A mysterious stranger shows up at Riccardo’s apartment with some news: his grandmother Perihan has died, and Riccardo has inherited her villa in Milan along with her famed butterfly collection.

The struggling writer is out of options. He’s hoping the change of scenery in Milan will inspire him, and maybe there will be some money to keep him afloat. But Perihan’s house isn’t as opulent as he remembers. The butterflies pinned in their glass cases seem more ominous than artful. Perihan’s group of mysterious old friends is constantly lurking. And there’s something wrong in the greenhouse.

As Riccardo explores the decrepit estate, he stumbles upon Perihan’s diary, which might hold the key to her mysterious death. Or at least give him the inspiration he needs to finish his manuscript.

But he might not survive long enough to write it.

A decadent and dazzling gothic novel with a cover just as sumptuous as its prose, Yiğit Turhan’s “Their Monstrous Hearts,” is as rich in atmosphere as it is full of allure… and butterflies. Brimming with secrecy, style and a little magic, this reads like both a love letter to the traditional gothic, yet also something completely of its own brand. It’s confident, unfolds with the elegance of a fan, and cuts as deep as the claw-tipped Schiaparelli velvet gloves it references. Thank you very kindly to Lane Heymont and The Tobias Literary Agency for sending this one to me, as well as for the complementary jumpscare. This one is already out in the world, from Mira Books.

We follow Riccardo, an author living in Paris, who following the undeniable success of a short story has found himself abandoned by the muse and suffering with a severe case of writer’s block. With that comes overdue bills and many, many messages from an increasingly exasperated agent. With stress mounting and motivation fading, the strange man enters his life at exactly the right time. He tells him that his mostly-estranged grandmother Perihan has passed away, he has a funeral to attend, and a villa in Italy with his name on it. That night he boards a train. What he discovers in Milan, a secret manuscript, a suspicious circle of friends, a bloody history, among other things, changes his life irreparably. 

There’s various negative reviews that discuss the prose of this novel, and whilst I agree it’s a talking point, there’s a few reasons why I thought it worked beautifully. We read primarily from the third person perspective of Riccardo. When he discovers the manuscript written by his grandmother, we also get Perihan’s first person recount, set against the brocade backdrop of Italian high society. Riccardo’s voice does occasionally feel a little staccato and stunted compared to the opulence of his grandmother’s narrative. His prose feels almost self-conscious, which actually (perhaps I’m simply reading into this too much) feels apt for a struggling writer. The dichotomy created between the differing perspectives is one I noticed, and more than anything else appreciated. It said a lot about the characters themselves, particularly Perihan who is as glamorous as she is mysterious. It’s also worth noting that this is Turhan’s first novel written in English. The writing is lush now, and I look forward to seeing it get dreamier still. 

Horror doesn’t always outright petrify, and “Their Monstrous Hearts,” certainly doesn’t. Turhan doesn’t so much turn to literary jumpscares (have you watched my TBRcon panel on those yet by the way?) or graphic violence, instead excelling in the slower, more seductive art of disquiet. It’s not frightening but unsettling. This is a novel that should hit all the right notes not just for lovers of the gothic, but fans of the fantastical and amateur sleuths, with its shifting perspectives, tension taut enough to pluck, and enchanting nature, all of which are delivered with a wink. Also, for anybody who has ever stared down the barrel of a blank word document. 

“Nobody ever suspects the butterfly.”

Previously, my only beef really was with moths, the dusty chaos agents they are, who throw themselves at my window when it gets dark, and worse, propel themselves right at my face when I’m scrolling post-lights-out. Now I’ll be side-eyeing butterflies too (although I suppose they’re just non-goth moths). I digress. “Their Monstrous Hearts,” reads like satin, and flows like silk until its sickening denouement. A velvet wrapped dagger of novel that is beautiful yet bloody and elegant yet eerie, if you don’t want to take my word for it, take Dua Lipa’s. 

Set in rural southern Ohio and West Virginia, The Devil All the Time follows a cast of compelling and bizarre characters from the end of World War II to the 1960s. There’s Willard Russell, tormented veteran of the carnage in the South Pacific, who can’t save his beautiful wife, Charlotte, from an agonizing death by cancer no matter how much sacrifi­cial blood he pours on his “prayer log.” There’s Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial kill­ers, who troll America’s highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate. There’s the spider-handling preacher Roy and his crippled virtuoso-guitar-playing sidekick, Theodore, running from the law. And caught in the middle of all this is Arvin Eugene Russell, Willard and Charlotte’s orphaned son, who grows up to be a good but also violent man in his own right.

