writer
Model Home by Rivers Solomon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Horror is done so incredibly right in MODEL HOME by Rivers Solomon. Uncanny, frighteningly heavy, intimately empathetic, and viscerally terrifying in about fifteen different ways, this novel feels unescapable in a way that only a masterful writer like Solomon could achieve. MODEL HOME is equal parts haunted house hell, seething social commentary, psychological thriller, and warning sign.
View all my reviews
Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Unreliable narrator from hell, will give you the icky creepies, took me to a darker place than I personally wanted to go, but hey–it’s called HORROR MOVIE.
View all my reviews
Monsters We Have Made by Lindsay Starck
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Graceful literary writing pervades Lindsay Starck’s monster story MONSTERS WE HAVE MADE. Part horror, part psychological thriller, this novel layers fact, fiction, and figment together into nuanced character study and a riveting pursuit for the truth.
P.s. Always excited to read a midwest author!
View all my reviews
Eye of a Needle by Jessica Lynn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
EYE OF A NEEDLE is a searing short form debut from author Jessica Lynn. It’s addictive to the point that you’ll blaze through it in one sitting. Tension on simmer and sumptuous prose explores religious trauma and the merits of gut instinct. Southern gothic meets supernatural in this tale drenched in dread, blood, and sticky summer heat.
View all my reviews
A History of Wild Places by Shea Ernshaw
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Shea Ernshaw brings a painter’s touch to this twisty-turny plot joyride that takes elements of mystery, fantasy, and horror, puts them in the woods, and sees how they all get along when cut off from the outside world.
View all my reviews
Whalefall by Daniel Kraus
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The writing in Daniel Kraus’ WHALEFALL is assertively top-tier. A visceral, blood-pumping story with perfect emotional pitch, this novel is a breathless page-turner. I especially enjoyed Kraus’ strong research base which creates a very real-feeling crisis (believe it or not, this is a realistic “swallowed by a whale” tale). Science and poetry take turns shining through interesting action writing that plunges the readers into depths of multiple kinds.
View all my reviews
Fish Gather to Listen by Jes McCutchen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A memorable collection from a dynamic new press thematically unified around that most primal of fears: deep, murky water occupied by things unknown. The grotesque swims parallel to the lyrical in Fish Gather to Listen. There is much here to disturb and delight, often simultaneously.
View all my reviews
Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I absolutely adore Jeff VanderMeer’s work. This is the eighth book of his that I’ve read, and the first I’ve ever disliked. Still love Jeff, he remains one of my favorite authors, but this was a slog. I wish I had more to say, but that is that.
View all my reviews
Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Mapping the Interior is a powerhouse of a novella by Stephen Graham Jones. It’s astonishing to me how some writers can make such a gut-punch impact in 100 slim pages that others struggle to achieve after 400. This story is haunted by searing recursive imagery and faulty memory, lenses blurred by love and dissociation. Mostly limited to the walls of the family home, the setting heightens the urgency, accelerating with every page. The forces who watch from the edge of this story never fully reveal themselves, but we all know them, and they are terrifying–especially seen through the eyes of the narrator–just a boy who barely knows what has happened to him, and later, a man trying to make sense of it.
View all my reviews
Tripping Arcadia by Kit Mayquist
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The subtitle on the cover of Tripping Arcadia says “a gothic novel.” And it is, in the most classical sense. Extreme, explosive emotions. Blending the beautiful with the obscene. Rich people who are incredibly unhappy. People whose first reaction to somebody they feel slighted by is to try to kill them. Unreliable, loathsome first person narrator. This book has all that. Less Gatsby, more Wuthering Heights or Frankenstein. It’s not supposed to make sense–it’s gothic!
View all my reviews