adult | Diversity in Horror Fiction

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, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Myths and Folklore, Own Voices, Queer, Trans

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

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.

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

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, Book Review, Chippewa, Gothic, Ottawa, Own Voices

On Sunday She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Saga Press

Genre: Gothic, Historic Horror, Werebeast

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Black characters and author, Queer main character and author

Takes Place in: Georgia, USA

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Animal Death, Body Shaming, Cannibalism, Child Death, Childbirth, Death, Gore, Homophobia, Incest, Miscarriage, Physical Abuse, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Self-Harm, Sexual Abuse, Slurs, Slut-Shaming, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence, Vomit

Blurb

When Judith Rice fled her childhood home, she thought she’d severed her abusive mother’s hold on her. She didn’t have a plan or destination, just a desperate need to escape. Drawn to the forests of southern Georgia, Jude finds shelter in a house as haunted by its violent history as she is by her own.

Jude embraces the eccentricities of the dilapidated house, soothing its ghosts and haints, honoring its blood-soaked land. And over the next thirteen years, Jude blossoms from her bitter beginnings into a wisewoman, a healer.

But her hard-won peace is threatened when an enigmatic woman shows up on her doorstep. The woman is beautiful but unsettling, captivating but uncanny. Ensnared by her desire for this stranger, Jude is caught off guard by brutal urges suddenly simmering beneath her skin. As the woman stirs up memories of her escape years ago, Jude must confront the calls of violence rooted in her bloodline.

Haunting and thought-provoking, On Sunday She Picked Flowers explores retribution, family trauma, and the power of building oneself back up after breaking down.

Jude (short for Judith) does what I’m sure many women have dreamed of doing. After killing her abuser she runs away from her terrible life to live alone in a haunted house in the forest where she becomes a wisewoman/healer and takes a mysterious lover who may or not be a beast. On Sunday She Picked Flowers reads like a Southern Gothic fairytale, if “Once Upon a Time” were 1965 and “a land far away” was Georgia. This is not a pretty story with a pure, fair maiden who is rescued from her miserable life. Instead, our heroine, 41-year-old Jude, is described as “too fat, too Black, too tall, and too damn ugly” (at least by her teachers and classmates) and is forced to save herself from her wicked mother and the curse of transgenerational trauma.

Jude has lived with her abusive, religious mother for her entire life. She doesn’t understand why her mother, whom she calls Ma’am, hates her so much, only that she does. Ma’am will beat her daughter for the smallest offense then turn around and act like nothing happened (this is known as the cycle of abuse). Her two aunts, Phyillis and Vivian, tell Jude it’s her own fault she’s abused for being “difficult” and she should be grateful for all her mother has sacrificed for her.

Jude keeps a packed bag and a tin of money hidden under her bed so she can leave one day. She’s tried to run away before but people in the town always bring her back. Eventually Jude realizes the only way she’ll ever be free is to kill her mother. One night Jude is making dinner when Ma’am announces she found the packed bag under Jude’s bed. Ma’am tried to guilt trip Jude before telling her daughter that she’ll never let her leave. Something snaps in Jude and she starts hitting her mother and the two end up on the floor. Ma’am tries to strangle her but Jude grabs a meat cleaver on the floor and buries it in her mother’s face. She attempts to call her aunt Phyllis for help and to confess what she’s done, the only one of Ma’am’s two sisters who might show her compassion, but is rebuffed. Realizing she can’t stay in that house Jude runs away and ends up in an abandoned haunted house in the middle of the woods that she names Candle.

In many ways transgenerational trauma can feel like a family curse that passes from parent to child. The controversial field of epigenetics claims that trauma can change your DNA to the point that it’s passed down genetically to your offspring, with descendants of Holocaust survivors, Residential School Survivors, and enslaved Africans continuing to experience the symptoms of trauma (depression, anxiety, substance misuse, etc.). Dr. Joy DeGruy, who holds advanced degrees in both clinical psychology and social work research, came up with the term “post traumatic slave syndrome” to describe the transgenerational trauma experienced by African Americans as a result of the Atlantic slave trade, in addition continued discrimination in the present day. While the American Psychological Association (APA) awarded Dr. DeGruy a Presidential Citation in 2023 her theory is not without its critics. Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, a historian and anti-racism scholar, argues that the idea of post traumatic slave syndrome is itself racist as it implies that Black people are inherently dysfunctional as a group.

Some studies have shown that when someone experiences abuse as a child and is unable to learn healthy coping methods, they are more likely to abuse their own children, with one study stating that abuse and neglect victims are three times more likely to be abusive themselves. Rates of domestic violence are higher in the Black community, with Black women at the greatest risk, most likely due to a combination of racism and poverty. Black parents also have a complex relationship with the corporal punishment of children, especially in the South. When my siblings and I were little my Black grandmother thought it was very amusing that my white mother didn’t believe in spanking, and joked about how the beatings she gave my aunt and father would get her sent to prison now.

But she did what she did to protect them from something worse. She knew white people would use any excuse to hurt, arrest, or even kill a Black person, even if they were a child so Black children had to always be obedient if they wanted to survive. They did not have the same opportunities as white children to make youthful mistakes. Child advocate Dr. Stacey Patton, who is herself a child abuse survivor, explained in an interview with Ebony that “People think that hitting a child is a form of teaching. We think it will protect them.” In another interview with the Touré Show podcast Dr. Patton stated “There was this idea that ‘Well if I beat you, you’re gonna be alive at the end of the day, whereas if the Klan gets their hands on you, you’re dead’… And so we fast forward to this century, and you have Black people saying, ‘If I don’t beat my child, then the police will kill them.’” Of course, the belief that all Black parents are inherently abusive or “bad” parents is rooted in racism.

Ma’am was horribly abused by her own father, and ended up taking her pain out on her daughter. Jude’s beatings were treated as acceptable “punishments” by her aunts who had been beaten similarly as children. But this does NOT mean that an abused child is guaranteed to be abusive themselves. Jude is able to break free and learns to love herself and that she’s more than what was done to her, just as many Black parents today are moving away from “tough love” and embracing gentle parenting. In fact, corporal punishment is quickly falling out of favor in the Black community.

Scholfield’s prose is gorgeous, one my favorite lines in the book is, “Jude entered the verdant maw of the woods, past its bark teeth and down its mossy throat, down into its humid green bowels.” What a great description, both foreboding and beautiful. It’s also a perfect example of the book’s reoccurring theme of transformation as Jude leaves civilization behind and enters the enchanted world of the forest (appropriate, as the forest has long been a metaphor for transformation in both fairytales and folklore). Ma’am prefers nature small and tamable because she had too much of it as a child working on a plantation (one of the reasons my grandmother left Tennessee and moved to Chicago) and four generations of Ma’am’s family slaved away on a plantation, even after emancipation. But Jude loves the beauty of nature and its wildness, and is willing to work the land if she’s working it for herself and not another. For in the forest, she is truly free.