“The Devil All The Time,” by Donald Ray Pollock is, perhaps tied with “Paradais,” by Fernanda Melchor, for my bleakest read of 2025 so far. Like a gritty and nihilistic “Love Actually,” “The Devil All the Time,” follows a web of interconnected lives. The similarities stop there. Rather than being full of festivity and redemption, “The Devil All The Time,” offers only an unapologetic and uniquely American brand of roadhouse violence and misery. The narrative is made up of a series of bloody strands that are knotted by Pollock into a coalescing snarl of misfortune- a tangle that is tightened with each chapter that passes. A truly horrible chain of events, the jigsaw pieces Pollock carefully slides the reader, do not form a pretty picture. By the time he hands us the final piece to click into place, we (futilely I’m afraid to say) pray that it doesn’t fit. 

Carl and Sandy travel the South picking up hitch-hikers, before brutalising them and snapping photos for their mounting collection. Roy and Theodore are a pair of “pastors,” who perform sermons not quite like anyone else. Encouraged by Theodore, Roy, believing that he is able to bring people back from the dead, murders his wife, and upon realising this was misguided, runs, abandoning his baby girl. Willard Russell is a hyper-religious Vietnam war veteran who following the cancer diagnosis of his beautiful wife Charlotte turns to sacrificing animals and dousing his “prayer log,” in blood. Leo Bodecker is a recovering alcoholic determined to survive the next election and stay sheriff, despite what people say about him. Reverend Sykes refuses to admit that he is dying, but is certainly mighty ill, and takes a leave of absence, leaving his nephew Preston Teagardin, who is a man of God in name only, in charge of his flock. What do all of these things have in common? Well, they’re connected by Arvin Eugene Russell, who we watch grow from a troubled child to a troubled man. It’s like “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” for adults. 

To varying extents, although none of them mild, every character in this book is really, deeply, irreparably not okay. From pedophilia to greed to sadism to religious fervor to just pure mania, this is a cast that covers the seven deadly sins and beyond. Toward the beginning of the novel, the series of separate, miserable lives, flickering across Ohio and West Virginia, could very well be a short story collection, with overlapping themes of small towns and religion and a shared stale-smoke, bourbon-soaked, bible-thumping back-drop. It doesn’t take long though, for their paths to cross (as we know they must) in a cruel kind of predestination that I would call doom rather than fate. 

I hate to sound condescending or derogatory, as someone who read this book and is writing this review outside of the US, but ultimately, the American (Mid-western) Gothic here is not romantic, or even, symbolic, but infrastructural. Towns like “Meade,” and “Knockemstiff,” read like caricatures, yet disturbingly… are not. The horror stems from the characters, and their attitudes undeniably stem (to a degree) from the economy and the environment- the roads, the air, hell, even the name “Knockemstiff.” Whether it’s Carl and Sandy returning home after a bloody vacation, or Arvin who is passed around between the two towns, but doesn’t venture beyond, just about everyone wants to escape from the urban, sulphur-smelling, apathetic appalachia they find themselves in, and most don’t manage it. Those that do, find more of the same. So what is it that unites such a sprawling cast of murderers, zealots, and grifters? Yearning perhaps. Transcendence, absolution, a half-decent mattress? The characters have the same American pathology, the idea that suffering means something, and righteousness can be proven through spectacle. Everything about the place is ugly. It’s unsurprising that the characters within it are too. 

A slow-moving back-water apocalypse, like most utterly devastating novels do, “The Devil All The Time,” pulls us into its riptide, and allows us to thrash and claw and cry out in vain, before spitting us out shivering and feeling rather sorry for ourselves. The sun is out- here in the UK at least- and if you need a reminder that happiness is fleeting, and the world is in reality, not a sunny place, this one has exactly that effect. Enjoy!

Synopsis:

On an almost uninhabitable rocky island off the coast of Maine, a Hotel looms over the shore, an ever-present gray lady that stands strong like a guard, keeping watch. For many who come here, this island is a sanctuary and a betrayal.

This is a place where memories linger like ghosts, and the ephemeral nature of time begins to peel away …like the sanity of all who have been unlucky enough to step foot on its shore.

In the late spring of 1873, Isabelle gave birth to her son Oscar, he cried for three startling minutes, and then went silent. During the months that follow, Isabelle is drugged and lulled into an almost hallucinatory world of grief and fear. Her life begins to feel as though it exists in a terrifying new reality separated from those around her …

When her grieving begins to make her husband, Henry, uncomfortable, he and his mother conspire to send Isabelle away to a Summer Hotel on Dagger Island, where she can rest and heal. While they are adamant that the hotel is not an asylum and that Isabelle will be able to return eventually to her home, Isabelle understands in her heart that it is all a lie. That perhaps, everything about being a woman in this time, may have always been a lie.

Her family has lied to her, and she has lied to herself.

The Hotel, of course, is not what it seems, and the foreboding Dagger Island begins to feel more like a prison than a retreat. Isabelle hears relentless sounds coming from the attic above her room, and the ever-present cries of small children scream in her head almost constantly. Are they hallucinations, or are they connected to the small cemetery she found, filled with the fresh dirt of little graves, the brokenhearted reminders of people that no one believes ever existed?

