It's been a while since I read a work of erotic horror that pushed my limits like this, but still made me feel so compelled to continue. So this is what a mouse hypnotized by a serpent feels like. First, a word of warning: the trigger warnings are all the way in the very back and I missed them going in. This is very violent, and graphically so, including disfiguration and what I would consider body horror. One of the triggers, for example, is "destructive fisting."
Ehvy is a medical examiner who is on a tour of an old creepy mansion with friends, when she happens to meet one of the descendants of the house, Will Sandridge. His presence there intrigues her because not only is he incredibly attractive, and they have an instant connection, his family history is highly sordid. Sex parties and murdering of the townsfolk? Naughty, naughty. But Ehvy is very into naughty. She is also very into Will.
I don't want to say too much else but the story becomes a cat and mouse game of sorts between Will and Ehvy. Ehvy is determined to know more about the man who literally haunts her dreams, and Will is... well, eager to continue their relationship in a way that is frightening, once you see what else he gets up to in his free time. Until the very end, I was never 100% completely sure what endgame was.
People who like gothic horror, erotic horror, and vampires who actually act like vampires will enjoy this book. The writing was great, and stylistically, this feels very much in the vein (ha, vein) of authors like Clive Barker and Lucy Taylor. If you read this, expect bloodsplatter.
Thanks to the author for providing me with a copy!
THE SAFETY OF UNKNOWN CITIES was recommended in this erotic horror thread I sometimes hang out in. The comparisons to Clive Barker both intrigued and terrified me because Barker is a fantastic author, but his stuff definitely pushes the limits of what I can handle. This book is a lot like the Hellraiser series, especially with the hedonistic sex addict heroine, Val, who fucks the way other people do hits of morphine; she needs greater and greater extremes to get the same highs, but it's never enough.
That's why she's searching for this place called The City. It's a place so terrifying that some people would rather blind themselves than see it-- unless you're a pervy weirdo, and then it's heaven on earth, where no sex act, no matter how depraved, is disallowed. Val goes all the way to the middle east with an intersex man who is also her lover, who holds the secret to The City over her head to toy with her.
But Val isn't the only one looking for The City. Breen, Val's ex lover and a serial killer-slash-sadist, is now looking for it, too.
I knew this book was going to be hardcore because it literally opens up with a graphic eye-gouging scene. It only goes downhill from there. I felt really uncomfortable reading this book and as with other readers, it made me feel a little physically ill. I found myself comparing it to THE HELLBOUND HEART, which was also about pleasure taken to wildly horrific extremes, but in that book, Barker left a lot of the horror to the reader's imagination. Here, Taylor feels the need to lay it all out, and the end result of that is that all of the body horror just gets stacked up on top of each other, until by the end of the book, you're asking yourself both what the point of it all was, and when it would end.
I skimmed to the end because I wanted to see if the characters made it out okay. None of them were particularly likable but with a book like this, it's kind of nice to know who-- if anyone-- makes it out alive. One of my favorite characters in the book got a pretty raw deal, so that was a bit of a bummer. Not sure I'd recommend this to anyone but readers of the extreme horror genre.
Update: Bumping up to a full five stars because I can't stop thinking about this book.
This book was absolutely insane, like FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC meets Midsommar. I wasn't expecting to enjoy it as much as I did, because this is some of the most depraved shit I've read in a while. Without going into spoilers, THE ECLIPSE RITUAL is the story of Obedience and Ronan, and a society that oppresses women and forces them to be brides against their will if they are chosen.
I liked Obedience's gradual questioning of her faith. I thought it was really well done and appropriately terrifying. Any book where one of the bad guys gets a piece of his dick nailed to a wall is going to be pretty fucked up. I also liked that all of the characters were 18+ and that as psychotic as the hero was, he had his own internal logic that he was following to try to prove his twisted love to the heroine.
If you're unfamiliar with the premise of THE CROW, it's the story of a young man named Eric who defies the laws of death itself for the sake of his vengeance, hunting down the criminals who murdered him, and then SA'd and murdered his fiancee as well. It's pretty horrifying, and very violent, and the story is incredibly dark and bleak.
