Publication date: September 1st, 2021

Links: Amazon | Goodreads

Everyone has wanted their favorite book to be real, if only for a moment. Everyone has wished to meet their favorite characters, if only for a day. But be careful in that wish, for even a history laid in ink can be repaid in flesh and blood, and reality is far deadlier than fiction . . . especially on Addington Isle. Winterset Hollow follows a group of friends to the place that inspired their favorite book - a timeless tale about a tribe of animals preparing for their yearly end-of-summer festival. But after a series of shocking discoveries, they find that much of what the world believes to be fiction is actually fact, and that the truth behind their beloved story is darker and more dangerous than they ever imagined. It's Barley Day . . . and you're invited to the hunt.

Winterset Hollow is as thrilling as it is terrifying and as smart as it is surprising. A uniquely original story filled with properly unexpected twists and turns, Winterset Hollow delivers complex, indelible characters and pulse-pounding action as it storms toward an unforgettable climax that will leave you reeling. How do you celebrate Barley Day? You run, friend. You run.

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I want you to picture for a moment the characters of your favorite childhood novel. Do you have a good grasp of that in your mind? Now imagine that they are real, live, breathing things that you see and touch. Wouldn't that be incredible? That's exactly how Winterset Hollow begins. Eamon, Caroline, and Mark take a sabbatical to the home of their favorite author to see the place where it all began. To see where the creation of the one thing that molded their very beings occurred. They practically have a hero complex constructed of the author. Why wouldn't they—as the story and characters gave them a reprieve from their own lives and stressors?

It's difficult to remember while riding the wonderment of the opening pages that this is a dark fantasy. As the awe slowly starts to fade, trepidation and that feeling of wrongness slowly start bleeding in—bringing a wave of unease. The moment it all changes is palpable. From there, it's a veritable sea of crashing confrontations and revelations. The tension is high and once it begins, it doesn't let up until the very end. 

Durham's prose is certainly on the more literary side. Interspersed with poetry taken from Addington's version of Winterset Hollow, the verbiage is resinous and thick. The expansive depictions elevated the novel from what could have been a simple slash and hack.  I found the language selections meticulous and beautiful. I think a lot of readers might consider it is overreaching and perhaps even pretentious but it worked so well for me. 

I truly did not expect the emotional rawness of Winterset Hollow. The wonderment of the beginning when they are meeting the characters, the shock when it all goes south, the fear and anxiety, and in the end, the bitterness of heartache. This was a completely unanticipated emotional rollercoaster of a book. There's no succor as the reader is ricocheted from one blow to another, whether physical, emotional, or mental. Was I happy with the ending? Honestly, I couldn't imagine a more flawless conclusion. It was like the sun setting on the perfect day—Barley Day.

Publication date: August 25th, 2021

Links: Amazon | Goodreads

A compelling gothic fairytale by bruja and award-winning writer Maria DeBlassie.

The women of Sueño, New Mexico don’t know how to live a life without sorrows. That’s La Llorona’s doing. She roams the waterways looking for the next generation of girls to baptize, filling them with more tears than any woman should have to hold. And there’s not much they can do about the Weeping Woman except to avoid walking along the riverbank at night and to try to keep their sadness in check. That’s what attracts her to them: the pain and heartache that gets passed down from one generation of women to the next.

Mercy knows this, probably better than anyone. She lost her best friend to La Llorona and almost found a watery grave herself. But she survived. Only she didn’t come back quite right and she knows La Llorona won’t be satisfied until she drags the one soul that got away back to the bottom of the river.

In a battle for her life, Mercy fights to break the chains of generational trauma and reclaim her soul free from ancestral hauntings by turning to the only things that she knows can save her: plant medicine, pulp books, and the promise of a love so strong not even La Llorona can stop it from happening. What unfolds is a stunning tale of one woman’s journey into magic, healing, and rebirth.

CW: assault, domestic violence, racism, colorism

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Centered around La Llorona, the gothic fairytale is a feminist treat. If you are not acquainted with the story of La Llorona, the most common version is of a woman who marries a rich rancher. After bearing his children, she witnesses him with another woman and in a fit of jealous rage, drowns their children in the river. Unable to live with the grief, she spends eternity pacing the shores of the river, weeping and wailing. Weep, Woman, Weep takes this story and bestows upon it a fresh face and name. 

Mercy's life has never been easy. Generations of sorrow have tormented Sueño, New Mexico and La Llorona waits by the riverbank to drag the next generation down. The town and its people are well depicted but even here, bigotry is nevertheless alive and well. Ever present is the shade of La Llorona as the girls of Sueño are taught to conceal their sorrows and never, ever walk by the river at night. Mercy and her best friend, Sherry, have bigger dreams of leaving this little small-minded town but one day Sherry is touched by La Llorona and nothing is ever the same again. Mercy is determined that she will not lose her own vitality to the watery depths. She's been marked but won't give in.

