Diversity in Horror Fiction

These Bodies Ain’t Broken Edited by Madeline Dyer

These Bodies Ain’t Broken Edited by Madeline Dyer

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Page Street Publishing

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

Audience: Young Adult

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

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

Blurb

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

These stories showcase disabled characters winning against all odds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Lanternfish Press

Genre: Gothic

Audience: Adult

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

Takes Place in: South Carolina Sea Islands

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

Blurb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: Adult, American Indian, BIPOC, Book Review, Chippewa, Gothic, Ottawa, Own Voices
On Sunday She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield

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.

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.

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

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 . . .

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

The 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
Fever Dreams of a Parasite by Pedro Íñiguez

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.

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.

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

The Unfinished by Cheryl Isaacs

The Unfinished by Cheryl Isaacs. Recommended. Read if you like atmospheric, slow burn horror

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: HarperCollins

Genre: Demon, Eco Horror, Folk Horror

Audience: Young Adult

Diversity: Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) main character and author, Jamacian-American side character

Content Warnings (Highlight to view):  Child Endangerment, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Kidnapping

Blurb

In this debut YA horror novel by Cheryl Isaacs (Mohawk), small-town athlete Avery is haunted by the black water and Unfinished beings of Kanyen’kehá:ka stories and must turn to the culture she hasn’t felt connected to in order to save her town.

The black water has been waiting. Watching. Hungry for the souls it needs to survive.

When small-town athlete Avery’s morning run leads her to a strange pond in the middle of the forest, she awakens a horror the townspeople of Crook’s Falls have long forgotten.

Avery can smell the water, see it flooding everywhere; she thinks she’s losing her mind. And as the black water haunts Avery—taking a new form each time—people in town begin to go missing.

Though Avery had heard whispers of monsters from her Kanyen’kehá:ka (Mohawk) relatives, she’s never really connected to her Indigenous culture or understood the stories. But the Elders she has distanced herself from now may have the answers she needs.

When Key, her best friend and longtime crush, is the next to disappear, Avery is faced with a choice: listen to the Kanyen’kehá:ka and save the town but lose her friend forever…or listen to her heart and risk everything to get Key back.

In her stunning debut, Cheryl Isaacs pulls the reader down into an unsettling tale of monsters, mystery, and secrets that refuse to stay submerged.

The story begins with Avery, a Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) teenager living in Crook’s Falls, going on her morning run through the forest. She’s trying to get a cross-country scholarship to afford university as she and her mother struggle financially, especially after her parents’ divorce. Avery did her first run for cancer research at age 7 and immediately fell in love. She explains “[Running] had been and still was the closest thing I could imagine to flying.” It also helps still her mind of racing thoughts. Her mother, along with everyone else, has told Avery to never leave the forest path for her own safety (though they don’t elaborate as to why). But apparently, Avery’s never heard the story of Red Riding Hood and decides to do just that. While she doesn’t encounter any wolves, Avery does come across a hidden meadow with a strange, black pond that gives her a sense of unease. When she peers into it, her reflection smiles at her. Thoroughly freaked out Avery manages to stumble her way back to the path and runs home.

Her overprotective mother, Violet, was worried about her daughter going on an early morning excursion without leaving a note, but Avery blows off her concern (something she does frequently with her friends as well). At first, Avery doesn’t treat her–or her friends, Key and Stella– that well, mostly because she’s so reserved and pushes them away when things get too emotionally heavy for her. But her friends accept these aspects of her and are supportive (Avery is essentially an introvert who was adopted by two extroverts, which is usually how introverts like me make friends). She even admits “And here it was—the maddening part of my personality that just couldn’t deal with Serious Feelings Talk. Sharing. Vulnerability. I couldn’t do any of it, even when I wanted to… But just like my mom, I found sharing scary. Unlike her, I was basically a coward.” Avery does get better as the story progresses though.

Avery finds that the black water seems to have followed her home, showing up in her dreams, her shower, her coffee, and even flooding a bus she’s riding. She has strange visions no one else can see that get progressively worse as time passes. Sleep deprived with frayed nerves Avery tries to open up about what’s happening to others, but people either don’t believe her or tell her to just ignore it. Avery is beginning to question her sanity when folks start to disappear, and she realizes it’s all connected to the Black water and a strange pale figure called “The Ragged Man.”

I found the most interesting part of the story to be Avery’s character development. She starts the book feeling disconnected from her culture and holding the world at arm’s length. Avery just can’t deal with her emotions or opening up to others. Part of this is because Avery thinks that if she speaks something, that makes it real, but if she just suppresses it then it will go away. This is based on her belief that she caused her parents divorce by asking them if they were getting divorced: her question made it happen. Although she understands intellectually that can’t be true, it doesn’t stop her from believing it. As Avery explains, “…saying things can make them real, and when they’re real, they can be taken away.” But as the story progresses Avery finds her strength by connecting to others.

Part of Avery’s disconnect from her Kanien’kehá:ka heritage is because her mother refused to teach her about it growing up. Avery explains “I think Mom was afraid it might do me more harm than good, marking me as different in a world that only claimed to value diversity.” This also may be a remanent of the lasting damage done by residential schools. As Noetta, an Osage, Mvskoke Creek, and Seminole woman explained in an interview with PBS “There are some Natives that were so affected by their boarding school experiences that they chose not to raise their children in the traditional ways” resulting in a loss of culture between the generations. As is perfectly summarized by the website Native Hope “All of these current challenges—lack of educational opportunity, physical and mental health disparities, the intense impact of historical trauma, lack of economic independence—are part of the great tragedy facing Native Americans: the loss of Native American culture and identity.”