Apparently the author's own fiancee was killed by a drunk driver when he was very young (eighteen, I think), and this graphic novel was an attempt to channel his feelings into a cathartic medium. You can really feel the raw anguish and hatred seeping through the pages, and at times, that can be very hard. The criminals are also horrible people who do horrible things, and we see them do some of them, which is also hard to read. Reading THE CROW gives you the idea that the world is a rather joyless and terrible place, where happiness is only fleeting, and evil basically runs rampantly unchecked.
It's hard not to fall in love with Eric, though. Even though he's pretentious and weird and violent, he's a 6'5" undead goth who is nice to cats and children and simps hard for his wife. So what if he wears bullets in his hair and carves a crown of thorns in his own chest? The only people who fall victim to his murder-sprees are Bad People Who Are Not Good(TM). He's better than most dark romance heroes.
I think the movie was better than the comic book, but the comic book isn't bad. If you're into gritty-looking art and very dark noir with goth overtones, you'll really enjoy THE CROW.
THE MONSTER KEEPS ME SAFE was really good, and kind of wild. I don't actually want to say too much because part of the fun is going in cold and not having any idea what the fuck is happening. This book was originally titled Tabula Rasa and apparently the author added in the prologue and the epilogue. I actually wish she hadn't added in the prologue because I think it spoils too much. I think the twist that happens about a quarter through the book would have been too meaningful without Shannon's POV to clue you in.
All I'll say is that this is a dark romance between Elodie and Shannon. But first, she's with a man named Trevor. None of these people are what they appear to be and part of the fun is finding out who they really are and the secrets they're hiding. The title is appropriate because the monster does keep Elodie safe but safety comes at a terrible cost.
Kitty Thomas's books can be hit or miss with me but this is one of her best. It's unique and weird and sexy and disturbing, and I basically read it in less than a day because I couldn't wait to find out what happened next.
This book feels like a cruel trick because it does a lot of things right but in combination they don't really work. IN THE CUT is an edgy thriller that kind of feels like Dangerous Minds if it was written by Andrew Vachss. The heroine, an inner city high school teacher in New York, collects slang the way other people collect coins and has suspect relationships with her low-income students. When a woman turns up murdered in her area, she also starts having kinky and equally suspect sex with the Irish cop on the case. Because a girl in her hoe phase has to be in her hoe phase.
IN THE CUT feels like a very mean book. The non-ending doesn't give closure, it throws around slurs and racial stereotypes like rice at a wedding, and the heroine makes all kinds of foolish choices for no apparent reason. Also, someone just straight up gets their nip sliced off, and it's just another day in the park as far as this book is concerned.
I feel like I have whiplash and not in a good way.
I really tried to stick with this one because the writing style is very good. This is basically a gender-swapped AMERICAN PSYCHO, with a shallow and sociopathic sorority girl as the killer. One day, she decides that she just really wants to kill the guys in her life, and embarks upon a stabby, slashy spree.
One thing I didn't see anyone talking about is that the heroine has an ED, and calorie restriction and purging feature pretty heavily as themes in this book. I feel this is supposed to be juxtaposed against her feral appetite for killing and savagery, as well as the consumerist LA culture she lives in. If you're reading deeply into this book, I think you could say that Tiffany is a violent rebellion against the patriarchy and the societal standards that said patriarchy has imposed upon women.
I probably would have liked this more if I hadn't read so many other female serial killer-fronted books that took this concept and ran with it slightly better. Would recommend this to people who enjoyed books such as SWEETPEA, HOW TO KILL MEN AND GET AWAY WITH IT, and BOY PARTS.
I follow this author on Threads and quite like her posts. When I saw that she had a gothic erotic horror novella out about vampires, I knew I had to have it. I mean, just LOOK at that cover! THE DARK QUEEN'S APOTHECARY is set in medieval Eastern Europe. At first, it starts out feeling very much like an episode of Castlevania, with Andrei, an apothecary, being summoned to the queen to perform a task that defies the rules of life itself at the behest of a sinister Queen.
