Leigh Stein When Dayna (39, unemployed, recently dumped via Reddit) agrees to help turn a decrepit LA mansion into an influencer hype house, the job comes with a complication: Becca, the tarot card reader who used to live there and amassed a huge following, has vanished. The mansion has a strange history and seems to exert its own influence on the young creators living there, while Dayna navigates her complicated past with Craig, the owner who she hasn’t spoken to in twenty years, gets involved with Jake, the last person to see Becca, and teams up with nineteen-year-old Olivia to investigate what happened. I actually really liked this despite some baffling character choices; Dayna was weirdly out of touch for someone who’s only thirty-nine, considering I’m 49 and more plugged in than she seemed to be at the start, but then she’d suddenly have these confident, on-point ideas about how things should work and just run with them immediately. Her observations about visibility, aging online, and the cost of being seen were pretty sharp, but Stein seems to borrow from Gothic fiction (a crumbling estate, a mysterious disappearance), without fully embracing it ….this is more a decaying mansion with Wi-Fi than a brooding psychological mystery (though at some point the mystery stopped feeling like much of a mystery anyway.) I had a good time with it anyway.

They Bloom at Night by Trang Thanh Tran In the aftermath of devastating hurricanes, Vietnamese-American teen Noon and her grief-stricken mother navigate the waters around Mercy, Louisiana, where a red algae bloom has transformed the landscape and mutated sea creatures into something grotesque and unrecognizable. Noon’s mother refuses to leave, convinced her dead husband and son have been reincarnated as sea creatures, leaving Noon feeling invisible – not enough as a daughter, not enough as a person, despite being alive and right there. When the town’s local thug forces them to hunt down whatever creature is lurking in the swamp and sends his daughter, Covey, along to keep watch, Noon is navigating grief over her lost family, trauma from an assault, rage and self-loathing she can’t shake, and the growing sense that she might be undergoing her own monstrous transformation. I wanted to like this more than I did – there were so many elements I appreciated (the body horror, Vietnamese mythology, the metaphor of monstrous transformation as response to trauma and alienation from one’s own body) but they didn’t coalesce into an enjoyable whole, feeling sluggish and scattered instead. I really like Tran and their ideas though, so I’m glad I read it and will always pick up more from them.

The Haar by David Sodergren Muriel McAuley is eighty-four and has no intention of leaving her Scottish fishing village of Witchaven, not even when an American developer shows up planning to evict everyone and build a golf course. A mysterious fog bank called the Haar rolls in from the sea, bringing something ancient and monstrous with it that becomes Muriel’s unlikely ally, and what follows is equal parts gore-soaked revenge tale and surprisingly tender love story. I think if I hadn’t been listening to the excellent narrator on audiobook, this wouldn’t have kept my interest – I went in expecting atmospheric dread and creeping horror, but got something that felt more romantic than frightening despite all the visceral violence. I genuinely liked Muriel as a protagonist, and I can appreciate love and sentimentality and grief all tangled up with body horror, but this didn’t work for me as the horror story I was hoping for. Viewed as its own strange hybrid thing, maybe it’s actually pretty great, but I kept wishing I could split it apart – give me the story of the town being bought up by a rich developer with one stubborn old woman refusing to sell, or give me the ancient entity lurking by the sea, but mashing them together left me wanting each piece to breathe on its own.

Play Nice by Rachel Harrison After her mother Alex dies, influencer Clio Barnes inherits the childhood home where Alex claimed a demon lived, specifically obsessed with Clio – claims that got Alex stripped of custody and labeled crazy. Clio’s sisters want nothing to do with the place, but Clio sees house-flipping content gold and begins renovations, only to discover her mother might have been right as she finally reads Alex’s out-of-print book about the possession. I liked parts of this: the sister dynamics felt real, the book-within-a-book structure worked was neat…but something was missing, like I wanted more of who Alex was before the house, more about how young Clio might have interacted with the demon, just more demon in general. What I actively disliked, though, was Clio herself, the bratty baby sister with her “I do what I want! Deal with it!” energy who dismisses her sisters’ legitimate trauma as manipulation while seeing dollar signs everywhere. I know that’s intentional character work, but I have a real problem with people who act like that (maybe because I’m an oldest sister), and her behavior grated on me so much it overshadowed basically everything else Also, blueberry bagels are Clio’s favorite, which just cements my dislike of her – sweet bagels are garbage, and if you want a round baked good with a hole to be sweet, just admit you want a donut already and stop dragging the poor bagels into it. They should be savory and loaded with fish and onions and terrifically smelly, as god intended.

The Salvage by Anbara Salam A Victorian shipwreck containing the remains of Captain James Purdie – a celebrated explorer who’s achieved near-cult status among the islanders – gets towed from Arctic waters to the remote Scottish island of Cairnroch in 1962, and marine archaeologist Marta Khoury arrives to salvage what’s inside. On her first dive down, she photographs artifacts and bones, but when she returns days later to retrieve them, everything’s gone, and she’s certain she saw a dark crouching figure in the wreck – which feeds right into the guilt she’s already drowning in from something terrible in her recent past. The Cuban Missile Crisis and a historically brutal winter strand her on the island, where she’s treated with suspicion as an outsider and has to navigate complicated relationships with Sophie (her boss/husband’s assistant, sent ostensibly to help) and Elsie, a local hotel worker she grows close to. I loved this, even though the 1960s Scottish island setting confused me initially since it’s not territory I usually encounter. The wintry atmosphere is spectacularly done and while many readers thought it dragged when the village freezes over and everyone’s scrambling for survival, I genuinely enjoyed watching the female friendships develop and spending time with these flawed, complicated characters navigating their various guilts and desires. The romance worked for me despite not usually wanting love stories in my ghost stories, though I’ll admit the casual attitude about the relationship didn’t feel entirely realistic for early 1960s Presbyterian Scotland.

The Search Party by Hannah Richell Max and Annie Kingsley invite their old university friends and their families to their new Cornwall glamping site for a trial run, but the reunion sours when the kids fight, the parents take sides, old resentments surface, and someone vanishes just as a massive storm rolls in. The setup had potential (isolated location, secrets, missing person, police investigation told through multiple timelines), but nothing about it really landed for me beyond people having predictable meltdowns in expensive tents. The one character I felt for was Kip, Max and Annie’s adopted son who has selective mutism and gets treated poorly by basically everyone. I finished it easily enough, but now all I can recall is a blur of dramatic confrontations and bad weather without any real sense of why I should have cared.

Smile For The Camera by Miranda Smith A reunion documentary brings the cast of cult slasher Grad Night back to the original Tennessee cabin location twenty years later, where they’re all hiding a terrible secret from the original shoot. Ella Winters, the movie’s final girl, finds herself navigating old resentments and cast drama before someone dressed as the movie’s killer finally starts picking off cast and crew members, which raises the obvious question of why this revenge plot waited two decades to kick in. I finished this easily enough and found parts of it entertaining, but the fictional movie Grad Night itself sounded incredibly dull (kids go to a cabin, kids get killed, there’s a final girl, the end), and there’s a weird twist that felt like it came out of nowhere and was never properly addressed in a way that made sense.

Spread Me by Sarah Gailey Kinsey leads a research team at a remote desert outpost where they discover a strange, grotesque specimen buried in the sand, which she breaks quarantine to bring inside, and the longer it stays the more everyone starts unraveling because this thing is searching for a host and making everyone weirdly, aggressively horned up Gailey commits fully to the strangeness here (Kinsey is sexually attracted to viruses, for instance), and while I generally find smutty stuff boring and would rather read about literally anything else, this was so boldly weird that I actually had a good time with it. The timeline jumps between present action and character backstories disrupted the momentum when I was invested in what was happening now, but overall, this was short, strange, and entertaining.

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman Forty women live locked in an underground cage with no sense of time, no understanding of how they got there, and only the vaguest memories of the world outside. The sole exception is our narrator, a young girl who remembers nothing before captivity and has grown up entirely within the cage’s fluorescent, timeless hum. When a moment of chance and a sliver of ingenuity allow them to escape, the world they emerge into is far stranger and more desolate than anything they imagined, and the girl becomes both witness and sometimes interpreter—to a landscape devoid of answers. It’s part eerie survival tale and part philosophical unraveling, as the women wander through an empty world not knowing whether they’re the last people alive or simply the most forgotten. I loved this, even though the starkness of its setting, bleak plains, abandoned structures, and a world stripped to its bones, initially felt so spare I wasn’t sure how much emotional attachment I’d find. But the atmosphere is astonishing: quiet, unsettling, and strangely luminous, especially in the scenes where the women try to rebuild some kind of life with almost nothing to anchor themselves. I was captivated by the narrator’s loneliness and the way she tries to make meaning inside a reality that offers none. The sadness is constant but beautifully rendered, and the final pages left me equal parts hollowed out and grateful. I think I’m drawn to stories like this, and even to books as seemingly different as Island of the Blue Dolphins and The Boxcar Children (which probably sound ridiculous as comparisons, but hear me out), because I love narratives about people figuring out how to survive and build something from almost nothing, finding small moments of comfort and connection in a world that’s fundamentally indifferent to their existence.

The Place Where They Buried Your Heart by Christina Henry The abandoned house on Jessie’s Chicago street has been there her whole life, crouched and waiting, and she’s the reason her little brother Paul disappeared inside it when she dared him to go in as kids. The book follows Jessie over decades as she grows up on that same block, builds a life, and watches darkness spread from that house until eventually her own son vanishes into it and she has to confront what’s been festering there all along. I’m always here for a creepy haunted house story and loved the neighborhood friendships and support system around Jessie, but this never quite worked for me, despite wanting it to. What started as fairly standard supernatural coming-of-age/grief horror suddenly veered into something oddly fairytale-esque at the very end, a bizarrely fantastical pivot that fell awfully flat.