For example, Avery’s can’t understand when her Ihstá (aunt), Lily, tries to speak Kanyen’kéha (the Kanien’kehá:ka language) to her, only knowing a few words because her mother never taught Avery their language. This loss of culture and community may be part of the reason Avery struggles so much with her mental health and feels like she must be independent, never relying on others for help. Unlike the traditional western approach to Wellness which focuses primarily on the body, Native communities often have a more holistic approach. According to the Canadian Health Justice website “There is immense diversity in approaches to wellness among different Indigenous communities however, a core concept of health and wellness common to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people is that people, earth, and everything around us are deeply interconnected and that wellness comes from holistic internal and external balance that goes beyond the absence of illness.” Without these important connections Avery’s mental health suffers.

Obviously, I can never understand the struggles American Indians go through, nor what it feels like to have your culture erased by residential schools (amongst other forms of cultural genocide), and I won’t pretend to. But I still found myself relating to Avery’s longing for a culture erased by colonialism. As some of you are aware, I’m half Black (though white passing), and while Black Americans do have their own rich culture, it doesn’t hurt any less knowing that generations worth of culture and knowledge have been erased by the enslavement of Africans by Euro-Westerners. While some remnants of African cultures still remain (like in music, food, religion, and even speech) it’s not the same thing as knowing how to speak the language of my ancestors or follow their spiritual beliefs because I don’t know what those were, and there’s really no way of finding out what specific region of Africa my family came from (genetic testing can narrow it down to a general area, but not a culture).

I know it’s not the same, but Avery’s despair over feeling like she was losing her roots stirred up grief and frustration in me. It was the same feeling I get when my white mother talks about the genealogy research she does for her side of the family (who are horrible people I don’t like) that she can trace back hundred of years. I would love to do that with the Black side of my family (who I’m much closer to), because that information was erased when they were enslaved. Again, I can’t really know how Avery feels, but I know how she made me feel. I guess what I’m saying is this book stirred up a lot of deep-rooted feelings for me. Avery feeling like she wasn’t part of her culture, or had a right to tell their stories really resonated with me as a biracial person who sometimes feel like an intruder in both my parent’s cultures. For Avery, reconnecting to her family and culture, and learning to rely on her friends, is the best way for her to heal and holds the key to defeating the black water.

The black water reminded me of MMIW and Native children taken from their families by the government. It’s supernatural metaphor for very real problems destroying Native communities today. When the black water steals someone the community finds reasons to excuse their absence, like “they ran away from home” and the police show little to no interest in their disappearance. I found the black water to be especially creepy, and at first, I believed it had to be based on some real-world legend. But no, it was entirely Isaac’s own invention, which I found impressive. The black water felt like a story passed down as a warning from generation to generation, and not something the author just invented for the book. However, Isaac does use some traditional stories in her narrative. Avery reflects on Haudenosaunee (the six Iroquois Nations) creation story of Sky Woman, at first believing  Sky Woman’s fall from the Sky World is something terrifying, a punishment for being too curious. But a Kanien’kehá:ka elder makes her realize that if Sky Woman hadn’t fallen, we wouldn’t have Turtle Island (the name used by some American Indians for what Euro-Westerners call North and Central America) or the Haudenosaunee people. So, although change can be scary, good things can come from it.

This made it the antagonist of the story even creepier, and this was definitely a creepy book, filled with a general sense of unease. But it wasn’t scary per se, so perfect for people who want to dip their toes in the shallow end of the horror pool. Your personal experience may vary, but I think this will appeal to fans who don’t usually read horror. You’ll also notice there aren’t a lot of trigger warnings for this book. The Unfinished feels very approachable, but if you’re a hardened horror fan, you may be disappointed at the lack of scares. I liked how the story centers around a teenage girl trying to save the boy she’s crushing on, a nice inversion of the “damsel in distress” trope, and the message about building community and relationships.

I personally feel that The Unfinished would have worked better as a novella, as the story really dragged for me. The pacing is much slower than I usually prefer, focusing more on atmosphere, emotion, and building suspense than action. Which is fine, it just didn’t grab my attention as much as other books. Keep in mind however, I do struggle with ADHD so I tend to prefer a fast pace with a lot going on over atmospheric reads. Those who do like a slow buildup of suspense and in-depth character studies will probably have no issue with the lack of action. I also found that the story was very repetitive; Avery sees something creepy, gets scared, goes to someone for help but then has trouble actually asking for help then runs away, lather, rinse, repeat. I understand this was probably to give Avery more time to develop her character, but to me it came off as unnecessary padding, which just reinforced my opinion that this would have worked better as a shorter story. The only other fault I found is something that’s admittedly, very nitpicky. I just really wished that Avery and Key could have just been friends instead of having an awkward crush get in the way, but that’s just my queer aversion to hetero romance tropes and I feel like most readers won’t care about that. Even though I had some issues with the length of the book I still enjoyed the story and its message, and I think it will be relatable to many BIPOC people who feel disconnected from their culture.

*If you want to learn more about the Haudenosaunee confederacy, I highly recommend the Iroquois Museum in Howes Cave, NY. I visited it years ago and found the museum highly informative and had great conversations with the staff and an elder who had painted the mural in the museum. If you’re not near New York the museum’s website has virtual tours and an online gift shop that sells educational books.