Judediscovers safety and strength in her solitude, that is until she meets Nemoira, a strange and beautiful woman who enters Candle and immediately makes herself at home. Jude falls hard and fast for the mysterious Nemoira, who may or may not be the beast that’s been leaving meat on her doorstep. Their relationship reminds me of classic stories like Bluebeard, Tsuru no Ongaeshi (Crane’s Return of a Favor), and Beauty and the Beast. I loved that this book was about an older woman rather than a 20-something. Of course there’s nothing wrong with younger heroines, but it can get repetitive always reading about women half my age in books supposedly aimed at adults. It’s easy to find older men in media, but creators seem afraid to make their women older than 30 or so. Jude, on the other hand, starts the story out at 41 and is in her sixties by the end of it. She’s also able to change and develop as a character despite being older. It’s wonderful to watch Jude go from terrified and helpless to fearless and self-sufficient over the course of the story. Best of all, she gets to have a romance and hot sex! Media makes it seem like women stop having sex the minute they hit 40, but while age can change how you have sex, older adults are still sexually active. So it’s nice to see that represented here and not treated as a punchline or something gross.

This was an achingly beautiful and haunting story. Despite its supernatural and fairy tale-like elements, the book’s depictions of abuse are still realistic. I appreciated how Scholfield humanizes Ma’am without excusing her abuse of Judith. Ma’am’s treatment of her daughter is inexcusable, even though Judith is not a “perfect victim” (a harmful myth that often prevents abuse survivors from getting help). Judith’s relationship with Nemoira is similarly complex, with Judith trying to love a monster without herself becoming monstrous and learning to stand up for herself. Scholfield’s descriptions are lush: you can practically see, smell, and hear the forest. On Sunday She Picked Flowers feels like in takes place in a liminal space between fantasy and cold reality, the “real” world, and the world of the forest. While reading it, I always felt like I was just on the edge of a dream.

Tags: Adult, African American, BIPOC, Black, Gothic, Historic Horror, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Own Voices, Werebeast

The Villa, Once Beloved by Victor Manibo

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Erewhon Books

Genre: Gothic, Myth and Folklore

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Filipino author and characters, Gay author and character, non-binary side character

Takes Place in: The Philippines

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Child Abuse, Classism, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Gore, Homophobia, Illness, Incest, Miscarriage, Mental Illness, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Sexism, Slurs, Transphobia, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Victim Blaming, Violence, Vomit

Blurb

Some legacies are best left buried…

Villa Sepulveda is a storied relic of the Philippines’ past: a Spanish colonial manor, its moldering stonework filled with centuries-old heirlooms, nestled in a remote coconut plantation. When their patriarch dies mysteriously, his far-flung family returns to their ancestral home. Filipino-American student Adrian Sepulveda invites his college girlfriend, Sophie, a transracial adoptee who knows little about her own Filipino heritage, to the funeral of a man who was entwined with the history of the country itself.

Sophie soon learns that there is more to the Sepulvedas than a grand tradition of political and entrepreneurial success. Adrian’s relatives clash viciously amid grief, confusion, and questions about the family curse that their matriarch refuses to answer. When a landslide traps them all in the villa, secrets begin to emerge, revealing sins both intimately personal and unthinkably public.

Sifting through fact, folklore, and fiction, Sophie finds herself at the center of a reckoning. Did a mythical demon really kill Adrian’s grandfather? How complicit are the Sepulvedas in the country’s oppressive history? As a series of ill omens befall the villa, Sophie must decide whom to trust—and whom to flee—before the family’s true legacy comes to take its revenge . . .

The Villa, Once Beloved is a modern gothic horror story set in the Philippines about the terrible crimes people will commit to obtain and maintain wealth and power. The story is tied to its setting, with the history of colonialism and political corruption in the Philippines playing an integral role in the plot.

Don Raul Sepulveda, the wealthy patriarch of the Sepulveda family, has decided his deceased family members need to be moved to a grand mausoleum. He attempts to build the mausoleum himself, despite his advanced age, after firing all the builders because they kept telling him his vision was impossible. Raul believes his family’s grand tomb must be finished quickly because death is coming for him, and is proven correct when he dies that night after seeing a terrifying specter in the jungle: a pale, faceless woman. His wife, Doña Olympia finds Raul’s crushed body in his bed the next day, his hands covered in dirt.

A few days later, a college student named Sophie is flying to the Philippines in a luxurious private jet with her boyfriend, Adrian, to visit his family. It’s her first time on an airplane and her first time out of the country. They’re flying to the Philippines for the funeral of Don Raul, Adrian’s grandfather. Sophie may be Filipino but she was raised by a white, working-class couple on a farm in Nebraska, making her feel like an outsider. While Sophie is worried that she may be intruding on the Sepulveda’s family’s private grief, she’s happy she can support Adrian in his time of need.

Sophie loves her boyfriend because of his “boundless and innocent optimism” and his ability to talk about his feelings and have tough conversations. He lavishes her with praise, unlike her adoptive parents, who don’t give her a lot of positive affirmation. Adrian cares deeply about his family and country, and has been educating Sophie about the Philippines: its history, culture, and what it means to be Filipino. Maybe I just distrust straight cis men, but Adrian seemed too good to be true. There weren’t exactly any red flags, but something about him felt off. Yellow flags, if you will. He never brings Sophie to his family’s home, despite it being only an hour from campus, and I got the sense a lot of his activism was performative. And the way he educates Sophie about the Philippines felt condescending. Sophie loves it;she describes it as “very My Fair Lady. Sophie was clay ready to be molded, a Filipina Eliza Doolittle who somehow needed to be more Filipina, and Adrian was happy to be Henry Higgins.” But if you remember the film (or the George Bernard Shaw play it was based on) Henry Higgins was a misogynistic jerk to Eliza Doolittle.

Adrian is planning to make a documentary about his family and their ties to the Marcos, a major political family in the Philippines. The Sepulvedas are related to the Marcos through Imelda Romualdez Marcos, the former First Lady of the Philippines. She was the wife of former president Ferdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos, Sr., and mother of the current president of the Philippines, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Romualdez Marcos, Jr. Ferdinand was a kleptocrat who ruled as a dictator from 1965-1986, committed numerous human rights violations, and kept the Philippines under martial law in the ‘70s. Adrian hates the Marcos with a passion, even going so far as to organize a protest at Standford University when Bongbong visited the Bay Area. When his grandmother Olympia announces that the current president and his mother will likely be guests at Raul’s funeral, Adrian is horrified.

Adrian’s family has been in the Philippines since before the diocese, and own a large coconut plantation. Their villa was built nearly 200 years ago by Señor Bartolome Sepúlveda as a summer retreat for his reclusive wife Dorotea to hide her from the attention of other men (or to hide her from society after she went mad from homesickness). They were Spanish aristocrats who had fallen on hard times and moved to the Spanish East Indies attracting by Manila’s growing wealth after the Spanish crown took control and turned it into a major trading port. Their son Oscar saved the Sepulveda fortune, by starting the coconut plantation. He married Mercedes, an indio (which his father didn’t approve of). They had seven sons and one daughter, Soledad, who was married off to a member of the Marcos family.