She meets a fellow guest at the Hotel, a young, enigmatic, and deeply damaged priest, named Francis.

Together they teeter on the edges of reality and try desperately to become free from the fates that their pasts have bound them to.

Review:

From Daylight to Madness is the story of Isabelle, a woman trapped in her life, burdened by societal expectations, and unable to truly take control of her future.

The book begins in the minutes after she gives birth to a son who dies almost immediately; he was premature, and in 1873, there was little that could have been done to save him. But she was never allowed to touch the baby, and in the aftermath of that loss, she’s expected to simply bounce back. To be what she was before. But she can’t. Much of the story is her struggle with a form of depression, and the callous way she is treated by her husband and mother-in-law. She is sent to “the hotel,” a bland name for a temporary asylum, to “rest” (see: to be fixed.)

The horror element was entirely psychological. The reader is subjected to Isabelle’s inner torment throughout the duration of the book, and left to wonder if what she’s experiencing is the result of her depression or the “tea” she is given to “calm” her. (It was laced with laudanum, which was used commonly in that era, and it’s an opioid, so either scenario is possible.)

In many ways, From Daylight to Madness reminded me of a darker version of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, which was written around the same time period as this book takes place, and also has similar themes (and a similar ending.) If you aren’t familiar with The Awakening, it was first published in 1899 and is considered a feminist novel of the time, featuring an unhappy woman who is married to someone she doesn’t want to be with, and in time she learns to take some control over her life. But in the end, she believes she’s only left with one option, and it’s not a happy one. I’ll leave it at that to avoid spoilers.

This was not the first book I’ve read by Jennifer Anne Gordon. A couple years ago, I read Pretty/Ugly, which I really enjoyed, but From Daylight to Madness lacked the same polish. There were many typographical issues throughout the ebook edition (missing punctuation, missing words, some homophone confusions), and that detracted from my enjoyment. The story was good; I just wish it had gone through more proofreading before it was published.

All in all, this was a solid story with a gothic-horror feel, so check it out if that’s your thing.

Simon and Priya’s young daughter has died in a tragic accident. Determined to heal their fracturing marriage, the couple move to the North Yorkshire Moors to renovate a dilapidated rural cottage. However, they just can’t process their grief as increasingly eerie events unfold. A child’s ghostly figure appears on the moors, doors lock themselves, and a mysterious stain grows from the loft. Is it their daughter haunting them or something else?

“This House Isn’t Haunted But We Are,” is a haunted house novel that reeks of sour grief and manure… proper Northern, like. Just like Howard, I’m holed up somewhere in Cheshire (please don’t track me down unless it’s to hand me books) so perhaps I’m biased- but the North of England is fertile ground for horror… and is all too often overlooked. I really couldn’t tell you why. We’re practically leaking folklore… I encourage all readers to google Yorkshire’s Lake Semerwater, Northumbria’s “Raggle Taggle Gypsy,” or Manchester’s “Black Shuck.” We’re full of crooked characters and bloody histories. Most importantly, besides the big cities, (which are their own kind of hellholes) if you’re in the North you’re probably in the middle of nowhere, and horror reader, to horror reader, the middle of nowhere is never good. If you still don’t believe me I ask you to turn your gaze to Wild Hunt Books’ “The Northern Weird Project,” which, as I’ve said before, as a weird northerner, I feel was created for me. Stephen Howard’s “This House Isn’t Haunted But We Are,” is the first instalment, and what an opening shot it is! A heart-breaking meditation on grief that truly refurbs the haunted house sub-genre, you’d be a fool to miss this slice of horror from up North.

We follow Simon and Priya, who were once loving parents to Lily. Following her death, the two have drifted apart, and moving to the Yorkshire countryside, into Simon’s Aunt Susan’s charming rental property, may just be the glue their marriage needs. It is, as houses in horror novels so often are, a fixer-upper. It has good bones…and loose roof tiles and dated furniture… and a menacing looking patch of mould in the corner. Aside from that, it seems standard. Surrounded by moorlands, one storey, a little damp, a little drafty, and haunted as fuck. 

I’ve referenced Stephen Graham Jones’ new introduction to Robert Marasco’s “Burnt Offerings,” before, but it’s just so good, and it’s a free country, so I’m going to reiterate. Jones asserts that there are two essential types of haunted house, the one that wants you gone and will drive you out by any means necessary… and then the hungry haunted house, which wants you to stay forever. The house in “This House Isn’t Haunted But We Are,” if I were forced to categorise, is a hungry haunted house, but not an ill-intentioned one. It is, on balance, a lonely haunted house, who really is quite fond of its new inhabitants. 