Tags: American Indian, BIPOC, Book Review, Demon, Folk Horror, Mohawk, Own Voices, Recommended, Young Adult

You’ve Awoken Her by Ana Dávila Cardinal

You've Awoken Her by Ann Dávila Cardinal. Recommended. Read if you like Cthulhu, Criticizing Classism

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: HarperCollins

Genre: Eldritch Horror, Mystery

Audience: Young Adult

Diversity: Puerto Rican main character and author, main character with anxiety disorder

Takes Place in: The Hamptons, NY

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Ableism, Child Endangerment, Classism, Death, Forced Captivity, Mental Illness, Racism, Police Harassment

Blurb

All Gabi wants is to spend the summer in his room, surrounded by his Funkos and books, but with his mom traveling, his bags are packed for the last place he wants to visit—the Hamptons. Staying with his best friend should have him willing to peek out of his cave, but ever since Ruth’s nouveau riche family moved, their friendship has been off.

Surrounded by mansions, country clubs, and Ruth’s new boyfriend, Frost Thurston—the axis that Hampton society orbits around—it doesn’t take long for Gabi to feel completely out of place. But when he witnesses a woman being pulled under the ocean water, and no one—not the police or anyone else in the Hamptons—seems to care, Gabi starts to wonder if maybe the beachside town’s bad vibes are more real than he thought.

As the “accidental” deaths and drownings begin to climb, Gabi knows he’ll need proof to convince Ruth they’re all in danger. And while the Thurston family name keeps rising to the top, along with every fresh body, what’s worst is that all the signs point to something lurking beneath the water—something with tentacles and a thirst for blood. Can Gabi figure out how the two are intertwined and put an end to the string of deaths…before becoming the water’s next victim?

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.

As an introvert, being forced out of my cave of books and horror movies and into new social situations is not my idea of a good time. Even more so if it means being surrounded by rich white people. I’ve seen Get Out, I know how that story ends. But that’s exactly how Gabriel (Gabi for short) is meant to spend his summer, with his white, Nouveau Riche best friend Ruth. Ruth has invited Gabi to her new house in the Hamptons to meet all her new, rich friends and basically make sure her bestie doesn’t spend the summer in his room glued to his computer. If you’re not familiar with the Hamptons, it’s a popular seaside resort with a large artist community where wealthy New Yorkers like to summer. But the Hamptons aren’t exclusively white (even if it sometimes seems that way). Sag Harbor was a refuge for upper and middle class Blacks starting in the 1940s and the Shinnecock Nation were the original inhabitants and still reside there today (which Cardinal makes a point of mentioning). And of course, there’s the Hampton’s Latin American population who make up the bulk of the workforce there.

Gabi adores Ruth (platonically): she’s feisty, independent, and extremely loyal to the people she loves. Unfortunately, who she loves right now is a guy name Frost who is the absolute worst. Gabriel has put up with Ruth’s bad taste in men for years, but Frost is definitely the bottom of the barrel:an arrogant hip-hop producer who’s used to getting his way. It’s interesting how Frost (not his actual name) profits off Black music while being white and owns a Basquiat (a Black, neo-expressionist street artist who rose to fame in the 1980s and sadly died of a heroin overdose at the age of 27), without sharing the artist’s anti-capitalist views or even really recognizing the themes of colonialism and class struggle in the artwork. It’s clear he only cares about Black culture as far as it makes him look cool. He also calls Ruth “Tiki” because her paternal great-grandmother was Native Hawaiian. Ew. But Ruth is Gabi’s best friend so he tries his best to get along with her new beau, no matter how loathsome he finds him. Okay, admittedly, he could try and be a little more accepting and less judgmental of everyone in the Hamptons, but Frost totally deserves it. The Hamptons aren’t completely terrible, though. Gabi gets to meet Lars, a pansexual restaurant owner who grew up in South Boston (yay Boston) and Georgina, a bartender and fellow horror fan with a dry sense of humor (and part of the aforementioned Latine workforce) who he strikes up a friendship with.

The Irony of the Negro Policeman painting done in Acrylic and oilstick on wood. A neo-expressionist painting of a Black man in a midnight blue police uniform with a skull-like face. The red and blue top hat he wears resembles a cage.

Irony of Negro Policeman by Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1981. Acrylic and oilstick on wood.

The class divide is clearly putting a strain on their friendship, with Gabi feeling afraid of getting replaced by Ruth’s new friends and left behind. Ruth is concerned by what she sees at Gabi’s lack off support and is also afraid of losing him. And it doesn’t help that Frost is whispering in her ear that Gabi’s jealous of her new life and trying to ruin it for him. It’s causing understandable tension and neither of them are entirely at fault for it. Gabi tends to deal with his insecurity by being snarky, even when people are trying to be nice to him, while Ruth keeps forcing Gabi into situations that make him uncomfortable and trying to get him to be friends with Frost. Clearly, both of them need to read up on Michael Suileabhain-Wilson’s Five Geek Social Fallacies, namely Geek Social Fallacy #4: Friendship Is Transitive (Ruth doesn’t seem to get that not all of her friends will get along, and that’s okay) and Geek Social Fallacy #3: Friendship Before All (Gabi needs to accept that Ruth is allowed to go off and live her own life without it being a slight on him).

