Diversity in Horror Fiction

Funerals Are for the Living by Sami Ellis

Funerals Are for the Living by Sami Ellis

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Amulet Books

Genre: Occult, Thriller

Audience: Young Adult

Diversity: Black, queer main character and author, main character with anxiety and depression

Takes Place in: North Carolina

Content Warnings (Highlight to view):  Alcohol Abuse, Body Shaming, Cannibalism, Child Abuse, Child Death, Child Endangerment, Death, Forced Captivity, Kidnapping, Mental Illness, Physical Abuse, Police Harassment, Racism, Slut-Shaming, Stalking, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Vomit

Blurb

New from the author of Dead Girls Walking comes a YA horror about a girl kidnapped by a racist cult after investigating the supernatural happenings at her sister’s gravesite

A month ago, Junie Daniels was in a car crash that left her with a dead sister, fragmented memories of the accident, and a mother too checked-out to plan a funeral. The cheapest grave plot Junie can find is in the next town over. Sure, Williamsville is still proudly named after a slave master who was rumored to dabble in dark magic—but this North Carolina, after all.

When unexplained occurrences start happening at the graveyard, though, Junie and her best friend, Omari, investigate. And it’s not long before Junie and Omari are taken…

Williamsville wants both Daniels girls. But Junie will do anything to protect her sister—even if it’s only her corpse.

Sisters Junie and Jay were as different as can be. Jay was outgoing, popular, and an activist who lived her life out loud. In comparison Junie is introverted, quiet, and only has one friend, Omari. Jay has to drag Junie to parties just to keep her from sitting alone in their shared room. So, when Jay is killed in a car accident that Junie survives, Junie can’t help but think the wrong sister died. While her mom is depressed to the point of catatonia, Junie is forced to use her college savings to plan her sister’s funeral herself. Instead of buying a plot in Daniels, where they live, Junie has Jay buried in the neighboring town of Williamsville after finding a flyer advertising a cheap plot on the windshield of her mom’s car.

Like the two sisters, Daniels and Williamsville are polar opposites. Williamsville was founded by slave owner William Graham, who terrorized the town and killed his slaves for fun. Basically, Graham is Simon Legree and Madame LaLaurie combined. The creepy, desolate town is still mostly white to this day. Meanwhile Daniels was founded by Black sharecroppers who refused to live on the land where their ancestors were enslaved. It’s small but lively and has a strong sense of community. But it’s a community Junie does not feel a part of due to her introversion and low self-esteem. And honestly, I get it. It’s hard to think other people like you when you don’t even like yourself, and it can be scary trying to connect with others when you’re not naturally outgoing.

Junie knows everyone loved Jay, who was very active in the community, and Omari, who is friends with everyone. But she thinks of herself as a third wheel, a cheap imitation of her more popular little sister. Junie seems to struggle with depression and anxiety, which definitely play a role in her self-isolation. But Junie is also kind of mean. Time and again we see people in the community try to reach out to her as she pushes them away. When her neighbors call after her, asking how she and her mom are doing, Junie ignores them. When her sparring partner and crush, Neveña, tries to be friends with her, Junie coldly rejects her. And when Jay dragged her to a party before her death, Junie sat in the corner and sulked the entire time. But community is important. Especially when you’re marginalized.

It’s her disconnect from the community that stops Junie from reaching out for help when she and her mom are clearly struggling. Unfortunately, Junie decides she can handle everything by herself without any support. Junie is so completely turned off by the entire town showing up to mourn Jay (she refers to them as “sloppy sad”) that she decides to have a second, more reserved funeral at Jay’s grave, just her and Omari. It’s there that Junie notices something is wrong with the soil. The white graves are covered in lush, green grass, but Jay’s is just off colored soil that immediately kills the roses Omari places on the grave. Pissed off by the “racist dirt” the Williamsville church clearly gave her, Junie vows to return and fix it. Omari suggests contacting a lawyer and suing the church or at least getting help from his Uncle York who owns a local flower shop. But Junie doesn’t want to draw attention to the fact that her mom hasn’t left her room for a month and can’t take care of her daughter, because CPS might get involved. After hearing a strange noise in the graveyard, Omari decides that’s their cue to leave the creepy-ass town and go home.

Things continue to go poorly for Junie. Her mixed martial arts coach tells Junie she can’t go to the state MMA championship because of how much she’s been slacking off, despite the fact she’s gone every year. She finds an eviction notice on her door due to non-payment. And when Junie’s mother finally musters the energy to get out of bed and returns to work, they let her go, which she deals with by getting drunk. Junie is already feeling down when her mom drops a bombshell.

Junie already knows that the town of Daniels was named after her great-grandpa, but what she didn’t know is that she’s also a descendent of William Graham. While it’s not uncommon for Black people to be descended from white slave owners, since enslaved women were routinely raped by white men (my own last name comes from the white man who owned my great-great grandparents, his own children), it’s still horrifying to discover she’s related to such a monster. Apparently, Graham had multiple families, and sired many offspring, the descendants of whom are actually proud of their heritage. Junie’s mom warns her never to return to Williamsville, even though her sister is buried there.

There’s a reason Junie’s mom doesn’t want her going to Williamsville. It’s what’s known as a Sundown Town, a community that keeps non-whites (usually Black people) from living there through a combination of racist laws, racial covenants,  violence, and intimidation. Black folks could work there during the day but were expected to leave before sundown. While the Civil Rights and Fair Housing Acts of 1968 made Sundown Towns technically illegal, housing discrimination, gentrification, policing, and the lasting effects of redlining,  continued the tradition. Keep in mind Sundown Towns can be found all over the US, even in supposedly  “liberal” states. But Junie ignores her mom and drags Omari back to Jay’s grave to deal with the racist soil problem. It turns out she should have listened to her mom because the two teens end up kidnapped by a cult of William Graham’s white descendants, led by the sinister Sister Erica.

It’s no accident that one of the main villains is a white woman. Sister Erica reminds me of the white women who sell out BIPOC women to uphold the white supremacist patriarchy, like the 53–55% of white women who voted for Trump (compared to 7-10% of Black women). I find it particularly satisfying to see women like Pam Bondi or Kristi Noem betrayed by the white patriarchy they supported because they though it made them special and safe. So, of course I was excitedly waiting for Sister Erica to get hers. Maybe it’s petty and cruel of me to enjoy the suffering of others like that, but honestly, I don’t fucking care. People who happily intentionally hurt already marginalized people deserve to be laughed at when the leopards inevitably eat their face.

The first thing I noticed while reading Funerals are for the Living is how much I enjoyed the writing style. Ellis uses AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) liberally throughout the book, and I fucking love it. The editor didn’t remove the double negatives or the “done beens” in the name of “proper” grammar, so the characters sound like real people at ease in their environment instead of Black folks forced to code-switch. AAVE and other English dialects have their own grammar rules and are not “broken English” any more than American English is a broken form of British English. But racist grammar snobs still act like it is. For me, reading characters use AAVE felt familiar and comforting, after all it’s how my Black family speaks when they’re around each other and don’t have to code-switch for work. If they’re speaking in AAVE that means it’s a safe space.

I love how Ellis described Junie’s Black skin as “summer colored,” a welcome departure from white authors comparing Black skin to food. In fact, the only time Black skin is compared to food in the book is when Sister Erica does it while fetishizing a Black man, and you can practically feel Junie and Omari cringe. It’s also a nice change of pace that the white characters are the ones who are dirty, have bad hair, and act “primal”. And it’s just nice to have a book that’s clearly made for Black readers and isn’t forced to make things more digestible to try and appeal to a white audience.

I thought Junie was a great protagonist. She doesn’t really excel at anything, she’s not as smart Omari or as outgoing and strong as her sister Jay, nor is she much of a martial artist like Neveña. She’s also not particularly nice and only has one real friend because of it. She felt like an everyday, average teenager who was going through some shit. But despite all her faults she is very loyal to the few lucky people she cares about. While the cult represents unquestioning obedience of the white patriarchy, Junie represents rebellion against oppression. She starts out as someone who just lets things happen to her but becomes more of a fighter (like Jay) over the course of the book. I also liked Ellis’ unflinching portrayal of grief in Funerals are for the Living, in addition to Black mental health. One of the major morals of the story is that it’s okay to ask for help, which brings us back to the importance of community. It’s something Junie and Jay used to fight about, Jay wanted their mom to see a therapist while Junie just wanted to leave her be and hope it got better on its own (which of course it doesn’t). Medical racism and stigma keep Black people from receiving therapy that acknowledges their unique needs, like the trauma caused by everyday racism.

Funerals are for the Living gave me Get Out vibes, but set in the backwoods of rural North Carolina rather than the wealthy suburbs of upstate New York. You know you can’t trust these seemingly friendly white people, and something is very off, you just don’t know what it is yet. There are some really creepy scenes, like when characters are tortured or you realize just how brainwashed the members of the cult (mostly young people and children) are. Then there are more subtle chills like finding the slave mural in the church or knowing the racist police won’t save you if you call them for help.