Claudio, the oldest son of Oscar and Mercedes, is Divina and Raul’s father. He was born in 1929, after the Philippines had been sold to America. Claudio, as a US national, served in the US army and fought in WWII during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines under General Douglas MacArthur. Claudio became a general himself, and a war hero, and chose to marry Elisea Jimenez because she was an heiress. He cheated on her multiple times, and may or may not have fathered children with other women. Elisea was the power behind the throne. She prevented Claudio’s siblings from ousting him from the company and it was her idea to expand into the international coconut trade in the sixties, selling lumber, coconut wine, and coconut oil. The coconut oil was especially popular with their US partners, and is still used in major cosmetics brands.

But then the Sepulveda family’s fortunes turned. In 1985 there was a worker’s strike at the Sepulveda’s plantation due to Marcos’ Coco Levy Fund Scam. A few days after that typhoon Saling (aka Typhoon Dot) struck, resulting in landslides that destroyed the countryside. Then malaria struck the town. There were crocodile attacks after that, then swarms of beetles that destroyed crops. Finally, a warehouse collapsed, killing several workers including Raul’s brother-in-law. When Raul’s father died suddenly of an aneurysm, Raul decided to flee to the states with his wife and young sons (Kai was not yet born), hoping to escape the curse. He left behind his newly widowed sister Divina to care for the villa and the coconut plantation.

Joining Adrian and Sophie at the villa are his parents Eric and Margot, his uncle Javier, his grandmother Olympia, his great aunt Divina, and some servants including the caretaker Remidios. Adrian’s auncle (a gender-neutral term for a parent’s sibling) Kai joins them later, barely making it to the villa because of the typhoon that strikes the Philippines. If you’re as bad at remembering names as I am, I would definitely recommend keeping a list of the characters because there are A LOT. Keeping track of the living family was one thing, but throw in all the ancestors on top of that and I started having trouble keeping track of who was who.

The book is told in third person limited tense, with Sophie acting as the main protagonist and audience surrogate who, while Filipino, is also an outsider and new to the culture and history. We also learn more about the family’s history through Adrian’s interviews with Divina for his documentary. Javier and Remidios serve as the deuteragonist and tritagonist of the story, giving the reader more of an insider’s view of the Sepulveda family. Javier and Remidios are both more cynical than the naïve Sophie who is just happy to be included. Javier is disappointed to discover his old home is not as grand as he remembered, instead finding it cramped and ill preserved whereas Sophie is in awe of the villa, highlighting their very different upbringings. Remidios has a less than charitable opinion of Sophie in the beginning (though she does warm up to her) and it’s interesting to see the protagonist, who is so often praised by Adrian, looked down upon by another character. Sophie is also the character who is most disturbed by what’s happening and becomes increasingly distraught as the story continues, growing paranoid and isolating herself from the rest of the family.

This is a slow burn horror book, which admittedly, I’m not usually a fan of. Things don’t start to getexciting until halfway through, when one of the family’s biggest secrets is finally revealed. The first half of the story is mostly getting to know the characters and their history, and I feel like it could have used more horror and foreboding. But of course, that’s just my personal preference.People with more patience than me will have a completely different reading experience. I did really enjoy learning about Filippino history and I liked how Manibo used real events and tied them into the story, like Typhoon Dot and the Coco Levy Fund Scam. I also liked how it isn’t revealed whether supernatural factors are at play until the very end. The reader is left to wonder if Raul was really killed by a batibat (a sort of Filipino sleep paralysis demon that can cause sudden, unexplained deaths) during a bangungot as Remidios claims, or whether the monster he saw was merely an apparition brought on by his madness. And is the string of disasters surrounding the family the work of a curse or merely bad luck?

Despite the villa’s size there’s a feeling of claustrophobia due to its isolation. The typhoon knocks out the internet, phone services, and roads making it impossible to reach anyone outside the villa. Because the villa is in a secluded area, it’s unlikely anyone will come to the aid of those trapped there by the landslides, despite Olympia’s insistence that everyone will come for her late husband’s funeral. Manibo is excellent at creating a gothic atmosphere, and, despite so many characters, each has their own unique perspective and personality, making them stand out. A must read if you’re a fan of the gothic.

Tags: Adult, Asian, BIPOC, Book Review, Filipino, Gay, Gothic, LGBTQIA, Myths and Folklore, Non-binary, Own Voices

The Scald Crow by Grace Daly

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Creature Publishing

Genre: Myth and Folklore

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Bisexual main character with chronic pain, author with chronic pain, Black Lesbian side character

Takes Place in: Illinois

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Ableism, Child Abuse, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Illness, Medical Procedures, Mental Illness, Racism, Slut-Shaming, Stalking, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Victim Blaming, Violence

Blurb

Shot through with gallows humor and speaking in the voice of a trusted best friend, this self-deprecating horror novel explores medical trauma through Irish folklore, asking “Can a sick woman ever be trusted?”

Brigid—that’s the Irish Breej, not “Bridge-id,” though it’s not like she’d correct you—has had a rough go of it. Her mother abused her when she was little, her best friend (and secret crush) is too busy chasing some blonde to answer Brigid’s calls, and she lost her job thanks to chronic pelvic pain with no identifiable cause. As a self-doubting, disabled adult, she’s certain that everything that has happened to her is her fault.

When her mother goes missing and Brigid’s only option is to move back into her childhood home in the idyllic Midwestern town of St. Charles, Illinois, the uncanny begins: A particular crow that once harassed her reappears, following her everywhere. A painting of Jesus keeps coming back, no matter how many times she throws it away. Frozen body parts show up in places rubber band balls and door stoppers ought to be. Every night she dreams that her real mother is dead and decaying in the closet, and the identical mother who raised her is not her mother. But it’s all in Brigid’s head. It’s all her fault. It must be. What other explanation could there be?

To survive, she’ll need to ignore what her mother and her chronic-pain doctors have always told her: that her perception of reality can’t be trusted.

Brigid (who uses the Irish pronunciation “Breej” rather than Anglicized “Bridge-id”) struggles with chronic pelvic pain coupled with IBS that makes it incredibly difficult for her to perform everyday tasks. Due to her chronic pain, Brigid can no longer work, and her disability payments are barely covering the cost of living. She’s on the verge of losing her apartment and becoming homeless (of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who experience homelessness roughly half of them have some form of disability). So, when her abusive mother mysteriously disappears and leaves Brigid her childhood home, she thinks her luck might finally be turning around. Unfortunately, returning to the house not only brings up bad memories for Brigid, but it begins to make her question her sanity as well. Things seem to move around the apartment. Objects she thought she threw out reappear making Brigid question her memory. She finds mysterious meat in the fridge and what, from her description, appears to be a phalange in the garbage disposal.

One day she wakes up to discover garbage spread across the floor and the mysterious piece of meat hanging from the ceiling. Brigid tries to tell the police about the apparent vandalism, but they’re unsurprisingly useless. Strangest of all, a scald crow appears to be following Brigid and spying on her. Scald crows, more commonly known as hooded crows, are found in the UK, so what one is doing in Illinois is anyone’s guess. In Irish folklore the hooded crow, or Badb in Irish, represents the Morrígan, a terrifying goddess of war, sovereignty, and fate. Like the Greek goddess Hecate, the Morrigan is often depicted as a tripartite goddess, three sisters named Badb, Macha, and Nemain. The hooded crow also appears at the death of the demigod Cú Chulainn. Brigid is fascinated by Irish mythology; she remembers reading it with her father before he disappeared, it still brings her comfort on her bad pain days, and she begins to wonder if the crow is more than just a crow. Of course, no one believes her.