Coffin Moon by Keith Rosson Vietnam vet Duane Minor is bartending in Portland in 1975, trying to stay sober and raise his thirteen-year-old niece, Julia, when he crosses a vampire named John Varley, who retaliates by murdering Minor’s wife and sending what’s left of their family on a vengeful pursuit across the Pacific Northwest. This has a gritty 1970s noir feel and reads more like a crime thriller than typical vampire horror, which I appreciated, and while it wasn’t weird or extraordinarily wild in any way, I can say I’ve never read another vampire book quite like it. I think that uniqueness comes from getting Varley’s perspective, along with Minor’s and Julia’s, watching all three of them from different angles as the hunt unfolds. The grief and rage driving Minor and Julia felt raw and devastating; their bond developed naturally over the course of the book, and the whole thing was brutal and emotionally gutting without feeling manipulative about it. This was an utterly satisfying read and exactly what I want from horror.

Night Watcher by Daphne Woolsoncroft Nola Strate hosts a late-night radio show in Portland about hauntings and cryptid sightings, but when a caller describes something chillingly similar to her childhood encounter with a serial killer called The Hiding Man, she becomes convinced he’s back and targeting her (yet somehow does absolutely nothing to keep herself safe in ways that stopped feeling like character behavior and started feeling like the author needed her to be a reckless moron for plot reasons.) This could have been so good, but I was deeply disappointed by how it turned out, starting with the fact that the author telegraphs early on exactly how the killer is accessing his victims, which removes most of the tension. The writing felt simultaneously over-detailed about mundane things (kombucha, coffee, endless mentions of Powell’s Books to remind you we’re in Portland) and strangely flat when it came to actual character development or emotional stakes. When the killer is finally revealed, it’s someone so random and disconnected from the story that you’re left thinking “oh, that’s just dumb.”

Self Care by Leigh Stein Everyone’s got a favorite trashy genre, and for the past few years, this has been mine: something about wellness and social media and influencer culture, sometimes through the lens of a thriller, sometimes presented as sad girl/weird lit fic, but there’s something so garbagey junk food about it that I can’t get enough of. This one follows the female cofounders of wellness startup Richual as they struggle to balance their feminist values with profit margins while their company implodes from various scandals, including sexual misconduct allegations against a board member and a PR nightmare when COO Maren Gelb tweets something terrible about the President’s daughter. I flew through it and enjoyed the specificity of the brand-dropping, the absurd self-care products, the performative wokeness, and the way it captures how these companies commodify feminism while exploiting the people working for them. The ending felt abrupt and left me wanting more closure or comeuppance for certain characters, but overall, this scratched the exact trashy itch I was looking for.

The Caretaker by Marcus Kliewer Macy Mullins is broke, grieving her father’s death, and desperately trying to provide for her younger sister when she takes a caretaking job she finds on Craigslist that involves following mysterious rituals at an isolated Oregon Coast house to prevent some incomprehensible evil from escaping. My stress levels while reading this were off the charts—poor Macy just could not get her shit together, screwing up the instructions at every turn in ways that left me frustrated with her and for her. The plot veers into such bizarro territory that some readers will absolutely be put off, with that meandering weirdness that made me think of the r/nosleep community, and when I looked it up, I realized that’s because Kliewer was a writer there. The dread and tension were real, but I closed it feeling like it was almost good rather than anything approaching actually great. Publishing April 21, 2026.

The Sound of the Dark by Daniel Church. The premise here involves haunted audio tapes from an abandoned RAF base that caused an experimental artist to murder his entire family in 1983, and decades later, true crime podcaster Cally Darker decides to investigate.  The writing had serious weird/gross/annoying problems throughout: at one point, Cally is using sex to distract her boyfriend, but the narration tells us she wasn’t trying to distract him anymore because she was “genuinely enjoying herself.’ I find this extremely doubtful, classic man-writing-women garbage. At another point, Cally puts on a pair of gold harem pants. Gold harem pants. Seriously? What!  At least two completely different interview subjects both use the word “benighted” in the span of about two chapters, and aside from that, these two very different characters spoke almost exactly the same. The same wry, sardonic tones, similar turns of phrase, etc. I don’t know that I could let that go in a book I was actually having a good time with, but in this one, it was exceptionally egregious. And the villain was such an over-the-top incel caricature that I wanted to throw the book every time he said “pretty Cally Darker.” By the end of this, I think I was hate-reading it.

Dead Weight by Hildur Knútsdóttir Unnur reunites a lost black cat with its owner Ásta, a local woman who seems a bit vulnerable and squirrelly (we soon learn why); Unnur agrees to keep the cat temporarily, which leads to an unlikely friendship between the two women. I tore through this in one sitting—it’s a quiet little book (gruesome but not bombastic about it) that leans more thriller than horror, and I liked it better than Knútsdóttir’s last one. The friendship felt genuine, and I was really invested in watching Unnur transform from someone living a bland, isolated life with a terrible married boyfriend into someone who actually cares about another person, especially once it becomes clear Ásta is in an abusive relationship and things take a violent turn. Short, focused, and doesn’t overstay its welcome. Publishing May 26, 2026.

Too Close To Home by Seraphina Nova Glass This is the first Seraphina Nova Glass book that didn’t quite work for me, which surprised me given how much I’ve enjoyed her other work. An upscale lakefront community is thrown into chaos when a car bomb explodes at the annual Labor Day party, killing the wrong person, and the story follows three suburban moms, Regan, Andi, and Sasha, whose lives are all tangled up in the aftermath. I love Glass for that close-knit, neighborly intimacy and the way she weaves community together, but this felt too sprawling and ambitious, with so many plot threads (bomb threats, missing persons, messy divorces, resurrected husbands) that I never found my footing. The three women were so interchangeable that I struggled to keep them straight well past the halfway point, and while everything technically came together at the end, the resolution felt both over-the-top and underwhelming. I missed the warmth and tight focus of her other work. Publishing April 14, 2026

Buyer Beware by Catherine Ryan Howard Starting over is hard enough without your new house hiding someone else’s deadly secrets, but that’s what happens when Hannah moves to 1 Delaney Row under a new name, trying to escape her past. At first her situation stressed me out because it reminded me of Adam Nevill’s No One Gets Out Alive—desperate woman, creepy house, creeping dread—but thankfully the book doesn’t bloat like Nevill’s did, dragging on for 600 pages. The dual timeline structure following two women whose stories eventually converge around the house worked well enough, but the mystery’s resolution felt unfairly convoluted: when a barely-there neighbor character suddenly becomes the keeper of crucial secrets the whole story hinges on, it doesn’t feel earned, it just feels like information was withheld arbitrarily. Readable enough, but that resolution soured whatever goodwill I had toward the book. Publishing July 28, 2026

Nothing Tastes As Good by Luke Dumas A clinical trial for a very experimental weight loss product promises miraculous results, and retail worker Emmett Truesdale, over 300 pounds and desperate for change, enrolls only to discover the side effects include lost time, overwhelming (and alarming) cravings…and a possible connection to people who were cruel to him now disappearing. You could tell this was written by an actual fat person who has experienced actual fat person struggles, from the way society treats Emmett to the constant bullying to the self-loathing, all of it felt authentic in ways that made parts of this horribly relatable, even when other parts were gross and cringe. Emmett’s childhood trauma around his weight happened in his own home, where he should have been safe and protected, which adds another layer of devastating realism to his character. The social commentary on fatphobia and diet culture isn’t subtle, but I appreciated the inclusion and found myself caring about Emmett despite knowing things weren’t going to end well for him. The ending went a bit over the top, but this worked for me more than it didn’t. Publishing March 31, 2026

The Lamb by Lucy Rose A mother and daughter live isolated in a cottage by the forest, their quiet life interrupted only by strangers who knock at their door seeking shelter, strangers they consume after feeding and caring for them. When Eden arrives during a snowstorm, everything rapidly shifts in ways both tender and terrible. Mama becomes utterly besotted with Eden in a way she never was with Margot, desperately in love, while what she’d given her daughter had always been something fraught with resentment and possession rather than genuine affection. Eden seems to care for Margot while also returning Mama’s passion, leaving Margot nowhere to belong, and whether Eden’s arrival was accident or design is never quite resolved (though in a story this dreamlike and fairytale-esque, do we even question where new entities come from?). This was weirdly beautiful and terribly, monstrously sad, told entirely through Margot’s childlike perspective.

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Here are all of the books that I read between mid-July and the end of September.  I tried to be better about writing my thoughts immediately after finishing each book this time around. Obviously, I haven’t got any deadline for posting these collections of book reviews, I am only writing for myself here after all…but once I have decided “ok now’s the time!” I’d really like there to be as little work as possible. Doing it bit by bit, one book at a time as I go along is much, much easier than letting all the read titles accumulate and then trying to remember all the details and write about 25 books in one week! If you are someone who shares book reviews, do you tend to write them one by one, or say, 5-10 in one go? What’s your process? Do you take notes while reading, or rely on memory? How do you balance being helpful to other readers without spoiling too much? And does your opinion of a book ever shift between finishing it and actually sitting down to write about it? Sometimes I find that books I thought I loved start feeling more kinda meh once I try to articulate why they worked, or books that annoyed me reveal something interesting or unexpected when I’m forced to be more analytical about them.

Anyway, there were a few books I DNFed (did not finish) this time around, and I am not sure if it is fair to include them, but I do think if I am going to do a round-up of stuff I have read, I want to include all of it, even the books that didn’t work for me. I wonder sometimes if DNF reviews might be more useful than positive ones, maybe there’s something to be said for knowing why someone abandoned a book and at what point, especially if you share similar reading preferences or have the same pet peeves. Plus, acknowledging when books don’t click feels like part of the real reading experience rather than only showcasing the successes.

Writing reviews as I went definitely made me more conscious of my reactions while reading. I caught myself thinking about things like when reveals change everything about a character retroactively, rather than recontextualizing what we already knew, or when the “surprise” feels unearned because no foundation was laid for it. I found myself noticing scenes that felt like filler rather than building toward anything, or when authors don’t trust readers to retain basic character information and keep hammering away at the same points. Sometimes these reactions struck immediately…I’d be one paragraph in and already thinking “this dialogue sounds off” or “I don’t buy this character’s voice” – while other insights crystallized in those first few hours after finishing, when specific moments were still vivid before getting smoothed over by time and other books. The downside is that sometimes I felt like I was reading with one foot outside the story, analyzing instead of just enjoying, though maybe that trade-off is worth it for actually being able to articulate why something worked or didn’t.