Despite the overall dark and sometimes depressing tone of the book, there’s still some great moments of dark humor. I laughed out loud when Junie yelled that the church scammed her with a “Temu Grave,” or when she worried that the white cult would turn her and Omari into chili with no seasoning. I personally felt the book had a few pacing issues and could drag in some parts, but when it hit its stride, it really hit its stride and I found I couldn’t put it down. The mystery element of the book is really gripping, and I never knew what was going to happen next. I did feel like the supernatural parts of the story were kind of shoehorned in, and I’m not sure if they were strictly necessary since the book was chilling enough with just the racist cult. They didn’t necessarily detract from the story, I just don’t think they really added anything either. Overall, Funerals are for the Living is a well-crafted and moving piece of young adult fiction that doesn’t speak down to its young audience and trusts them with heavy topics.

Tags: African American, Anxiety Disorder, BIPOC, Black, Book Review, Depression, Disability, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Mental Illness, Own Voices, Recommended, Young Adult
Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle

Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Tor Nighfire

Genre: Blood & Guts, Sci-Fi Horror

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Lesbian main character, Bisexual side character, Gay, Autistic author,

Takes Place in: Palm Springs, California

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Amputation, Animal Abuse, Child Endangerment, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Gore, Illness, Kidnapping, Self-Harm, Suicide, Torture, Violence

Blurb

Poppy Stringer was born to be a star.

An aspiring fashion influencer by day, Poppy moonlights as a grave robber to make ends meet, wheeling and dealing dead bodies across Palm Springs.

When her hero, the flamboyant, piano-slamming rockstar Eddie Michaels, unexpectedly dies, Poppy gets a call to retrieve his body from the medical examiner’s office for a lucrative sum. It could be the last job she’ll ever need—if everything goes to plan. But the night’s delivery quickly veers off course when Eddie wakes up.

Now Poppy must fight for her life if she hopes to survive this blood-soaked joyride of carnage and extravagant entertainment.

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

I was SO excited when I got approved for this ARC, you have no idea. There’s a lot of death in Fabulous Bodies, like, A LOT. The violence and gore are over the top, which I found fun, but may be too much for some readers. It’s also super campy, which again, I personally love but other readers might find ridiculous. That doesn’t mean the deaths aren’t disturbing, as people die in all number of creative ways and some of them are truly horrific. It’s basically splatterpunk without the sexual violence and misogyny that seems to plague so much of the genre. A fun read with great dark humor that I finished in only a few sittings. I just couldn’t bear to put it down.

Poppy Stringer is a confident (or full of herself, depending on your point of view), queer woman who knows she’s fucking hot and will do almost anything to become a famous influencer. Her Instafeed (the book’s fictional version of Instagram) makes her lifestyle look glamorous, but the single mom is struggling to fund it. To support her lavish lifestyle, Poppy turns to body snatching. After all, her giant house in Palm Springs won’t pay for itself. She sees what she does as a victimless crime because no one is actually getting hurt and the loved ones of the deceased are merely inconvenienced. After all, the bodes she steals are just hunks of meat who don’t care what happens to them. And it’s worth it to give her five-year-old daughter, Marlo, the childhood she never had, even if it means spending less time together. Being raised by adoptive parents who didn’t really want her has hardened Poppy into someone cold and calculating who will do almost anything to get ahead, including grave robbing. She’s sees herself as a shark, surrounded by fish who’re satisfied nibbling on scraps.

Poppy isn’t an entirely selfish person; she does care deeply about her daughter and her best friend Noah. But when other people, like Poppy’s neighbor Ashley, try to get close to her, Poppy is quick to push them away. Noah honestly puts up with a lot from her, frequently babysits Marlo while her mom is out working her “other job,” which she tells him nothing about. While dining out with Noah, Poppy gets a call from a mysterious woman who somehow found her number. The woman offers her five million to retrieve a body. But not just any body, it’s the body of Poppy’s favorite musician and queer icon, Eddie Micheals, recently killed by a drunk driver (a tragedy which Poppy used for content). Despite her reservations, Poppy agrees to take the job. After all, five million is life-changing money. Enough that she can quit the grave robbing business.

Everything goes smoothly when she steals the corpse. A little too smoothly, in fact, and Poppy ignores her gut feeling that something isn’t right. She’s driving down a desert road with the body in her van when Eddie wakes up. The now undead rockstar reveals that he’s made a deal with the devil which gave him fame, fortune, and the ability to control people with his voice (think Jesse Custer from Preacher or Killgrave/The Purple Man from Marvel Comics). He just needs Poppy to help him run a few “errands” before sunrise and then she’s free to go. But of course, nothing is ever that simple. Poppy is forced to bear witness as Eddie tells people to murder, mutilate, and maim themselves and others, leaving a trail of bodies through Palm Springs.

While the story starts with Poppy as an almost-villain protagonist, there are some things even she won’t stoop to, which Eddie is all too happy to indulge in–mostly hurting and killing others. She may be a shark, but she’s a nurse shark while Eddie is a great white. The two are similar in that they’re both artists willing to do “anything” to get ahead (although Poppy learns that night that she actually has limits) and neither sees themselves as a “bad” person. Eddie tells Poppy “I’m not a bad guy, I’m just a survivor.”

Despite the horrible things he does, he never sees himself as a villain, which forces Poppy to question her own amoral actions and gives her the chance to have a nice character arc. Yes, Poppy is an awful person, and all I can say is “Yay for unlikable, problematic gay characters!” I love how terrible and morally gray she is. And Eddie is a delightfully campy villain. Queer readers deserve to have complex queer characters. Unfortunately, some folks have adopted right-wing puritanical viewpoints around moral purity. These are the people who argue kink doesn’t belong at Pride and want to censor anything that makes them uncomfortable which includes problematic queer characters. To these morality police I say:f you can’t handle queer characters who aren’t cutesy, pure, beacons of morality then maybe you should stick to cozy fic and stay away from horror. Liking a problematic character does not mean you would approve of their actions in real life, and trying to sanitize queer content is a particularly nefarious form of censorship.

At one point Eddie tells Poppy that art is what makes life worth living, and he’s not wrong. Yet, Poppy realizes love is what really matters. Poppy may be a morally grey narcissist, but she’s nowhere near as bad as Eddie, because unlike Eddie, there’s one thing she cares about more than fame, and that’s her daughter. It’s her love for her daughter that keeps her from completely crossing the line into villainy and which ultimately gives her the strength to fight Eddie. Fabulous Bodies is another Tingle book that proves love is real. Fabulous Bodies may be an action-packed roller coaster ride of gore, but at its core it’s still about the power of love.

 

Tags: Adult, Autism, Bisexual, Blood & Guts, Book Review, Gay, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Sci-Fi
Hemlock by Melissa Faliveno

Hemlock by Melissa Faliveno

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Genre: Gothic

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Bisexual main character, main character with alcohol use disorder (AUD)

Takes Place in: Wisconsin

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Animal Death, Classism, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Homophobia, Illness, Mental Illness, Rape/Sexual Assault, Self-Harm, Sexism, Sexual Abuse, Slut-Shaming, Stalking, Suicide, Transphobia, Victim Blaming, Vomit

Blurb

Sam, finally sober and stable with a cat and a long-term boyfriend in Brooklyn, returns alone to Hemlock, her family’s deteriorating cabin deep in the Wisconsin Northwoods, where her mother disappeared years before and never returned. But a quick, practical trip takes a turn for the worse when the rot and creak of the forest starts to creep in around the edges of Sam’s mind. It starts, as it always does, with a beer.

As Sam dips back into the murky waters of dependency, the inexplicable begins to arrive at her door in the forms of a neighbor who leaves no trace, a talking doe who sounds just like Sam’s missing mother, and a series of mysterious gifts that might be a welcome or a warning. And as Sam’s stay extends—as the town’s grip on her tightens and her body takes on a strange new shape—the borders of reality begin to blur, and she senses she is battling something sinister—whether nested in the woods or within herself.

Hemlock is a carnal coming-of-addiction, a dark sparkler about rapture, desire, transformation, and transcendence in many forms. What lives at the heart of fear—animal, monster, or man? How do we contain a threat that may come from within? And how can we reject our own inheritance, the psychic storm that’s been coming for generations, and rebuild a new home for ourselves? In the tradition of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, Hemlock is a novel of singular style, with all the edginess of a survival story and a simmering menace that glints from the very periphery of the page.

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

Hemlock is not a traditional horror narrative, so be warned if you go in expecting monsters, violent killers, or haunted houses. Instead, it’s a much more subtle approach to gothic fiction about a woman being haunted by her alcoholism. It has all the classic hallmarks of gothic fiction such as beautiful but isolated locales hiding dark secrets, decay, obsession, supernatural elements, and an antihero protagonist tormented by the family curse of alcoholism. Sam has managed to remain sober for ten months, but when she leaves her life in New York City to return to rural Wisconsin and fix up her parent’s cabin in the Northwoods, she quickly falls off the wagon. Sam’s father built the cabin in the Northwoods himself out of pine, and named it Hemlock (after one of his favorite varieties of pine) explaining “if you love something, you’ve got to give it a name.” Sam thinks it’s interesting that the cabin also shares the name of a deadly plant. Later in the book, we learn Hemlock means “you will be my death” in the language of flowers.