Viorica was such an interesting and dynamic character. She reminds me a lot of the heroines in Tanith Lee novels: she is a selfish creature of passion, flawed and a little sadistic, but very insecure and flawed, in a way that makes her fascinating rather than unlikable. Her sort of relationship with Andrei after he (SPOILER) becomes a vampire like her was really interesting to read. The way their roles warped and changed as they did was quite well done, and there are callbacks to numerous other gothic works in the storyline, whether it be Island of Doctor Moreau, Frankenstein, or the legend of Lizabet Bathory.
Fun read and quite dark but not overly so. Mind the TWs.
So I almost DNFed this in the beginning because I wasn't sure that I liked the writing style, but once I got used to the ornate and flowery prose and the slow beginning, I couldn't put this book down. THE END OF EVERYTHING is quietly devastating and absolutely heartbreaking to read. It's a coming of age story about grooming, girlhood, toxic masculinity, and the viciousness of first friendships. For almost the entire book, dread sat like a hot coal in the pit of my gut, and I feared so much for these poor, poor girls.
I don't want to say too much, but basically this book is set in a small town in the 1980s. Lizzie is friends with two sisters, Evie and Dusty, but Evie is her best friend. Dusty, the older sister, fills Lizzie with awe, because she's older and beautiful and in a way, aspirational. But Evie is her ride or die, and she spends as much time at the Verver household that she does at her own.
Then one day, Evie goes missing and everyone suspects it was an older man. A pervert with a taste for young girls. Lizzie decides to look into her best friend's disappearance, but the closer she gets to the Verver family, the darker and more convoluted the evil truth becomes.
I'm a little shocked that the ratings for this book are so low. I have to figure it's either the writing style (fair) or because people didn't understand that all of these girls are unreliable narrators. I see the same problem in books like LOLITA or MY DARK VANESSA, where if you don't have media literacy and take everything those narrators are saying at face value, you could read those books and think that they're actually defending the abuse of children. But that is REALLY not the case here. I feel like THE END OF EVERYTHING is a cautionary tale more than anything: not against girls needing to be more careful because fuck victim blaming, but about the desperate need for society to protect girls who, in their innocence, might conflate abuse with love.
God, this was heartbreaking. I feel like I need a hug. That ending. Woof.
I'd seen a TikTok about this novella and I was really curious because the summary was so vague. Basically, a woman is driving through the rain with her abusive husband in the car, and they happen upon a hitchhiker with his hood pulled down. Maire, the woman, doesn't want to stop because she thinks that he could be dangerous. She's right.
I don't want to say too much about this book because I don't want to spoil what happens, but it made me like a story that has a taboo in it that I normally avoid, which is pretty amazing. My jaw dropped at two of the twists. I would only recommend this to the darkest of dark romance readers since it basically covers all the bases, but I felt like it handled its content pretty well. There are some interesting discussions that could be had about this book, like how coming from a broken home causes you to depend on people you shouldn't, how trauma bonding through a shared and painful history can transcend social mores, and even how one can be so blinded by one's own so-called moral righteousness that it can cause a person to be more compassionate to a stranger than they would their own wife, just to keep up appearances.
So yeah, I liked this book. The ending was great. Pay attention to the trigger warnings and note the "taboo" label, but definitely read this if you're looking for something different and super dark. My only wish is that it was longer. I feel like a full length novel about all of these characters would have been really interesting. There's an epic and fucked-up saga in here that's screaming and begging to get out.
Disclaimer: I'm friends with the author on socials but she didn't ask me to read this.
I just finished this book and I swear my jaw is still unhinged from that twist. First and foremost, though, this book needs to have a solid page of trigger warnings because it is one of the most psychologically intense books I've picked up in a while, and the first half basically sucked my soul into a black and desolate void. DON'T pick this up if you cannot read about on-page rapes or you're feeling depressed and miserable, because this book will make you feel so much worse.