Even with the heavy burden of grief on her shoulders, she finds quiet rebellion in her day-to-day life on the farm. She's jaded and wary but strength comes from within and Mercy has it in spades. She avoids the river, even standing the standing water of baths, and secretes her tears in jars so they will not be used to cause pain. Through it all, she perseveres.  The addition of a new neighbor leads Mercydown a path to another way of thinking. Mercy takes her roots that could entangle her, waters them with her tears, and lets them flourish into something beautiful. 

Choosing to have Mercy speak from the pages makes Weep, Woman, Weep more of a confessional than impassive story.  There are times that she stops herself from saying more than she means to say.  The use of first person makes Mercy's tale more intimate and believable. She's cutting and genuine and that's what makes her story all the more heart-wrenching.

Weep, Woman, Weep easily conveys the folklore vibe while still managing to be well-rooted in Mercy's world. At times, it's uncertain if La Llorona is merely in Mercy's head. Is she truly a supernatural spook? Whether or not La Llorona exists or is a convenient excuse for Mercy's stoicism is anyone's guess. One could look at it as a view of the role of women. How we are taught to swallow down our sorrow and put on a brave face to the world. How showing emotion is frequently viewed as negative and how our own hopes and dreams are put on the back burner sacrificially for others. This gothic fairytale is so beautifully written. Its haunting goes far beyond the grasp of La Llorona and weaves a beautiful story of endurance, fortitude, and love. 

Publication date: November 23rd, 2021

Links: Amazon | Goodreads

A shape-shifting spirit haunts a family in England during the depths of winter.

A woman must locate a snowflake for a magical trickster to save her frozen true love.

A witch knocks upon a young man’s door to take his life on Christmas day.

A small boy meets a faerie housed within a snow drop.

Once upon a time stories travelled from place to place on the tongues of merchants and thieves and kings alike. Under the blanket of night they were exchanged between children, and passed on to their children, and their children after them. Details were altered from one generation to the next until thousands of tales existed where once there were few.

In the spirit of these age-old stories comes Once Upon a Winter, a seasonal anthology of folk and fairy tales from 17 authors across the globe. It covers the Gothic, the romantic, the whimsical, the frightening and everything in-between, and features both intriguing twists on classic tales and exciting original stories.

The first of four planned seasonal anthologies from Macfarlane Lantern Publishing, Once Upon a Winter is sure to have a story for just about everyone. Grab your copy in time for Christmas today!

Inside this anthology:

The Biting Cold by Josie Jaffrey

The Match Girl by Rebecca F. Kenney

Santa Claus is Coming to Town by Bharat Krishnan

A Pea Ever After by Adie Hart

The Snowdrop by H. L. Macfarlane

Silverfoot’s Edge by Ella Holmes

The Storm Hags by Caroline Logan

The Boggart of Boggart Hole Clough by Jake Curran-Pipe

Around the Hawthorne Tree by Jenna Smithwick

The Best Girl this Side of Winter by Laila Amado

The Snow Trolls by S. Markem

Lord of the Forest by Katherine Shaw

Queen of the Snows by Joyce Reynolds-Ward

Long Meg and the Sorcerer’s Stones by M. J. Weatherall

The Frost of Mercy by A. J. Van Belle

Wintercast by R. A. Gerritse

You Can’t See Me by Kate Longstone 

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I absolutely adore folktales and fairytales, whether they are variations of the original stories, simply influenced by the classic tales or completely brand new imaginings. I didn't hesitate to say yes to Once Upon a Winter. What's even more exciting is that Once Upon a Winter is the first of four planned seasonal anthologies from Macfarlane Lantern Publishing. Obviously, this one starts with the colder season of the year and all the stories within containing the cold bite of winter's wind and snow.

As with all anthologies, there are stories that will resound more with the reader over others, which is the beauty of an anthology. While there were a couple of the stories that didn't work so well for me, the vast majority did. The atmosphere of the stories varies from sweet and romantic like "The Snowdrop" by H. L. Macfarlane, in which a boy meets an unexpected faerie friend, to the humorous "The Snow Trolls" by S. Markem where the edict is "Don't eat the yellow snow" and then there are those much, much darker, which are always going to be my personal favorites. 

That's not to say I still didn't enjoy the other stories. "A Pea Ever After" by Adie Hart is a feminist tale that is on the lighter side of the retellings in the anthology but I loved this take on The Princess and the Pea by Hans Christian Andersen. A fairy godmother has gathered four princesses together to compete for the hand of the prince. It was a welcome change to see smart, capable princesses that had no need of rescuing. In fact, the princesses had no interest in marrying the prince at all. Not that he's not perfectly handsome or refreshingly educated or even remarkably kind and funny because he is, they just aren't interested or have better things to do with their lives. 

Once again on the darker side of things is "Silverfoot's Edge" by Ella Holmes. In this tale, a trickster freezes a woman's love in a small pool and tasks her with finding one special snowflake in the midst of so many. This story starts in winter but spans the following months as well. It's everything that I love about fairytales. There's the peril of her loved one, the riddle to solve, a clearly defined baddie, and a determined and cunning heroine.  Not to mention that the little-folk creatures sent with her to "weigh" the snowflakes—the only way she'll know she's found the correct one—are adorable. My favorite passage of the entire anthology is here: 

        

        My mother once said to me love is an edge you will fall over, and she was right. 