Anyway, yeah, yeah, all the backstory before I share the recipes. I know, I know. Get on with it!

Devil’s Day by Andrew Michael Hurley John Pentecost returns to his family’s Lancashire farm for his grandfather’s funeral, bringing his pregnant wife Kat to the isolated Endlands community for the first time. The Gaffer had been the keeper of local traditions and boundary lines that supposedly protect the valley from the Devil, and now John must decide whether to take on that responsibility during the annual sheep gathering and Devil’s Day ritual. Andrew Michael Hurley is fast becoming one of my favorite authors – if you’ve ever read Robert MacFarlane’s lyrical writing about ancient British landscapes and thought “what this needs is some creeping dread and unexplained rural menace,” then you’ve found your writer. The pacing is glacially slow, but it works perfectly for Hurley’s atmospheric style, allowing the bleak moorland and bitter winds to seep into every scene until the landscape itself becomes a character. Kat feels increasingly trapped and unwelcome among the suspicious locals, while John is torn between his old life and his deep, almost mystical connection to this harsh place that demands everything from those who try to survive there.

Swallows by Natsuo Kirino Riki, a broke temp worker in Tokyo, agrees to be a surrogate for Motoi and Yuko, a wealthy couple desperate for a child, after her friend mentions the hefty payout for renting out your womb. Kirino’s exploration of poverty and reproductive choices is genuinely compelling, even when her characters make baffling decisions with zero self-awareness – like Motoi wanting a kid to live vicariously through while Yuko doesn’t even want to raise a child she’s not related to. The frank discussions about sex and bodies caught me off guard (but maybe it shouldn’t have, considering the author) and there’s definitely a lot talking in circles without actually resolving anything, just seemingly endless back-and-forth conversations that don’t seem to go anywhere, but I found myself invested in following Riki’s disaffected journey through this morally complicated situation regardless. It’s messy and uncomfortable, which works for a story about people making terrible choices while desperate for money or babies.

Crafting for Sinners by Jenny Kiefer Ruth has been repeatedly shoplifting from New Creations craft store as revenge after being fired for her sexuality, despite her girlfriend Abigail’s warnings to stop – but when she’s finally caught, the employees lock her inside and hunt her down instead of calling the police. Which is weird enough, but their plans for her are clearly much worse. What should be a tense survival horror of Ruth fighting her way out using crafting supplies turns into an endless slog of her creeping between shelves while fretting about her blood sugar, and bizarre slapstick murder and destruction (I couldn’t tell if this was meant to be funny or not?? )The violence feels repetitively excessive, like it’s doing the work the plot should be doing, and random podcast segments get thrown in that feel like a missed opportunity to actually connect to the story. The ending itself worked until the epilogue takes a sharp turn that feels like something from a cheesy TV movie, completely undercutting everything that came before. I do love Ruth’s internal dialogue, though, which consisted chiefly of “fuck these fuckers.” Which, fair.

Fox by Joyce Carol Oates Since I DNFed this after two chapters, I can only comment on what I experienced before giving up. Francis Fox is a charismatic English teacher at an elite boarding school whose car is found submerged in a pond with body parts nearby, leading to questions about his true identity and dark secrets. Despite Oates’ undeniable command of language and literary prowess, there’s something about her long-form prose style that I find insufferable – she becomes excessively verbose in a way that feels like a terrible slog rather than artful crafting. I love a beautiful turn of phrase and well-crafted sentence, but Oates pushes beyond that into smugly pretentious territory that tests my patience. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” is probably one of the most effectively unsettling things I’ve ever read, which proves she can be brilliant when constrained by shorter forms – but her novels feel indulgent and meandering in comparison. I know a lot of folks think she’s a brilliant genius so I feel like a lowly worm even having an opinion about it, but sometimes literary titans just don’t work for you personally.

With A Vengeance by Riley Sager Riley Sager’s books are wildly inconsistent, and this one lands solidly in the “outrageously worst I’ve read from him” category – yet I somehow continue to eagerly anticipate each new release like a senseless, slavering lunatic. Anna Matheson lures six people who destroyed her family in 1942 onto a luxury train from Philadelphia to Chicago, planning to confront them about their crimes and deliver them to authorities waiting at the destination – but someone starts murdering her targets during the overnight journey. The entire premise is absolutely ridiculous: How does she get six suspicious strangers to just… go along with getting on a mystery train? What authorities would agree to let a civilian deliver six potential criminals like some kind of vigilante instead of investigating themselves? Her whole “confrontation and confession” plan is painfully naive – why does she think these people will suddenly admit to decades-old crimes just because she threatens them with legal consequences? What could potentially be a tense locked-room mystery becomes a repetitive mess where characters stumble across bodies, accuse each other randomly, then move on to the next murder without any real investigation. The plot relies on absurd coincidences rather than clever deduction, and the whole thing falls apart the moment you think about the logistics for more than two seconds.

Death of a Bookseller by Alice Slater Roach is a longtime bookseller at a struggling branch of Spines bookstore who becomes dangerously fixated on Laura, a new children’s bookseller brought in (along with colleague Eli) to help rejuvenate the failing location. When Roach discovers they both have an interest in true crime – specifically that Laura’s mother was murdered by a serial killer – she becomes convinced they’re kindred spirits, but Laura wants nothing to do with her increasingly unhinged attempts at friendship. What’s marketed as a mystery is really more of a psychological exploration of two deeply flawed people, and both main characters are thoroughly unpleasant in different ways. Roach is genuinely repulsive – greasy, stalkerish, and obsessed with killers rather than victims – though I suspect I was so put off by her partly because she mirrors the tiny edgelord in my own heart, sneering at “normies” while thinking she’s more interesting and superior to their beige blandness. Laura and Eli waltz into the store like they own the place, which immediately predisposed me to dislike them from the start. The repetitive routine of work, pub, hangover actually felt surprisingly cozy to read about, even though it was probably meant to illustrate how these characters are stuck and stagnating. The book raises interesting questions about the ethics of true crime consumption (I find the whole “fan” culture around it pretty distasteful myself), but this feels more like watching two awful people circle each other than a compelling thriller…which, perversely, made it quite readable.*

*I make an effort to note the personal synchronicities I experience whilst reading a story, and here’s yet another: “An elderly gent in a stained three-piece tweed suit buys The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared.” I literally just watched the film adaptation of The Hundred-Year-Old Man the weekend before I read that line.

Murder Ballads by Katy Horan Ever since I first heard Ceoltoiri’s haunting version of “The Cruel Sister” on their Women of Ireland CD 25 years ago, I’ve been haunted by that moment when “the harp began to play alone” – those goosebumps still chill me every single time. Katy Horan’s Murder Ballads feels like the perfect companion to that long fascination, bringing together her beautifully unsettling illustrations with meticulous research into twenty traditional murder ballads and their real-world origins. She doesn’t just retell these dark stories but excavates their histories, tracing how some songs evolved from actual murders while others spring from pure folklore and mythic tradition. Her approach is both scholarly and sensitive, restoring humanity to victims often reduced to cautionary tales while examining the genre’s troubling roots in patriarchal violence and white supremacy. Each ballad entry includes recommended recordings, making this as much a gateway into the music as it is a cultural study. Horan’s art has a strange, folkloric beauty: darkly whimsical but never twee, weaving folk tradition and rustic charm alongside a gothic sensibility that’s been touched by shadow and mystery. A quality of illuminated manuscripts crossed with old Appalachian almanacs and herbalist guides. For anyone drawn to the darker threads of folk tradition, this is an essential and beautifully crafted exploration of how real tragedy and timeless myth both become song.

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We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad follows Sam, now a published author, getting kidnapped by the Bunnies during her book tour so they can tell their side of the story from the original novel. What should have been a return to Awad’s brilliantly unhinged world instead felt like tedious Bunny fanfiction – all the surface elements are there, but the magic that made the first book so weirdly captivating is missing. The mystery and ambiguity that made Bunny so compelling gets replaced with heavy-handed explanations and lore that I never wanted or needed. When a second POV kicks in partway through (the bunny-turned-boy creation), it briefly livens things up with its childish, emoji-filled narration, but even that novelty wears thin across nearly 500 pages. I found myself wishing Awad had left the Bunny universe unexplained and perfect rather than giving us this tedious expansion that somehow manages to be both overlong and underwhelming. (September 23, 2025)

Oddbody by Rose Keating This short story collection lured me into a macabre carnival of bodily oddities that’s occasionally stomach-turning but magnetic in its strangeness. Women lay eggs during breakfast shifts, fathers become worms in bathtubs, and ghosts become unwelcome third wheels in relationships – all described in sparse, matter-of-fact prose that makes the bizarre feel strangely normal. I’m usually pretty oblivious to metaphors, so while other readers point out heavy-handed symbolism about depression, relationships, and societal pressures, I just enjoyed each story at face value, letting the visceral imagery of consumption, transformation and rupture burrow under my skin like a grotesque parasite I’m both repulsed and transfixed by. Keating creates these deeply uncomfortable scenarios where the women protagonists accept their bizarre circumstances with a shrug while continuing about their daily lives. The collection feels like witnessing ten different fever dreams where bodies betray, transform, and consume in ways that made my skin crawl but somehow left me hungry for more.

Root Rot by Saskia Nislow Nine children gather at their grandfather’s lake house, but instead of names, they have labels like “The Liar” and “The Secret Keeper.” This storytelling choice initially confused me, but soon I was pulled into Nislow’s hypnotic collective “we” narration as reality shifts around the children – mushrooms bleed, faces distort, and the landscape seems hungry. The book captures that disorienting childhood experience of being thrown together with cousins, creating a strange mythology while adults remain distant figures doing incomprehensible adult things.. The vacation setting transforms from familiar to alien in ways that feel both disturbing and fascinating. There’s no tidy resolution and I finished the book partly confused but strangely content with a story that perfectly scratched my itch for creative weirdness in the stories I consume.