Brigid is used to being gaslit, both by her abusive mother and medical providers who question her mysterious pelvic pain. So, when things start getting weird at the house, Bridgid believes it’s all in her head. She also thinks her pain is “all in her head,” even though any decent healthcare provider would tell her that psychosomatic pain doesn’t mean the pain is made up or fake. Unfortunately, as anyone with a chronic condition will tell you, there are a LOT of terrible healthcare providers who treat chronic pain as imaginary. It’s not like on medical TV shows where doctors fight to find a diagnosis and treat the patient no matter what. In the real would, if providers can’t easily diagnose you, they decide you’re no longer their problem or you’re making it up.

My father, a gastroenterologist, often sees patients who have spent years trying to find a diagnosis for their digestive issues before they end up in his office. Most of these patients have seen multiple other specialists who simply gave up on them after discovering they weren’t easy to diagnose. A patient of his told me she spent 10 years looking for a cause of her digestive issues before my dad diagnosed her as having a zoonotic disease from working with swine, something no one else had bothered to test for. Judging by this Reddit thread this is not an uncommon experience for people with chronic illnesses. Brigid has already had one exploratory surgery that came up with nothing, and has pretty much given up any hope of finding a cure for her chronic pain.

Keep in mind people with disabilities are not a monolith, and every individual has a different relationship with their disability. Not every person with a disability wants a cure and assuming all disabilities should be “cured” (i.e. assuming a disability is a defect that keeps someone from being “normal”) is ableist. For example, most autistic people don’t want a cure as autism is not a disease. Many Deaf people feel the same way. Accommodations and addressing ableism are what they want, not a cure. But again, everyone feels differently. Some people may want certain aspects or comorbidities of their disability to go away, but not others. For example, an Autistic friend of mine is perfectly fine with his autism, but hates his anxiety disorder and takes medication to mitigate it. He would be thrilled if his anxiety was cured. But some people with disabilities DO want a cure, and that’s also okay. Brigid’s disability causes her to physically suffer a great deal, and accommodations can’t really mitigate her pain, so she doesn’t like it and wants it gone.

Like many folks with a chronic illness and/or pain, Brigid has a limited amount of energy to get things done and must plan her whole life around her pain flares. She is often too tired by the end of the day to cook anything healthy for dinner and usually just gets a microwave pizza or burrito because that’s all she can handle when her pain gets bad. She must plan her days carefully around her pain, which makes unpacking and cleaning her mother’s house difficult. Spoon theory is a metaphor created by Christine Miserandino to describe the amount of energy a person with a chronic illness has for every day tasks. Each activity costs a certain amount of “spoons.” Simple things like brushing your teeth or watching TV “cost” less spoons while more complex tasks like going to school or work, cleaning the house, or exercising require more spoons. The number of spoons someone has on any given day can vary, so activities need to be planned around the number of spoons available. People with chronic illnesses, pain, depression, etc. have less spoons that someone who is able-bodied and neurotypical,so they need to be especially careful about how they plan their days. They may only have a few spoons on especially bad days, so they need to get as much done as possible on good days. When Brigid’s pain is less severe, she tries to get as much cleaning and unpacking done as possible, even though it will make her pain worse later.

Brigid doesn’t just have physical symptoms to contend with. She also struggles with trauma from the emotional abuse she endured from her mother for years. Brigid thinks she’s unlovable and deserves the abuse from Mammy because she was a “difficult” child. This has left her with a lot of shame and self-hatred. Her friend, Emma, points out that, in truth, Brigid is too agreeable and will go along with anything, even if it hurts her. Brigid’s people pleasing along with her lack of self-compassion are both common in abuse survivors. Brigid doesn’t recognize what happened to her as abuse, however, since it was never physical.

Brigid often dreams that an evil mother came and killed her “real” mother, who used to be kind and loving. There’s a Freudian theory that a child can’t comprehend her previously loving and kind mother becoming cruel and abusive, so she thinks her mother has been replaced somehow. In Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales the author argues that children separate their mother into their “good” mother (when she’s kind and nurturing) and “bad” mother (when she punishes them or doesn’t give them what they want). This is represented in Grimm’s Fairy Tales by the usually deceased good mother, and the wicked stepmother, who provides a transference object for the child’s hate.

Brigid’s mother being replaced by a bad version also brings to mind the story of changelings. In European folklore, a changeling is supernatural substitute that was left by fairies, demons, elves, or trolls in place of a human, usually a child. In Ireland, the belief in changelings continued to endure at least as late as 1895, when Bridget Cleary, who worked as a dressmaker, was murdered by her husband, Michael Cleary. At his trial Michael claimed that his wife had been replaced by a fairy and he had to burn the changeling alive to get his wife back. If you’re a fan of Aaron Mahnke, episode 11 of his podcast, Lore, tells the story of Bridget Cleary (I highly recommend it).

There’s a modern theory proposed by such scholars as D. L. Ashliman, Lorna Wing, and Davids Potter that the changeling myth arose as a way to explain neurodivergence or other disabilities in children. Unfortunately, this could lead to abuse and even infanticide as parents believed the child was not their own. In 1826, again in Ireland, Ann Roche drowned her four-year-old grandson, Michael Leahy, believing him to be a changeling because he could neither speak or stand. Roche believed that holding him under water would cast out the fairy which would allow her grandson to act like a “normal” child. Sadly, even today, children with disabilities are at least three times more likely to be victims of abuse or neglect than children without disabilities (and the number may actually be higher due to many children with disabilities being unable to directly report). When children with disabilities are murdered by their caregivers people will often excuse the murder and paint the murderers as victims because their child was a burden. Moral philosopher and terrible human being Peter Singer argued in his book Practical Ethics (1979), that it is morally justified to kill babies with disabilities. He also claims that it’s totally okay to kill a baby with a disability if the parents replace them with a non-disabled baby.

“When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed. The loss of happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of a happier life for the second.”

Gross. Sadly, Brigid has internalized the belief that her disability makes her “a burden,” despite what her therapist and best friend tell her.

I liked that Brigid’s Black best friend and crush, Emma, was not relegated to the role of “just there to support the white girl with no needs of her own.” When Brigid was relying too much on her for emotional support Emma was quick to set a boundary and tell her BFF (not unkindly) that this was probably something better discussed with her therapist, Carol. Emma makes time for Brigid, but isn’t always available when she calls, as Emma is busy with her own life which includes romantic turmoil, pottery class, dealing with the rich white parents she nannies for, and her beloved cats. She will even call Brigid for support when she’s struggling with her love life, so the friendship doesn’t feel one-sided (even if Brigid, in her insecurity, worries that it is).