        I think about it often as I walk the woods. She is dead and shrouded in the earth, and I feel her with every bare-footed step throughout the dirt. 

Landing among my favorites as well were two others in the collection: "The Best Girl this Side of Winter" with its undead, poisoned claws, and impossible quest and Katherine Shaw's "Lord of the Forest" which introduced me to the Leshii, a Slavic forest protector spirit. Don't let the fluffy bunnies on the cover fool you, there are wolves within these pages. 

If you love the stories by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Charles Perrault, and Hans Christian Andersen, there's a story here for you. Unlike the aforementioned authors, this anthology sees a more diverse authorship being primarily comprised of female and LGBTQ+ authors from various countries. Grab yourself a copy and a fuzzy blanket and expect a little magic for those long dark winter evenings. 

Publication date: October 15th, 2021

Links: Amazon | Goodreads

Open the door to your nightmares.

They are the silent guardians of our inner spaces. We throw them open to welcome friends and family. We shut them tight against the darkness and trust them to keep us safe. But they also hide our true natures, ward off intruders, and seal away what can never be allowed to escape.

But, what happens when the thing that we rely on the most, welcomes the bad things in? What happens when our protector becomes the thing we fear?

Turn the key, pull back the bolt, unfasten the latch and let the darkness through. Discover 19 tales of terror and despair that lurk on the other side of the Doors in the fourth instalment of Eerie River Publishing’s horror series.

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It Calls From The Doors joins four others in its "It Calls From" series. There's It Calls From The Sky, It Calls From The Sea (You can read my review here) and It Calls From The Forest (Vol 1. and 2). You would think that doors are such an innocuous thing. How could they possibly be scary? They aren't a destination; Merely a threshold. What happens when those doors open to places we aren't expecting? Or worse, what if they open exactly where we are expecting? That's what this anthology from Eerie River Publishing and its authors attempt to define.  

Featuring nineteen tales from nineteen different authors, this assemblage of door related horrors will have something for every horror lover. There are cosmic horrors, creature features, stories about death, and killers all fitting the door theme. As a horror fan, I love seeing how a single prompt can inspire so many different versions. 

A few of my favorites:

"Homesick" by Chris Hewitt was an interesting story about a fixer upper with a door to an eldritch horror. Not only would that be horrifying in itself, this story contained thousands and thousands of doors with things behind too terrible to truly comprehend. What's worse is that somewhere within those myriad doors are her daughters. 

"Who's That Trip Trappin'" by Ally Wilkes was another creepy story. This one involving an escalator. We've all had the thought—however brief—about being sucked down in the cracks of the escalator but I bet you never thought that an escalator could be as terrifying as this story.

"The Black Room" by Mason Gallaway was short but surprisingly sweet. A child goes back to the house she grew up in to face her fears as an adult. The darkness is still there waiting for her, but this time she's not alone...and that makes all the difference. 

There were stories that didn't work so well for me but that's what you are going to find in every anthology—and the reasons why anthologies are so much fun. The variety almost guarantees you to find a few authors to follow. Eerie River continues to put out delightfully hair-raising anthologies with new authors to discover. 

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Publication date: September 7th, 2021

Links: Amazon | Goodreads

When the poison gas first leaked out of the ground, mankind thought the horror would be over in no time.

When the lizard-men followed, swarming the land, slaughtering indiscriminately, those who survived scattered to the hills and the forests. Most did not last long.

But Cora, who found refuge and made a home in the mountains where she lives with the memory of her dead son, still fights. Tenacious, she lives wild and protects that home from the lizards who seek to kill her.

Until now.

Because man has arrived, and he is not friendly.

In this terrifying fight for survival, Zachary Ashford blends the thrills of the creature feature genre with the claustrophobic atmosphere of a home invasion.

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Ashford wastes no time dunking the reader right into the fray and with one sentence commences initiating the tension that will ensue throughout the story. 

The cicadas had fallen silent.

Such a simple sentence and one that could be completely innocuous, but we know there's more at stake here. That sentence begins the contrast of the beauty of nature with the terrible monstrousness of the creatures and the ensuing battle for survival. There's no doubt of the ephemerality of everything human in this new world after the "ruin" as it's christened. 

I like that the story starts without really telling us how we got here. What are the lizard people? Where did they come from? Other than telling us that poisonous gas came first encircling the cities and then these saurian creatures came next, we don't really know much about them. They are pitiless killers, but you can't condemn them for surviving. They aren't the ones to hate here any more than we'd hate crocodiles or say any big cat in the African Safari. They were made to consume and in order to survive and thrive, they have to eat. It's not their fault that one of the easier things on the menu is human.

We only really have three characters, which makes the novella easier to follow versus Sole Survivor. Gone is the big cast with names you don't care about—fodder for the feast if you will. No, here Ashford gets intimate. There's Cora, who has carved out a space in the Australian bush, away from the cities and towns and then there are interlopers, Darren and Sarah. Well, we can't forget about the lizards, but as the methodical hunters and killers that they are, strangely they aren't the biggest threat here. 