There’s a quiet sadness to the “haunting,” here that sets Howard’s novel apart from many others in the sub-genre. Rather than being a site of pure malevolence, the house becomes almost its own tragic character. In a narrative move as strange yet genius as Catriona Ward’s “The Last House on Needless Street,” we read not just from the perspective of the house… but from the second person perspective of the house. This strange metalepsis, and undeniably quirky narrative reframing allows us to see the haunted house not simply as architecture, but as a desperate, eager-to-please, borderline-neurotic empty vessel. It enhances the lovely, aching, emotional texture of the story and elevates what would perhaps otherwise be your run of the mill haunted house horror into something brilliant.

You and I are arguably living through a grief horror golden age with John Langan amongst others leading the charge. That being said, grief and horror have always gone hand in hand. Howard writes with real bleakness, raw heart and such naked emotional intensity that the characters of Simon and Priya, who are very much at different stages in their grief cycles, and thus at each other’s throats, almost jump off of the page. It’s the most crucial aspect of the novel. “This House Isn’t Haunted But We Are,” is not just an excellent title, but the thesis of the entire story, that courses through every fibre of every page.

In 106 pages Stephen Howard demonstrates that home is indeed where the heart is, and that it truly is weird up north. Tender, terrifying, and shot through with a real honesty that may just get you, I gobbled this up in a single sitting. “This House Isn’t Haunted But We Are,” is not just well-paced, well-executed and let’s be real, well-scary, but an exceptional salvo to what is bound to be an excellent set of books. If Howard’s opening is any indication, Wild Hunt are about to put Northern horror firmly on the map.

After striking out on her own as a teen mom, Madi Price is forced to return to her hometown of Brandywine, Virginia, with her seventeen-year-old daughter. With nothing to her name, she scrapes together a living as a palm reader at the local farmers market.  

It’s there that she connects with old high school flame Henry McCabe, now a reclusive local fisherman whose infant son, Skyler, went missing five years ago. Everyone in town is sure Skyler is dead, but when Madi reads Henry’s palm, she’s haunted by strange and disturbing visions that suggest otherwise. As she follows the thread of these visions, Madi discovers a terrifying nightmare waiting at the center of the labyrinth—and it’s coming for everyone she holds dear.

Clay McLeod Chapman is one of my absolute favourite contemporary horror writers, and despite the fact the man is an absolute machine, seriously an unstoppable force of heartache and horror, I’m having to pace myself a little. “What Kind of Mother,” is one I was saving as a treat, and best believe I gobbled it right on up. It tasted wrong: salty, rubbery, slightly slimy, but I devoured it nontheless. A briny and brackish grief horror, set in Clay’s Derry-equivalent “Bradywine,” “What Kind of Mother,” is a gut-wrenching, barnacle-crusted story with seaweed for veins and a storm brewing in its chest. It examines just how strong an emotion loss is, whether literal or metaphorical, and how sacrifice really may be the greatest form of love. The horror slaps like a wet fish, stings like a jellyfish, clings like a limpet, pinches like a crab, and draws blood. Me? I lay in bed all day and read it cover to cover in one painful, slightly feverish sitting… like a sea-cucumber. I’m running out of sea creatures to reference, so the headline is this: “What Kind of Mother,” delighted me, whilst hurting my feelings, and pouring salt in every wound. It It is a silk blanket cut from the same lush, grief-woven cloth as the rest of Chapman’s work.

We follow Madi Price who is forced to return to her home town of Brandywine Virginia when the estranged father of her daughter Kenda finally decides that he wants to play dad. With little else to anchor her, she decides to take up her grandmother’s mantle of palm reader, and starts telling fortunes at the market. Her own future is a decidedly foggy one, as it’s there that Henry McCabe walks back into her life, and since they dated for 3 months in high school, his life has changed drastically. He was married, and had a boy called Skyler, but now, after Skyler vanished at 8 months old, and his  Grace hanged herself, he has nothing. Nothing but hope. He is convinced that his child, now six, is alive somewhere, and that Madi can help him find him. 

Parenthood is a central theme in “What Kind of Mother,” that is raised in its very title. It is fully dissected and then reassembled. “What Kind of Mother?” is a question asked not once, but over and over in varying shades of tenderness and rage. It’s a constant, unrelenting, repetitive line of questioning that allows Chapman to unpick the very fabric of parenthood and lay bare the threads- love, guilt, desperation, failure, sacrifice. It’s examined, not in its instagram-filtered, starbucks in hand form, but in its raw, ugly elemental state. Madi and Henry are two grieving parents standing on opposite sides of the abyss. Henry is mourning the literal loss of his son Skyler, whilst Madi feels she has lost a part of Kendra to her father, and is full of doubt and guilt. It’s an exploration of the many forms loss can take, and the lengths we’re willing to go to, the compromises we’re happy to make, and the contortions we’re capable of in the name of love. What kind of mother was Grace? And what kind of mother is Madi?