Sam had a hard childhood. She was bullied for her dark skin and body hair inherited from her Italian father. People said they “didn’t like the look of her” even though she did everything to try and be good. She was bullied by boys who spit on her. The ladies at church described her as “feral.” Because Sam wasn’t white enough or feminine enough, she was othered by her rural community and labeled as “bad.” Eventually, Sam embraces the labels forced upon her and goes down a self-destructive path that includes abusive relationships, letting men do whatever they want with her, self-sabotage, and alcoholism. Sam does finally get into a healthy relationship with a man named Stephen and manages to stay sober for ten months. But returning to Hemlock triggers her return to alcohol. It starts simply enough. Sam discovers a pack of beer in the basement of the cabin, as if it’s been left there just for her, and tells herself she deserves one after all the hard work she’s done. But one beer is never enough. Getting drunk is the first time Sam has felt truly happy and at peace in a while.

Hemlock’s isolation is both a blessing and a curse for Sam. On the one hand it gives her the peace she’s been craving from living in NYC. Surrounded by nature, she finds a contentment she didn’t have in the city.  On the other, too much time alone causes Sam to relapse and her mind starts to play tricks on her. Or perhaps there really is something in the woods, a cryptid or a ghost, the novel leaves it open to interpretation. In a review published of 280 hundred studies it was found “that rural, relative to urban, residence is associated with an increased likelihood of hazardous alcohol use and alcohol-related harm.”  Being low income also increases the risk of alcohol related harm. There’s also a lack of treatment options for alcohol and substance use disorder in rural areas compared to urban areas. For Sam, alcoholism is a family trait, passed down from mother to daughter. Her grandmother was an alcoholic but did everything to hide it. Sam’s mother was an alcoholic who drank Listerine after Sam and her father poured out all the booze in the house. Sam lives with the shame of having a mother with alcohol use disorder and resents her mother for it, but still ends up growing up to be an alcoholic herself. It has been found that children of alcoholics are at an increased risk of having alcohol use disorder.

I don’t find Sam particularly likable, but she doesn’t need to be. She feels real. She feels like someone struggling. There’s a reason it’s hard to be in a relationship with or related to alcoholics. As Sam puts it “anyone who’s ever loved a drunk knows that having hope is the most hopeless thing.” Sam doesn’t really like herself when she’s drinking either. She starts fights with strangers and gets arrested. She drives under the influence. She cheats on her boyfriend. In her family, they don’t talk about their feelings, they ignore them and cope by drinking. Sam will feel guilty about what she did while intoxicated, then drink more to deal with the shame, repeating the cycle. She believes the best feeling in the world is the oblivion that comes with being drunk, and nothing, including her boyfriend, can compete with it because alcohol is her one true love.

I liked how it was mainly women who influence Sam’s life (her father and boyfriend were less important) and fit the maiden, mother, crone archetype. There’s her mother, who loved Sam but whose struggles with alcohol forced Sam to grow up too fast. The maiden is a woman Sam meets in a hardware store who Sam cheats on her boyfriend with. She encourages Sam to get drunk and party with her. Then, there’s the good influence among the three, Lou-Ann, an older, butch Ojibwe lesbian and recovering alcoholic who gives Sam good advice and encourages her to go to an AA meeting with her. She reminded me a lot of a recovery coach I work with; a down-to-earth older woman who’s been sober for nearly 40 years and uses her personal experience with alcoholism to help guide others to sobriety and support them on their journey of recovery. Like my coworker, Lou-Ann never shames Sam for her alcoholism, but she doesn’t bullshit her either. She just lets her know she’ll be there when Sam is ready. While I was initially concerned that Lou-Ann would skirt the line of the unfortunate “drunken Indian” stereotype I personally felt like Faliveno did a good job making her feel like a real, complex person. But while no red flags went off for me, I’m also not Native, so her character may hit different for someone who is.

Sam physically transforms over the course of the story. Her muscles become more defined and her body hair thicker and darker. Her eyes change color and her senses sharpen to the point she no longer needs contacts and she can hear sounds in the woods. Some days Sam feels like a woman, some days, she doesn’t. Lately, she’s felt like something that doesn’t have a name. I liked the references to gender dysphoria, but I wish Sam’s transformation had more of a payoff. At first, I thought she was becoming something monstrous, but that particular plotline doesn’t really go anywhere.

Sam also encounters a talking doe, whom I suspect will be divisive. The doe is snarky and offers advice, but the humor and fancifulness of her character in an otherwise dark story can feel out of place. Personally, I liked the doe as a character, but wasn’t entirely sure she fit the gothic aesthetic. Faliveno never reveals whether the doe, Sam’s transformation, or the dark figure in the forest are supernatural or just a figment of Sam’s imagination brought on by alcohol. Normally I’m a big fan of leaving the reader wondering if something is supernatural or not à la the Turn of the Screw, but this didn’t feel well executed. Don’t get me wrong, some of it worked (like the possible ghost), but some of it, like Sam’s changing body, didn’t. You can only get away with so many unanswered questions before the reader starts to get frustrated. The other thing I struggled with was the overall lack of horror. Sure, there are some tense moments, but there’s no big payoff, just a sense of something dangerous in the woods.

Faliveno is an essayist, and the book does sometimes feel more like a series of essays on alcoholism and smalltown life in the rural Northwest than one cohesive narrative. This is not a criticism by any means, though I do feel it will work for some people and not for others. For me, it sort of worked. I was pulled in by the first half of the book, but by the second half, my interest began to wane. While there were a lot of things that didn’t work for me, I truly enjoyed Faliveno’s honest look at what alcoholism does to a person. In an interview, the author explains she had experienced her own struggles with alcohol, which helped inform her writing. Overall, I think I would have enjoyed the book more if I had gone in with different expectations.

Tags: Adult, Alcohol Use Disorder, Bisexual, Book Review, Gothic, LGBTQIA, Queer, Recommended
Eat Your Heart Out N.J. Gallegos

Eat Your Heart Out N.J. Gallegos

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Black Hare Press

Genre: Comedy Horror, Romance,

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Lesbian main character and author

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Cannibalism, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Gore, Homophobia, Medical Procedures, Violence

Blurb

Jules is a first-year medical student with an exceptional mind for anatomy, a devotion to precision, and a carefully controlled emotional life. That control shatters when she meets Maureen.

Maureen is magnetic—confident, beautiful, effortlessly desired. What begins as attraction quickly deepens into something sharper, darker, and far more consuming. Jules mistakes intensity for intimacy, chemistry for destiny, and fixation for love.

As their relationship lurches between passion and distance, Jules begins to unravel. The boundaries between study and obsession blur. Anatomy labs bleed into fantasy. Hunger—emotional, erotic, psychological—becomes impossible to ignore. Every slight feels catastrophic. Every touch feels like a promise. Every rejection fuels something dangerous.

Set within the sterile world of medical training, Eat Your Heart Out explores the seductive logic of obsession and the quiet horror of a mind convincing itself that devotion justifies anything. Desire becomes possession. Love becomes entitlement.  Control slips, slowly and then all at once.

Dark, intimate, and deeply unsettling, this psychological horror novella traces the path from longing to fixation—and the terrifying places desire can lead when nothing is ever enough.

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

Oh man, N.J. Gallegos had me at “toxic lesbians” and “cannibalism.”  Add in a medical setting and a kickass playlist, and I was sold. Cannibalism is hinted at throughout the story: Our protagonist, a queer medical student named Jules, constantly compares parts of her cadavers to food (to the point it makes her hungry), uses kuru as a random example of a neurodegenerative disease, and named her cat Jeff after serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer (aka the Milwaukee Cannibal). So you know that at some point someone is getting eaten, you just don’t know how or when.

Jules is an introverted horror nerd who is studying to be a surgeon. She loves medicine, her cat, and her classmate Maureen (who Jules calls Mo). Sadly, Mo doesn’t seem to even realize Jules exists. But after Jules’ best friend, a neurology nerd named Chris, gives her molly at a Halloween party (which Jules attends dressed as Patrick Bateman), she finally has the courage to approach her crush. The two women end up having a drunken hookup and spend a cozy weekend in Jules’ apartment having mind blowing sex. Jules falls hard and fast. Her obsession with Mo (which Jules mistakes for being in love) only gets worse, to the point she’s already planning the rest of their lives together. Now she just has to convince Mo, who doesn’t even want to be exclusive, that she feels the same way about Jules.

Jules’ obsession and possessiveness is disturbing, but also kind of sad, especially since Mo is not that great. For one thing, she pours ketchup on an expensive steak that Jules spent a lot of time making for her. If I did that, no jury in the world would convict my wife after she inevitably chopped me up and fed me to the cats. Mo strings Jules along, fully aware that she has fallen hard and wants to be exclusive. And while Mo is honest about just wanting to be casual and seeing other people, she also gives Jules just enough hope to keep her from breaking it off. You can’t help but feel bad for Jules, even as you cringe at her creepy, obsessive behavior.