While annoying at times, I think their behavior is not uncommon for young adults who are still learning the intricacies of relationships. As a grown up with a fully developed frontal lobe and years of experience with friendships, yes, the character’s behavior can be annoying. But for teenagers who have been friends since early childhood and are probably facing the idea of growing apart for the very first time, their actions make sense. Hell, I probably would have responded the same way at their age. And here is where I remind everyone this book is written for young adults, so if you’re older, you may not find the characters relatable. But that’s okay, the book isn’t for you. And honestly, I found both Gabi and Ruth well developed and likeable, even when they were acting like brats (again, they’re teenagers, it comes with the territory). I also really appreciated that there was no hint of romance between two friends. It’s nice to see them just be friends, as the “men and women can’t be friends” trope is one of my pet peeves.

I’ve written before about how Lovecraft was a racist, sexist, xenophobic, antisemitic asshole to the point that even his wife and friends were calling him out on it. So, I love when marginalized authors use his works to create their own, progressive stories. The Horror at Red Hook is basically about how Black and Brown immigrants are a plague, so I love that Cardinal subverts this by making the white inhabitants the invaders instead (which historically they are) and gentrification the real plague on society. The wealthy colonizers are repeatedly compared to white poplars, an invasive tree species that was first introduced in the mid-18th century from Eurasia and that outcompetes many native North American species of plant.

There’s also a lot of talk of appropriation in the horror genre. Gabi’s online nemesis, @SonicReducer, points out that modern zombies are a whitewashed version of the original Haitian zombies who were a symbol of slavery. We learn from Georgina that Lovecraft stole his ideas of Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones from other cultures where the creatures actually existed, tying into the book’s themes of colonization. In reality Lovecraft was more likely inspired by Alfred Tennyson’s poem The Kraken and The Gods of Pegāna by Lord Dunsany. He despised anything that wasn’t Anglo-Saxon so I have a difficult time imagining he would have been willing to draw from cultures he viewed as “lesser” for his ideas. Still, fiction requires a willing suspension of disbelief and not me nitpicking a story about an eldritch horror terrorizing the Hamptons, so I’m willing to let it go for the sake of enjoying the story. Plus, it ties into the story’s themes of colonization.

A poorly drawn sketch of Cthulhu in profile sitting on a square drawn by H.P. Lovecraft. The date says May 11th, 1934. H.P. Lovecraft has written underneath the drawing. The words

A sketch of Cthulhu done by H.P. Lovecraft. Clearly Lovecraft was a better writer than he was an artist.

There is some ableism in the book, Gabi describes someone speaking to him as if he has a single digit IQ and refers to another character as looking like a “junkie” (a cruel name for people with substance use disorder), which I was not a fan of. Gabi also refers to Georgina’s make up as “punk rock war paint,” which made me side-eye. But overall, the book wasn’t especially problematic in any way.

I enjoyed the mystery elements, as I’m a total nerd when it comes to research and love when characters go to the library to discover the town’s dark past. In this case, Gabi and Georgina try to discover why people keep disappearing in the town, and if Frost’s family might be behind it. It’s pretty obvious who the bad guys are from the beginning so the mystery elements come more from how they’re making people disappear, why, and who’s next. There’s a sense of dread the hangs over the whole story that I found very effective. The pacing was decent, with enough horror elements to keep the book moving without sacrificing character development. Overall, You’ve Awoken Her is a good book for those looking for scares that aren’t too intense or gory. Body parts are found on the beach, but that’s about as gruesome as things get. While Gabi makes many references to horror films (both real and fictional) you don’t have to be a hardcore fan to enjoy the book.

Tags: Anxiety Disorder, BIPOC, Book Review, Disability, Eldritch, Hispanic/Latinx, Latine/Latino, Mental Illness, Mystery, Own Voices, Puerto Rican, Recommended, Young Adult

They Bloom at Night by Trang Thanh Tran

They Bloom at NIght by by Trang Thanh Tran. Recommended. Read if you like oceanic horror, found family.

 

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Genre: Body Horror, Eco Horror

Audience: Print, audio, digital

Diversity: Lesbian, transgender, and gay characters, non-binary author, Vietnamese Author and main characters

Takes Place in: Louisiana

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Animal Death, Animal Cruelty, Death, Homophobia, Pedophilia, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Sexism, Transphobia, Verbal/Emotional Abuse

Blurb

A red algae bloom has taken over Mercy, Louisiana. Ever since a devastating hurricane, mutated wildlife lurks in the water that rises by the day. But Mercy has always been a place where monsters walk in plain sight. Especially at its heart: The Cove, where Noon’s life was upended long before the storm at a party her older boyfriend insisted on.

Now, Noon is stuck navigating the submerged town with her mom, who believes their dead family has reincarnated as sea creatures. Alone with the pain of what happened that night at the cove, Noon buries the truth: she is not the right shape.

When Mercy’s predatory leader demands Noon and her mom capture the creature drowning residents, she reluctantly finds an ally in his deadly hunter of a daughter and friends old and new. As the next storm approaches, Noon must confront the past and decide if it’s time to answer the monster itching at her skin.

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.

They Bloom at Night is a queer, coming of age, environmental horror story. What at first appears to be a classic tale of “Man vs Nature,” quickly shifts to show that“monster” and environment are not the main antagonists, so much as the greedy human, and, to an extent, the environmental destruction caused by humans.