Chapman knows his way around a grotesque set piece, whether it be a demon phone box, or a mutilated rabbit, and here there is no deficit of gore- I long for the times when I didn’t know what a peeler was. But as always, his brand of horror is not anatomical but emotional. This is a book in which pain has texture. The supernatural elements are uncanny, the body horror is grimace-worthy, but it’s the grief that is real, it’s the grief that lingers. It’s the grief that has tentacles and it’s grief that ultimately pulls the reader under.

Here in the UK, we don’t tend to eat much crab, which means that mercifully my new-found aversion to it is no great loss. Frankly, if it can’t be covered in batter, deep-fried and served with chips and a side of mushy peas, we’re not interested. Anyway, unlike Madi, I’m no psychic, however “What Kind of Mother,” is exactly the superb, salt-water, southern Gothic I knew it would be, and I continue to crave more from Chapman.

ive high school friends, bonded by an oath to protect each other no matter what.

On a camping trip in the middle of the forest, they find something extraordinary: a mysterious staircase to nowhere

One friend walks up – but never comes back down.

Now twenty years later, the staircase has reappeared, and the friends return to find the lost boy – and what lies beyond the staircase in the woods…

There’s a reliably unsettling formula in horror that continues to delight me. You take an estranged group of friends, bound together by some shared trauma, preferably by way of some inexplicable terror (killer clowns, missing kids, so on and so forth) and get the band back together decades later. Stephen King does it in “It,” Ronald Malfi does it in “Small Town Horror,” Shaun Hamill does it with “The Dissonance, and now, Chuck Wendig does it with “The Staircase in The Woods.” I don’t want you to think for a second though that Wendig’s latest is pastiche or homage by any definition. He adds into the equation: mythic Americana folk horror, unsettling domestic surrealism, and one of the most expansive, impressive and hungry haunted houses I’ve ever had the deep displeasure of reading about. “House of Leaves,” meets “Monsters Inc,” meets creepypasta in this high-octane, big-concept story of friendship, guilt and trauma, which simultaneously reads like a whispered camp-fire tale and modern gothic epic. My utmost thanks to Del Rey UK for my ARC copy, you can enter the woods yourself from April 29th- just make sure you can find your way back out.

We begin in familiar yet fertile horror territory. We follow five teenage protagonists with teenage problems: Nick, Lauren (Lore), Hamish, Owen and Matty. The group have their cracks, love triangles, drink and drugs, and the usual suffocation of small towns, but are held together by the glue of the covenant, which was formed in the face of a group of bullies. Here’s where things get weird. The group wander into the woods one night, and come across the titular staircase. No ruins surround it, it’s just there… and Matty goes up it. When he reaches the top, he disappears. Things are a little more grave than the broken rib he may have sustained had he fallen off and landed on the other side, because he’s actually, literally vanished. And he doesn’t come back. Twenty six years on, the group aren’t friends so much as they are acquaintances, and some of the remaining four have moved on more than others. What’s for certain though is that each of them were there the night that Matty vanished, and none of them have quite come to terms with the staircase in the woods.

What makes the book so compelling, beyond its short, sharp chapters (I read the bulk of this book with the caveat it would be “Just one more chapter,”) and some genuinely pants-darkening horror, is its clear-eyed examination of trauma, and how it calcifies into character. How it seeps into our foundations and when unresolved can harden into something indistinguishable from identity. The covenant are not brought back together again on the basis of a noble rescue mission or selfless quest. We follow broken adults, lugging baggage of guilt and grief and shame, united not by camaraderie, or even friendship, but damage. Wendig grounds even the most supernatural horror in very human stakes: Can people really change? 

The staircase itself may be a gorgeous and eerie centrepiece, but in my opinion the characters, and the messy tangle of emotions they bring with them are the stars of the show. The stale romance, bitter jealousy, the sharp edges of resentment that are only slightly dulled by time, amidst rekindling friendship, moments of nostalgia that are both soft and comforting and sharp and painful. It’s authentic. 

A book packed with horror, but with heart to match, “The Staircase In The Woods,” is Wendig’s darkest yet. A story about broken people, splintered friendships, and, well, a staircase in the woods, my nightmare tank is fully refuelled, and the child who used to scroll r/nosleep under the covers is nourished.

Synopsis:
The Netherlands, 1887. Lucy’s twin sister Sarah is unwell. She refuses to eat, mumbles nonsensically, and is increasingly obsessed with a centuries-old corpse recently discovered on her husband’s grand estate. The doctor has diagnosed her with temporary insanity caused by a fever of the brain. To protect her twin from a terrible fate in a lunatic asylum, Lucy must unravel the mystery surrounding her sister’s condition, but it’s clear her twin is hiding something. Then again, Lucy is harboring secrets of her own, too.
Then, the worst happens. Sarah’s behavior takes a turn for the strange. She becomes angry… and hungry.
Lucy soon comes to suspect that something is trying to possess her beloved sister. Or is it madness? As Sarah changes before her very eyes, Lucy must reckon with the dark, monstrous truth, or risk losing her forever.