Ashford has perfected his main character Cora. She could be me or you. She wasn't built to do this. She doesn't have years of military training or survivalist knowledge. She was, like the rest of the world, thrust into this miasma and it was either adapt or falter. This world has changed her. She's endured but she's not without fault. She's made mistakes that cost her the life of her son. In spite of that, Cora has managed to keep herself alive being resourceful with little bits of material appropriation and newfound awareness along the way. She's carving out an existence alone in the mountains and she likes it just fine that way. When Darren and Sarah show up, she offers them whatever she has just so they will move on and leave her little corner of the forest in relative peace. 

Darren is the kind of villain you love to hate. Ruthless and smart but still stupid somehow. There's a wrongness about him that goes much further than the pure meanness that people can have within their hearts. It's clear from the start that he has a sickness both in body and soul. He's despicable, a stain on humanity, and I want to see him get everything that karma has coming for him. Sarah, on the other hand, is a bit of an enigma. Is she with Darren simply for survival—riding his coattails for protection?  Does she truly care for him, in which case was he a better person before the shit hit the proverbial fan? It's hard to know exactly where she stands and Cora waffles on that one as well throughout. 

This isn't your typical end-of-the-world survivor slog. Ashford chose a completely weird post-apocalyptic lizard creature stance, sure, but by narrowing the viewfinder to these three characters, he's created something inherently more intimate and ultimately more unsettling.  He puts the horror genre in the spin cycle. What begins as a creature feature evolves into the "human is the real evil" trope and morphs yet again in the last pages. Thrilling and poignant, When The Cicadas Stop Singing is a completely different beast than Ashford's other works. It's unexpected, completely out there, and heartrending.

Publication date: September 21st, 2021

Links: Amazon | Goodreads

Set in Colonial New England, Slewfoot is a tale of magic and mystery, of triumph and terror as only dark fantasist Brom can tell it.

Connecticut, 1666.

An ancient spirit awakens in a dark wood. The wildfolk call him Father, slayer, protector.

The colonists call him Slewfoot, demon, devil.

To Abitha, a recently widowed outcast, alone and vulnerable in her pious village, he is the only one she can turn to for help.

Together, they ignite a battle between pagan and Puritan – one that threatens to destroy the entire village, leaving nothing but ashes and bloodshed in their wake.


"If it is a devil you seek, then it is a devil you shall have!"

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There's been a lot of hype around Slewfoot and history has not often been nice to me where hyped books are concerned. I more often than not find that the books that others are raving about are just...okay. A lot of the time I even end up DNF'ing. That's why with trepidation, I started Slewfoot. Y'all. I could NOT put this one down. I was lucky enough to get it as an audiobook and I highly recommend that if you plan on reading it, that you experience the audiobook. Barrie Kreinik does a marvelous job bringing all the character voices to life. 

Abitha, having been sold for a paltry amount by her father, comes to the colonies to start a new life with her equally new husband. Her husband, Edward is a good man and though it's a hard life, Abitha does well. Unbeknownst to Edward, his brother who co-owns the farm has been gambling and has substantial debts. Even though Edward only has one more payment to his brother until he owns the land, they are at risk of losing the farm to pay his brother's debts while his own farm is safe from harm.  After chasing a lost goat into the woods, Abitha stumbles onto something that has been sleeping and now it's time for it to awake. 

I adored Abitha's character. She's headstrong and cusses like a sailor yet at the same time, tries her best to fit in with the Puritans even though she finds the lifestyle extremely restricting. She could have laid down and given up but she decided to make the best of a bad situation. She honestly cares for Edward, even if she doesn't think that he loves her in the way she yearns to be. I wanted so much for her to succeed in everything that is thrown at her. Even after meeting this goat-like entity, what does she do? Names it Samson and befriends it. 

Samson aka Slewfoot on the other hand was a mystery to me. Not a surprise considering Samson is a mystery to himself. Is he a demon? Devil? Is he slayer or protector...or perhaps a bit of both? I couldn't decide if I liked him or not in the beginning and was very suspicious of his motives. As the story progressed, I grew to admire him as well, though a big part of me ached for him in his tormented confusion and loss of self. 

Brom weaves this folktale masterfully around the reader. Of course, in every good tale, there's a villain and Brom gives us a despicable putrid piece of trash to loathe and despise. Oh and how! Edward's brother is self-serving and contemptible. You love to hate him and even when you think you can't possibly abhor him more, he manages another slimy and underhanded action. 

Slewfoot is a slow burn. Brom has to set the scene, transporting you back to 1666 Connecticut. We are given plenty of time to discover the characters and to empathize with their plights. The world surrounding them is hard and cruel enough when you know who and what you are but without this knowledge, even more so. Somewhere in the middle, the plot stalls to a mere plod, but stick with it. By the end of the novel, you are cheering Abitha and Samson on, which is the highest compliment of characterization. 

