Book #88 of 2026: Wake Up and Open Your Eyes by Clay McLeod Chapman I have any number of issues with this story, but let me start with the most basic and subjective, which is that I simply don’t like it. This is essentially splatterpunk — the transgressive celebration of gore for its own sake …
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Book #73 of 2026: Fully Loaded by Blake Crouch [Note: I’ve seen some listings of this book under the title Fully Loaded Thrillers, but that seems to be a misreading of the cover. The inside material at the front of the ebook gives the two-word name for it.] This story collection reads like vintage Stephen …
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Book #55 of 2026: The Dead of Summer by Ryan La Sala (The Dead of Summer #1) I really enjoyed author Ryan La Sala’s previous YA queer horror title Beholder, but this newer release is unfortunately a misfire for me. Although the first chapter sketches some interesting character dynamics — our teenage hero has a …
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Book #42 of 2026: Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle Horror screenwriter Misha Byrne is having a hard time lately, even besides his upcoming twentieth reunion in the hometown where he hasn’t come out of the closet yet. Either someone is playing an elaborately cruel trick on him, or he’s experiencing a psychotic break, or …
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Book #41 of 2026: Shining in the Dark: Celebrating Twenty Years of Lilja’s Library edited by Hans-Åke Lilja Although I’ve generally enjoyed the short stories in this collection, I have to admit that I don’t quite get the point of it as a project. Lilja’s Library is a website dedicated to the writing of Stephen …
Book #17 of 2026: Yellow Jessamine by Caitlin Starling This horror-fantasy title has potential, but the novella format ultimately works against it by not offering enough room for adequate development of its ideas. An herbalist and shipping magnate in a blockaded city becomes aware of a strange new illness spreading through the population, rendering its …
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Book #9 of 2026: A Spell to Wake the Dead by Nicole Lesperance This novel has a neat beginning that it then proceeds to squander, becoming one of those stories where I can viscerally feel my rating for it dropping as I continue to read along. The initial premise involves a trio of queer and …
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Book #198 of 2025: The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia An excellent horror novel that unfolds across three quasi-related timelines. Primarily we’re following a graduate student in 1998 as she pursues research on her thesis topic, which concerns a lesser-known (fictional) female contemporary of H. P. Lovecraft. She’s investigating a rumor that one of the author’s …
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Book #172 of 2025: You Weren’t Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White If you’ve read any of author Andrew Joseph White’s YA works, you know that they tend to be rich in both horror themes and #ownvoices details pulled from his own transgender experiences, often with those two elements structurally intertwined in order …
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Book #165 of 2025: King Sorrow by Joe Hill A beast of a novel that fully earns its epic scope, proving once and for all that author Joe Hill has escaped from his father Stephen King‘s shadow but will always be indebted to him for the shared family style (as well as a few charming …
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