Review:

Hello again dear reader or listener, let me tell you about the latest book to keep me up so late I heard the morning birds begin to sing before I realized I should probably go to sleep (it was 5 am). Unfortunately, I can’t really do it justice, but I’ll try my best.

With thanks to Poisoned Pen Press for granting my NetGalley request, here are my honest thoughts.

You might not know this about me, dear reader, but I am a big fan of all things Gothic, and I don’t mean the romanticized or sanitized idea of Gothic or Victorian which can be entertaining to an extent. I mean the gritty, bewildering, harrowing, enthralling, and hauntingly dark, true Gothic. So it was with immense pleasure that I found Johanna van Veen’s new book, Blood on Her Tongue, met those expectations to the fullest. In fact, I might argue that van Veen has raised the bar on what Gothic Horror ought to be. Just make sure to heed her warnings at the beginning.

This book feels like watching a Robert Eggers movie, more specifically Nosferatu (and not merely for the vampiric elements), but even better. Just as promised in her author’s note, van Veen weaves such a rich and thick atmosphere that you can cut it with a knife (or a fountain pen, iykyk), and it is, for lack of a better word but still very apt, delicious. Her prose is lyrical and Romantic, optimally paced to build up suspense and dread until it finally delivers macabre blows that leave your ears ringing. In the best way. Even knowing what you are in for does not prepare you for the visceral emotions this book will draw forth, and they will be many.
Truly all of the research that went into writing this story shines through, showing unapologetically and without any restraint the realities of women in the late 19^th century who dared show anything even resembling emotion and wit past what was deemed acceptable in polite society.

Whether the disquieting happenings are supernatural or the product of a very sick mind, the true horrors lie not only in body horror or violence but in the stigmatization of the mentally ill, and in the harrowing lack of agency or power granted to women by those who deem themselves as above. I use the word granted here on purpose as well, because just as the protagonist slowly and painfully realizes it herself, the reader is fully aware that she is not among allies in a society that sees women as ornamental and with only utilitarian purposes (e.g. child bearing and housekeeping) at best.
What I found exceptionally rendered here is that, if you’re a female reader, you catch on to all of the above straight away, because well, no need to state the obvious, but, if you’re not, the author has done such a subtle and expert working in of all the details to well and truly display this that it is impossible for you to not be fully immersed in the terror, resentment, pain, helplessness, and anger, and understand it all fully.

Not for the faint of heart, Blood on Her Tongue claws its way into you and doesn’t let go till the extremely satisfying ending, because I support women’s rights but boy do I support women’s wrongs in such contexts. You might feel like you should be looking away at times while being utterly unable to do so in what is potentially one the most thorough, raw, powerful yet sensitive but no holds barred, portrayal of hysteria, both as it was understood and weaponized (because van Veen absolutely goes there and Good For Her) at the time, and how we understand it now.

This is a story about power dynamics, about true heartbreak, about all the good and the bad in sibling relationships, especially those teetering on the codependent, and about all the ugly and hidden feelings we carry and might act on. It is rife with themes one could discuss for hours, be it its place within Queer literature, the narrative use of sex and sensuality, the patronizing nature of those that mean well but actually do more harm, about the way each character reveals their true self under pressure, and about what does one do once such a revelation is made?
It is a story about extremes in a world that abhors them, and it is a story about a woman who tries to navigate it all trying to remain sane and eventually having to decide what that even means or if it’s worth holding on to.

If you enjoy Gothic horror, sharp social commentary, intelligent explorations of character and psychology and dynamics, or even if you just want an evening full of transporting storytelling, you will love Blood on Her Tongue. I can’t recommend it enough.
Just be wary gazing into the dark too long, it has teeth. Until next time,

Elen A.E.

Synopsis

Return to the world of Renfield County from the Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of Edenville. Perfect for fans of Paul Tremblay and Eric LaRocca.

“You remember all the stories, right? Monsters and giants and kid-eaters and that guy in the tub? Of course you do…”

There’s something wrong in Renfield County. It’s in the walls of the county’s historic houses, in the water, in the soil. But far worse than that—it’s embedded deep within everyone who lives here. From the detective desperate to avoid hurting his own family; to the man so consumed with feeling zen that he will pursue horrific, life-changing surgery to achieve it. From the townspeople taken by ancient, unknowable forces; to those who find themselves lost in the woods, pursued by the beasts who lurk within the trees.

Yes, there’s something very wrong in Renfield County—something that has been very wrong for a very long time. Something that is watching.

Something that is hungry.

From the mind of acclaimed author Sam Rebelein, return to the Bram Stoker Award-nominated world of Edenville in this interconnected series of short stories, and discover the true secrets of Renfield County.

Review

One thing that I love about the horror genre is that often times, the author or creative team will make the setting itself as much of a character as the main cast themselves. Castle Rock, Hill House, Silent Hill, the list goes on. Each of these settings feel like they have their own history, their own myths, local legends, skeletons buried deep. You always get the feeling that these are breathing, living entities, with a life blood that flows through them, could exist as its own force, despite the fact that it is the people living their lives and the choices that they make, the histories they build, that are what ultimately make these places come alive.