I really loved Gallegos’s prose. The story is narrated by Jules, and the writing can range from flowery (“Professor Adams’ weaselly face twitched with frank pleasure, luxuriating in his droll pontifications”) to blunt (“she made love to me then completely shit on my feelings”) underlining Jules’ flair for the dramatic and her wildly changing moods. One moment she’s a poetic romantic, the next angry and immature.  Jules only gets more unhinged as the story progresses, stalking Mo, sending her cryptic texts with song lyrics (how very 2000s emo teen of her) at all hours of the day, and harassing Mo’s other lover, Tyler, the dumb jock ortho. The humor sprinkled throughout Eat Your Heart Out blends well with the horror without feeling out of place, and the pace of the story kept me invested (despite my ADHD) without feeling rushed.

 

Tags: Adult, Bisexual, Book Review, Highly Recommended, Horror Comedy, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Own Voices, Romance
Moonflow by Bitter Karella

Moonflow by Bitter Karella

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Run for It

Genre: Blood & Guts (Gorn), Eco Horror, Eldritch Horror, Myth and Folklore

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Trans main character and author, queer/lesbian major characters

Takes Place in: California

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Animal Abuse, Child Abuse, Child Death, Child Endangerment, Childbirth, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Gore, Incest, Medical Torture/Abuse, Mental Illness, Physical Abuse, Police Harassment, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Sexism, Sexual Abuse, Slurs, Slut-Shaming, Transphobia, Violence, Vomit

Blurb

I see something out there, in the woods. It does not have a face. They call it the King’s Breakfast. One bite and you can understand the full scope of the universe; one bite and you can commune with forgotten gods beyond human comprehension. And it only grows deep in the Pamogo forest, where the trees crowd so tight that the forest floor is pitch black day and night, where rumors of strange cults and disappearing hikers abound. Sarah makes her living growing mushrooms. When a bad harvest leaves her in a desperate fix, the lure of the King’s Breakfast has her journeying into those vast uncharted woods. Her only guide is the most annoying man in the world, and he’s convinced there’s no danger. But as they descend deeper, they realize they’re not alone. Something is luring them into the heart of the forest, and they must answer its call.
Wow, this book… just wow.

How do I even begin to describe this fucked up, queer, psychedelic, gross, erotic, satirical, disturbing, fungal horror story that I sped through because I couldn’t put it down? Every free minute I had was dedicated to reading Moonflow. And I have ADHD; I can never focus on one thing for long unless I’m super interested. But I hyper-fixated on Karella’s weird ass masterpiece of a novel. As a splatterpunk story, the writing is intentionally over the top and there’s a ton of weird, gross stuff going on. There’s lots  of violence and fucking and it’s crude and funny as hell, but also deeply tragic. I personally loved it, but I know splatterpunk is not everyone’s cup of tea and some readers are going to be off put by the sex and violence. I love how trans the book is; eggs, muffing, dead names, TERFs, and chasers are all mentioned. The main character, Sarah, reminded me a lot of myself. She’s fat, trans, and a science nerd who could use a boost of self-confidence and went on three dates with her girlfriend before realizing they were dates. She also really loves her cat, Herman, and most of her desire to earn more money is so she can afford nice things for him, like the wet food he likes.

Sarah was forced to drop out of college due to depression and dysphoria, but at least she can still put the mycology skills she learned there to good use. Sarah grows psychedelic mushrooms for Madeline, a hot trans woman who delas drugs at house parties and is always surrounded by admirers. Madeline invites Sarah to another one of her sordid house parties where Sarah offers her a batch of freshly grown Fire Imps (all the mushrooms in the book are fictional). Unfortunately, Madeline isn’t interested, claiming they’re “last season” and “gauche.” She tells Sarah about a mushroom called The King’s Breakfast that she wants instead. Despite lacking the blue coloration that indicates a high concentration of psilocybin, the King’s Breakfast is strong and (even better) it’s impossible to have a bad trip on it. Even Sarah, who hates getting high around other people, enjoys her experience with the King’s Breakfast, hallucinating a beautiful nature goddess. Madeline asks Sarah to go into the Pamogo forest to collect some spores to grow. Desperate for money, Sarah agrees. Madeline has “a very old and dear and trusted friend” who will act as her guide in theforest.

It turns out the “trusted friend” is Andy, and Sarah immediately pegs him as a doofus. He’s the kind of guy who describes himself as “an ally,” despite it being a term others bestow upon you and not something you can claim. He complains about her selling mushrooms–a free natural resource– because of Capitalism, while ignoring the fact that Sarah is in desperate need of money and how, as a trans college dropout, she can’t just “get a job.” Despite his objections, Andy still guides Sarah through the Pamago forest, using the dead bodies of hikers lost in the forest as morbid trail markers (as everything else in the forest seems to move). Andy always has some sort of logical explanation for the weird things that happen in the Pamogo. Compasses don’t work because of electromagnetic storms. Raccoon bones end up in piles because the trees create a wind tunnel. The mushrooms move as if alive due to acidity in the soil.

Meanwhile, in a town near the Pamogo forest, two women named Skillet and the Hell Slut are watching an innocent looking girl enter the only bar in town. The Hell Slut correctly guesses that she’s a runaway escaping her pimp and saves her from a frat boy harasser outside the bar. After the Hell Slut kicks the guy’s ass, Skillet convinces the girl to go with them to meet their leader “Mother Moonflow.” If you think that sounds like the name of a cult leader, you’d be 100% correct.

Skillet and the Hell Slut belong to a lesbian separatist cult nested in the heart of the Pamogo forest, living off the land. They worship the Green Lady, a nature goddess who resides in Pamogo forest. She was formerly the consort of the Lord of the Forest, a male fertility and nature God with antlers, who she now protects her followers from (or so Mother Moonflow says). Both deities are reminiscent of the Wiccan Mother Goddess and the Horned God. The followers of the Green Lady seem to have similar (though less extreme) beliefs as women who practice Dianic Wicca. The founder of Dianic Wicca, Zsuzsanna Budapest, is also a huge TERF who, despite claiming to be a radical feminist, reduces women to their reproductive organs. Mother Moonflow is similarly obsessed with genitals, she and her group call anyone with a penis a phallic Alec. There are also vaginas painted on everything.

I liked the book’s criticism of a certain type of radical feminism, the kind practiced by TERFs like Z. Budapest. By claiming men (and anyone else with a penis because they reduce gender to genitals) are inherently violent, it means they don’t think men can change this part of their nature. This is an issue because it lets men off the hook for their actions.They can’t help raping/abusing/murdering because they’re men. It’s the same sexist attitude as “boys will be boys,” a sort of twisted, reverse victim blaming. These are also the kind of people who will brush aside sexual assault and violence committed by women. Even though Andy is an idiot, he is right about one thing. Trying to get rid of either the masculine or feminine throws off the balance of nature. Mushrooms are a perfect example of this, as most are hermaphroditic. In other words they contain both “male” and “female” sexual traits, capable of both fertilizing and being fertilized (some mushrooms also have thousands of different sexes).

There’s a lot of focus on Sarah and the Hell Slut being fat and their large bodies are frequently described, more so than the non-fat bodies of other characters, with the exception of Mother Moonflow’s comically large tits. Skillet is clearly a chubby chaser, she loves fondling the Hell Slut’s tummy folds and asks Sarah how much she weighs. She does get called out on it, thank God, but it still felt like Skillet gets away with being very gross. I’m guessing all the focus on Sarah and the Hell Slut’s bodies is because fat people are so often uncomfortable with their bodies (and make other people uncomfortable) from living in a fatphobic society. I loved that two of the main characters were fat women, but as a fatty myself, I felt like all the focus on their bodies was too much, and it admittedly made me uncomfortable.

Each chapter begins with either a quote from Lazarus Sloane’s diary (a man who tried and failed to build a sawmill in the Pamago forest) or Sarah’s mushroom guidebook for the Pamago by a man named T. F. Greengarb. Each gets increasingly unhinged as the story progresses. Sloane is clearly losing his grip on reality as more and more of his workmen start to disappear. Greengarb’s mushroom descriptions also start getting really weird. Early on, he writes about mushrooms like the Candy Cap, said to taste like maple syrup, but later in the book he describes the oily black Fox Candle that tastes like “children’s fear.” I thought this was a nice, creepy touch.

This was a weird read, which usually I’m not a fan of. In this case, I felt it worked well.

Tags: Adult, Blood & Guts, Book Review, Eco Horror, Eldritch, Highly Recommended, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Myths and Folklore, Own Voices, Queer, Trans
Dead First by Johnny Compton

Dead First by Johnny Compton

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Son

Genre:  Ghosts & Hauntings, Mystery, Occult

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Black author and main character, bisexual main character, Korean-American side character

Takes Place in: Texas

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Amputation, Child Death, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Forced Captivity, Gore, Kidnapping, Mental Illness, Police Harassment, Racism, Self-Harm, Suicide, Torture, Violence

Blurb

When private investigator Shyla Sinclair is invited to the looming mansion of mysterious Texan tycoon Saxton Braith, she’s more than a little suspicious. The last thing she expects to see that night is Braith’s assistant driving an iron rod straight through the back of his skull. Scratch that—the last thing she expects to see is Braith’s resurrection afterward.