El Dorado Drive by Megan Abbott Megan Abbott has this strange talent for pulling me into worlds I never expected to care about – first with The Turnout where I found myself invested in ballet despite my complete disinterest in dance, and now with three formerly privileged sisters in post-recession Detroit getting sucked into a pyramid scheme. Harper, Pam, and Debra carry decades of shared history and complicated loyalty as they chase financial salvation through “The Wheel,” an exclusive investment club where women pay thousands to join, recruit others, and supposedly watch their money multiply without selling a single product. The slow-burn story shifts when death enters the picture, casting suspicion across sisterly bonds that were already fragile. Abbott captures the acute anxiety of downward mobility – these women clinging to middle-class respectability while pretending everything’s fine. The ending makes perfect sense in hindsight, though I was too caught up in the sisters’ desperation to properly suss it out.

Party of Liars by Kelsey Cox Sophie’s ridiculously Texas-sized Sweet Sixteen becomes a crime scene when a body crashes onto the dance floor from a balcony above, transforming teenage revelry into small-town scandal. Cox structures this whodunit around multiple perspectives – the young stepmother Dani, the bitter ex-wife Kim, the Irish nanny Orlaith, and Sophie’s best friend Mikayla – each hiding their own secrets and resentments. The book plants subtle hints about certain relationships that completely misdirected me until a surprising revelation midway through changed my understanding of the characters and their motives. While there wasn’t anyone I was particularly rooting for and the ending felt a bit underwhelming after all the buildup, it was a quick, entertaining read for when you want rich people behaving badly, petty grudges, and murder all wrapped into one party disaster.

Shy Girl by Mia Ballard Broke and depressed thirty-year-old Gia accepts an unusual offer from Nathan, a man she meets on a sugar dating website – be his pet dog in exchange for paying off her debts. What begins as a strange but seemingly straightforward arrangement quickly turns into something darker, freakier, and more twisted as Nathan reveals his true intentions. As Gia’s bizarre arrangement morphs into captivity, her humanity is gradually stripped away and she evolves into something feral and vengeful, I found myself increasingly disconnected from both the character and the story. I’m honestly not sure if it was the writing style, the heavy-handed metaphors that others pointed out, or simply that this type of story doesn’t appeal to me. Maybe all of the above? This wasn’t terrible by any means – I didn’t connect with it the way others clearly did, and I can’t quite articulate exactly why. I picked up this book based solely on the beautiful cover art, knowing nothing about the story itself. Had I known about the frequent sexual violence throughout the narrative, I would’ve given this one a pass – the animal transformation premise itself wasn’t the issue, but rather the uncomfortable context it was presented in.

The Brood by Rebecca Baum Mary Whelton, a cutthroat NYC lawyer with questionable ethics, crashes her car while fleeing the press and wakes up captive in a remote cabin with a strange woman she only knows as “Girl.” What begins as a Misery-like hostage situation quickly turns bizarre when Mary discovers Girl mistakes her for her missing mother and has an unhealthy obsession with a local cicada population and something called “The Brood” which has disturbing (and that’s an understatement!!) plans for Mary. Baum’s uncomfortably and unpleasantly detailed descriptions of women’s bodies – their secretions, transformations, and functions – made this a challenging read that had me physically, squirmingly ill at times. The constant focus on breasts, feeding, and the grotesque manipulation of female biology created a visceral horror whether bugs freak you out or not. I found myself both repulsed and weirdly captivated by the twisted mother-daughter dynamics and the increasingly strange body transformations. A revolting read that I desperately wanted to put down, yet somehow could not. (October 28, 2025)

The Compound by Aisling Rawle Imagine waking up in a desert compound with nine other beautiful women, cameras tracking your every move for a reality TV show where contestants must couple up to avoid banishment while competing for increasingly lavish rewards – all while the outside world slowly burns. I’ve always felt smugly superior about not watching reality TV (what does that say about my cultural elitism?), but here I was completely hooked by this book from the first page. There’s something uncomfortable about my willingness to consume the exact same content when it comes packaged as literature rather than television – as if the medium somehow legitimizes my guilty pleasure. It was perfect airplane reading – I was both literally and figuratively a captive audience for this fraught, escapist fantasy. Lily isn’t particularly deep or likable, but I found myself weirdly invested in her journey as she navigates the show’s manipulations, forming strategic alliances and pursuing diamond earrings with single-minded determination. What made this work was how it used the addictive format to deliver an underlying critique of consumerism without ever getting preachy. The strange mix of boredom, forced intimacy, and manufactured drama created an oddly compelling world, while hints of environmental collapse and war in the background create an unsettling undercurrent. I blew through it in one sitting and finished feeling both thoroughly entertained and vaguely uncomfortable with how much I enjoyed it.

Strange Houses by Uketsu A nameless narrator gets roped into examining floor plans for his friend’s potential house purchase, only to discover bizarre “dead spaces” hidden between the walls. With his architect buddy, he embarks on a puzzling investigation where they stare at diagrams and somehow leap to wild conclusions from almost nothing. The prose has that mechanical quality I’ve come to expect from Japanese translations – not unpleasant, just that distinctive flat-affect style I’ve noticed over years of reading translated works. The characters possess about as much personality as the floor plans they’re analyzing, serving mainly as vehicles for the puzzle-solving. Their eye-rolling, far-fetched deductions in the face of minimal evidence was utterly ridiculous, but the sheer absurdity of it all kept me turning pages. I’d honestly be more interested in checking out the manga adaptation, which probably makes the diagram-heavy mystery solving more visually engaging than reading conversations about floor plans.

How To Survive A Horror Story by Mallory Arnold Seven strangers, including six horror authors and one random aspiring writer, get invited to a dead horror author’s mansion for a will reading, only to be trapped in a “deadly” game where they must face their past misdeeds or die trying. The dialogue was as painful, the inner monologue was cringy (OMG, that one quote about Jennifer Aniston…lordy), and what was supposed to be scary or mysterious came across more like a mediocre Halloween haunted house where the employees are required to stay six feet away from the guests. I kept waiting for the characters to develop personalities beyond “selfish jerk” or “slutty blonde,” but no such luck. This seemed like it wanted to be a clever horror-comedy mashup of Clue and House on Haunted Hill, but somehow managed to suck the fun out of both concepts while adding nothing of its own.

The Ghost Woods by C.J. Cooke Set in the 1950s and 60s, this gothic tale follows two unwed mothers – Pearl and Mabel – who end up at Lichen Hall, a crumbling manor surrounded by eerie woods where pregnant women are sent away to give birth in secrecy. The dual timeline structure creates a nice back-and-forth rhythm as we gradually discover the house’s dark secrets through both women’s experiences with the strange proprietors, the Whitlocks, and their bizarre grandson Wulfric. Despite the mushroom angle (add this to the growing pile of fungal horror novels colonizing my shelves), I found myself drawn in by the genuinely atmospheric setting of the decaying manor and the heartfelt relationships that form between the women as they navigate their shared trauma. Oddly enough, this is the second book I’ve read in two months about unwed mothers’ homes, though the villain reveal felt a bit silly and undercut the otherwise creepy vibes.

The Manor of Dreams by Christina Li follows the aftermath of Hollywood starlet Vivian Yin’s death, when her daughters Lucille and Rennie expect to inherit her sprawling California mansion but discover she’s left it to Elaine, whose family once worked for Vivian decades ago. Both families end up living in the house together while they sort things out, which goes about as well as you’d expect – especially when supernatural occurrences start plaguing everyone and the overgrown garden literally begins creeping toward the house. The story jumps between different time periods, revealing Vivian’s rise to fame and the secrets that tore these families apart, though I found myself wondering why it took so many scenes to establish that certain characters were genuinely terrible people – it felt like beating a dead horse. The exploration of Chinese American identity in old Hollywood felt authentic and added a real sense of depth beyond the gothic atmosphere, and I appreciated how the mansion itself becomes a rotting symbol of broken dreams. By the time everything finally came together in the last chunk of the book, at least the pieces fit, even if I’m still puzzling over some of the earlier hauntings that seemed to drift away unresolved.

Dark Sisters by Kristi DeMeester spans three centuries in the cursed town of Hawthorne Springs, following women who fall prey to a mysterious illness when they step out of line—boils in their mouths, teeth falling out, the whole gruesome package. The setup has potential: Anne Bolton makes a dark bargain in the 1700s, Mary Shephard has a forbidden affair in the 1950s, and Camilla Burson questions her preacher father’s congregation in 2007, all connected by this sinister legacy. DeMeester clearly knows her way around body horror and feminist rage, and the concept of generational curses tied to female rebellion should have been right up my alley. But despite all the right ingredients—witch trials, religious hypocrisy, queer longing—the execution felt sluggish and overly heavy-handed with its themes. The multiple timelines never quite clicked for me, and by the time the big revelations arrived, I was more relieved to be done than genuinely surprised. (December 9, 2025)

Y/N by Esther Yi was part of my challenge to read all the library books whose holds I let lapse in the past few years, and I’m so glad I didn’t let this one slip away. A Korean-American woman living in Berlin becomes obsessed with Moon, a member of a K-pop boy band, and abandons her entire life to fly to Seoul and track him down after he mysteriously retires from the group. It takes exactly three pages for her to go from sneering anti-fandom intellectual (“my spiritual sphincter stayed clenched to keep out the cheap and stupid”) to completely, absurdly fanatic, and she begins writing Y/N fanfiction -where “Your Name” gets inserted so readers can pretend they’re dating Moon- to cope with these emotions too enormous for her body to hold. The story unfolds like a bizarre dream, where random people appear precisely when the narrator needs them, and Yi’s strange, dense writing makes you feel like you’re sinking into someone else’s fixation. I adored this cynical snob narrator even though she made me remember exactly why I find intense fandom so insufferable, but Yi transforms it into something gorgeous rather than just sad.