Since Hurricane Arlene destroyed the town of Mercy, Louisiana two years ago, a red algae bloom on the Mississippi River has become the longest-lasting known to humans. The algae have made fishing difficult for the teenaged Noon (real name Nhung, but most white people can’t pronounce that) and her mother, Tien. The two women have taken over fishing after the disappearance of Noon’s brother and father, who Tien believes are either still alive or have been reincarnated as sea animals and are waiting for rescue out there somewhere. Their family has a guardian water spirit, named Sông, who Noon sees as little more than superstition. Sông is said to have kept her father’s family safe as they made their perilous journey from Vietnam to the United States by sea, and Sông is the reason Tien is convinced that her husband and son are still out there.

Even though, both have likely drowned, Noon’s mother insists they must stay in Mercy to find them, despite her daughter’s desperation to leave the small town. Mercy holds nothing but bad memories for Noon. After her brother, Jaylen, was born, her parents began to ignore her and favor their son. Their home was all but destroyed by Hurricane Arlene. Noon has never felt welcomed among the racist, sexist town folks who hurl jeers at her and her mother when they dock their boat. Loan Shark and businessman Jimmy, the man who controls most of the town through money and fear, still owns their boat and demands Noon and Tien bring him strange, mutated sea life to sell. And Noon was sexually assaulted at Mercy’s Cove by an older boy who had groomed her. When her mother found her, Noon’s hair had turned white and her skin was flaking off. Her body continues to change, her fingernails all fall out and she can only digest raw meat.

When Noon and Tien get to the dock, a girl named Covey who seems to be overseeing things says they must go see her father, who is revealed to be Jimmy. Jimmy explains he wants them to look for a sea monster. People around Mercy have been disappearing, most recently a government scientist studying the algae bloom named Dr. Lucía Delgado. The government wants to close the fishing season early and possibly designate the whole area a disaster zone, and Jimmy can’t have that. He orders Noon and Tien to find whatever creature is causing the disappearances and bring it back to him in three weeks’ time. He informs them that Covey will be accompanying them on their mission. After Tien becomes ill from a rusty nail injury she receives from Jimmy, the two teens are forced to work together to find Jimmy’s monster. A tense relationship between Covey and Noon slowly blossoms into friendship and then into something more as they race to solve the mysterious disappearances and face their own trauma. On their journey Noon reconnects with her old friend, Wilder, who has run away from home, and meets Saffy, who was kicked out of her home after her parents discovered she was transgender.

The hurricane that nearly destroys Mercy has clear parallels to Hurricane Katrina, the 2005 hurricane that decimated New Orleans and caused nearly 1,000 fatalities. Noon refers to her life after Hurricane Arlene as post-Apocalyptic, even though everything is business as usual outside Louisiana. Mercy has some electricity and running water, but it’s unreliable at best. A Rolling Stone article about Hurricane Katrina entitled it Apocalypse in New Orleans. Vanity Fair has one called Hell and High Water: American Apocalypse. Noon explains that politicians think the people who chose to stay in Mercy deserve what they got. A research paper entitled System Justification in Responding to the Poor and Displaced in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina states

“One sentiment that took hold following Katrina was that those who lived in New Orleans were at fault for having chosen to live there in the first place, and for not having evacuated when the officials issued a mandate. Some went so far as to ask why people would choose to live in a city that lies beneath sea level. Talk show hosts and local newspapers blamed victims and asked why the government was obligated to help those who did not evacuate.”

Two men paddle in high water in the Ninth Ward after Hurricane Katrina.

A photo of the Ninth Ward after Hurricane Katrina. Mario Tama/Getty Images

Besides environmental disaster, one of the major themes of the books is the fraught relationship between parents and their children. Noon states “…the people who hurt us most, who forced us here, have been those responsible for our care.” Saffy’s parents forced her to choose between being her authentic self or living with them and pretending to be a boy. Similarly, Wilder runs away from home because his parents want him to be something he’s not. Because boys are more highly valued then girls, an effeminate boy is a disappointment, and Wilder simply couldn’t continue to fit his parents’ idea of what a man should be. Noon is also a victim of toxic masculinity, and is treated as having less value than her brother Jaylen. Even after her brother and father go missing, presumed dead, her mother continues to place a higher importance on them than her living daughter.

I appreciate that, while all the parents had problems, the Asian parents at least seemed to love their children, and were doing their best while burdened with generational trauma and a traditionally sexist culture. Tran is able to challenge the sexism in Vietnamese culture while also making clear that sexism and bad parenting isn’t exclusive to Asians. Wilder has a tense relationship with his parents who are uncomfortable with his bisexuality and even pressure him to be more manly. But at least they don’t disown him like Saffy’s parents do. There’s at least some hope Wilder will one day be able to reconcile with his mom and dad. Jimmy, on the other hand, is completely irredeemable, not just as person but as a parent. Noon says “Like so many parents Jimmy thinks his daughter is only fit for his hopes. But when we inherit those, we also inherit the mistakes. We are the ones to live with the consequences. Every generation before had a semblance of a chance, but we have the end of the world.” He sees Covey only as an extension of himself, just another tool on his belt. Tien at least tries to be a good mother to Noon, trying to protect her, singing her to sleep at night, and performing Cao gio (coining) to relieve her headaches.