Braith can’t die, it turns out, but he has no explanation for his immortality, and very few intact memories of his past. Which is why he wants to pay Shyla millions to investigate him, and bring his long-buried history to light.

Shyla can’t help but be intrigued, but she’s also trapped by the offer. Braith has made it clear that he knows she’s the only person he can trust with his secret, because he knows all about hers.

Bold, atmospheric, and utterly frightening, Johnny Compton’s Dead First is spine-chilling supernatural horror about the pursuit of power and the undying need for reckoning.

Private investigator Shyla has just finished a case for a man named Massimo Dante, who thought he was the antichrist. He paid her well enough that she was able to buy herself a house and help her cousins out financially. She doesn’t need to accept billionaire Sexton Braith’s case, but curiosity gets the better of her. Braith wants Shyla to determine why he’s immortal, which his trusted chauffer, Remy, demonstrates by shoving a fire poker through his skull. Thoroughly freaked out, Shyla is ready to turn him down. Yet, Braith implies he knows her biggest secret–that she killed a man when she was young–and will bring it to light if she doesn’t help him. Little does Shyla know that Braith is hiding his own, much darker, secrets.

I was instantly hooked by the premise for Dead First. I’m a sucker for horror mysteries. While the first half of the book felt a bit slow for my taste, the pace really picks by the midpoint, and each reveal feels more horrific than the last. What starts out as a supernatural mystery eventually morphs into full blown horror. Interesting to note, Dead First seems to take place in the same world as Compton’s Bram Stoker Award nominated novel The Spite House, as there’s a passing reference to The Spite House at the very end of the book.

I liked how Shyla was more morally ambiguous than most protagonists. She’s willing to do some pretty messed up stuff for the ones she loves and to protect her secret. She’s driven by revenge and you can tell her anger is poisoning her, but she’s unwilling to let go of it. Shyla has trouble opening up to others and past experiences have hardened her. This is part of why she broke up with her girlfriend, Jinh. Shyla’s relationship with Jinh is complicated, to say the least. The two clearly still care for each other, but Shyla seems scared to get too close. Shyla first met her ex when she went on Jinh’s podcast, a blend of true crime and supernatural lore that has fans all over the world. Jinh has the ability to speak to the dead, though Shyla doesn’t really believe in Jinh’s power. While I liked Jinh, I felt like her character could have used more development.

I appreciated how the racism in the book is very subtle. You’re not hit over the head with it, but it’s there, hinted at and never outright stated.  For example, Shyla is always concerned about being harassed by the police. If you are a non-Black person who was somehow in a coma all through 2020, or just completely unaware of how cops treat Black people, you might not pick up on it. But it’s obvious Shyla must worry about cops and the busybodies who call them because she’s Black, even if it’s never spelled out for the audience. I liked that Dead First doesn’t feel like it’s written for non-Black people to learn about the horrors of racism. Instead, it assumes the reader is already aware of the systemic racism Black people deal with every day and Compton doesn’t have to delve in to it because it’s not part of the story. As much as I appreciate racism as horror stories, it’s also nice to read Black stories that aren’t focused on racism and Black trauma. Shyla does have trauma, but it has nothing to do with her race (other than the police not working as hard to find a missing Black child).

While the book initially feels more like a supernatural mystery thriller than straight horror, there’s still plenty of gore and some genuinely frightening moments in the second half of the book.  I personally enjoyed it, but I can see the mystery crowd being turned off by the violence and torture, while horror fans may not want to wait through the detective procedural parts of the story to get to the scary stuff. But I believe readers will enjoy the tense, haunted atmosphere, one of the story’s strongest points.

 

 

Tags: Adult, African American, Asian, Asian American, BIPOC, Bisexual, Black, Book Review, Ghosts/Haunting, Korean, Korean-American, LGBTQIA, Mystery, Occult, Own Voices, Recommended
Greedy by Callie Kazumi

Greedy by Callie Kazumi

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Bantam

Genre: Psychological Horror

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Multiracial (hafu) Japanese-British author and major character, Japanese minor characters

Takes Place in: Japan

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Animal Death, Body Shaming, Bullying, Cannibalism, Child Death, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Eating Disorder, Suicide, Violence, Vomit

Blurb

They will kill me soon, Edward Cook thinks. And when the Yakuza are unable to collect what he owes, Ed realizes, theyʼll go after his wife and child next. Broke, desperate, and unemployed, he stumbles upon an unusual ad: Chef wanted! Private chef for a high-profile businesswoman. One million yen per day.

Ed accepts the job. He hasnʼt earned any Michelin stars, but he knows his way around a kitchen. Leaving his life in Tokyo behind, he departs for an opulent estate in the mountains owned by the enigmatic and reclusive Hazeline Yamamoto, a disgraced socialite with a predatorʼs smile and an exacting palate. Hazelineʼs world is one of taste, connoisseurship, and experimentation—she is a certified gourmand. But when you can afford filet mignon for every meal, you begin to seek out the strange and forbidden.

The closer Ed gets to Hazeline and the brighter future that she promises—if he remains loyal—the nearer he is to realizing the chilling truth about her altruism. In this shadow world of unimaginable wealth, there are worse monsters than two-bit gangsters. The wind blowing through Hazeline’s home carries the sound of screaming, and Ed finds himself feeding all kinds of beasts.

Perfect for fans of Parasite and The Menu—enticing as a starter, meaty as a main dish, and full of satisfying just-desserts—Greedy is a suspenseful poison-pen note to classism and an ode to Japanese cuisine, a horror-tinged thriller unsuitable for vegetarians but full of shocking delights for every reader.

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

Food-centric horror always makes me hungry, and this one had me craving meat. There’s a reason the cover warns it’s not safe for vegetarians.

Ed is a British ex-pat living in Japan with his Japanese wife, Sayuri, and their young daughter, Kaori. After traveling to Japan and falling head over heels for Sayuri, he lands a sales job at an English-speaking company. Unfortunately, COVID hits the company hard, and Ed gets laid off. Instead of job hunting, he starts spending the day at pachinko parlors and soon becomes addicted to the rush of gambling. Now Ed has wasted their savings, developed a significant gambling debt, and gotten involved with the yakuza, all of which he hides from his wife. He knows Sayuri will never forgive him if she finds out, but his lack of a job and the financial strain on their family is already causing marital tension. Desperate for money, Ed finally spots a job ad in the newspaper which may be the answer to his prayers. A high-profile businesswoman needs a discreet personal chef and is willing to pay one million yen a day (around $6,345 USD) to the right person. While not officially trained in the culinary arts, Ed spent time working as a sous chef at a few terrible restaurant chains in England and his wife has taught him to cook Japanese dishes, so he figures he can bullshit his way through an interview.

I liked how Ed is a flawed yet sympathetic character. His addiction was presented not as a moral failing (that would be Ed’s decision to lie to his wife), but as an illness. Most forms of gambling are illegal in Japan, but gambling addiction is still a huge problem, especially after COVID-19 when more people turned to overseas online gambling. Currently, it’s estimated that there are about 1.97 million people in Japan who actively use online casinos. Some even take yami baito or “dark part-time jobs” to pay for their gambling debt. These jobs, often advertised online, promise lots of quick cash for seemingly easy tasks, but don’t mention they require illegal activities. You would think that Ed would be concerned that this too good to be true job as a personal chef might actually be a yami baito, but as we quickly learn, Ed tends to ignore clear warning signs.

*trigger warning for discussions of body size and eating disorders*

It turns out the high-profile business woman is none other than Hazeline Yamamoto, a wealthy recluse and the widow of billionaire Botan Yamamoto. Ed is surprised by how Western Hazeline is, rejecting both restraint and conformity, things typically valued in Japanese society. She tells Ed about being growing up hāfu in Japan, a term used to describe people who have one Japanese parent and one non-Japanese parent. Like the author, who is the daughter of a Japanese mother born and raised in Brazil and a Scottish and Columbian father, both Hazeline Yamamoto and Ed’s daughter have one Japanese parent and one non-Japanese parent. In Hazeline’s case her mother was a British model and her father a Japanese businessman. On top of the struggles of being mixed race in a homogenous society, Hazeline was also bigger than her Japanese classmates. She was bullied for being “chubby” and not fitting into Japanese clothing, despite not being overweight by western standards.

In Japan, less than 40% of adults are considered overweight, and Japan has one of the lowest obesity rates in the world, most likely due to walkable cities and the traditional Japanese diet being so healthy.  The average size for a Japanese woman is 1.58 m (5’2”) and 55.3 kg (122 lbs) according to World Data, while women in the UK are on average 1.64 m (5’4”) and 73.6 kg (162 lbs).

On the flip side, over 10% of Japanese women are underweight, and for women in their twenties, one in five are underweight. Hazeline felt so pressured to be thin that, in order to fit in, she became anorexic. There’s unfortunately a lot of stigma surrounding eating disorders in Japan and a lack of support for those who have them.

But after her husband died, Hazeline realized she was sick and tired of being hungry all the time and living as a hermit meant there was no one to care about Hazeline’s body. She tells Ed that the only joy she had left is from the food she consumes. “What use is dying skinny and hungry? When I join Lucifer, I shall be plump and happy, and I can’t bring myself to give a damn what anyone thinks about it.” And that’s where Ed comes in.