I don't want to give too many details away, but Slewfoot turns the typical good vs. evil trope on its head. If you are thinking, where's the horror? Where's the blood? Patience, friend. Brom is a virtuoso of revenge and equalization and will have you howling for blood and judgment in the final chapters. I promise you will relish every drop of retribution that rains down upon their heads. Slewfoot is spectacularly dark and ruminative and most delightfully witchy. This one tops my favorite reads list easily this year, making me wish I could read it for the very first time all over again. It's a spellbinding and captivating tale.

Publication date: October 19th, 2021

Links: Amazon | Goodreads

Flowers for the Sea is a dark, dazzling debut novella that reads like Rosemary's Baby by way of Octavia E. Butler.

We are a people who do not forget.

Survivors from a flooded kingdom struggle alone on an ark. Resources are scant, and ravenous beasts circle. Their fangs are sharp.

Among the refugees is Iraxi: ostracized, despised, and a commoner who refused a prince, she’s pregnant with a child that might be more than human. Her fate may be darker and more powerful than she can imagine.

Zin E. Rocklyn’s extraordinary debut is a lush, gothic fantasy about the prices we pay and the vengeance we seek. 

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Iraxi has reason to be angry. She's stuck on a ship in a flooded world, surrounded on all sides by those who despise her, and monsters of air and sea who are waiting to end her. She's pregnant with a child she doesn't want in a new world where no one has yet to carry to term. She's not even sure the child is human. Her hatred burns her from within, leaving no room for anything else. Her anger is like the water that filled her world, rising swiftly and submerging everything in its path. 

I am insistence personified, and the spite I draw is my sustenance...

 This is a novella that will speak to all your senses. Not only is Iraxi's rage all-consuming, but the descriptions of the ship and its people will also engulf you. Seventeen hundred forty-three days at sea. She is locked in this place surrounded by rotting wood, the sea lapping at it from all sides, mildewing in the salty air. The stink of bodies and fluids and blood all around. Unable to even escape to fresh air due to the razorfangs from the sky and tentacles from the depths. This narrative will envelop you in its depictions like a dark, oily dream from which you can't awake. 

While the eldritch creatures encircling the ship would typically be the focus of a novella, Rocklyn beckons us to sit with Iraxi in her boiling resentment and fury. We experience her loathed pregnancy, the debilitating changes to her body, and eventually the horror of her labor and what comes after. If you are looking for a dark and disturbing visceral tale, Iraxi's account will whisper bleakly to you. Flowers For The Sea is ghastly and gloriously weird and well worth the read. 

Publication date: October 31, 2021

Links: Amazon | Goodreads

Joey’s a mechanic. One night, she receives a call from her best friend, asking for his car to be picked up from the infamous body dumping grounds of Baltimore: Leakin Park. When she arrives, there’s little more around than a stalled-out car and a couple of ravens, so she leaves only with the car. Back at the body shop, it doesn’t take long for the smell of rot to permeate the trunk. Inside? A corpse. The cops say her friend did it. His absence is his guilt, but Joey knows better. She will find her missing friend and she will prove his innocence.

But something isn’t right in Baltimore. It’s not just the feeling that someone is always watching from the city’s abandoned buildings... Her search for her friend reveals something much worse hiding under the city. A ghost town, a reaper, regret. Suddenly, the city’s rage and the stink rising out of the dirt make much more sense. 

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Bleedmore, Bodymore is a YA fantasy horror with a very nice nod to Greek mythology. Our protagonist, Joey, is thrown immediately into the fray, showing up in the slums of Leakin Park after a call requesting a tow. Only there's a body in the trunk of the car of her friend and her friend is nowhere in sight. Who is the person in the trunk? Did her friend kill him? If he didn't, why has he disappeared? Down the rabbit hole goes Joey into a whole different world transposed on the city of Baltimore and Leakin Park.

I was all for the atmosphere of this read. It's dark and gritty showing the shadowed side of Baltimore. There's a dank and mealy vibe coating everything and you can conjure the wet asphalt and garbage smell in the air without even trying. That's where the novel excelled. The pacing worked well enough though there were some slowdowns and breakneck parts. 

Where it lost me was taking a hard right turn beyond the murder and mystery sticking us straight into mythology and the underworld. I was expecting paranormal. That wasn't the problem. Additionally, I love a good mythology/horror combination, but I was honestly confused enough to backtrack thinking I missed something. Once I reoriented myself, I loved the addition—this dark underworld filled with a ghost town, a river of regret to drown in, heart-devouring raven shifters, a reaper, and dead-but-not-dead abusive alcoholic fathers. (Tw - abuse, alcoholism, and suicide)

I didn't care so much for Joey aka Josephine. I wanted to like her and I wanted to care about her plight but it didn't happen. She never quite made it past a one-dimensional character for me. She comes across as being very immature and she makes some extremely stupid decisions for seemingly no other reason than "I'm tough and edgy". If I had to hear about her licking or sucking on her lip piercing ONE MORE TIME, I was going to lose it. As far as the secondary characters went, the most interesting ones were Charon and Val. I wanted to know more about them. This is a continued series though so surely the author will expand on that later.  