The Dead of Summer by Ryan La Sala follows Ollie Veltman returning to the queer vacation island of Anchor’s Mercy after a year away caring for his dying mother, only to find himself in the middle of a supernatural plague rising from the ocean. The setup is solid – an eccentric drag queen-run paradise off the Maine coast suddenly overrun by mysterious contagions and sea monsters – and La Sala structures it as a mix of Ollie’s story and friendships and scattered documents trying to piece together what went wrong. I appreciate La Sala’s writing and characters even when his plots don’t totally land for me (I suspect that I, like many readers, read La Sala through The Honeys-tinted glasses, and even when it’s not perfect, it’s still more Ryan La Sala which is better than the alternative of no Ryan La Sala) and this one kept me reading despite some jarring timeline jumps between past and present. The horror elements work well, especially the genuinely grotesque creatures, but I wanted more time to actually experience this island and its fabulous before everything went to hell. The cliffhanger ending feels a bit manipulative but also makes sense, given how much story is clearly left to tell. (September 16, 2025)

The Myth Maker by Alie Dumas Heidt promised Greek mythology meets serial killer thriller, but what I got was elaborate murder scenes based on the most surface-level goddess details—I kept thinking it would be more fascinating if the killer had tapped into their more esoteric aspects instead of just the obvious stuff. Detective Cassidy Cantwell’s investigation follows a predictable cycle of murder, mythological explanation from a convenient professor, suspect interviews, repeat, and I lost track of the dozens of characters pretty quickly. The video game-influenced killer reveal felt overwrought, and honestly, I’ve already forgotten most of the details despite finishing it just two days ago. I’ll probably read the sequel anyway since Cassidy’s cold case about her murdered best friend seems infinitely more interesting than this by-the-numbers procedural.

When the Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy turns into something much stranger than the werewolf story the title suggests. Struggling actress Jess finds a terrified five-year-old hiding outside her apartment, and after an incredibly violent and extremely bizarre encounter with the boy’s naked father, they’re on the run together. The horror that follows them is more imaginative than I expected, and much closer than Jess realizes, with Cassidy crafting genuinely unsettling body horror while exploring how fear and trauma can literally transform us. Even if you go in expecting some weirdness, it spirals far beyond that into territory I didn’t see coming, all while developing the sweet, unlikely friendship between Jess and this damaged kid.

Blob: A Love Story by Maggie Su delivers exactly the kind of messy, ridiculous protagonist I’m weirdly drawn to. Vi is a 23-year-old college dropout working hotel reception, avoiding her bubbly coworker Rachel, and generally making terrible decisions when she finds a sentient blob outside a drag club and decides to take it home. What starts as a drunken impulse becomes an attempt to mold the blob into her perfect boyfriend, feeding it cereal and pop culture until it transforms into a conventionally attractive man. The premise is absurd, but Su uses it to dig into Vi’s loneliness and self-sabotage and maybe the ways we try to control the people we claim to love.Vi is genuinely awful at times—selfish, avoidant, cruel to people who care about her—which somehow makes her both insufferable and disgustingly compelling. There’s something uncomfortably familiar about watching someone so stuck and stagnating make such spectacularly bad choices, even if you tell yourself you were never quite that terrible.

John Green’s The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet is a collection of essays adapted from Green’s podcast where he reviews random aspects of human existence – everything from air conditioning to cave paintings – on a five-star scale, weaving in stories about his own struggles with mental health and finding hope during dark times. To be honest, I never listened to the podcast, so I didn’t actually know the conceit before I started reading, but what could have been a gimmicky concept becomes something genuinely moving about how we find meaning in small things. The reviews that work best are the ones where Green stops trying to be clever about the rating system and just lets himself be vulnerable – the chapter on googling strangers made me cry because it’s less about the topic and more about how desperately we all want to understand each other. As Green writes, quoting Harvey, “In this world, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant. Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant,” and that shift from smart to pleasant is exactly what makes this book work. So many of his insights, connections, and observations resonated with me on such an immediate and deeply fundamental level that I bought myself a used copy after finishing the library loan.

Fiend by Alma Katsu follows the uber-wealthy Berisha family, whose thousand-year-old import-export empire seems impossibly blessed – their rivals suffer convenient strokes, buildings catch fire at opportune moments, and whistleblowers end up dead. The story alternates between present-day chaos and childhood flashbacks as three siblings, reluctant heir Dardan, power-hungry Maris, and idealistic Nora, discover the ancient evil that’s been fueling their family’s success for generations. This is Katsu’s first contemporary horror after her historical novels, and honestly, it was fine – a quick read that somehow also managed to be a slow burn. The complicated family dynamics – all the backstabbing and competing for power while trying to keep their supernatural secret – work well enough with the horror elements, but I’ve been liking each of Katsu’s books a little less than the one before, with The Hunger still being my favorite. This one continues that trend without being actively disappointing, but it never quite grabbed me the way her earlier work did. (September 16, 2025)

How Bad Things Can Get by Darcy Coates drops Ruth, the sole survivor of a childhood cult, onto Prosperity Island for what’s supposed to be an influencer’s dream party with hundreds of his most devoted fans. When the island’s dark history connects to Ruth’s past and the elaborate games turn deadly, guests start disappearing in increasingly violent ways. I usually love Coates’ work, but this one felt pretty absurd to me – the over-the-top influencer premise, the characters making the most ridiculous decisions, the elaborate scenarios that somehow everyone just goes along with. The cult backstory had potential but got overshadowed by all the island chaos, and while the blood and violence ramp up considerably in the second half, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this would work so much better as a movie. I’d absolutely watch the hell out of this on the big screen with a tub of overpriced popcorn, but on the page it just didn’t quite work for me the way her other books do. (August 26, 2025)

Don’t Let Him In by Lisa Jewell opens when Nina receives an unexpected gift from Nick Radcliffe, claiming to be an old friend of her recently deceased husband Paddy. As Nina falls for Nick’s charm, her daughter Ash grows suspicious and starts investigating his past, while across town florist Martha struggles with her frequently absent husband Alistair’s increasingly suspicious behavior. Maybe it sounds smugly naive to say this, but I genuinely do not get how all these smart women got taken in by this man who manages to be both incandescently diabolical and audaciously mediocre at the same time. The manipulation tactics were so transparent and the red flags so abundant that I spent most of the book wanting to shake sense into everyone involved. That said, I love Lisa Jewell’s work, so I had to see where this story was going, and she does deliver her signature twisty plotting and satisfying resolution. Even if I couldn’t buy into the premise, my affection for Jewell kept me reading through to the end.

I absolutely adored Happy People Don’t Live Here by Amber Sparks, even though it was maybe a bit twee and precious at times – but just the right amount of twee and precious for me. Alice and her young daughter Fern move into a creaky former sanatorium turned apartment building, where Fern discovers a dead body and starts investigating despite her paranoid mother’s warnings. Alice has secrets of her own – there’s a reason they’re always moving and she’s so paranoid – and she’s also a miniaturist, which adds to the book’s precious quality but also speaks to her need to keep things small and controllable. The story unfolds in this wonderfully weird world populated by the kind of people you’d expect to live in a converted sanatorium: there’s someone who performs as a mermaid, a neighbor who communes with spirits, a professor specializing in obscure medieval topics. The writing itself is lovely, but there’s something about the whole story that has this magical, kooky, almost childlike sense of charm to it – not undeveloped or simplistic, just delightfully earnest in a way that feels younger than typical adult fiction. As someone who’s not usually drawn to YA, this hit exactly the right balance of whimsical gothic mystery with enough substance to satisfy, and I found myself not wanting to leave this strange little community Sparks created. (October 14, 2025)

Ghost Music by An Yu was another in my challenge to finally read my lapsed-hold books. Song Yan gave up her concert piano career to become a wife, but her husband Bowen refuses to have children and grows increasingly distant, especially after his mother moves in and starts blaming Song Yan for the lack of grandchildren. When mysterious packages of mushrooms start arriving at their Beijing apartment, Song Yan discovers they’re from Bai Yu, a famous pianist who disappeared a decade ago, and she gets drawn into a surreal world where she talks to an orange mushroom in her dreams. This is one of those spare, eerie books where you’re never quite sure what’s real and what’s metaphor, and honestly I didn’t understand half of what was happening, but something about the dreamlike atmosphere and Song Yan’s quiet desperation had me strangely invested.

Endling by Maria Reva follows Yeva, a malacologist who funds her snail research by participating in Ukraine’s romance tour industry, entertaining Western men seeking “traditional” brides. When she teams up with sisters Nastia and Solomiya to kidnap a group of bachelors as a protest stunt, their plans are disrupted by Russia’s invasion in early 2022. At first, this setup feels almost absurd – a scientist obsessed with endangered snails, romance tourism, a kidnapping scheme involving a mobile lab – but it quickly becomes clear this isn’t some kind of quirky romp at all. The connection between the three women felt genuine and compelling, watching how they were transformed by this brief but intense shared experience gave the story real emotional weight, and I found myself completely absorbed by Yeva’s passion for saving endangered snail species. The sections where Reva breaks the fourth wall and inserts herself as author pulled me out of the fictional world, though I realize how spoiled and selfish that sounds when she’s grappling with how to tell a story while real war unfolds around her relatives and homeland. While I wished those meta elements could have been handled differently – perhaps as an afterword or in a separate section – I also recognize this as essential reading that forces us to confront our own ignorance about what’s happening in the world. This review feels intimidating to write because the work is several layers smarter than me in every regard, and I’m sure there were nuances and historical context I simply don’t grasp, but if nothing else, I appreciated how Reva forces readers into a necessary reckoning with our own limited understanding of the world.

When Noah finds his parents locked in a violent trance in front of the TV, he discovers it’s not just them – it’s happening nationwide in Wake Up and Open Your Eyes by Clay McLeod Chapman. What he uncovers is an epidemic where people become possessed through certain media channels and websites, turning families into literal enemies who tear each other apart. This was…something, and I’m honestly not sure how I feel about it. Chapman’s writing is undeniably skilled – he builds tension expertly and creates genuinely nightmarish scenarios – but I felt bludgeoned to death by the political commentary, and I say this as someone who agrees with his politics completely. I know that was the point, but still – maybe we’ve reached a moment where subtlety just isn’t cutting it anymore. Yes, it was grotesque and extreme and revolting, and okay almost obnoxiously nasty but that’s clearly the territory Chapman is working in here. The social horror metaphor felt both obvious and necessary, even if I’m still not entirely sure what Chapman was trying to accomplish beyond making us all feel terrible about the state of things. And maybe also trying to make us barf.