*end trigger warning*

Hazeline wants Ed to prepare her exquisite, inventive meals. As Hazeline puts it “I don’t eat to survive, I eat to savor. It should always be worth it, every mouthful a justification for my body.” She especially loves meat and tells Ed “…a meal without meat is merely a side dish.” When Ed serves her duck with plum jam as part of his interview, Hazeline very proudly tells him how she killed and gutted it herself. Kazumi touches on the Burakumin during her story, a historically “outcaste” or “untouchable” social class, occupying the lowest level of the feudal Japanese social hierarchy.

The Burakumin are those descended from people employed in occupations considered taboo by orthodox Shintō and Buddhism beliefs about not killing living things or touching the dead. So, undertakers, executioners, leatherworkers, and, of course, butchers. Discrimination against those who work as butchers continues in Japan to this day. So, it’s weird that Hazeline has a philosophy that it’s good practice to kill your meals yourself. As the final step of his interview Ed must slaughter a chicken for food.

I didn’t like that the Japanese words were italicized. When non-English words are italicized, I feel it labels them as “exotic” and other. Editor Natalia Iwanek goes into detail about why italicizing non-English words is problematic here. I suspect, however, that this was the editor’s decision rather than the author’s. There is a glossary in the back of the book of Japanese words used in the book, which is helpful as Kazumi doesn’t have to interrupt the flow of the story to explain the words to an English-speaking audience who may not be familiar with what an izakaya is or what majide means.

It’s pretty evident what the “big reveal” of the book is early on, and most readers will quickly figure out what Ed is trying so hard to deny. Somehow, that makes it even more suspenseful because you KNOW what’s going to happen, but that doesn’t stop you from praying it won’t. It’s horrible, like watching a car crash in slow motion. You’re screaming at Ed to figure it out and get out of there, but he keeps dismissing the very apparent red flags. Even though there wasn’t any obvious horror until the end of the book, and not much on-page violence, my anxiety levels were through the roof, dreading what was coming. Greedy is a book that I absolutely devoured (pun intended).

Tags: Adult, Asian, Asian British, BIPOC, Book Review, Japanese, Own Voices, Psychological Horror, Recommended
The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts by Kim Fu

The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts by Kim Fu

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher:  Tin House

Genre:  Gothic, Psychological Horror

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Chinese American author and main character

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Animal Death, Child Abuse, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Illness, Incest, Kidnapping, Medical Torture/Abuse, Medical Procedures, Miscarriage, Necrophilia, Oppression, Mental Illness,  Physical Abuse, Rape/Sexual Assault, Suicide

Blurb

In the aftermath of her mother’s death, Eleanor is unmoored. For years, her mother orchestrated every detail of her life—from meals, to laundry, to finances—as Eleanor focused on her career as an online therapist. Left to navigate the world on her own, Eleanor clings to her mother’s final directive: use her inheritance to buy a house.

Desperate to obey her mother one last time, Eleanor impulsively buys a model home in a valley-turned-construction site, a picturesque development steeped in a shadowy history. It feels like a fresh start, until the rain comes—an endless, torrential downpour. As water seeps in through the house’s cracks, the line between what is real and what is not begins to blur. Haunted by the stories of her clients, a stream of workmen and bureaucrats she can’t trust, and visions of ghosts from her past and present, Eleanor’s reality unravels, and she is forced to reckon with the secrets she’s buried and the choices she’s made.

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts is a horror story about every millennial’s worst nightmare: being expected to navigate the world of adulthood without any guidance or support, and buying a home.

Eleanor Fan is a therapist whose mother, Lele, has recently passed away from cancer. Her dying wish was for her daughter to buy a house. Like many millennials, owning her own home seemed like an impossibility for Eleanor until her frugal mother passed and left her enough for a modest house. But even with her inheritance, Eleanor is struggling to find somewhere livable. Her first realtor, Mary, only shows her crappy, one bedroom condos, and Eleanor is outbid each time she applies. Her new realtor, Matt, drives her through a dying town, into the forest and shows her a model home in a newly developed area. The developer went bankrupt after building the model homes, and the new developer is waiting for the summer to continue building. Eleanor loves the house, though is unsure about buying.Matt encourages her to jump on the opportunity as soon as possible, which means waiving the inspection (huge red flag). What seems like a dream come true turns into a nightmare when the house quickly becomes unlivable.

I’m lucky enough to be married to a super competent gen Xer who knows how to repair most anything, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have bothered with home ownership, even if I lived in an alternate universe where I could have afforded one on my own. I don’t know how to fix a cracked pipe, install a dishwasher, or build a bookshelf that wasn’t purchased from Ikea (all things my wife has done easily). I’ve never even mowed a lawn or cleaned gutters! And forget taking care of it, just trying to purchase a home can be a confusing nightmare. There’s the whole process of applying for a mortgage, finding the right real estate agent, putting in a bid on the house, hiring a home inspector, figuring out internet service and all that crap. It’s overwhelming! No wonder Eleanor has no idea what she’s doing.

The house she buys was cheaply and quickly made to look good, not actually serve as a home. And even if it was? Some of the design choices were made with form over function in mind, like the giant floor to ceiling windows with no blinds or curtains. Not only do the windows lack insulation, there’s zero privacy (thank God Eleanor lives in the middle of nowhere), and there will be a ton of light during the day, whether she wants it or not. Unfortunately, Eleanor didn’t consider any of these things before buying the house, and when she does finally notice the above issues and tries to solve them with curtains, she learns that curtains are really freaking expensive. And that’s just the start of the problems. With a seemingly endless rain pouring down on her new home comes numerous leaks that start as a trickle under the windows but quickly start damaging the home. The rain gets in the front door lock and jams it, forcing Eleanor to call a sketchy locksmith who charges her $600 and then makes vague threats about what will happen if she doesn’t pay.

There are a lot of creepy men in The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts. Eleanor’s grad school mentor raped her. her work colleague, Teddy, lusts after her even though Eleanor sees him as a father figure (his wife even assumes they slept together). Her real estate agent, Matt, clearly conned her. One of Elanor’s new patients, Jared, is a raging misogynist who refers to women as “females” and wants to use Eleanor to practice talking to women yet constantly speaks down to her and ignores her. Eleanor just doesn’t seem to have good luck with men. There is her ex, who by all accounts seems like a decent guy, but he wants nothing to do with her because of her weird attachment to her mother.

Millennials like Eleanor have had it rough. We reached adulthood during the Great Recession of 2008, and many of us were forced to move back in with our Boomer parents (assuming that was even an option). Even those of us with college degrees, something we were told by adults we had to get if we wanted to a good paying job, weren’t having any luck. The jobs we’d been prepared for weren’t hiring people without experience, and retail and food service jobs didn’t want someone they considered “overqualified.” Meanwhile, we had a ton of student debt we couldn’t pay off, wages were stagnant, and the cost of living was soaring. That means we were forced to put off typical adult milestones like marriage, having kids, and yes, buying a house. With schools getting rid of shop and home economics courses many of us also weren’t taught how to fix a car, sew a button, or a cook a meal (thanks Ronald Regan).

Eleanor’s mom completely failed in preparing her daughter for the real world. After Eleanor is raped by her grad school mentor she drops out of her PhD program and regresses emotionally (something Teddy points out is common after trauma) and her mother comes to take care of her. She handles Eleanor’s money and keeps the books for her practice as dealing with money bores and frightens Eleanor (all her bank accounts are joint accounts with her mother). Lele cleans Eleanor’s apartment, takes out her trash, buys her groceries, cooks her meals, and does her laundry for her.  Eleanor is so coddled that her mother even feeds her apple slices like a baby bird while she’s working and clips her toenails. The irony is not lost on me that Eleanor works as a therapist, helping other people with their lives, when she can’t even get her own shit together and would definitely benefit from some therapy herself.

Isolation is a recurring theme throughout the story. Eleanor is physically isolated in the valley where she lives and where the rain never seems to end, but also emotionally isolated from others after the passing of her mother. She has no romantic partner, no real friends, and only a distant aunt for family. She doesn’t even see her patients in person anymore, instead opting to focus solely on telehealth. The story is strongly implied to take place right after COVID, when everyone was feeling the despair that comes from isolation. But it seems Eleanor never really connected to people after the pandemic.

I should point out that, despite the title, this is not a haunted house story. The “ghosts” are people that Eleanor knows (or knew) that appear in her mind and talk to her, more hallucination than specter. But while there are no literal ghosts, Fu still instills tension with modern fears like home ownership, isolation, climate change, and losing one’s parents.  It feels like a gothic novel, except the house isn’t old and decaying but new and decaying, while the never-ending rain, which is slowly eroding the surrounding landscape, creates an oppressive atmosphere. There isn’t really a plot so much as a series of events that unfolds in Eleanor’s life as we watch her mental state fall apart along with her home, but it still grabbed my attention and never felt like the story dragged.