There's plenty here that worked well of though. There is loads of action and it moves the story along fairly quickly. Joey is actually pretty witty and some of the dialogue will give you a laugh. There's some great imagery as well and the atmosphere is top notch. I feel like this would be better promoted as urban fantasy versus horror, though it certainly contains horror elements. Hopefully, book two can address some of the weaknesses and give a stronger more cohesive read. 

Publication date: September 21st, 2021

Links: Amazon | Goodreads

'Humans, as is there wont, have a terrible habit of making a mess of everything.'

Mirabelle has always known she is a monster. When the glamour protecting her unusual family from the human world is torn and an orphaned brother and sister stumble upon Rookhaven, Mirabelle soon discovers that friendship can be found in the outside world.

But as something far more sinister comes to threaten them all, it quickly becomes clear that the true monsters aren't necessarily the ones you can see.

A thought-provoking, chilling and beautifully written novel, Pádraig Kenny's The Monsters of Rookhhaven, stunningly illustrated by Edward Bettison, explores difference and empathy through the eyes of characters you won't want to let go.

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The Monsters of Rookhaven is a delightful middle-grade gothic tale of a little girl named Mirabelle and her family. For centuries, the Family has lived protected in their home away from the eyes of most humans. Until one day, the veil tears and two abandoned and abused human children find their way in. They are promptly and fiercely championed by seemingly normal Mirabelle to stay. While the rest of those living at the estate are unsure, the children are quickly settled in amongst the strange and usual characters.  The rift, however, leaves the family vulnerable to those that might wish them harm and it has been out there patiently waiting. 

The world that Kenny weaves is mysterious and enchanting. The estate that the family lives on is brooding and sprawling, replete with unnatural flowers guarding the paths. Each of the family has a unique "talent". There's Uncle Betram, who can transform into a huge bear. Aunt Eliza is made up of spiders. Gideon can transport via portals. The twins, well they are their own breed. Piglet is the literal monster in the basement. We have to learn much later what their talent is, but the family keeps them behind a tremendous locked door and whispers "Piglet is dangerous." 

There are themes of friendships and found family, and how the monsters aren't always the one to be feared. It's not all love and sweetness though—the last half takes a very dark turn. There is a defined evil under the the burgeoning friendship and comfort that the family supplies. Secrets often can cause harm and there is a big ominous secret waiting in the wings for Mirabelle. It will change everything.

I was lucky enough to get The Monsters of Rookhaven on audiobook narrated by Emma Noakes. She has a gift with voices and made the listen that much more enjoyable. Her volume ebbed and flowed through all the different voices, bringing each character to life in turn. I found myself smiling while listening. I couldn't wait to get my earbuds plugged back in to this unforgettable story with its captivating narrator. 

Fans of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children will be charmed by this story. It's fantastical and magical. Perfect for middle-grade readers or for those wanting a little more enchantment in their lives. 

Publication date: September 14th, 2021

Links: Amazon | Goodreads

Welcome to the decrepit Woodmoor Manor…where something in the woods is always watching. From the author of Scritch Scratch comes a chilling middle grade story about a creepy mansion and sinister creatures in the woods

All Ginny Anderson wants from her summer is to relax. But when Ginny's father—a respected restoration expert in Chicago—surprises the family with a month-long trip to Michigan, everything changes. They aren't staying in a hotel like most families would. No, they're staying in a mansion. A twenty-six room, century-old building surrounded by dense forest. Woodmoor Manor.

Locals claim the surrounding woods are inhabited by mutated creatures that escaped a mad scientist over a hundred years ago. And some say campers routinely disappear never to be seen again.

When the creaky floors and shadowy corners of the mansion seem to take on a life of their own, Ginny uncovers the wildest mystery of all: there's more than one legend roaming Saugatuck, Michigan, and they definitely aren't after campers.

They're after her.

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This is my second book by Lindsay Currie and I absolutely love her style. (You can read my review of Scritch Scratch here.) Her books so far seem to follow a pretty basic formula: preteen gets to head into some spooky sites, manages to find herself mixed up in a Scooby style mystery, and does some sleuthing into the past to discover exactly why what's happening is happening. Though just because something is formulaic doesn't have to mean it's boring or predictable. There's plenty here to draw you in and get you invested. 

Ginny is a great character with relatable worries and fears. Of course, part of that is moving out to the middle of nowhere into this ginormous mansion while her father discovers what it will take to rehab the old place. Especially when she hears that there may be more to Woodmore Manor than she expected...a lot more. Ginny also happens to be very smart and curious about things that she doesn't already know about so it's not long before she's researching its history. She's a huge Agatha Christie fan so figuring out the mystery is completely her thing. She also manages to drag her brother and a newfound friend into helping solve the mystery. Family and friendship feature front and center in the relationships that Lindsay Currie creates. 

If you think middle grade can't be spooky, there are plenty of chills in this haunted house story. The author starts slowly with a few unnerving encounters that could easily be brushed off, but as the story proceeds, those moments become more and more startling. As with Scritch Scratch, there are some pretty terrifying moments that our protagonist Ginny encounters. One in particular probably would have pre-teen me sleeping with the lights on. I love that she doesn't hold back with the scares. However, by the end of the book, she also manages to make it all okay or at least manages to make it all make sense. Sometimes just knowing why something is happening makes it less scary. 