I also appreciated that although Emma works as a nanny for rich white people, she does so without falling into the harmful Black mammy (not to be confused with what Brigid calls her mother) trope. She does the work because she’s paid well (very well) by wealthy parents, but still recognizes the inherent racism in liberal white parents hiring a Black nanny so their kids will respect other races while also expecting her to do the work they consider below them. Emma is a curvy woman, but not desexualized at all. In fact, Brigid often remarks on how stylish and sexy she is. Again, Daly could have made Emma little more than a trope, this time the Jezebel, but manages to avoid it by making Emma a well-rounded character. She is more likely to speak her mind than Brigid, but isn’t “loud and sassy,” and struggles with her own insecurities. Although Emma doesn’t appear often in the book, she still gets her own romantic storyline, and even some character development when she recognizes she’s being biphobic by refusing to date women who have only dated men before. I’m also happy to report that “Black” was always capitalized when talking about race.

I loved Daly’s dark sense of humor because sometimes all you can do is laugh about it when things are terrible, as Brigid often does to deflect. I also loved Brigid’s character, felt strongly for her, and wanted so badly for her to have a happy ending, even though I know those are rare in real life. The pacing is a little slow in the beginning compared to the end, but that’s really the only criticism I have. This story is not for the squeamish, as Brigid suffers from both gastrointestinal distress and difficult periods and both are described in painful detail. Honestly, I appreciated that Daly did not shy away from talking about poop and menstrual blood as it let the reader see the full extent of what Brigid goes through on a daily basis. As someone with my own pelvic and digestive problems (that are thankfully nowhere near as severe or painful as Brigid’s) it was refreshing to see symptoms I’ve experienced myself described without shame. Scald Crow was one of those books that managed to made me laugh out loud, choke back tears, and shiver with apprehension. Definitely a fun and spooky read.

Tags: Adult, Bisexual, Book Review, Chronic Illness, Chronic Pain, Disability, LGBTQIA, Myths and Folklore, Own Voices

Fever Dreams of a Parasite by Pedro Íñiguez

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Raw Dog Screaming Press

Genre: Body Horror, Eco Horror, Eldritch Horror, Folk Horror, Ghosts/Haunting, Historic Horror, Killer/Slasher, Monster, Sci-Fi Horror, Zombie

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Mexican American author and characters, Mexican characters

Takes Place in: Mainly Mexico and California

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Ableism, Alcohol Abuse, Amputation, Animal Abuse, Animal Death, Body Shaming, Cannibalism, Child Death, Child Endangerment, Childbirth, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Gore, Kidnapping, Miscarriage, Mental Illness, Physical Abuse, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Sexism, Stalking, Suicide, Torture, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence, Xenophobia

Blurb

Íñiguez weaves haunting tales that traverse worlds both familiar and alien in Fever Dreams of a Parasite. Paying homage to Lovecraft, Ligotti, and Langan, these cosmic horror, weird fiction, and folk-inspired stories explore tales of outsiders, killers, and tormented souls as they struggle to survive the lurking terrors of a cold and cruel universe. With symbolism and metaphor pulled from his Latino roots, Iniguez cuts deep into the political undercurrent to expose an America rarely presented in fiction. Whether it’s the desperation of poverty, the fear of deportation or the countless daily slights endured by immigrants, every story is precisely rendered, often with a twist that allows us to see the mundane with fresh eyes.

Most of the stories in this anthology fall in the cosmic horror genre, but each story is entirely unique. There are, however, a few repeated themes; families, poverty and classism, people down on their luck, and those who take advantage of them. Monsters are a staple throughout the book, though most of the stories don’t really explain what the monster is. Are the dog-creatures werewolves? Is the blood sucking child a vampire? What in the world are those maggot monsters in Midnight Frequencies? What the hell is the old man with the fangs? Who knows! I can guess, but sometimes it’s scarier not to know. Even with all the different strange creatures, there’s often a human enabling it, once again proving that humans are the worst monsters of all. The anthology explores various themes and contemporary issues like the California wildfires, environmental destruction, addiction, the damage done by both the cartel and the US in the poverty-stricken areas of Mexico, how desperate immigrants are exploited, predatory landlords, and even increasingly adversarial political TV commentators.

The first story, titled Nightmare of a Million Faces, is about Anastasia Mendez, an unemployed porn star who just left an abusive relationship with her ex-boyfriend/manager/fellow porn star, Robert. Even without the monster appearing at the end the story is already disturbing as it focuses on how women’s bodies are often controlled. In Anastasia’s case, Robert decides(as her manager) who she has sex with and what roles she takes, and as her boyfriend, he coerces her into having an abortion she doesn’t want when he gets her pregnant. Even though the story is short, much of it focuses on fleshing out Anastasia’s character so you feel invested in her survival by the end of it.

I liked that Nightmare of a Million Faces focused on the flaws in the mainstream porn industry without condemning sex work itself. And while Robert was controlling, Anastasia chose to work in porn before she met him, and even after they broke up, sex work wasn’t something she was forced to do. It’s also very pro-choice, despite focusing on an abortion Anastasia didn’t want. People with uteruses shouldn’t be forced to abort any more than they should be forced to give birth. Women of color like Anastasia are at especially high risk of reproductive coercion.

Birthday Boy is one of my favorite stories in the collection. It’s about a child whose fantasies shield him from the horrors around him and the atrocities committed about his father. The story is quite short, but effective, and the ending feels like a gut punch. Many of the characters are either parents or about to become parents, and there’s a certain horror in knowing they must protect their children from the monsters. Some are men whose wives have left them and taken their children, like in Midnight Shoeshine. Others, like the father in Postcards from Saguaroland, have left on their own to try and secure a better life for their families. Then, there’s Frank from Roots in Kon Tum, who abandoned the woman he impregnated in Vietnam and started a new family in the US. Effigies of Monstrous Things is about a single father trying to raise his daughters after his wife’s disappearance. Shantytown and Caravan are both stories about single mothers living in poverty struggling to take care of their only child, and The Body Booth is about an expectant mother who has chosen to raise her child alone. The House of Laments is one of the few stories with a happily married couple in which Rodrigo and Julia are expecting a baby after suffering multiple miscarriages. Some of the stories are focused on other types of familial relationships, like the grieving siblings in The Cellar and the seal hunting uncle and nephew in Skins.

The story from which the anthology gets its title is written like a magazine profile on an elderly fashion designer named Alberto Madrigal, whose designs are based on traditional Mexican fashion. When he first immigrated to the United States, before he became famous, other designers called him a “parasite” and accused him of stealing jobs. But now he’s hired by famous celebrities, like heavy metal star Kane Krieger, who has just had his directorial debut. His horror film, called Fever Dreams of a Parasite, is about a man tormented by dreams that may come from another world and slowly drive him to madness. The critics have panned Krieger’s film at advanced screenings, and he wants to wear something to the premiere that will be a big “fuck you” to the critics. Madrigal struggles to create a suit until he’s inspired by a nightmare and the fleas on his dog’s back. I liked the unique epistolary style of this story. Postcards from Saguaroland is another notable example of Íñiguez deviating from his typical story structure, with a non-linear story that starts with the reveal of the monster.

