Book #45 of 2022: My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones (The Lake Witch Trilogy #1) On a basic plot level, this is the story of a half-Indian teen trying to convince everyone in her small town that they’re soon to be caught up in the events of a slasher-style massacre, identifying patterns …
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Book #6 of 2022: White Smoke by Tiffany D. Jackson This YA ghost story could have been a run-of-the-mill three-star read for me, but since the ending is so abrupt and unsatisfying, I think two stars feels more appropriate overall. I’ve had a really hard time getting inside the mindset of the protagonist, a teen …
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Book #346 of 2021: You Feel It Just Below the Ribs by Jeffrey Cranor and Janina Matthewson This novel technically takes place in the dystopian setting of authors Jeffrey Cranor and Janina Matthewson’s “Within the Wires” podcast, but you don’t need to have listened to that first in order to enjoy it — all I’ve …
Book #329 of 2021: Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw This horror novella came highly recommended, and I was further intrigued by the striking cover design and promise of Japanese folklore-inspired frights within. (The title is the literal translation of ohaguro bettari, the main variety of monster encountered here.) Unfortunately, I’ve found the book …
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Book #316 of 2021: The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling For nearly half of this novel, it seems a competent yet somewhat unremarkable iteration of the standard Bluebeard-esque gothic plot — see Rebecca, Jane Eyre, etc. — of a young woman warned not to dig into her brooding new husband’s secret past or …
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Book #315 of 2021: The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward This horror thriller isn’t an absolute trainwreck, and it undeniably picks up near the end, but the whole thing is built around a series of twists that are painfully obvious from the start and tiresome in their dragged-out execution. Ostensibly the plot …
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Book #287 of 2021: Scary Stories for Young Foxes by Christian McKay Heidicker (Scary Stories for Young Foxes #1) Middle-grade horror can be a tricky genre to pull off, with an atmosphere that’s spookily disquieting yet not full-on terrifying, but this Newbery-winning title from 2019 navigates that threshold nicely. Structured as a series of connected …
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Book #261 of 2021: The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass There’s enough of a distinctive (and #ownvoices) gay black perspective to this YA horror novel to save it from my lowest possible rating, but overall, it’s a real mess. Our protagonist can see visions of dead people, but the exact nature of his …
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Book #225 of 2021: The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix Author Grady Hendrix’s latest novel diverges from his usual supernatural fare, while still delivering a killer [sorry] premise: that a collection of the young women who have survived till the end of slasher-movie style attacks are now in group therapy together, only for …
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Book #219 of 2021: Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses by Kristen O’Neal Given the title of this YA novel, I hope it’s not too much of a spoiler to mention that there’s a literal werewolf in it, even though that fact isn’t confirmed until almost a third of the way through. But both before and …
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