That said, it's brilliant. The first person narrative feels so raw, and Annie is a survivor in every sense of the word. While on Threads, we were talking about strong female protagonists and how some authors like to shit on weak or traumatized female characters in order to boost able-bodied and emotionally stoic women who kick butt, possess sexual agency, and mostly have their shit together. And that's all well and good, but while reading this book, I kept thinking about this comment someone left on my thread, about how sometimes survival itself is strength. And that's this book. Strength in survival.
STILL MISSING is a lot like ROOM by Emma Donoghue or Roxane Gay's UNTAMED STATE. It shows the psychic aftermath of abuse, but also has a woman regaining her sexual agency after trauma (with a pretty hot scene) and some genuinely shocking and memorable twists. I don't want to say more, because less is more going in, however I will say that there is infanticide, mentions of child sexual abuse, and also animal deaths (graphic and upsetting ones). I will definitely be checking out more from this author but I probably won't ever read this one again. I sure won't forget it, though.
WOW. This is everything I want out of a dark gothic romance: strong heroine, tortured hero, vibes for days, moral ambiguity, just the tiniest bit of dub-con and a little bit of kink, and a little bit of the paranormal. I'm honestly shocked Grace Callaway wrote this, to be honest, because her newer stuff seems like it's for the fluffies, but this was DARK. Also, it's a Jane Eyre retelling?
I loved it.
Abigail Jones works as a maid in the Earl of Huxton's house. She's bookish and quiet and keeps to herself, but beneath the prudish exterior lies a dark secret: her mother was a prostitute who died in an asylum having fucked-up visions, and Abigail fears she'll end up exactly the same. She has nightmares constantly, and sometimes, during the day, she sees things that terrify her... and excite her.
After an encounter with the Earl in the library (ahem), he promotes her to the role of secretary, entrusting her as his confidant. But the closer she gets to him, the less she really knows. What's the deal with the painting of the creepy but beautiful woman in his library? What about the mysterious death of his late wife and his older brother? Where does he go all day and why does he sleep with so many women? The questions keep piling up, and the more there are, the less sure Abby is that she wants to know the answer. This doesn't even really scrape at the surface of what the book is REALLY about but I don't want to spoil things.
No, seriously. That WTF pivot in the middle is priceless.
I just loved this book so much, okay? It showed up on a list of JANE EYRE retellings and since this was one of the few that seemed to be taking the tried and true gothic route, I was immediately intrigued. The way that the author wove the foundational bits into her story while still making it absolutely her own was ingenious. This is one of those books where after I finished it, I walked away thinking, "I wish I'd thought of that." Even when things got kind of weird, I was still into it... because it was my brand of weird. The atmosphere was just as good as the romance, and the writing was simply luscious.
I'm surprised this book has such low ratings but I think part of the problem is how it was probably marketed. The contemporary historical romance crowd tends to prefer lighter fare, so if this was marketed with them in mind as an audience, I think many of them would be disgusted or put off. In terms of theme, I feel like this would actually be a better match for most dark romance readers: the gore, depravity, and morally gray antihero just fit in really neatly with what they tend to want.
Anyone who enjoys historical romances on the darker side will love this book.
Whoa. This book was... something else. The first half of it was fantastic-- character development up to here, settings and atmosphere that had me feeling jealous, and the perfect blend of character-driven and story-driven elements propelling the book forward. The second half was... weird. Very, very, very weird. I was trying to think about what this book reminded me of and then it hit me: Stephen King's ROSE MADDER. The ending was like something out of a fever dream and I wasn't sure it worked. There was also some major insta-love between the two characters. They were both so broken, I wish there had been more time for them to build a rapport with each other on an emotional level before deciding they were in love after they did it once. I mean, really.
The story is very dark and I would advise anyone picking it up to go in with caution. It opens up with a violent murder-suicide scene and there are graphic depictions of self-harm. Towards the end, there's a lot of gore and emotional trauma. I didn't see many reviews warning people about this. The self-harm passage was particularly visceral and had me feeling a little light-headed (I think it occurs around 25% in the Kindle version).