There was one story I had a few issues with, The Savage Night. When I first started reading it I thought it was about an unnamed Indigenous tribe, because the main character was referred to as the tribe’s medicine man, in which case many of the tropes used in the story and the title would have been problematic. Fortunately, it turned out to be about Paleolithic humans in which case a writer has a lot more creative freedom. Still, I would have used a different term for the tribes’ spiritual healer as “medicine man” seems to be specific to American Indians.

The Last Train out of Calico is much better in terms of representation. Although Lakota train robber Warren Blackhawk has hints of “the stoic Indian” it’s nice to see a morally gray American Indian character. American Indians are usually painted as either the “noble savage” or someone on horseback whooping and killing cowboys. So, it’s nice to see a sympathetic character who’s just a guy who robs trains with his friends.

Other things I liked: Black was capitalized when referring to race and the Spanish wasn’t italicized. A woman with substance use disorder was portrayed sympathetically as a struggling mom who loves her child but is also battling a disease, rather than a weak and immoral person.

The anthology felt like Lovecraft meets the Twilight Zone, which I loved. It’s full of fun, bite-size horror stories full of tragic characters struggling against an uncaring world, whose desperation and hopelessness you can really feel. Íñiguez’s collection is bleak with a strange, dream-like quality to it, full of the weird and grotesque.

Tags: Adult, Anthology, BIPOC, Body Horror, Book Review, Eco Horror, Eldritch, Hispanic/Latinx, Historic Horror, Mexican, Mexican American, Monster, Own Voices, Sci-Fi, Vampires

Draw You In Vol.1 – Collector’s Item by Jasper Bark

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing

Genre: Blood & Guts, Mystery, Occult

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Gay author, two main characters with mental illness

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Ableism, Amputation, Body Shaming, Child Abuse, Death, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Gore, Homophobia, Mental Illness, Pedophilia, Police Harassment, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Slurs, Transphobia, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence, Xenophobia

Blurb

Can you disappear so completely that only one person remembers you existed?

That’s what comics creator Linda Corrigan asks, when her editor, disappears without a trace. Drawn into an FBI investigation by Agent McPherson, Linda and comics historian Richard Ford unearth a chilling link to the forgotten comic artist R. L. Carver, whose work might just hold the key to a series of mysterious disappearances.

As they explore Carver’s life, they uncover the secret history of horror comics, the misfits, madcaps and macabre masters who forged an industry, frightened a generation and felt the heat of the Federal Government. They also stumble on the shadow history of the United States on a road trip that veers into the nation’s dark underbelly, where forbidden knowledge and forgotten lore await them.

Described as “Kavalier and Clay meets Clive Barker,” Draw You In Vol.1 – Collector’s Item is the first in a mind-bending trilogy of novels. It contains stories within stories that explore horror in all its subgenres, from quiet to psychological horror, from hardcore to cosmic horror.

Experience the epic conspiracy thriller that redefines the genre for a new generation.

I should start by saying this is the first book in a trilogy, it ends on a cliffhanger, and you’ll be left with more questions than answers. You need to read the full series to get the whole picture, but you won’t have to wait for the next volume to come out because all three books have been published. I’ve only read the first book for this review, so I can’t say what the rest of the series is like, but I enjoyed the first novel. Readers should also be aware the story centers around an FBI investigation with the main character acting as a civilian consultant. While I personally enjoy detective investigation stories like Psych, Lucifer, and Hannibal, I know copaganda is a big turn off for many. Finally, there’s a secret government organization, which may be another turn off for readers, as the whole idea of a wealthy cabal that secretly controls the government has roots in antisemitism (look up “The Elders of Zion” for an example). However, Bark’s secret organization seems to be controlled by wealthy WASPs instead, and one of the people trying to prove its existence is a Jewish man. I personally felt like the secret organization was more of a criticism of how the government often hurts those with marginalized identities than playing into an antisemitic conspiracy theory, but I’m also not Jewish so it may hit different for someone who is.

The story starts with a formerly famous comic book artist named Linda Corrigan who is now struggling to get by. It’s been my personal experience that male authors don’t usually write women well, but I love the way Bark writes Linda. For one thing, I appreciate that she’s middle-aged and heavier set instead of hot, young, and skinny. She acknowledges that her appearance is a double-edged sword; while she no longer gets sexually harassed, misogynist editors now ignore Linda completely. Her complicated relationship with being an artist, especially now that she’s no longer popular, also felt relatable and realistic. Linda loves being an artist, but the industry does not love her back, and it’s a difficult job, full of heartbreak and financial strain. She doesn’t just miss the money, but the attention she used to get as a famous artist.

She’s struggling to market and sell her independent graphic novel, Doom Divine (the title comes from the Algernon Swinburne poem The Death of Richard Wagner) and it’s destroying her morale. Linda misses the old days when she was on panels and invited as a guest artist. As someone who used to do artist alleys at anime cons 10+ years ago, I can relate to Linda’s fond memories of the past. I remember when it was easy to get into an artist alley back in 2009 and Boston Comic Con was a one-day event in a basement room that cost about $20 to get in (you got a discount if you wore a costume). It was mostly indie comic creators and comic shops selling back issues back then. Of course, Linda also admits that comic cons have become much safer for women than they used to be earlier in her career, when she was one of the few female comic artists and was used to sexual harassment. She’s happy to see both more women attendees and women working in the industry.

Linda is getting little traffic at her booth and debates packing it up early when she runs into one of her old editors at Fox Comics (I love that Bark uses a real comic book publisher from the past), Paul Kleinman. The two begin joking around and Paul shows her an old sketchbook of horror art. Linda recognizes the work as being by a little-known comic artist named R.L. Carver. Paul lets her use Carver’s old pen and sketchbook, and she draws a quick portrait of the editor. He ends up inviting her to an exclusive party with a bunch of other editors that could really help Linda’s career. Linda puts on her Vampirella dress (another fun comic book nod), and heads to the party, but when she arrives, no one has heard of Paul and she’s not on the list. To add insult to injury her old assistant editor Stephanie tells her that her dress isn’t age appropriate and too revealing. Hurt and humiliated Linda heads home wondering how Paul could play such a cruel trick on her.

At the con the next day, no one seems to remember who Paul is. His mysterious disappearance triggers one of Linda’s panic attacks. She reports Paul missing after about a week, but the police imply Linda is ether crazy or lying for filing a missing persons report for a man who seemingly doesn’t exist. She’s beginning to believe maybe she really is losing her mind when Agent McPherson of the FBI tracks her down. He tells Linda that Paul isn’t the only mysterious disappearance connected to R.L. Carver’s sketchbook, and he offers her a position as a special advisor to the FBI. Joined by a comic historian named Richard Ford, the three set out to learn the history of the enigmatic Carver. Linda finds herself relating to Carver because he’s also a comic artist ahead of his time who’s dismissed by the industry. As she learns more about his story, she begins to wonder if pursuing a career as an artist is truly worth it. As the mystery at the root of the story unfolds, we also learn more about the comic industry and its history.

The cover for Tales from the Crypt #29 shows a hunch backed ogre nailing a man into a coffin. The cover for Black Cat #50 depicts a man's face and hands melting down to the bone from a tube of uranium. Weird Mysteries #5 shows the purple gloved hands of a man removing the brain of an ape's head. The cover of Eerie #2 has a skeleton holding a lantern and staff of bone leading a woman in chains through a sewer. The woman wears a torn yellow dress.