I also liked all the random facts about ocean animals strewn throughout the book. Noon is a huge nerd and I’m totally here for it. Through her we learn that the red algae bloom is not toxic to marine life like the red tide (which can be worsened by hurricanes), but it does seem to cause mutations. We also learn how algae have mutualistic symbiotic relationships with several species, like Coralline algae, a red alga which plays an important role in the ecosystems or coral reefs. A similar type of algae lives in Cassiopea jellyfish, which gives the jellies their color and helps them get food.

An aerial photo of a red tide near the FLorida coastline.

Photo of a red tide from WMBF News.

As a story about embracing the “monstrous” parts of yourself, rather than hiding them away to please your family and society They Bloom at Night will especially appeal to queer and trans readers. I suspect Noon may be non-binary, but hasn’t cracked her egg  yet as many of the things she says and feels about being in a “girl’s body,” like “Monsterhood is a girl’s body you don’t belong in”  and not knowing what it means to be a girl, felt familiar to me as a non-binary AFAB person. She feels more comfortable in a “monstrous” body than one that belongs to a girl. The “body horror” is less horror than it is freedom. Tran is also non-binary and uses they/she pronouns so I wonder if they had similar feelings as a young person. There’s a decent amount of trans and queer representation in the book, with Saffy being transgender, Wilder bisexual, Covey a lesbian, and the lead scientist researching the algae bloom, Dr. Delgado, is non-binary. There may also be some neurodiversity among the group as one of the teens quips that they’re “Team Neurotic Kids with Very Specific Interests,” something else that people are expected to hide away for the comfort of the neurotypical.

Tags: Asian American, BIPOC, Body Horror, Book Review, Eco Horror, Gay, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Non-binary, Recommended, Trans, Vietnamese, Young Adult
I’m Sorry if I Scared You by Mae Murray

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
Malicia by Steven dos Santos

Malicia by Steven dos Santos

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Page Street Publishing

Genre: Blood & Guts, Demon, Monster, Mystery, Myth and Folklore, Occult

Audience: Young Adult

Diversity: Gay and bisexual man characters, Dominican Americans, character with anxiety disorder

Takes Place in: The Dominican Republic

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Ableism, Child Death, Death, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Gore, Medical Torture/Abuse, Mental Illness, Suicide, Torture, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence, Vomit

Blurb

Four friends, three days, two lovers, and one very haunted theme park.

On a stormy Halloween weekend, Ray enlists his best friends Joaquin, Sofia, and Isabella to help him make a documentary of Malicia, the abandoned theme park off the coast of the Dominican Republic where his mother and brother died in a mass killing thirteen years ago.

But what should be an easy weekend trip quickly turns into something darker because all four friends have come to Malicia for their own.

Ray has come to Malicia to find out the truth of the massacre that destroyed his family. Isabella has come to make art out of Ray’s tragedy for her own personal gain. Sofia has come to support her friends in one last adventure before she goes to med school. Joaquin already knows the truth of the Malicia Massacre and he has come to betray his crush Ray to the evil that made the park possible.

With an impending hurricane and horrors around every corner, they all struggle to face the deadly storm and their own inner demons. But the deadliest evil of all is the ancient malignant presence on the island.

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

The story is told through alternating first-person perspectives between the four main characters; Raymundo, Joaquin, Sofia, and Isabella. The friends are traveling to spend Halloween weekend in Raymundo’s family’s abandoned, horror-themed amusement park, Malicia. The park was closed after a mysterious mass murder took place, claiming the lives of Raymundo’s mother and brother. The island on which Malicia was built is only accessible by boat, and there’s a massive hurricane headed right toward them, so good luck trying to escape if anything goes wrong. You may question the teens’ decision to go to what is very obviously a cursed murder island during a hurricane, but each of the four have their own reason for being there. Raymundo wants to try and summon his brother’s spirit, Isabella wants to film a documentary about the island, and Joaquin wants to sacrifice Raymundo because the cult he belongs to told him to. (Don’t worry, that’s revealed early in the story, so it’s hardly a spoiler.) Sofia is  there because her friends are, and because she very firmly doesn’t believe in the supernatural or scare easily.

I think the characters were somewhat underdeveloped and one-note, and the exposition felt awkward at times. But honestly, the characters were just an excuse to explore the super cool setting. I mean, an abandoned, horror-themed, cursed, amusement park? Could there be a more perfect location for a horror story? And Santos clearly put a lot of thought into describing Malicia in loving detail. There’s an entire map in the beginning of the book (and I’m a sucker for maps) showing the different areas of the park, like Serial Springs, Paranormal Place, and Creature Canyon. I also liked the ride descriptions, which all sounded like tons of fun.

Malicia strongly reminded meof the island setting in Umineko When They Cry, where the characters are trapped by a typhoon on a remote island that is slowly overtaken by the supernatural (and everyone there dies horrible deaths). As both stories progress, the scares move from strange shadows and murders that could’ve been committed by a human to horror that’s clearly the work of demonic forces.

I enjoyed how the author not only used Spanish frequently throughout the book (which I appreciate that the publisher did not italicize) but words and phrases specific to the Dominican. The friends name their little group the Quisqueya Club, a word of Taíno origin that refers to the inhabitants of Hispaniola. Raymundo and Joaquin refer to each other as pana and tiguere, the friends informally greet each other with “Qué lo que” (what’s up?), Raymundo calls his parents Mai and Pai, and he admits to himself that he’s a Jablador (liar). Many of the monsters are also specific to the Dominican like Los Biembiens and La Jupia. The four friends also prepare Dominican food like mangú and yaniqueques.