And this is exactly what Sam Rebelein is going for in this collection of short stories, The Poorly Made & Other Things. Set in the fictional county of Renfield County – which is also the same setting as Rebelein’s debut, Edenville – Rebelein takes us on a journey of an almost mythological retelling level of local legends, stories, CreepyPasta type tales, in 10 shorts that, on their own, completely stand alone. But Rebelein connects all these stories together by a linked thread, an email exchange between a sister and her estranged brother, as she recounts her own research into their home town of Renfield County and the mass murder of a family that seemly has tainted this town.

Amongst these stories, Sam also sprinkles little “easter eggs” between them all. In one story, you have Hector Brim, a mysterious man who features heavily in the first story. Later on, another story references the Brim family. It’s these that also make these stories feel true to life, that make them feel like they are fully part of a community gossiping with one another, and stories, urban legends, being passed from person to person. It’s another layer of depth to this twisted town.

Of course, as I’ve already said, each of these stories also stands as a terrifying, creepy, horrible tale all on their own. And each are wildly different from what comes before – even experimental in their telling. One is told from a second person narrative – a style of storytelling I usually despise – except here it’s done to create a very effective chase type thriller, which an entity relentless stalking the main protagonist (i.e. us). We have a story from the POV of a child, as if that child is telling this story to us, and I could imagine they are distractedly colouring in a picture with some crayons whilst they do it – which makes this story creative. Which is cool to see. Which this reference will go straight over your head if you haven’t read this one.

Ultimately, we have a package of cosmic, body, gothic, slasher, tragic, folkloric horror tales that makes each story feel totally fresh, linked together by an email chain that creates a mystery to bind these together. All the stories are just enough to have the right amount of bite, like sitting down to a Michelin-starred 10 course tasting experience. Yes, you might only have a mouthful per story, but its so rich, bold, and the flavours are so widely varying, that it creates a satisfying experience. This feels like a modern day Icelandic Tales, through the lens of small town USA. I’m really looking to what Sam Rebelein does next, and luckily, I still have Edenville to fall back onto, for one more journey to the fucked-up town of Renfield County! A highly recommended collection!

With thanks to Titan Books for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis

A restaurateur lured by pandemic-era incentives moves her family to a seemingly idyllic town in Georgia.

The email message that lands in Billie Hope’s inbox seems like a gift from the universe. For $100 she can purchase a spacious Victorian home in Juliana, Georgia, a small town eager to boost its economy in the wake of the pandemic. She can leave behind her cramped New York City rental and some painful memories. Plus she’ll get a business grant to open a new restaurant in a charming riverside community laden with opportunity.

After some phone calls and one hurried visit, Billie and her husband and daughter are officially part of the “Juliana Initiative.” The town is everything promised, and between settling into her lavish home and starting a new restaurant, Billie is busy enough to dismiss misgivings.

Yet those misgivings grow. There’s something about Juliana, something off-kilter and menacing beneath its famous Southern hospitality. No matter how much Billie longed for her family to come here, she’s starting to wonder how, and whether, they’ll ever leave.

Quick Review

Gothictown’s brand of small-town suspense / horror got its hooks in me and would not let go. It’s a carefully-crafted slow build, then a frantic race to the end.

Full Review

Thanks to Megan Beatie Communications for providing me with an advanced reader copy of Gothictown.

Gothictown is a curious book. On one hand, it’s entertaining, and I suspect it’ll hit a lot of the right notes for anyone craving some small-town horror and suspense. On the other hand, there’s a few details that I personally have some trouble getting behind.

Emily Carpenter is clearly a talented author. Every single character seemed to have their own unique voice. Gothictown has a big cast—we meet just about everyone living in the town of Julianna, plus Billie’s immediate family—so that’s a big accomplishment. It also helped me keep track of who was who in a story that, written by anyone else, could have certainly had issues with that.

The writing is always interesting as well, whether we’re with Billie at work, meeting the locals, or uncovering why the town feels so “off-kilter.” Carpenter balances the mundane parts of this story with the less mundane very well.

The majority of the book is grounded in Billie’s desire to get out of New York City and start up a new restaurant in Juliana. We’re shown glimpses of the conflict to come once they finally arrive at their new home, but it takes a long time for it to come to a head. In the mean-time the plot seems to meander. 

It all comes together in the end, but it does so hastily. I won’t go into spoilers, but I would have preferred a little more focus in the middle, and a little more time during the final act. I felt like I was getting whiplash as we went from the first two thirds, which felt like a suspense story, through all the motions of the finale: a blend of horror, action, and a strangely cozy ending (to be clear, this is not a cozy book). It’s all over in a blink.