Tales from the Crypt #29, Black Cat #50, Weird Mysteries #5, Eerie #2

Carver is revealed to be a Black comic artist (although I notice the editor didn’t capitalize Black) like Matt Baker, Elmer C. Stoner, and Jackie Ormes, who starts out drawing horror comics, similar to Alvin C. Hollingsworth (To learn more about Black comic artists check out Invisible Men: The Trailblazing Black Artists of Comic Books). We also learn later in the book that he’s asexual (yay for ace rep). Carver draws stories for the pre-Comics Code horror comics of the early 1950s, like Voodoo, Eerie, Suspense Comics, Black Cat, and Tales from the Crypt. Carver even has his own “horror hosts,” similar to the Crypt Keeper and Uncle Creepy, called the Saints of the Damned. Unfortunately, Carver’s work becomes too realistic and horrific and he’s eventually fired. Struggling to find work, Carver does a brief stint drawing fetish comics. This is similar to Joe Shuster, one of the original creators of Superman, who did BDSM comics under the pseudonym of Clancy when he was desperate for money (which you can learn more about in Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster). Of course, the creation of the Comics Code Authority in 1954 would have made Carver’s graphic illustrations impossible to print.

Blue Beetle #31 depicts a man clad in a blue scaly costume with a blue domino mask, red gloves, and a red belt. He is fighting Japanese soldiers in a WWII battle. There's a tank behind him with American soldiers. The City of the Living Dead cover shows a blond, white woman adventurer holding a whip. She stands in a cave full of human bones in front of a white-faced corpse that's been tied up by the wrists. The cover of Phantom Lady shows a dark haired white woman in a skimpy blue costume with a red belt and red cape. She is standing in front of a giant page with writing that is being read by an emaciated yellow hand with long finger nails.

Blue Beetle #31 drawn by E C Stoner, City of the Living Dead drawn by A.C.Hollingsworth, Phantom Lady #13 drawn by Matt Baker

A psychiatrist named Dr. Fredric Wertham was largely responsible for the Code. His book, Seduction of the Innocent: The Influence of Comic Books on Today’s Youth, blamed comic books that depicted sex, crime, and drug use for contributing to juvenile delinquency by encouraging these acts in young people. Not even the relatively tame superhero comics were safe, with Wertham claiming that Batman and Robin encouraged homosexuality and Superman was un-American and fascist (which I’m sure his two Jewish creators must have appreciated). Seduction of the Innocent was extremely popular, even winning a Book of the Year award, and this popularity stirred up a moral panic across the country. This eventually lead the United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency to hold the comic book hearings in 1954. By September of that year the Comics Magazine Association of America came together to create the now defunct Comics Code Authority, a self-censoring body to regulate the content of comic books. Rukes included “No comic magazine shall use the words “horror” or “terror” in its title” and “All lurid, unsavory, gruesome illustrations shall be eliminated.” This censorship hit horror comics, particularly publisher EC, especially hard.

Finally, Carver settled on making Underground comix. Comix emerged in the 1960s partially in response to the draconian restrictions enforced by the Comics Code Authority. These comics were either self-published or published by a small press and were sold in head shops. They often depicted drug use, free love, and political commentary. The golden age of underground comix lasted from 1968 to 1972, starting when Robert Crumb published Zap Comix. Underground horror comix rose in popularity during this time, many of them inspired by the EC Comics of the 1950s. Titles including Skull (Rip Off Press), Insect Fear (Print Mint), Death Rattle (Kitchen Sink), and Bogeyman (San Francisco Comic Book Company) were published in the early 1970s.

Boogeyman shows a monster in a graveyard with green skin and a white face with giant black eyes and a salivating mouth full of sharp teeth. In it's fist it holds a small demon with moth wings. Skull shows what appears to be an Aztec cult. There is a disfigured face in the foreground in a black cloak with a symbol on the forehead. A light skinned woman in a skimpy outfit walks a fierce dog on a leash. Insect Fear depicts a giant, neon green mosquito in a laboratory.

Bogeyman #3, Skull #5, Insect Fear #1

The amount of research that went into creating Draw You In Collector’s Item is impressive. Bark makes several references to real world artists like John Severin and Jack Cole, writers like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, publishers like Fox Comics (creator of Blue Beetle) and EC (creator of Tales from the Crypt and Mad Magazine), series like Terry and the Pirates, and even individual comics like DC’s House of Secrets #92 which features the first appearance of Swamp Thing. Bark also references other historical elements like the Cartoonist and Illustrators School (later the School of Visual Arts) created by Burne Hogarth for returning GIs and the Kefauver Hearings. Even the Louisiana Voodoo (which has differences from Haitian Vodou) was well researched, something that’s rare in the horror genre and routinely reduces a religion down to zombies and curses. I studied Vodou in college as part of an anthropology course (there was a lot of arguing with my white professor that yes, it was in fact a “real” religion) and found that Bark uses proper terminology when referring to the spiritual leaders (oungan and manbo), spirits (lwa), symbols (veves) and takes care to not make Voodoo seem like a “primitive” belief system. Bark even includes the manbo and ougan, Cécile Fatiman and Dutty Boukman, who conducted a Vodou ceremony at Bois Caïman, which is credited with being the catalyst that started 1791 slave rebellion of the enslaved Haitians against the French slaveholders.

The numerous mysteries at the center of the story (many of which I haven’t revealed to avoid spoilers) grabbed my attention and managed to hold it for the entirety of the book: no small feat considering I have ADD and can’t focus on one thing for long. The characters are all intriguing and I enjoyed the diversity of opinions and personalities. For example, Richard struggles with the stigma of having a mental illness while also having to be reminded by Linda to be more aware of his white male privilege, which always ruffles his feathers. Sometimes she feels sympathy for him, other times she appreciates how he admires her work or is impressed by his research skills, and on still other occasions she finds him incredibly frustrating and ignorant. I appreciate Bark’s honest representations of mental health for both Linda and Richard as well as accurate exploration of the harassment women face in the comic book industry. Overall, this is a fun, captivating read and I can see why it’s called Draw You In because that’s exactly what this book does.

Tags: Adult, African American, Asexual, Black, Blood & Guts, Book Review, Gay, LGBTQIA, Mental Illness, Mystery, Occult

I’m Sorry if I Scared You by Mae Murray

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Medusa Publishing Haus

Genre: Body Horror, Sci-Fi Horror

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Bisexual main character, Lesbian major character; queer author of Indigenous descent with a chronic illness/physical disability

Takes Place in: Arkansas

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Animal Death, Antisemitism, Childbirth, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Gore, Homophobia, Physical Abuse, Police Harassment, Rape/Sexual Assault, Slurs, Slut-Shaming

Blurb

Thanksgiving 2010.
The world prepares for the first lunar eclipse to take place on the winter solstice since the year 1638. Crop circles, strange animals, disappearances, and UFOs permeate the empty countryside of the American South.