More fool am I for picking up Nobody’s Fool by Harlan Coben. Former detective Sami Kierce has spent twenty-two years haunted by waking up next to his dead girlfriend Anna in a Spanish hotel room, covered in blood with a knife in his hand, until he spots her very much alive in his private investigation night class. Harlan Coben maybe has okay ideas for stories, but I don’t think he’s a great writer – the plotting felt convoluted and the character motivations never quite made sense, especially Tad Grayson’s, which I still don’t understand. The timeline was completely off, the technology references felt like an old guy trying to sound current, and don’t even get me started on the moment when Sami walks into his kitchen to find his wife talking to Anna and thinks “wow, I have made love to both of these beautiful women.” Oh my god, so fucking gross, Jesus Christ. I kept reading because Coben does know how to keep pages turning, but by the end I was mostly just annoyed at myself for expecting anything better from someone whose writing consistently feels several notches below the premises he comes up with.

The Rotting Room by Viggy Parr Hampton sets up an intriguing premise: Sister Rafaela joins the cloistered Sisters of Divine Innocence, where nuns tend to decomposing corpses in a sacred burial ritual, but she begins to suspect something sinister when a mysterious stranger’s body resists decomposition. This had some fascinating ideas and the concept of the rotting room itself was genuinely disturbing, but Sister Rafaela was as dumb as a box of rocks – insipid and wishy-washy in a way that made me want to shake her. Father Bruno was equally useless, a complete ding dong who spent most of his time being inexplicably horny for Rafaela instead of actually helping solve anything. The worst part was the tiresome amount of time spent on mundane details – “first I went here then I went there then I sat down for lunch but I had no appetite” – rinse and repeat for what felt like endless pages. Hampton clearly did her research on historical burial practices and created an effectively creepy atmosphere, but the repetitive internal monologue and flat characterization made this feel much longer than it needed to be. I kept waiting for either character to do something, anything, decisive, but instead got stuck in their endless hand-wringing until an abrupt and unsatisfying ending.

Colored Television by Danzy Senna Jane is a biracial writer desperately trying to support her family, including her artist husband Lenny whose work doesn’t sell, while they bounce between house-sitting gigs and perpetually unstable housing situations. When her decade-long novel – her “mulatto War and Peace,” as she calls it – gets rejected, she pivots to television writing by stealing an idea from a friend…which is bad enough, but the friend owns the house they are living in! Jane is the worst friend ever. I actually liked this one despite never wanting to be friends with Jane, because Senna pulls no punches about any of it, the financial desperation, the racial dynamics, the creative sellouts, and that kind of unsparing observation is what makes it work. And also Senna lets her characters make jokes and observations that would be completely unacceptable coming from anyone outside their community – it’s the kind of risky writing that only works when you’re writing from the inside.

Wicked Things by John Allison I adore John Allison, and while this wasn’t my favorite thing he’s done, any John Allison is good John Allison. Charlotte Grote gets framed for murder at a teen detective awards ceremony and ends up working with the London police to solve other cases, but the fact that she’s not particularly motivated to clear her own name struck me as genuinely weird for this character whose whole thing is sleuthing and detectivation! Max Sarin’s art is wonderful as always, and Lottie’s character is still that fun combination of charming and Very A Lot even when her priorities seem baffling.

The Sirens by Emilia Hart Lucy wakes up with her hands around some guy’s throat after he shared intimate photos of her, so she flees to her estranged sister Jess’s coastal house where men keep mysteriously disappearing into the sea – except Jess has vanished too, leaving behind only her diary and an unlocked door. Through the diary and her dreams about Mary and Eliza (twin convict sisters from 1800 whose bodies are changing as their ship sails to Australia), Lucy discovers her family’s supernatural heritage as sirens who lure abusive men to their deaths for generations. This was such a letdown after Weyward, Hart basically swapped witches for mermaids, and Lucy is so maddeningly passive that she spends 200 pages wandering around doing a bunch of nothing while her sister is missing!  

A Killing Cold by Alice Kate Marshall Theo gets engaged to wealthy Connor after six months and heads to his family’s isolated winter retreat to meet the skeptical relatives, only to discover a childhood photo of herself taken at the very same place. Ugh with the totally convenient coincidences! There’s so many of them in this book! Through recovered memories, Theo realizes she lived there as a small child when something terrible happened that the Dalton family has been covering up ever since. The coincidence of them meeting and falling in love without recognizing each other is absolutely wildly stupid, but Marshall somehow kept me reading anyway with short chapters and enough genuine mystery about what happened to Theo’s mother. I found myself genuinely curious despite knowing the whole setup was completely ridiculous.

The Great British Bump Off by John Allison Shauna enters the beloved UK Bakery Tent baking competition hoping to charm the judges and make friends, but when a fellow contestant gets poisoned during filming, she volunteers to solve the mystery while still competing in the challenges. I don’t actually love GBBO (even though it’s cozy and gentle, it’s still a game show and I find that stressful), but this was such a neat way to enjoy the concept of the show without the stress. Allison basically created a murder mystery version of The Great British Bake Off with all the expected contestant types and a Paul Hollywood knockoff. The mystery isn’t particularly great (you can’t solve it yourself because important clues seem to come out of nowhere) but honestly I’m not here for that anyway – John Allison writes fantastic friendships with quirky character dynamics and excellent hi-jinks, so I didn’t care because the whole thing was just ridiculous fun.

Ladykiller by Katherine Wood Gia, a wealthy heiress, goes missing from her Greek estate, leaving behind only a manuscript detailing the events leading up to her disappearance, including her hasty marriage to a suspicious new husband and the bizarre guests they entertained that summer. Her childhood best friend Abby and brother Benny rush to find her, but the manuscript raises more questions than it answers about what’s real and what’s fiction. This had all the elements I usually love – rich people behaving badly, Greek island setting, messy friendships – but I honestly can’t remember much about how it all wrapped up, which probably tells you everything you need to know about how memorable it was.

The Dollhouse Academy by Margarita Montimore Ramona and her best friend Grace get accepted to the ultra-exclusive Dollhouse Academy, a secretive boarding school that churns out entertainment industry superstars, where they meet their idol Ivy Gordon who’s been trapped there for eighteen years. The first half drew me in completely with its creepy dark academia vibes and the slow revelation that something sinister is going on behind all the glamour and talent training. But my loan expired right when things were getting good, so I bought the book and waited a week or two to pick it up again, which totally killed the momentum – by the second half I just wasn’t as invested and felt like I wasted my money on what turned out to be a pretty predictable “evil entertainment industry conspiracy” story.

Strange Pictures by Uketsu I’m sure there’s an audience for Uketsu’s gimmicky sketchbook picture-puzzle mysteries, but I’m clearly not it. This one is a collection of seemingly unconnected mysteries – from a pregnant woman’s disturbing blog sketches to a child’s drawing of his home that contains a dark secret – that all connect through nine childlike pictures containing hidden clues to various crimes including murders and suspicious deaths. The book starts with a child psychologist explaining how she uses patients’ drawings to understand their mental state, then jumps between different cases where amateur sleuths analyze these creepy pictures to solve the mysteries. Like in Strange Houses, the characters have all the personality of calculators and somehow divine elaborate theories from the flimsiest clues imaginable.

The Unraveling of Julia by Lisa Scottoline After Julia’s husband is murdered, she retreats into isolation until a mysterious letter arrives offering her an inherited villa in Tuscany, prompting her to travel to Italy where she starts having visions about a Renaissance duchess and gets caught up in family history and astrology. The supernatural elements had potential but felt more like YA than a proper thriller. A few things that took me out of the story: there’s some casual poisoning that never gets satisfactorily resolved, Julia’s relationship with her best friend is inconsistent and all over the place, and most bewildering is how this woman who became a fearful recluse after her husband’s death suddenly has no problem navigating a foreign country with impossible ease. (July 15, 2025)

The Party by Natasha Preston A group of teenagers throw a party at a remote English castle that’s about to be demolished, but when a storm traps them there and people start dying, they realize there’s a killer among them. I don’t know if this was actually marketed as YA but it sure read like it – the writing feels like it was done by an actual teenager, the characters make zero logical decisions, and the ending is so ridiculous and unmotivated that I actually laughed out loud when the killer was revealed.

I had a good time with Breathe In, Bleed Out by Brian McAuley, even though something about the main character, Hannah, bothered me in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Hannah and her friends head to a spiritual retreat in Joshua Tree where she’s hoping to heal from the trauma of her fiancé Ben’s death during a wilderness trip, but someone starts picking off attendees in increasingly gruesome ways instead, so no healing for Hannah I guess. McAuley clearly knows his slasher tropes and the kills are absurd and creative in that stomach-turning way slasher fans want, plus his satire of wellness culture hits the right notes without being too heavy-handed. But Hannah just never clicked for me – she seemed weirdly assertive and confrontational for someone who’s supposedly been isolating herself and falling apart, like she had zero problem getting in people’s faces or standing up for herself. (This could be just me; traumatized and at my lowest or even on a day I am feeling 100% amazing I could never be as combative as Hannah.) Also, these friends genuinely seemed to hate each other, which made me wonder why they’d vacation together in the first place. The book works as a fun, bloody romp through familiar territory, but I kept wishing I could actually root for the final girl instead of just waiting for the next ridiculous death scene. (September 2, 2025)

The Break-In by Katherine Faulkner turned out to be one of the most enjoyable domestic thrillers I’ve ever read, even though Alice made some brazenly, outrageously stupid decisions that had me wanting to shake her. Also, I hate the term “domestic thriller,” it feels dismissive somehow? But I am not sure what else to call this genre? Anyway. When Alice kills an intruder in self-defense during a playdate at her London home, she can’t let go of the incident despite everyone telling her to move on, especially after strange phone calls and online comments suggest there’s more to the story than a random break-in. This hooked me from the first page and I found myself very resentful and grumpy every time I had to put it down! The plot twists did get a little convoluted as Alice digs deeper into who the intruder really was and why he targeted her house, but nothing that didn’t make sense, which I really appreciated. Sometimes I’ll finish a mystery with a dazed sense of “what just happened here?” but I never got that from The Break-In. Faulkner manages to keep all the threads coherent even as the revelations pile up, and while Alice’s choices often made me cringe, I was too wrapped up in the mystery to get derailed by her mind-boggling behavior. (August 26, 2025)

I liked It Was Her House First by Cherie Priest okay enough, though, is it me, or do a lot of this author’s books involve house restoration? Ronnie buys a run-down mansion sight unseen, unaware that it was once owned by silent film star Venita Rost, whose vindictive spirit still haunts it, along with the trapped ghost of guilt-stricken Inspector Bartholomew Sloan. Ronnie narrates every bit of daily minutiae – brushing teeth, calling contractors, texting her sister-in-law, eating sandwiches – in a way that felt extraneous, maybe meant to ground the story but mostly just slowing things down. This struck me as more of a slice-of-life comedy than horror; these aren’t scary ghosts, they’re just chatty ones. (July 22, 2025)

Rental House by Weike Wang was the third in my challenge to read lapsed holds. Keru and Nate are a married couple dealing with the uphill battle of trying to blend their completely incompatible families – her strict Chinese immigrant parents and his rural white working-class family who have nothing in common except mutual bewilderment. We see this unfold over two vacation rental disasters where everyone’s worst tendencies come out, and you watch this couple slowly realize that maybe love isn’t enough to bridge every cultural divide. I enjoyed Wang’s wry take on how exhausting it is to constantly translate between worlds that will never understand each other, and as many reviewers remarked, it’s a perfect illustration that you aren’t just marrying your partner – you’re marrying their whole family.