Our two heroes are Zach and Trevor. Zach is a computer hacker and the son of abusive parents. Because of this he has major emotional intimacy problems and can't sleep with anyone he loves (or love anyone he sleeps with). Trevor, on the other hand, is the sole survivor of his father's murder rampage in their home. His father was an artist and an alcoholic before he just became an alcoholic (and then a murderer). Now Trevor himself is an artist and has become numb after a life spent in and out of foster homes. To anchor himself, he has returned to the scene of all of his traumas: the house in Missing Mile.
I think this book is worth reading because it is a work of LGBT+ horror, it is chock-full of '90s fringe culture references, and does a great job with atmosphere and setting. If the romance and the story had been just a little more fleshed-out this could have been an easy five-star read. I'm a little shocked that so many people were condemning this book for being too sexually graphic. Apart from being a little too descriptive about bodily fluid, this is more story than it is sex scene. I found the violence way more frequent and off-putting (funny how way fewer people are talking about that).
SLICE OF CHERRY is a YA publication from 2011, and even though this book was released while I was on Goodreads, I hadn't actually heard of it or this author before listening to a Teen Creeps podcast episode about the author's other book, BLEEDING VIOLET. In some ways, this book is a product of its time. It reminds me of the gothic nlog-centered stories that I used to see on Quizilla in the early 2000s. There's something very Tim Burton-esque about this story, but without the humanistic whimsy that made Tim Burton more fantasy than horror. It's like someone curated one of those emo girl Xanga pages with the razorblade and fallen angel aesthetics and decided to make a portal fantasy out of it. Which means that it ends up feeling very precocious for a teen novel and not always in a good way. There are passages in this book that are incredibly triggering, even for an adult reader.
I don't want to say too much about this book because spoilers, but basically, Fancy and Kit are two sisters who live in a town in Texas called Portero. Portero is the land equivalent of a piece of Swiss cheese except instead of being filled with air, its holes lead to other worlds and inhuman monsters, which are sort of guarded against by a roving magical police force called Mortmains. I am literally so jealous of this concept and wish that I'd thought of it. Points for imagination. Fancy and Kit are also the daughters of a serial killer called the Bonesaw Killer who murdered all of his victims in their basement. But lest you feel too sorry for them, the psycho gene runs strong in these two and they are more than eager to carry on their father's work, "unzipping" old perverts and torturing a would-be prowler in the cellar.
At some point, one of them realizes that she has the ability to go to this other world that she calls "the happy place" which is basically one of these Swiss cheese portals. Except in this world, she's basically a god. The other sister thinks that they ought to do public works for the greater good. And these two conflicting desires end up fusing rather gruesomely with their bloodlust: they decide that they will take people to the happy place to torture and murder BUT ONLY IF THEY DESERVE IT. There, random act of kindness done. Send these two the Nobel Peace Prize already.
The murders are pretty violent and often ironic. It's like a more graphic revenge story in the vein of Jigoku Shoujo where you're introduced to some horrific abusers and would-be murderers who end up getting a bloody serving of rough justice. Child abuse (sexual and physical) are themes in this book, and there are graphic descriptions of gore. Someone is called the F-slur for gay people at one point. Also, people who aren't from Portero are called "transies" which was mentioned in the Teen Creeps podcast and which I thought was a transphobic slur but it's actually apparently an in-town slur for people who are tourists and I think it's short for "transients" but that's never gonna catch on like muggles or mundanes, bestie.
Ultimately, the story was SO WEIRD that I almost couldn't help but like it. I could tell the author had a lot of fun writing it and the idea of two Black heroines getting to be so unapologetically bad while also being themselves in this twisty fantasy world where they had total control was honestly refreshing and unique. And again-- I had major jealousy over the setting she created because it was so fucking cool. I just wish it had been fleshed out more. You know a book needs more time on the editing book when you read 500+ pages of it and get to the end and think, "But I still don't really know how any of this works and also none of this gives me closure." Like, the ending was pretty unsatisfying and I don't think there was ever a concrete explanation for how the portals worked or what the Mortmains did, or how people became Mortmains or what the townspeople did to protect themselves from monsters. This is what happens when you get a story that's all vibes and very little payoff. It can work and here I think it actually did, but how do you market it? To WHOM do you market it?