This is one of those books that keeps you turning pages until the very end. The pacing is fantastic and once it starts rolling, this story doesn't slow down. I couldn't wait for Ginny and the crew to figure things out. While there are some things that might seem a little predictable, it's almost in that yell-at-the-characters-on-tv way. You might have figured it out watching from the outside in, but they haven't and you can't wait until it all clicks for everyone. What Lives in the Woods was a treat and I can't wait to read whatever comes next. 

Publication date: November 13th, 2020

Links: Amazon | Goodreads

Sebastian “Seb” McAlister has run out of luck in Vegas. Cornered by a trigger-happy gang and shot through the stomach, he makes a desperate escape in his supercharged Hellcat. Fate guides Seb safely out of Sin City and into the desert, but as his wheels fade into the horizon, he fades into darkness.

He awakes among a tiny community in the middle of nowhere. A mountain range circles the hodgepodge of shacks like prison walls looming high. And the warden that resides in those mountains is big, ugly, and deadly—a creature straight out of a Lovecraftian nightmare.

If Seb hopes to escape that wayward way station, he’ll need enough cunning to outwit a force beyond comprehension… and a fast car. With a little luck and a ragtag group of would-be monster mashers racing alongside him, Seb just might have a shot of making it through the mountains alive.

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What happens when you combine fast cars, Las Vegas gang shootouts, and Lovecraft? You get this weird but fun acerbic romp with Jason Parent! Eight Cylinders is the love child of cosmic horror and Fast and the Furious. 

The story opens with Sebastian “Seb” McAlister in the middle of an abandoned department store parking lot shoot out with the local Chinese drug lord questioning the mini Magic 8 ball he'd taken from said drug lord's eye socket. Yes, you read that right. First, someone was using it as a fake eye. Second, Seb took it and pocketed it. Third, he's actually asking it for advice. When his partner in crime is killed and Seb is wounded, he takes off in his stolen SRT Hellcat with no destination except the advice of his mini Magic 8 ball. He passes out from blood loss and wakes up trapped in the mountains of the desert with strange companions and surrounded by a giant tentacle monster that won't let them leave.

Seb is an interesting character. He's a criminal with a conscience and an erstwhile crime noir internal dialogue. He cares about three things: his partner, his girlfriend, and his new boosted hot rod, so let's not give him too much credit, shall we? Admittedly selfish, reckless, and maybe a bit crazy, he's still the perfect anti-hero to band together this merry bunch of weirdos, uniting them under a common cause and possibly leading them to freedom. 

Is this sci-fi? Action? Horror? Who knows and who really cares? This novella isn't going to strain your brain. It's meant to be fast and dirty like Saturday nights drifting at the track.  It starts with a bang and ends with a movie-style ending—unfinished but satisfying. It's action-adventure storytelling at its best. Lots of guns and fast cars and regular guys turned badass. Don't expect things to make sense because they won't. Don't expect answers that you couldn't get from a Magic 8 ball. Things just are and they don't always fit within the range of what is possible. Eight Cylinders is just an entertaining read that puts the pedal to the metal and rides hell for leather for the hills.  

 

Publication date: May 4th, 2021

Links: Amazon | Goodreads

One of the most popular role-playing properties in the world gets new life with this trio of horror novellas set in Vampire: The Masquerade's World of Darkness by three brilliant talents: Genevieve Gornichec, Cassandra Khaw, and Caitlin Starling

The subtle horror and infernal politics of the World of Darkness are shown in a new light in Vampire: The Masquerade: Walk Among Us, an audio-first collection of three novellas that show the terror, hunger, and power of the Kindred as you've never seen them before.

In Genevieve Gornichec's A SHEEP AMONG WOLVES, depression and radicalization go hand-in-hand as a young woman finds companionship in the darkness...

In Cassandra Khaw's FINE PRINT, an arrogant tech bro learns the importance of reading the fine print in the contract for immortality...

And in Caitlin Starling's THE LAND OF MILK AND HONEY, ideals and ethics bump heads with appetite on a blood farm.

Three very different stories from three amazing, distinct voices, but all with one thing in common: the hunger never stops, and for someone to experience power, many others are going to have to feel pain.

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Walk Among Us is a collection of three novellas set in the world of Vampire: The Masquerade. For those of you unfamiliar with Vampire: The Masquerade, it's a gothic tabletop RPG that rose to popularity in the 1990s.  Set in the "World of Darkness", players play vampires, complete with the struggle to maintain some humanity as well as navigating treacherous political machinations of both vampire and human alike. True to the vampires of that world, these stories are dark and broody. The vampires within these tales have diverse backgrounds and ideologies. 