Malicia an incrediblya spooky, gory, fun read. Even though it’s a 300+ page book, it felt like a quick read because the chapters are short and the suspense was able to grab my attention, although, admittedly, the story did drag a bit in the middle. The shifting viewpoints throughout the book helped build the suspense as the characters all started to become suspicious of each other. Because it was written for teens, it felt like a PG-13 horror movie with R-rated violence, which, of course, you can get away with in a book. The descriptions of mutilated bodies and rotting flesh are very graphic so this one is definitely not for the squeamish horror fan.

Tags: Anxiety Disorder, BIPOC, Bisexual, Blood & Guts, Book Review, Demon, Disability, Dominican, Gay, Latine/Latino, LGBTQIA, Monster, Mystery, Myths and Folklore, Occult, Own Voices, Young Adult

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These Bodies Ain’t Broken Edited by Madeline Dyer

These Bodies Ain’t Broken Edited by Madeline Dyer

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Page Street Publishing

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

Audience: Young Adult

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

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

Blurb

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

These stories showcase disabled characters winning against all odds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Lanternfish Press

Genre: Gothic

Audience: Adult

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

Takes Place in: South Carolina Sea Islands

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

Blurb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: Adult, American Indian, BIPOC, Book Review, Chippewa, Gothic, Ottawa, Own Voices
On Sunday She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield

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.

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.

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

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 . . .

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

The 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
Fever Dreams of a Parasite by Pedro Íñiguez

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.

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.

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

The Unfinished by Cheryl Isaacs

The Unfinished by Cheryl Isaacs. Recommended. Read if you like atmospheric, slow burn horror

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: HarperCollins

Genre: Demon, Eco Horror, Folk Horror

Audience: Young Adult

Diversity: Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) main character and author, Jamacian-American side character

Content Warnings (Highlight to view):  Child Endangerment, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Kidnapping

Blurb

In this debut YA horror novel by Cheryl Isaacs (Mohawk), small-town athlete Avery is haunted by the black water and Unfinished beings of Kanyen’kehá:ka stories and must turn to the culture she hasn’t felt connected to in order to save her town.

The black water has been waiting. Watching. Hungry for the souls it needs to survive.

When small-town athlete Avery’s morning run leads her to a strange pond in the middle of the forest, she awakens a horror the townspeople of Crook’s Falls have long forgotten.

Avery can smell the water, see it flooding everywhere; she thinks she’s losing her mind. And as the black water haunts Avery—taking a new form each time—people in town begin to go missing.

Though Avery had heard whispers of monsters from her Kanyen’kehá:ka (Mohawk) relatives, she’s never really connected to her Indigenous culture or understood the stories. But the Elders she has distanced herself from now may have the answers she needs.

When Key, her best friend and longtime crush, is the next to disappear, Avery is faced with a choice: listen to the Kanyen’kehá:ka and save the town but lose her friend forever…or listen to her heart and risk everything to get Key back.

In her stunning debut, Cheryl Isaacs pulls the reader down into an unsettling tale of monsters, mystery, and secrets that refuse to stay submerged.

The story begins with Avery, a Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) teenager living in Crook’s Falls, going on her morning run through the forest. She’s trying to get a cross-country scholarship to afford university as she and her mother struggle financially, especially after her parents’ divorce. Avery did her first run for cancer research at age 7 and immediately fell in love. She explains “[Running] had been and still was the closest thing I could imagine to flying.” It also helps still her mind of racing thoughts. Her mother, along with everyone else, has told Avery to never leave the forest path for her own safety (though they don’t elaborate as to why). But apparently, Avery’s never heard the story of Red Riding Hood and decides to do just that. While she doesn’t encounter any wolves, Avery does come across a hidden meadow with a strange, black pond that gives her a sense of unease. When she peers into it, her reflection smiles at her. Thoroughly freaked out Avery manages to stumble her way back to the path and runs home.

Her overprotective mother, Violet, was worried about her daughter going on an early morning excursion without leaving a note, but Avery blows off her concern (something she does frequently with her friends as well). At first, Avery doesn’t treat her–or her friends, Key and Stella– that well, mostly because she’s so reserved and pushes them away when things get too emotionally heavy for her. But her friends accept these aspects of her and are supportive (Avery is essentially an introvert who was adopted by two extroverts, which is usually how introverts like me make friends). She even admits “And here it was—the maddening part of my personality that just couldn’t deal with Serious Feelings Talk. Sharing. Vulnerability. I couldn’t do any of it, even when I wanted to… But just like my mom, I found sharing scary. Unlike her, I was basically a coward.” Avery does get better as the story progresses though.

Avery finds that the black water seems to have followed her home, showing up in her dreams, her shower, her coffee, and even flooding a bus she’s riding. She has strange visions no one else can see that get progressively worse as time passes. Sleep deprived with frayed nerves Avery tries to open up about what’s happening to others, but people either don’t believe her or tell her to just ignore it. Avery is beginning to question her sanity when folks start to disappear, and she realizes it’s all connected to the Black water and a strange pale figure called “The Ragged Man.”

I found the most interesting part of the story to be Avery’s character development. She starts the book feeling disconnected from her culture and holding the world at arm’s length. Avery just can’t deal with her emotions or opening up to others. Part of this is because Avery thinks that if she speaks something, that makes it real, but if she just suppresses it then it will go away. This is based on her belief that she caused her parents divorce by asking them if they were getting divorced: her question made it happen. Although she understands intellectually that can’t be true, it doesn’t stop her from believing it. As Avery explains, “…saying things can make them real, and when they’re real, they can be taken away.” But as the story progresses Avery finds her strength by connecting to others.