That said, I'm kind of itching to read the companion book lol.
This is a frustrating review to write because when I first picked up the book, I thought this was going to be a five star read. It employs so many of my favorite tropes-- creepy small towns, dark family secrets, toxic relationship dynamics, evil children-- and the author has such an accessible, suspenseful writing style. The idea of a creepy hippie commune out in the middle of the desert was SO good and I was excited to figure out what was going on with Rob and her family.
I ended up getting really put off by the animal and child abuse that are themes in this book, though. I didn't see a lot of reviews warning people about that, and it is BRUTAL. I'm not particularly put off by animal deaths in the sense that while I don't like them, they aren't deal-breakers for me if they aren't gratuitous, but this felt gratuitous. The child abuse and dangerous situations for the children in this book are also pretty brutal. Several people in this book are straight up psychos.
Which brings me to another point: it's hard to root for anyone in this book because everyone is so awful. Towards the end, I felt like the book kind of jumped the shark and I began to think, Really? REALLY? It felt like it was trying so hard to be weird and edgy that it ended up not being cohesive. Is it paranormal or isn't it? What is going on with the family? These questions are never answered in a satisfactory way. And while I liked the vibes, you can't write a whole book entirely based on vibes. GIVE ME ANSWERS.
I'm giving this a three. I didn't hate it and there were several things I loved about it, but the ending left me wanting more than I got (and this book seriously needs to come with a warning-- yeesh).
This was a buddy-read with Heather. I finally finished it even though this book is way darker than I'm usually comfortable with, and I've been in a slump when it comes to dark reads. But I needed the Kindle Unlimited spot so I decided to suck it up buttercup and grin and bear it, because after getting traumatized by R. Lee Smith's COTTONWOOD, I felt like I could take on the world. FYI, this review is going to have some spoilers and discussions of some of the trigger warnings, so maybe don't read this if you don't want to read that kind of stuff.
THEN, EARTH SWALLOWED OCEAN is kind of like if someone took ADDIE LARUE and made it into an omegaverse novel, right down to the deals with the devil and the freckle worship. Sadie (her name even sounds like Addie lol) has something terrible happen to her in the beginning of the book, which should have resulted in her death, but the devil intervenes. Now if she can find an evil soul to replace her own, she can live. WHAT A DEAL.
Enter the werewolf brothers, Wright and Ridge Lindal. Wright served in WWII and is still traumatized from that and the death of his human wife (at his brother's hands no less). Ridge, on the other hand, lives his life according to a code of feral sociopathy. He almost eats-- literally-- Sadie after raping her, but then it turns out that she's his soulmate instead. Even though he's evil.
Throughout the whole book, the reader wonders which-- if either-- of the two brothers is going to die to fulfill the devil's prophecy. Which actually leads me to what is perhaps the biggest plothole in the whole book: WHY THE HELL didn't they take one of those religious serial killers down to the ocean and kill one of them? They were evil AF. But was this ever considered? Noooo lol. They were too busy having blasphemy-sex on top of the church altar (which, hey, you do you, boo, I'm not religious).
The writing is absolutely gorgeous but there's a point where literary repetition starts to feel more like accidental repetition and the author overused a lot of words, like lush, plush, and feral. Sometimes they would be used multiple times per page. She has a truly amazing writing style that is brilliantly evocative and reminded me of both Poppy Z. Brite and Tanith Lee at times, but this felt egregious.
I don't want to spoil the ending but there are triggers for cannibalism, gore, sex with blood, knotting, sex in a church, blasphemous stuff, child abuse (neglect), gun violence, references to Nazis, war violence, and suicidal ideation. Also, there's a TON of sex. I'm not usually one to call that a trigger but this is more erotica than it is a romance and that's the type of thing you have to be in the mood for. I skimmed a lot of chapters because the sex scenes started to feel so repetitive and were absolutely drenched in fluids (which I personally find gross, but some people like the sloppy stuff I guess). Maybe the point of this was to make it feel like they were animals, but it lacked tenderness and emotional intimacy. I think that's the problem with fated mates as a whole: it acts as a shortcut that omits the need for romantic development and trust.