"A Sheep Among Wolves" is the first foray into the world of White Wolf. This story by Genevieve Gornichec was the weakest of the bunch for me. In it, a college student dealing with depression and loneliness finds herself realizing a whole other world has been right in front of her. I struggled with this story the most. The pacing was incredibly slow and I really had to push myself to get through it. The main character felt very insipid and reserved. Any supporting characters went the reverse direction and were absurdly stereotypical. While I certainly appreciated the overall mental health theme, this one just felt like something I'd read before. 

The second story, Cassandra Khaw's "Fine Print", certainly elevates the collection. Bringing a modern-day touch, the main character here is someone that you love to see get what he deserves. Khaw brings this detestable character to life in hi-def and lets us take a seat to watch his undoing. Arrogant and overbearing, this rather tedious specimen of manhood thinks that he's getting the better deal when in all actuality he's getting played by vampires way older and smarter than he is. This one truly shows that vampires are inexhaustible masters of manipulative and cunning. 

"The Land of Milk and Honey" by Caitlin Starling brings up the rear in this collection. This unique story combines ethics and vampirism with this setting of sustenance and sustainable farming. Out of all the stories, I enjoyed this one the most. The strange quandary of needing blood to survive but to do so without killing is one that has been touched on before in vampire fiction but never quite in this way. It brings up some interesting parallels to our own struggles. This story has a bit of everything, some romance, a little treachery, and a lot of manipulation. 

For a collection that only holds three stories, it took a while to get through this one. I enjoyed the variety of themes presented by each story. Vampire fiction has been around for a long time so getting something that feels fresh is a unique experience in itself. 

Publication date: August 5th, 2021

Links: Amazon | Goodreads

From its creepy town mascot to the story of its cursed waterfall, Burden Falls is a small town dripping with superstition. Ava Thorn knows this well – since the horrific accident she witnessed a year ago, she’s been plagued by nightmares.

But when her school nemesis is brutally murdered and Ava is the primary suspect, she starts to wonder if the legends surrounding the town are more fact than fiction.

Whatever secrets Burden Falls is hiding, there’s a killer on the loose, and they have a vendetta against the Thorns…

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Kat Ellis opens the curtain on this small town thriller with the introduction to our protagonist, Ava Thorn. Ava, a senior in high school, has been ousted from her childhood home, the manor and grounds of the once-thriving Thorn apple orchards which has been owned by the family for generations. To make matters so much worse, it's been sold by her uncle to the one person Ava despises most—the man who collided with her parents' car and who she blames for her parents' deaths—Madoc Miller. When one of the Millers turns up dead and Ava is the one to discover the body, rumors start to fly of Dead Eyed Sadie, a blight upon the Thorn family history.  But is Sadie really behind the death or is it less supernatural?

The small-town setting of Burden Falls is absolutely dripping with superstitions from Dead Eyed Sadie to the drawings of the evil eye everywhere. This is one small town where the roots go deep and sometimes tear themselves out of the grave to haunt you. It's impossible for everyone in town to not know what's happening and easier for the rumors to spread. To make things even more interesting, Dead Eyed Sadie is a harbinger of death for the Thorns. It's rumored that every Thorn who has died has seen Sadie right before death and Ava even has first-hand knowledge of that with her dad's sighting right before the wreck. Is Dead Eyed Sadie for real? It's hard to know for sure.  There's a crosshatching of supernatural and natural that is surprisingly effortless here.  

Ava is an interesting MC. High schooler. Outsider. Bloody Thorn. The death of her parents is fresh in her mind as it only happened last year. She has the added benefit of being right there in the car with them when it occurred and those seconds are etched on her mind and heart. Typically, teenage protagonists annoy me. They are self-centered and vapid. While some of the side characters (looking at you, Ford), definitely had no inkling how to think of anyone but themselves, Ava is fallible and yet still lionhearted and intelligent. She's also grieving and attempting to come to grips with what her new life holds. On the outside, she's fine but internally, she's just trying to hold it together. Anyone who has ever endured grief like this knows that every day you might wake up with a completely different emotion than you had the day before. That made Ava much more relatable with the layers of emotions that she experiences. From our external viewpoint, we still know that Ava is an incredibly unreliable narrator. She dreams things that feel real and has moments of seeing things that are there—until they aren't. She doesn't even know if she can trust herself to know the truth. It's a fantastic trick to make the reader second guess everything but Ava is so vulnerable that you want desperately to believe in her.

This is one of those mysteries that the person you least expect is always the person you should most suspect. I can't say there were any surprises in the end given that formula but I enjoyed the ride. Even though it's technically YA, Ava's maturity has been thrust upon her and made her read much older. Great characters with complicated relationships start you down this dismal path but the urban legends, dark familial history, and a splash of blood will keep you there until the end. 

Kat Ellis is a young adult author whose novels include Wicked Little Deeds/Burden Falls (August 2021), Harrow Lake (July 2020), Purge (September 2016), Breaker (May 2016), and Blackfin Sky (May 2014). She is a fan of all things horror and sci-fi, and a keen explorer of ruins, castles and cemeteries – all of which are plentiful in North Wales, where Kat lives with her husband.
You can find out more about Kat at www.katelliswrites.com or connect with her on social media. 
Email: katelliswrites@gmail.com
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