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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Book #201 of 2021: Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon This is a strange narrative that changes shape at multiple junctures, so I’m loath to give too much away for prospective readers. But it begins with its fifteen-year-old heroine, the black albino intersex bride of the local reverend, fleeing from their fundamentalist cult compound to deliver her …
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Book #128 of 2021: Rolling in the Deep by Mira Grant (Rolling in the Deep #1) A short but effective creature feature, following a deep-sea expedition looking to capture or manufacture footage of mermaids for a schlocky TV production. The last thing they expect is to find the real animals who inspired the myths, nor …
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Book #119 of 2021: The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy (Danielle Cain #1) The setting to this supernatural horror novella is a lot of fun, offering a sort of queer punk commune made up of squatters and/or idealistic radical leftists who are noticeably less common in fiction than in real life. I …
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Book #197 of 2020: Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix This story of a haunted IKEA-type store plays out about as expected, but I think it’s my least favorite of the four Grady Hendrix novels I’ve read so far. Too much in the early chapters seems like a cartoonish satire on corporate retail culture, so when the …
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