William by Mason Coile Henry is a reclusive engineer with agoraphobia who’s been hiding in his attic working on an AI robot called William, while his pregnant wife Lily has no idea what he’s been up to. When Lily’s coworkers Adam (with whom Lily may be having an affair) and Paige, a tactless oddball with no concept of appropriate conversation, come over for brunch and want to meet the mysterious husband, Henry decides to show off his creation, which turns out to be a spectacularly bad idea when William starts getting violent. This was pretty corny in that B-horror movie way, but despite all the silliness I did find it genuinely creepy at times, and the twist actually caught me off guard. It wasn’t an amazing book, but I’m not mad about spending time with it – I think I would have enjoyed it more as a film, or even as a Twilight Zone-esque episode of some horror anthology series.

The Night of Baba Yaga by Akira Otani Badass, streetwise fighter Yoriko Shindo gets kidnapped by yakuza and becomes reluctant bodyguard to crime boss’s sheltered but sharp-tongued daughter Shoko, sparking a violent story where every male character seems committed to being as over-the-top vile as possible. Despite being crass, vulgar, and packed with misogynistic threats, I found myself weirdly riveted by this blood-soaked grindhouse-style tale of female rage and the unexpectedly tender bond that develops between the two women. Comes with major content warnings for sexual violence, but if you can handle that, it’s an entertaining revenge fantasy that left me unexpectedly moved and more than a little heartbroken.

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Eye of the Beholder by Emma Bamford lures you in with an irresistible setup – a ghostwriter arrives at a glass mansion (writers! rich people’s excess! all the stuff I love!) in the Scottish Highlands to pen a famous cosmetic surgeon’s memoir, only to find her subject mysteriously absent. Despite its predictable twists and stupid, unconvincing romance, something about this moody thriller kept me turning pages. The atmospheric setting and beauty industry backdrop create an intriguing world, even if the story doesn’t quite deliver on its promise. As a writer, I found myself particularly invested in Maddy’s professional journey, though the resolution of her work situation left me fuming. A flawed but weirdly compelling read.

Glass Houses by Madeline Ashby follows Kristen, a “chief emotional manager” at a tech startup, who along with her colleagues and their eccentric billionaire CEO Sumter, finds themselves stranded on a mysterious island after their plane crashes. The survivors discover a high-tech mansion that proves to be both shelter and threat, as people start dying one by one. The story weaves between island events and Kristen’s questionable character and complex past, creating a tense thriller that mixes near-future tech with classic locked-room mystery elements.

Parents’ Weekend by Alex Finlay follows five college students who vanish during a campus event, leaving their parents to confront both their children’s secrets and their own. While Finlay’s writing is formulaic – so much so that I can’t even remember characters who apparently appear in multiple books – his short chapters and quick pacing make this a dependable palate cleanser between more intense reads. Not remarkable, but it serves its purpose as a literary breather when you’re tackling denser works alongside it. Publishing May 2025

The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins unfolds on Eris, a tide-locked Scottish island – that eerie claustrophobic setting that has served gothic horror so well in works like The Woman in Black and The Third Day. Like those stories, here the tide itself becomes an antagonist, twice daily conspiring to trap you with your fears. When human bones are discovered in a famous artist’s sculpture, an art curator must visit the island’s sole inhabitant, but can only leave during the brief windows when the causeway emerges from the sea. Hawkins uses this natural prison to amplify questions of creativity, isolation, and control through a slow-burning mystery that’s more interested in the psychology of its characters than shocking twists. The rising waters become a countdown clock that transforms every decision into a possible trap.

The House That Horror Built by Christina Henry drops us into a horror fan’s dream job – cleaning a reclusive director’s mansion filled with creepy movie props. The premise sounds like a wonderland for horror fans, but the execution stumbles with repetitive internal monologues (how many times can our protagonist second-guess a moving prop or remind us she needs a new job?) and a rushed ending that fails to deliver on the setup’s promise. While I appreciate any story that features horror-loving characters, this one needed tighter editing to trim the padding and build actual suspense.

Darkly by Marisha Pessl Louisiana Veda, the enigmatic creator of the Darkly game empire, crafted board games that pushed well beyond simple entertainment. Her elaborate puzzles, steeped in Victorian gothic aesthetics, garnered a cultish following before her mysterious death rendered them collector’s pieces worth millions. Enter Arcadia “Dia” Gannon and six other teens, chosen from across the globe for a coveted internship at the Veda Foundation. Their summer quickly transforms into what appears to be Veda’s final, unreleased game – one that never made it to production, perhaps for good reason. Pessl’s world-building shimmers with dark imagination, carrying forward the same haunting intrigue that made Night Film so compelling. The games she’s invented feel startlingly authentic, each one a clever fusion of artistry and psychological manipulation. Dia’s sharp perspective keeps us invested as the mystery deepens, and the plot unfolds in clever layers. A swift, addictive read from an author who excels at crafting dark tales about brilliant, enigmatic creators and the chaos they leave in their wake.

Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito introduces Winifred Notty, a governess who arrives at dreary Ensor House, where in three months’ time, she informs us that everyone living there will all be dead.  Winifred is tasked with educating the Pounds children in subjects ranging from English and French to ornamental needlework, and in the course of their lessons and bedtimes, we learn that while outwardly embodying Victorian propriety, Winifred’s carefully constructed persona belies a chillingly dark imagination and inner world. As she becomes further entrenched in the estate’s oppressive atmosphere and uncovers the Pounds family’s peculiar proclivities, Winifred finds it increasingly challenging to maintain her façade. If you relished Maeve Fly’s violently irreverent antihero and unhinged plot, you’ll find Winifred Notty’s distorted and uniquely vicious mind equally captivating in this eerie, blunt, and grotesquely humorous masterpiece. Warning to sensitive readers: maybe don’t. Publishing February 2025

Rivers Solomon’s Model Home is an unrelentingly haunting tale centered on the Maxwell siblings – Ezri, Eve, and Emmanuelle. Their childhood in a gated community outside Dallas, where they were the only Black family, was marred by strange and terrifying events in their home at 677 Acacia Drive. This traumatic past has kept them at a distance from both the house and their parents in adulthood. The siblings’ forced return home following their parents’ mysterious deaths sets the stage for a confrontation with their history. As they delve into family secrets and attempt to unravel the truth behind the house’s disturbing occurrences, Solomon crafts an atmosphere of intense unease and palpable dread. I already love reading about the complex dynamics between the siblings, and Solomon’s portrayal of the family kept me invested throughout. I found myself particularly drawn to Ezri’s perspective, though it was often a difficult and heartbreaking place to be. Spending time in Ezri’s head was truly horrifying at times, as their trauma and struggles were so vividly portrayed. Model Home was not anything like I expected. Solomon doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to dark themes and disturbing scenes – it’s a brutal read, no doubt about it. But I found myself unable to put it down, even when it made me uncomfortable. If you’re up for an intense, unsettling read, this book offers a bold, unconventional take on the haunted house story. It’ll make you think, and it’ll take you deep into the heart of family secrets and hidden horrors.

The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica Religious extremism meets environmental apocalypse in The Unworthy, where Bazterrica continues her exploration of how quickly humanity devours itself. Inside a mysterious convent, an unnamed woman documents her experiences among the “unworthy” using whatever materials she can find – including her own blood. While less viscerally shocking than Tender is the Flesh’s literal cannibalism, this tale of a brutal religious hierarchy creates its own kind of horror as it examines how power structures consume the powerless. I didn’t find this one as strong or as compelling as her previous work (in fact, it was a bit of a slog in some parts), but Bazterrica’s unflinching style still provokes profound discomfort. Publishing March 2025

In Beta Vulgaris by Margie Sarsfield,  the mundane task of harvesting sugar beets in Minnesota becomes a surreal descent into one woman’s spiraling depression. What begins as a straightforward story about seasonal work to escape debt becomes something far more devastating – and weirdly compelling. Through Elise’s eyes, we experience not just the physical labor of the beet harvest, but the exhausting weight of existing in a mind that’s constantly at war with itself. Sarsfield renders disordered eating, self-loathing, and crushing anxiety with such stark familiarity that you find yourself nodding in recognition even as you wince at the truth of it. It’s all threaded through with a caustic, mean-spirited humor that somehow makes the relentless internal monologue bearable – even darkly entertaining. When mysterious voices begin emanating from the beet pile and workers start disappearing, you’re not quite sure if you’re witnessing a psychological unraveling or something more sinister. The genius is that both readings work, and both are equally horrifying. Publishing February 2025

In The Last Session by Julia Bartz, social worker/art therapist Thea can’t shake the feeling she knows the catatonic patient who shows up at her psychiatric unit – a connection that leads her straight into the tangles of her own messy past. When the patient briefly surfaces only to vanish, Thea follows her trail to a wellness retreat in New Mexico where couples supposedly work through relationship and sexual trauma. The retreat’s increasingly invasive exercises force Thea to confront not just her missing patient’s story, but her own complicated history with a predatory pastor and teenage experiences that left deep scars. The story veers into some wild territory involving reincarnation and cult dynamics, which might lose some readers along the way who are looking for more basic mystery/thriller business. Despite Thea making some questionable choices that stretch belief (especially for someone working in mental health), there’s something compelling about watching her barrel through every red flag in pursuit of answers. P.S. For fellow perfume enthusiasts like me who always notice perfume in their stories, there’s a Clinique Happy mention in these pages. Publishing April 2025

Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer returns us to Area X decades before its formation, weaving together three distinct timelines that demand your complete attention – I had to set aside all other books to fully immerse myself in its complex web. Through a doomed science expedition, a worn-out operative named Old Jim, and the first official Area X exploration team, VanderMeer crafts a story that feels both inevitable and horrifying. I found the novel’s most chilling insight in the insinuation that certain catastrophes are predetermined, but that their severity might be negotiable – if we could even recognize the difference between salvation and extinction when it stands before us. Like looking into an abyss that stares back, Absolution offers only the briefest glimpse of something vast and incomprehensible that will needle at your brain forever, maddening fragments of understanding you won’t even be able to articulate by the time the next book appears.