Anyway, Shiloh Sloane is an author to watch. I've read two of her books now and both of them were amazing. I'm excited for the upcoming book set in this world called CRACKED BLUE SKY.
Not me picking up a Five Nights at Freddy's novel even though I KNOW that I can't do robots, dolls, or horror. Man, I am so dumb about this kind of stuff. Why do I do this? WHY? Even though I know that FNaF is well out of my wheelhouse, I am fascinated by the lore and the franchise. It's a video game series filled with jump scares and the evil secrets that can be buried by a small town and quaint Americana.
THE SILVER EYES is about a girl named Charlie, who is the daughter of the inventor of the animatronics. Struck by nostalgia and the need for answers, she and her friends go to the abandoned mall that was build as a shell around the pizzeria that closed after the infamous murders. And it's creepy and it's weird, and there's a security guard who seems to know too much. Also, did those animatronics move? I'm pretty sure they did. OH MY GOD DID THOSE ANIMATRONICS MOVE? IS IT BEYOND ME? IS? IT? BEHIND? MEEEEEEEEEE? OH GOD I HEAR A MUSIC BOX.
I don't want to say too much because spoilers and all, but this was really creepy and ended up being the perfect blend of a survival horror story, a small town thriller, and, like, an 80s horror throwback. I feel like Stephen King could have written something like this, as it definitely has IT vibes. A lot of people on Amazon didn't like the art but I actually thought it was fine. I guess if you're used to the polished Marvel/DC look, you might be disappointed, but I like the indie look that some of these smaller publishers, as they remind me of the webcomics I read in my teens (specifically Questionable Content, which I LOVED). I do think the story felt a little bare bones and I would have liked more closure, but since this is book one in a three book series, I guess they have to hold out some stuff for the sequels, so I'm tentatively suspending judgement.
Disclaimer: I did some beta-ing for some drafts of this book and I am the author's friend, but I parted with my coin like an ordinary book simp for this work, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
I've been waiting for this book for years and it did not disappoint. I'm very happy with the changes the author made because the original was so bleak, and even though I loved how dark it was, I think changing the scope of the narrative to focus on the healing instead of the trauma of a character was a good move. It feels less exploitative and more affirming of the heroine's agency and intrinsic value as a human being.
You cannot really read this as a standalone or discuss this book without spoilers, but the series is soooo good, so I will do my best to give a brief summary without revealing too much. Leila, the heroine, and her friend, Dawn, were kidnapped by vampires who wanted to have sex with them and then kill them, basically. They escaped and now Dawn is a vampire and Leila is a human but still messed up. In DEAD LOVE, she starts to make steps to recovering her sexual and personal agency by getting back into her art and dating a human bartender named Dax. But, of course, this is a 100+ page book and not a 10+ page book because that plan doesn't end up working out so hot.
I liked this book a lot. The writing was great and Leila was a wonderfully complex and flawed character. My only qualm is that the resolution and ending were a bit rushed. I kind of expected a detailed discussion between Dax and Leila about what happened and I don't think there really was one (unless I missed it). I also felt like the douche vampire hunters got off too easy. (And was Megan ever found? Who took her??) But the ending was perfect and builds the promise out for more and I'm so excited to read more books in this world.
YIKES. This book is the posterchild for how illustrated covers can trick people into thinking they're getting a quirky little rom-com, only to end up with something very not that. And one of the top shelves for this book on Goodreads is "romance"? You sick, lying fucks.*
*JK ily, but seriously, definitely NOT a romance**
**In my not-so-humble opinion
Kitty is a social media influencer with family problems up the wazoo. Socialite mother dabbling in the literal blood money (her father was a slaughterhouse magnate). Daddy issues from her cold and aloof father teaching her that the cast of Charlotte's Web makes for good eatin'? No wonder she's a vegan with a major hang-up about men.