Odette “Odie” Tucker is a first-generation college student, returning home from Boston to rural Arkansas for the holidays. On the drive home, she endures a pill-induced abortion in a gas station bathroom, the product of a recent rape she has told no one about. On a whim, she ‘rescues’ the clump of expelled cells in a plastic water bottle.

At home, Odie faces the suppressed feelings of abandonment from her family and lifelong best friend Dale, an out butch lesbian Odie is too afraid to admit she’s in love with. When Odie’s abortion becomes sentient and possesses her, she begins to live vicariously through its complete embrace of life, love, sex, violence, and vengeance.

I started I’m Sorry if I Scared You while recovering from a salpingectomy. One of my biggest phobias is getting pregnant and giving birth, and with Roe v. Wade being overturned in 2022 and the current administration’s war on birth control, I wasn’t taking any chances. And post-sterilization seemed like a good time to read a Southern rape revenge story about a sentient fetus and the occasional space alien.

Most of the story takes place in rural Arkansas, from where Murray originally hails. I’m Sorry if I Scared You is a love letter to that area and the low-income families that do their best to survive there. Poverty is a serious issue in Arkansas. Its poverty rate of 17.2% is the seventh highest in the nation, above the national official poverty measure of 11.1%. It’s one of the worst states for child well-being, has a higher suicide by gun rate than the rest of the US, has an incarceration rate of 912 per 100,000 people (making it the third highest in the Nation), is one of the least educated states, the most homophobic/transphobic, and is ranked one of the worst states to live in due to the economy. In contrast, Massachusetts, the state where Murray currently lives and her main character, Odie (short for Odette), goes to school, is one of the richest states, the first to legalize same-sex marriage in the country, and the most educated state in the US. We were also voted the snobbiest state (and apparently we’re proud of it), but more on that later. Odie is the first in her family to get into college (implied to be Harvard) and she views school and moving to Mass as her ticket to a better life. That is, until she’s raped by another student and discovers things can be shitty pretty much anywhere.

Disillusioned and depressed now that she knows college in Massachusetts can be just as shitty as the things that happen at home, Odie takes Plan B and drives back to Arkansas for Thanksgiving break to find comfort among her friends and family. She drives while bleeding through her pants and passes the clump of cells in a gas station bathroom. For reasons unknown to her, Odie decides to save the embryo in a plastic water bottle and bring it home with her. We learn that Odie has very mixed feelings about home. She’s ashamed of the insect infested trailer and the poverty in which her family lives, but at the same time, she loves her family and her two best friends, Dale (short for Dhalia) and Dwayne, and wants to be with them after such a traumatic event. Both her father and stepmother struggle with substance use disorder, alcohol for her dad and pills for her stepmom, and her teenage brother, Bubba, has already been to rehab for meth.

Substance use disorder (SUD)* does not discriminate when it comes to socioeconomic status, but poverty, lack of formal education, and unemployment are all risk factors for fatal overdoses and make it more difficult to recover from SUD. At my current job working with patients with SUD, I see how much more our low-income and unhoused patients struggle with their recovery than our patients with more financial stability. There are fewer detoxes that accept Medicaid and MassHealth (I live and work in Massachusetts, and MassHealth is our public state insurance), and those that do are often not as nice as the ones that only accept private insurance. Poverty and being unhoused can have disastrous effects on mental health by increasing stress and feelings of hopelessness, which in turn increases the risk of substance abuse. It’s also extremely hard to try and focus on getting better when all your energy goes toward trying to survive. There’s also the shame that comes with both, as poverty and addiction are often viewed by our society as a moral failing, as if poverty and substance use were choices.

Odie struggles with the complexities of loving someone with substance use disorder. Her father is kind and loving one moment, then flies into a violent rage the next. He drinks while he drives, terrifying Odie and Dale. But Odie seems to have accepted his alcoholism as a fact of life, which makes it even sadder. Murray does an excellent job capturing the feelings of despair felt not just by Odie after her assault, but of her friends and family who didn’t “escape” rural Arkansas. Shortly after her return, Odie and Dale head to Club Trinity (probably based on the Triniti Nightclub in Little Rock), the only gay club in the state. Even with Arkansas passing anti-LGBTQIA+ bills left and right, there are still safe havens for the queer community in Arkansas, like Eureka Springs, “the gayest small town in America.” Odie remarks that “The Southern queers did not have the same air of self-importance as the queers in Massachusetts” which, as a Massachusetts queer, I really wanted to be offended by, but it is kind of true. Having lived in Mass my whole life, there’s definitely a lot of classism here, and people will often ask where you went to college so they can judge how well educated you are, especially if you’re in the Boston area or one of the college towns. I’ve read posts by white Massachusetts liberals who will joke about Southern states “getting what they deserve” under Trump, as if there aren’t leftists in red states, and painting Southerners as lesser because they view them as poor and uneducated (and apparently think being low-income and lacking a formal education somehow makes you inferior). They don’t even realize how racist this is since the South has a large Black population.

My grandmother was from Tennessee and also left her depressed hometown of Iron City (the subject of the documentary Iron City Blues) during the great migration to move to Chicago and get her degree. Her family expected her to return home to be a teacher when she graduated, but she knew if she returned, she’d never escape the Jim Crow South and instead stayed in Chicago where there were more opportunities for an educated Black woman. Unlike Odie, my grandmother had nothing but negative things to say about the town she grew up in, and the South was full of bad memories for her. Odie knows her town isn’t a good or safe place to live, but there’s still love there. It’s why she goes back to Arkansas to seek comfort.

This was a weird ass book, and I mean that in the best way possible. I wish I could give more away, but since it’s short, I don’t want to spoil anything. Two of the book’s major themes are police violence and sexual assault (which feels especially poignant in today’s political environment) and it’s gratifying to read about Odie getting her revenge on both the cops and her rapist. A satisfying and sick fantasy since we so rarely get justice in the real world. I liked that there was polyamorous representation and we get to see what it’s like to be queer in a red state. It’s also refreshing to see Murray subvert “hixploitation” horror (examples include films such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, Motel Hell, and Wrong Turn). Here it’s not the “hillbillies” who are the source of horror, but the rich college kid and corrupt cops.

*If you or someone you know struggles with substance use disorder check out SMART Recovery, a secular and research based peer support group.

Tags: Adult, American Indian, BIPOC, Bisexual, Body Horror, Book Review, Chronic Illness, Disability, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Own Voices, Physical Disability, Queer, Sci-Fi

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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

Blurb

Wow, this book… just wow.

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, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Myths and Folklore, Own Voices, Queer, Trans

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

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.

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

*end trigger warning*

Tags: Adult, Asian, Asian British, BIPOC, Book Review, Japanese, Own Voices, Psychological Horror

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

Blurb

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.

Tags: Adult, Asian, Asian Canadian, BIPOC, Book Review, Gothic, Hong Konger, Own Voices, Psychological Horror

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

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

On Sunday She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Saga Press

Genre: Gothic, Historic Horror, Werebeast

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Black characters and author, Queer main character and author

Takes Place in: Georgia, USA

Blurb

Haunting and thought-provoking, On Sunday She Picked Flowers explores retribution, family trauma, and the power of building oneself back up after breaking down.