Tags: Adult, Asian, Asian Canadian, BIPOC, Book Review, Gothic, Hong Konger, Own Voices, Psychological Horror, Recommended
These Bodies Ain’t Broken Edited by Madeline Dyer

These Bodies Ain’t Broken Edited by Madeline Dyer

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Page Street Publishing

Genre: Body Horror, Demon, Historic Horror, Monster, Myths and Folklore, Romance, Vampire

Audience: Young Adult

Diversity: Authors and characters with disabilities including ADHD, anxiety, agoraphobia, Autism, celiac disease, chronic pain, Crohn’s disease, diabetes, Down syndrome, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, Fibromyalgia, mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), neurofibromatosis, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), PTSD, and substance use disorder. Non-binary main character and author, agender main character, biracial Haitian side character, bisexual main character.

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Ableism, Amputation,  Animal Death, Body Shaming, Bullying, Cannibalism, Child Abuse, Child Death, Classism, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Forced Captivity, Gore, Homophobia, Illness, Kidnapping, Medical Procedures, Oppression, Mental Illness, Physical Abuse, Self-Harm, Sexism, Slurs,  Suicide, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Victim Blaming, Violence

Blurb

A monstrous transformation within your own body.
A sacrificial imprisonment.
A fight to the death against an ancient evil.

These stories showcase disabled characters winning against all odds.

Outsmarting deadly video games, hunting the predatory monster in the woods, rooting out evil within their community, finding love and revenge with their newly turned vampire friend—this anthology upends expectations of the roles disabled people can play in horror. With visibly and invisibly disabled characters whose illnesses include Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, Crohn’s disease, diabetes, PTSD, and more, each entry also includes a short essay from the author about the conditions portrayed in their stories to further contextualize their characters’ perspectives. From breaking ancient curses to defying death itself, these 13 horror stories cast disabled characters as heroes we can all root for.

Contributors include bestselling and award-winning as well as emerging authors: Dana Mele, Lillie Lainoff, Soumi Roy, Anandi, Fin Leary, S.E. Anderson, K. Ancrum, Pintip Dunn, Lily Meade, Mo Netz, P.H. Low, and Carly Nugent.

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

Horror isn’t exactly known for having good disability rep, so it was great having an anthology written by authors with disabilities because there was so much variety in representation. There was everything from Crohn’s disease to Ehlers-Danlos syndrome to PTSD. In some stories, a character’s disability played a huge role (Baby Teeth, Within the Walls, The Worst of It), and it’s only mentioned in passing in others (When the Night Calls, Kissed by Death). At the end of each story, the author would write about how they chose to represent disability in their work, and some even shared their experiences with their own disabilities and how they related to their stories.

I loved that both invisible and visible disabilities were featured. I have invisible disabilities myself (ADHD and mental illness), but for a long time I didn’t consider myself disabled because, like many people, I thought the only disabilities that existed were visible. This caused me a great deal of stress because I was always trying to compare myself to neurotypical people. It never occurred to me to ask for accommodations because I thought I should be able to “power through” any challenges on willpower alone. Engaging with the disability community online helped me be more accepting of my own disability. I learned that I wasn’t “broken,” the difficulties I had were not moral failings, and having a disability is not a “bad” thing. I discovered that the things I struggled with due to ADHD and mental illness were not my fault, it was just a difference in brain chemistry that I was born with. Accepting my disability meant I also accepted help and learned to function with my disability instead of always fighting against it. It was empowering. So, reading stories about ADHD and mental health in a disability anthology felt incredibly validating. Not only that, but these characters with disabilities got to be the heroes. It was awesome reading about a woman with ADHD get revenge on the men who wronged her and a non-binary person whose mental illness was not the source of horror in the story. Another great thing about These Bodies Ain’t Broken is the amount of intersectionality. There were queer characters, non-binary characters, Asian characters, etc.

This review would be unreasonably long if I examined every story in the collection I will focus on a few that stood out to me. When the Night Calls by Soumi Roy takes place in 19th century Bengal. Charu is a newly married 16-year-old girl whose best friend Malati, an educated city girl who is fiercely independent, has disappeared without a trace. Malati’s cold husband claims that his wife was lured into the forest and taken by the Nishi Daak for being so willful. He says it was Malati’s own fault she was taken, but Charu isn’t sure what to believe. Malati always told her the Nishi Daak was just a story told to keep women in line. Although Charu does her best to be an obedient wife and daughter-in-law her curiosity gets the better of her and she stumbles across the terrible secret kept by the village men; the reason women and girls of the village keep disappearing. This bloody story of feminine vengeance and Bengali monsters was an extremely satisfying read. I also enjoyed it as Charu and I share a disability, ADHD (although it’s not named it the story the author reveals that Charu is neurodiverse). I related to the frustration of making mistakes, even when you’re trying your hardest, and how painful it is when people around you attribute this to laziness or “just not paying attention.”

The first line of Thy Creature by Lillie Lainoff draws you in immediately. “The hardest thing about coming back to life is remembering how to breathe.” Told in the second person, this Frankenstein inspired tale tells the story of a girl brought back to life by her college boyfriend, Cal, after she dies in a hiking accident. Despite being a mediocre boyfriend at best, the protagonist seems perfectly happy to settle and set her expectations low when it comes to Cal, especially since she now owes him for bringing her back to life. The story reminded me so much of all the straight women who settle for awful men because they don’t think they deserve better. Hey, there’s a reason single women are happier.

Dating while disabled comes with its own set of challenges especially when dating someone without a disability. The non-disabled person may only date someone with a disability out of pity or because they fetishize their disability. This also applies to anyone who isn’t skinny, white, cisgender, etc. (aka has their own category on Pornhub), so heaven help you if you belong to more than one of those marginalized groups (intersectionality). Then there’s all the misconceptions, like the assumption that people with disabilities aren’t sexual (obviously Ace people with disabilities exist, but that’s a sexual orientation, and has nothing to do with their disabilities). As Lainoff’s protagonist slowly builds confidence, she also learns she doesn’t have to settle just because she has a disability and that maybe her boyfriend isn’t all that great.

In Ravenous by Carly Nugent, the protagonist, Linden, is struggling with depression and passive suicidal ideation. She refuses to monitor her blood sugar or manage her diabetes which has already landed her in the ER once. Linden has decided she’s just going not to accept her diabetes, forcing her mother to help her manage most of it, and she’d rather die from it than live with it. I like that Nugent wrote about the difficulty someone with a chronic illness goes through when they’re first diagnosed. Linden is still in the denial and depression stages of her grief after learning her life will never be the same. But over the course of the story, she learns to accept that she has diabetes, and it doesn’t mean her life is over. I love that the author didn’t portray disability in a negative light while also acknowledging that yes, finding out that you’re going to have to manage a chronic illness for the rest of your life can really suck.

Another story I really liked was House of Hades by Dana Mele. House of Hades is a virtual world filled with gamers and virtual replicas of the dead. The tech was originally funded by some billionaire who wanted to live forever. But when he learned that you can’t really become an immortal machine, he sold the program, which was used it to create House of Hades. They call the digital clones “ghosts,” which include historical figures like Shakespeare and Marie Antoinette. The game is so realistic that if you die in the game you can die in real life (so Matrix rules) unless you “wake up,” which is why the game requires a buddy system. The voice command “wake up” triggers the exit protocol. Unfortunately, you need someone else to trigger it for you, you can’t exit yourself, which seems like a serious design flaw.

Ode and Era are two gamers who like to hang out in House of Hades. Ode is currently grounded, and isn’t supposed to be playing the game because they’ve been abusing pills and recently had an overdose on a drug called V (aka Viper, the story’s fictional drug). Their parents recently got divorced and they’re struggling with it. When they go back to Hades with Era, Ode is shocked to discover they’ve been separated. Now Ode is all alone in a dark little town, seemingly empty, but something is watching them. They are forced to solve puzzles and play the town’s strange game to try and find Era and a way out.

I thought the setting was very creative, and I like that the protagonist was non-binary like me. In the story notes Mele explains how she didn’t like the way horror villains were always portrayed as mentally ill. As someone with my own mental illness and who has spent time inpatient at mental health hospitals (or as I like to call it “a grippy sock vacation”) it hurts when I hear people talk about the “dangerous crazies” in the psych ward or explain away a person’s terrible behavior (racism, violence, abuse, etc.) by saying “they’re crazy.” They’re not mentally ill, they’re just awful people! And mentally ill people are more likely to be the victims of violent crime than commit it. Only a very small percent of violent crimes (around 5%) are committed by people with mental illness. Yet the myth of the “crazed killer” prevails in horror. So, I appreciate that Mele made her protagonist mentally ill.

One of my favorite stories in the collection was The Weepers and Washer-Women of Lake Lomond by Madeline Dyer (the editor of the anthology), though I think the story would have worked better if it was a full-length novel. It was like I was being served this amazing meal, but I had to shove it in my mouth in five minutes when I really wanted to savor it. It didn’t necessarily feel rushed, I just think I would have enjoyed it more if I had had more time with the characters, the setting, and the lore because it was all so great! In the story the protagonist, Bianca, who has multiple disabilities including Ehlers-Danlos, POTS, and MCAS, is pretending to be her twin sister, Remi, so she can take part in the World Kickboxing Championship on the island of Loch Lomond. Bianca is convinced the island had something to do with the death or their cousin, Mari, who competed on Loch Lomond a ten years prior. Remi’s boyfriend, Blake, does not think this is a good idea, but Bianca, who hates being treated like she’s “broken,” is determined. She’s thought of everything; Remi faked an injury months ago to explain away Bianca’s crutches. The competition takes place in pitch dark, the organizers claiming that it’s to make it more fair for blind and low-vision competitors (a blind girl won the championship last time), so no one will see Bianca using a mobility aid. And she only needs to stay in the competition long enough to find out what happened to Mari, so Bianca doesn’t necessarily have to win her first match.