I picked up It Will Only Hurt for a Moment by Delilah S. Dawson, craving a spooky artist retreat story, and I wasn’t disappointed. To be fair though, I always crave thrillers or mysteries featuring artists or writers at the center! The plot follows Sarah, a potter escaping an abusive relationship, who joins a secluded artists’ colony. Things take a horrifying turn when she unearths a body, and it only gets worse as more corpses appear and her fellow artists start acting bizarrely (somewhat reminiscent of the possessed students in Lois Duncan’s YA gothic horror Down a Dark Hall, if anyone remembers that?) Sarah’s journey from victim to investigator kept me on edge, and she was an absolute hoot – her snarky inner monologue often had me laughing out loud despite the increasingly disturbing events. While the ending felt a bit rushed, I loved the vivid setting of the crumbling resort and the quirky cast of increasingly unhinged artists in this thoroughly enjoyable and very satisfying read.

Guillotine, also by Delilah S. Dawson serves up a fashion-obsessed protagonist who’ll endure a terrible date for a shot at her dream job, only to find herself trapped on an island with the ultra-wealthy family from hell. While it aims to skewer the one-percent with both satire and actual skewering, the story works better as an over-the-top revenge fantasy than social commentary. A quick, gleefully graphic read that’s entertaining enough if you don’t think too hard about it.

Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley follows Richard and Juliette as they grapple with their young son’s death in their isolated Yorkshire house. While Juliette turns to occultists and Richard obsessively digs for an ancient hanging tree’s roots, something darker than grief begins to take hold. When Richard unearths the skeleton of a hare that slowly, impossibly begins to regenerate, Hurley’s folk horror takes a turn from psychological to supernatural. The ending refuses to offer even a glimmer of light in the darkness – what some read as peace feels to me like something far more chilling.

The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal Victorian London seethes with dark possibility in The Doll Factory, where aspiring artist Iris works painting doll faces while dreaming of real canvases. When she meets Pre-Raphaelite artist Louis Frost, she strikes a deal to model in exchange for painting lessons, opening a door to the fascinating world of radical Victorian art. But during the construction of the Great Exhibition, she also catches the eye of Silas, a taxidermist whose obsession turns the novel from historical drama into something much darker. Despite my aversion to romance plots, the rich blend of Pre-Raphaelite art history with gothic suspense made this one worth my time.

The Sphinx and the Milky Way: Selections from the Journals of Charles Burchfield collects intimate journal entries from American painter Charles Burchfield, distilling his vast 10,000-page journals into a small but potent volume. Through his eyes, we experience both the transcendent and mundane – from counting cricket chirps to tell the temperature, to profound reflections on infinity while studying pussywillows. Burchfield’s entries reveal a mind deeply attuned to nature’s mysteries, yet also touched by very human struggles with depression and money worries. His observations shift seamlessly between precise detail and cosmic wonder, creating a quiet but profound meditation on what it means to truly see the world around us. If you’re a sensitive spirit yearning to find meaning in this chaotic world, this book isn’t just a recommendation – it’s essential nourishment for your inner life.

Chuck Wendig’s The Staircase in the Woods reunites four adults haunted by their friend’s disappearance on a mysterious woodland staircase twenty years ago. When the stairs reappear, they’re forced to confront both the supernatural and their own unresolved guilt. While Wendig’s premise is intriguing, and the supernatural elements create an eerie atmosphere, the characters’ trauma exists more in description than experience – we’re told of their deep psychological wounds but never quite feel them ourselves. Though Wendig has a devoted following and he seems like a really nice guy, this emotional distance and utilitarian prose style keep me from fully connecting with his work.

Susan Barker’s Old Soul begins in an Osaka airport, where a missed flight leads Jake and Mariko to discover they share a haunting connection – both have lost loved ones under inexplicably similar circumstances. Their paths crossed with a dark-haired woman who moves through time collecting photographs and leaving broken lives in her wake. Jake’s search for answers takes him through neon-lit cities and across sun-bleached deserts, gathering testimonies from those who’ve encountered this ageless wanderer as she shifts between names and identities. In New Mexico, an ailing sculptor named Theo holds pieces of her story that reach back through centuries. Barker weaves these testimonies into a mesmerizing tapestry, each account adding layers to a mystery where immortality and predation twist together in the shadows of human grief. The novel unfolds with patient, elegant menace, delivering what I felt to be one of the year’s most original and compelling horror stories. Publishing January 2025

Christian Francis’s novelization of Session 9 transports Brad Anderson’s cult horror film to the page, following an asbestos removal crew through the moldering corridors of Danvers State Hospital. The story tracks the psychological deterioration of Gordon Fleming and his crew as they navigate the asylum’s shadow-filled halls, where decades of dark history seep through crumbling walls. The disturbing psychiatric sessions of former patient Mary Hobbes weave through the main narrative, her fractured voices echoing against the backdrop of peeling paint and broken windows. While the novel may not capture every nuance of the film’s suffocating atmosphere, Francis keeps a steady hand on the growing tension as the crew descends deeper into the abandoned institution’s maze-like passages. The result feels more like a companion piece than a reimagining, preserving the core elements that made Anderson’s film so unsettling.

The Summer I Ate the Rich by Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite What’s a teenage zonbi to do when she’s got culinary ambitions and a taste for human flesh? In The Summer I Ate the Rich, Brielle Petitfour balances her dreams of becoming a chef with caring for her chronically ill mother and managing her secret identity as a half-zonbi. When she lands an internship at a pharmaceutical company and starts running an exclusive supper club for Miami’s wealthy elite, Brielle finds herself serving up dishes with very special ingredients sourced from the local mortuary. (I do wish we’d gotten more of an explanation and description of the purpose of this. We somewhat see the results, but I wanted to know more of the hows and they whys.) Despite its horror premise, the book reads more like a YA drama, complete with a romance between Brielle and Preston, the son of a powerful pharmaceutical dynasty. Drawing from Haitian zonbi lore rather than Hollywood-style zombie stories, the authors create an unexpectedly glossy take on what could have been a much darker tale. The story weaves together elements of young love, family dynamics, and class disparity, while keeping its more gruesome aspects surprisingly subtle. Publishing April 2025

No One Gets Out Alive by Adam Neville plunges a desperate Stephanie into the cheapest room she can find, where unnerving encounters quickly devolve into inexplicable terrors. How is this place so cold and dark and hopeless? Where are her housemates that she can hear muttering and sobbing through the walls? Her vile landlord Knacker and his towering, unwashed cousin Fergal add human menace to the supernatural dread – and Nevill excels at making both equally terrifying. Stephanie’s financial anxiety alone had me stressed before anything violent or otherworldly happened! But at over 600 pages, the story is unforgivably bloated, with one late scene taking what feels like twenty pages just to literally light a match. I’m keeping this review brief because if you decide to immerse yourself in the book, you’re already signing up for plenty of reading.

Lost in the Garden by Adam S. Leslie had me at its premise: a forbidden village, a world trapped in an unnatural permanent summer where ghosts roam freely, and that marvelously unsettling folk-horror vibe I can never resist. When I couldn’t find a library copy anywhere, I broke down and bought it. What a letdown. Though I enjoyed Leslie’s writing style and the way he could turn a phrase, the story meanders endlessly before even reaching Almanby. We spend 450 pages with characters I never connected with – particularly Heather, who reads like a hyperactive feral toddler rather than an adult, and Antonia, whose simmering but persistent obsession with Heather drives them through pointless wandering. I usually DNF books this tedious, but having actually paid for it, I stubbornly kept reading, hoping it would click into place. It didn’t. I’d give Leslie another try – he can write when he wants to – but this book desperately needed a ruthless editor.

I could not possibly end 2024 with what turned out to be the most disappointing read of the year (see Lost in the Garden, above), so I had to squeak in one more. The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia weaves together three timelines of witchcraft and dark academia, following grad student Minerva as she investigates an obscure horror writer whose famous novel was inspired by her roommate’s mysterious 1930s disappearance. As someone who loves academic mysteries and deep dives into forgotten authors, I was hooked by the premise alone. While the ’90s setting initially charmed me with its familiar touchstones (Minerva’s Discman loaded with The Pixies, The Sneaker Pimps, and about twenty other familiar things, along with references to things like the Molly Tanzer Library and a philosopher named Stephen Graham Jones), the constant cultural name-dropping eventually felt like too much of a good thing. Moreno-Garcia deftly handles the multiple narratives and ties everything together neatly, though seasoned mystery readers might spot the twists coming. As Ruthie Langmore says, “I don’t know shit about fuck,” and even I was able to see who’s who and what’s what and where things were going. Still, this atmospheric tale of dangerous magic and buried secrets kept me engrossed to the last page and was a way better end to the year! Publishing July 2025

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