Unfortunately that hang-up soon turns deadly when she accidentally kills a man who's harassing her on her way home. Faster than you can say "look what you made me do," she starts not-so-accidentally killing other men who are guilty of everything from ghosting to rape. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and Kitty is planning on serving them up on #sponsored cutlery, with a pinch of vigilante justice.
This reminds me of a much, much darker Katherine St. John work, as KSJ also writes a lot of beach read thrillers. But this one also has a heavy dash of Caroline Kepnes's YOU. Some people have compared it to Dexter and I can see that, but YOU is a better comparison because Kitty has such a dark and wicked sense of humor, seeped in satire and a rather sangfroid despair at the futility of humans to do anything but disappoint her on a deeply personal level. For most of this book, I was thinking this would be a four- or five-star read. But then the ending happened and I thought, hmm, I don't like that.
HOW TO KILL MEN AND GET AWAY WITH IT is an aggressively decent read, but it's heavy on the gore and I don't really think the cover prepares you for that. There's a lot of rather graphic torture and murder scenes, including some of animals. The tonal shifts were rather jarring, although I do think this would translate well to the screen. I kept envisioning it as one of those quirky streaming murder shows, like My Life Is Murder or Ms. Fisher's Modern Murder Mysteries. I think it would translate well to screen. It was just a little too much for me and I felt like the ending was a little silly.
Overall, though, I did have a lot of fun reading this. It's a great summery read for the morbidly inclined and I'm excited to check out the author's follow-up.
Okay, so let me start off this review by saying that I am the BIGGEST horror wuss, so if you're an aficionado take this review with a grain of salt. (Maybe the whole jar, actually.) I like gothic tales and ghost stories but I don't like graphic violence or books where the pets or the love interests die, so as you can imagine, reading horror is usually an especially fraught experience for me. I love the aesthetics, I just hate the misery-- and I get super, super anxious while reading.
T. Kingfisher understands the desperate need among the anxious for vibes and aesthetics but no Super Bad Things in horror. Between this book and WHAT MOVES THE DEAD, I ended up both charmed, amused, and scared out of my pants, but both had satisfying endings that were bittersweet (bonus in this one: the dog doesn't die). I think people reading this expecting, I dunno, Stephen King, might be mad, but man, what an amazing story. Apparently it's a sort of expansion/homage to Arthur Machen's "The White People." I've never read that story but I'm sure the author did a great job (God bless the public domain).
This story is about a woman named Mouse who is tasked with cleaning out her grandmother's house when she dies. But her grandmother was a hoarder-- and her step-grandfather was apparently harboring some pretty insane delusions about people he calls "the twisted ones." Mouse finds a journal in his bedroom detailing some of his ramblings, with references to a manuscript and something he calls The Green Book. The more she reads, the weirder it gets. But then Mouse starts to see things in the wood: creatures that shouldn't exist and places that should be there. And then she starts to wonder if maybe her step-grandfather wasn't really delusional after all.
I don't want to say anything else because some people are out there giving way too many spoilers in their reviews and less is definitely more, but I LOVED this book. I loved Bongo the Hound. I loved the people Mouse encounters who help her on her journey: Enid the Goth barista, Foxy the hippie, and Tomas and Skip, people living at the commune (one of them is bipolar and the rep is so casual). I loved how creative and creepy this world that the author built felt. I've seen people calling it folk horror and after thinking about this, apparently that's the kind of horror I like. Cozy horror with vibes. If you enjoyed this experience, books with similar themes are YOU LET ME IN, THE CHINA GARDEN, and THE STRANGER. I loved all of these books so apparently creepy rocks and creepy trees are my thing. Go figure. Either way, T. Kingfisher is the only person out there who I trust to scare me properly and politely.
The only reason this isn't getting a full five stars is because I wanted to find out what was really going on with the grandmother and get more closure with the book. I feel like a lot of things were left to the reader's imagination or whatever, and sometimes that feels like cheating. I'm not mad, though.
Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨
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Books:
dark-and-twisted
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