I can understand Blake’s hesitation to help Bianca go through with her plan, because at first, I thought Bianca was foolish to try and pretend to be her sister. While both sister’s have Ehlers-Danlos, Remi only got stretchy joints, while Bianca got the whole shebang that can come with the condition. How would Bianca be able to compete in such a physically demanding competition? And immediately after arriving on the island,things start to go wrong. There’s no food that Bianca can safely eat, and the training masters confiscate her medication and medical drinks claiming it will give her an “unfair advantage.” Dizzy with fatigue and illness she tries to bow out of the championship, but is forced to compete. And when she enters the dark arena, the training master takes Bianca’s crutches. Worst of all, her opponent doesn’t seem quite human. I thought she was guaranteed to be monster chow. But then her disability ends up being the reason she survives. *spoiler* Because Bianca’s crutches (presumably made of durable steel, which contains iron) can hurt her adversaries. As Bianca says at the end of the story “I’m Bianca. And that’s how I’m alive. Because I’m disabled. Because I need mobility aids. Because I fought with my crutch.” *spoiler ends* I absolutely love this twist. Disabilities are often to assumed to be a “weakness” but it ends up being Bianca’s strength.

Three of the stories used the second person point of view, which is when the story addresses the reader directly using the pronoun “you” when describing the protagonists’ actions (i.e. you shook in fear when faced with the monster from your dreams). This is a tricky to do, and doesn’t always work well, as you’re basically telling the reader what they’re doing and feeling. But it’s also more intimate and the reader gets a greater feel for what the protagonist is going through. I liked that some of the authors used this for their storytelling. It gives  you more of a feel for what it’s was like living with a specific disability.

While not all the stories in the collection were as strong as others, I think this is a solid anthology. It was great to both see myself in characters and learn about different types of disabilities, as there’s so much variation. I also love that the stories defied stereotypes like disabled people not being worthy of love, or mentally ill people being dangerous. The only thing that surprised me was that there were no stories by authors who were blind, low vision, or Deaf/deaf, and there was only one story with a character who used a wheelchair. Perhaps Madeline Dyer wanted to focus on disabilities which don’t get as much media attention or she simply wasn’t able to get authors to represent those disabilities. This isn’t really a criticism, just something that surprised me. Perhaps I just need to reexamine my own biases when it comes to disabilities.

Tags: ADHD, Agender, agoraphobia, Anthology, Anxiety Disorder, Autism, BIPOC, Biracial, Bisexual, Body Horror, Book Review, Cane user, Celiac Disease, Chronic Pain, Crohn’s disease, Demon, diabetes, Disability, Down syndrome, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, Haitian, Historic Horror, LGBTQIA, MCAS, Monster, Myths and Folklore, Neurodiversity, neurofibromatosis, Non-binary, Own Voices, POTS, PTSD, Recommended, Romance, Substance Use Disorder, Trans, vampire, Wheelchair user, Young Adult
Pour One for the Devil by Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.

Pour One for the Devil by Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Lanternfish Press

Genre: Gothic

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Author is Mackinac Bands of Chippewa and Ottawa Indian, main character is American Indian (unknown tribe), Gullah side characters

Takes Place in: South Carolina Sea Islands

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Animal Death, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Forced Captivity,  Incest, Racism

Blurb

When Dr. Van Vierlans receives an invitation from Mrs. Elizabeth Van der Horst to give a lecture at her island mansion off the coast of South Carolina, he doesn’t think twice. There’s a generous honorarium, and he relishes the chance to revisit the Sea Islands, where he once studied the Gullah language.

The lavish house he arrives at is strangely out of time. No other historians appear, nor does an audience, as he passes the time chatting in Gullah with the household servants. Just when his suspicions become difficult to ignore, Mrs. Van der Horst plies him with a sumptuous feast that distracts him from her true motives–which may prove more sinister than anything he’s prepared to imagine.

I first read Van Alst’s work in the Indigenous dark fiction anthology, Never Whistle at Night. His story, The Longest Street in the World stood out to me because it was the first time I’d read an Indigenous story about an “Urban Indian.”  The story took place in Chicago, home to the first Urban Indian center in the country, and author Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.

Van Alst’s main character in Pour One for the Devil, Dr. Van Vierlans, is also an urban Indian and an Ivy League trained junior professor of anthropology. Already I love this because we not only get to see an American Indian man with a PhD, but he’s also an anthropologist to boot. So often anthropologists are portrayed in media as white people studying “primitive” Indigenous people in remote areas, and the field itself is the product of colonialism, so it was refreshing to see an Indigenous anthropologist.

This Southern Gothic story begins with Dr. Van Vierlans being lured to the estate of the wealthy, white Elizabeth Morgenstern, with the promise of a generous honorarium for a lecture about the Coosaw shell rings. I was already getting vibes before the professor arrived, but then Auntie Delilah, a Gullah domestic worker at Morgenstern’s home, attempts to warn the doctor that both Elizabeth and the house are dangerous. Either due to ignorance (has he never seen a horror movie?!) or greed, Dr. Van Vierlans decides to ignore the warnings and stays anyway.

While taking a nap in one of the guest rooms Dr. Van Vierlans has a dream that the Devil is sitting on his chest. The Devil asks for a story about himself, and the doctor agrees to give him one, but in exchange Lucifer must leave him alone until Van Vierlans dies. The devil warns him that his death will be sooner than he expects, but even this isn’t enough to scare him away from Elizabeth’s House. It’s interesting that the devil appears to him at all,since Van Vierlans supports the traditional ways, unlike his father who insists on practicing Christianity.

At dinner the professor and his host engage in verbal combat. Dr. Van Vierlans finds Elizabeth Morgenstern, or Miss Lizzy, as she prefers to be called, fascinating. As a man from Chicago, he finds her rural Southern ways to be quaint. And because he’s an anthropologist, and familiar with the etiquette of different cultures, he’s able to impress Miss Lizzie with his impeccable manners. Elizabeth tells him about the automatons built by her late husband, Peter, which Delilah believes are powered by spirits.  

I like how the American Indian man is portrayed as the cosmopolitan city mouse, while the country mouse is the wealthy white woman. He has studied her culture enough that he can easily blend in and impress the old white lady. Dr. Van Vierlans also becomes friendly with Auntie Delilah as he studied the Gullah as part of his work as an anthropologist and speaks Gullah creole (though Delilah points out he speaks it “like a little boy”).  

I also really appreciated how Gullah is translated into a more formal style of English; a sociolect associated with the wealth and intelligence. Mitford popularized the idea of U (upper class) and non-U (non-upper class) English in the 1950s, which she claimed could determine what social class one belonged to. A person’s accent is also strongly associated with class. Because class is often erroneously tied to intelligence people will infer how smart someone is by what kind of English they speak. For example, standardized grammar often aligns with high IQ scores, and IQ tests have been show to favor people who are white and privileged. And no, it’s not because they’re smarter, IQ tests just aren’t accurate measures of intelligence. Gullah used to be (and sometimes still is) erroneously considered a mark of ignorance. By translating Gullah into “upper class English” (which Delilah and her sisters also speak fluently) Van Alst demonstrates that not only does the creole language have its own grammar and syntax rules, but that Gullah speakers are just as intelligent as those who speak a more formal English. The Gullah people are also described as “West Africa’s best and brightest farmers” who were enslaved and “forced to use their agricultural genius to grow rice crops on stolen land.” Again, Van Alst directly contradicts the racist stereotype that enslaved Black people were ignorant.

Auntie Delilah (whose true name is Nenge) was my favorite character. She is ethnically Mende (one of the largest ethnic groups in Sierra Leone), and her father and grandfather were Kamajor, respected hunters/warriors. She describes her childhood teachers as foolish white folks from up North who saw her and her people as souls to be saved. She learned about the bible and took her name from there as a middle finger to white Christians and the patriarchy. Delilah is happily unmarried and childfree, but is far from being a mammy stereotype. Instead, she’s chosen to remain single and without children because she enjoys her independence and doesn’t have the patience for a husband and child. I also always enjoy seeing happily childfree women in fiction.

I think some of the strongest aspect of Van Alst’s writing are his descriptions of nature and Elizabeth’s house. You could practically feel the humidity and smell the lush vegetation. I also enjoyed the humor, which balanced out the horror well. The ending was weird, not in a bad way, but it did leave me yearning for more of an explanation. It felt to me like the book ended abruptly before the story had finished, but I’m also not someone who enjoys vague endings.

Tags: Adult, American Indian, BIPOC, Black, Book Review, Chippewa, Gothic, Ottawa, Own Voices, Recommended

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