Personally, I didn’t find Billie all that likable, either. I could sympathize with her, and see why she did things, but she was so consistently self-destructive. Several chapters revolve around her doing something stupid, then wrestling with herself over it, but rarely actually trying to resolve the issue or make amends.

All that said, I was invested in Gothictown. Yes, I was frustrated with Billie and the way the plot could meander, but I can’t deny that the book had its hooks in me. It was a fantastic change of pace from my usual fantasy and sci-fi books, and I absolutely loved how Carpenter wrote dialogue. There’s some really neat stuff with the town’s history and the residents as well, and the way those stories intertwine in the book.

I recommend Gothictown to anybody seeking a horror / suspense read. While not everything about it was a home-run for me, it’s still a fun, gripping story.

ORKNEY ISLANDS, 1797 – Agnes Tulloch feels a little cheated. This windswept place is not the island paradise her husband promised it to be when they wed. Now with four young children, she struggles to provide for her family while her husband grows increasingly distant.

When a stranger comes ashore to rent an abandoned cottage, Agnes and the other islanders are abuzz with curiosity. Who is this wealthy foreigner and why on earth would he come to Eynhallow? Her curiosity is soon replaced with vexation when her husband hires her out as cook and washerwoman, leaving Agnes with no say in the matter. Agnes begrudgingly befriends this aristocrat-in-exile; a mercurial scientist who toils night and day on some secret pursuit. Despite herself, she’s drawn to his dark, brooding charm. And who is this Byronic stranger sweeping Agnes off her feet? His name is Frankenstein and he’s come to this remote isle to fulfill a monstrous obligation.

A windswept, sorrow-soaked gothic novella that lures you in and leaves you stranded, Tim McGregor’s “Eynhallow,” is bleak, beautiful and deeply unsettling. Set against the cold and indifferent tides of the Orkney coast, McGregor explores themes of womanhood, autonomy, isolation, and the cost of ambition. Part “Bride of Frankenstein,” retelling, part horror folk ballad, this starts with a whisper and ends with a scream, and clings to your skin like salt. 

It’s 1797 and we follow Agnes Tulley who (with her vile husband and 3 children) makes up one of the four families living on Eynhallow. Agnes is built like a warrior but lives a quiet and dull life, bound by circumstance. Her husband is a brute twenty years her senior, the other islanders view her as an outsider despite the fact she’s lived there twenty years, and her life since has been one long, insufferable grind, in which her only comfort are her children, of which 4/7 are still alive. Things change when a strange man arrives on their shores. Mr. Tulley is quick to auction off his wife’s services (cooking and cleaning) and whilst her initial interactions with the European stranger are brief and strange, the two quickly begin to build a relationship, and Agnes finds herself entangled in his obsessive work.

In Tim McGregor’s novella, the island of Eynhallow itself is not just a sick title or isolated setting, but almost its own character, a living thing. It exists, but you can only visit once a year, and it hasn’t been lived on permanently since a plague hit in 1851. So, it’s a bad-ass place to set a horror novella anyway, literally ripe for it, but in McGregor’s hands, the bulk of the revulsion I felt throughout stemmed not from anything supernatural, but the cruel hand Agnes is dealt by her husband, the island, and frankly life. Her physicality alone marks her as different, unfeminine, unwieldy, a woman out of place. She is a wife shackled to a violent husband, a mother who has lost three children, and viewed as an outsider by her community. She is tethered by her children and her marriage, and the routine she has built, to this island, yet also in a constant state of separateness, and of course makes for an excellent protagonist. Whether the islanders know it or not, Victor Frankenstein’s reputation precedes him, and it’s really no surprise that he, an outsider, is quick to build a cautious but mutual understanding with Agnes.

There is no shortage of horror books that riff off of “Frankenstein,” and whilst, yes, the Modern Prometheus is a masterpiece, I don’t think it’s unfair to say that in weaving it in, McGregor risked drowning in a vast sea of retellings. What sets this one apart however is that rather than allowing a certain scientist to (literally) sail in and assume the role of main character, Frankenstein is only really there to help us better understand Agnes. Victor’s presence on Eynhallow does not introduce the horror element,but amplifies the horror that was already there. He stays true to Shelly in that Victor is obsessed with creation but terrified of what he has created, the opposite of Agnes, who has endured the horror of creating in a world where that is what her worth is equated to, and treasures her children. She is the counterpoint to Victor’s rejection of responsibility, and endures, mothers, and nurtures, even when she is given nothing but abuse in return. 

A gothic tragedy of the highest order, “Eynhallow,” is a tale of monstrosity and motherhood, autonomy and erasure, survival and sacrifice that moved me (who is hard as nails) to tears. McGregor didn’t write a Frankenstein retelling but dissected the Modern Prometheus, stitched it into something wholly original and breathed new, terrible life into it. He took one of literature’s most notorious unfinished creations and finally, devastatingly, triumphantly completed her.