Part of Avery’s disconnect from her Kanien’kehá:ka heritage is because her mother refused to teach her about it growing up. Avery explains “I think Mom was afraid it might do me more harm than good, marking me as different in a world that only claimed to value diversity.” This also may be a remanent of the lasting damage done by residential schools. As Noetta, an Osage, Mvskoke Creek, and Seminole woman explained in an interview with PBS “There are some Natives that were so affected by their boarding school experiences that they chose not to raise their children in the traditional ways” resulting in a loss of culture between the generations. As is perfectly summarized by the website Native Hope “All of these current challenges—lack of educational opportunity, physical and mental health disparities, the intense impact of historical trauma, lack of economic independence—are part of the great tragedy facing Native Americans: the loss of Native American culture and identity.”

For example, Avery’s can’t understand when her Ihstá (aunt), Lily, tries to speak Kanyen’kéha (the Kanien’kehá:ka language) to her, only knowing a few words because her mother never taught Avery their language. This loss of culture and community may be part of the reason Avery struggles so much with her mental health and feels like she must be independent, never relying on others for help. Unlike the traditional western approach to Wellness which focuses primarily on the body, Native communities often have a more holistic approach. According to the Canadian Health Justice website “There is immense diversity in approaches to wellness among different Indigenous communities however, a core concept of health and wellness common to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people is that people, earth, and everything around us are deeply interconnected and that wellness comes from holistic internal and external balance that goes beyond the absence of illness.” Without these important connections Avery’s mental health suffers.

Obviously, I can never understand the struggles American Indians go through, nor what it feels like to have your culture erased by residential schools (amongst other forms of cultural genocide), and I won’t pretend to. But I still found myself relating to Avery’s longing for a culture erased by colonialism. As some of you are aware, I’m half Black (though white passing), and while Black Americans do have their own rich culture, it doesn’t hurt any less knowing that generations worth of culture and knowledge have been erased by the enslavement of Africans by Euro-Westerners. While some remnants of African cultures still remain (like in music, food, religion, and even speech) it’s not the same thing as knowing how to speak the language of my ancestors or follow their spiritual beliefs because I don’t know what those were, and there’s really no way of finding out what specific region of Africa my family came from (genetic testing can narrow it down to a general area, but not a culture).

I know it’s not the same, but Avery’s despair over feeling like she was losing her roots stirred up grief and frustration in me. It was the same feeling I get when my white mother talks about the genealogy research she does for her side of the family (who are horrible people I don’t like) that she can trace back hundred of years. I would love to do that with the Black side of my family (who I’m much closer to), because that information was erased when they were enslaved. Again, I can’t really know how Avery feels, but I know how she made me feel. I guess what I’m saying is this book stirred up a lot of deep-rooted feelings for me. Avery feeling like she wasn’t part of her culture, or had a right to tell their stories really resonated with me as a biracial person who sometimes feel like an intruder in both my parent’s cultures. For Avery, reconnecting to her family and culture, and learning to rely on her friends, is the best way for her to heal and holds the key to defeating the black water.

The black water reminded me of MMIW and Native children taken from their families by the government. It’s supernatural metaphor for very real problems destroying Native communities today. When the black water steals someone the community finds reasons to excuse their absence, like “they ran away from home” and the police show little to no interest in their disappearance. I found the black water to be especially creepy, and at first, I believed it had to be based on some real-world legend. But no, it was entirely Isaac’s own invention, which I found impressive. The black water felt like a story passed down as a warning from generation to generation, and not something the author just invented for the book. However, Isaac does use some traditional stories in her narrative. Avery reflects on Haudenosaunee (the six Iroquois Nations) creation story of Sky Woman, at first believing  Sky Woman’s fall from the Sky World is something terrifying, a punishment for being too curious. But a Kanien’kehá:ka elder makes her realize that if Sky Woman hadn’t fallen, we wouldn’t have Turtle Island (the name used by some American Indians for what Euro-Westerners call North and Central America) or the Haudenosaunee people. So, although change can be scary, good things can come from it.

This made it the antagonist of the story even creepier, and this was definitely a creepy book, filled with a general sense of unease. But it wasn’t scary per se, so perfect for people who want to dip their toes in the shallow end of the horror pool. Your personal experience may vary, but I think this will appeal to fans who don’t usually read horror. You’ll also notice there aren’t a lot of trigger warnings for this book. The Unfinished feels very approachable, but if you’re a hardened horror fan, you may be disappointed at the lack of scares. I liked how the story centers around a teenage girl trying to save the boy she’s crushing on, a nice inversion of the “damsel in distress” trope, and the message about building community and relationships.

I personally feel that The Unfinished would have worked better as a novella, as the story really dragged for me. The pacing is much slower than I usually prefer, focusing more on atmosphere, emotion, and building suspense than action. Which is fine, it just didn’t grab my attention as much as other books. Keep in mind however, I do struggle with ADHD so I tend to prefer a fast pace with a lot going on over atmospheric reads. Those who do like a slow buildup of suspense and in-depth character studies will probably have no issue with the lack of action. I also found that the story was very repetitive; Avery sees something creepy, gets scared, goes to someone for help but then has trouble actually asking for help then runs away, lather, rinse, repeat. I understand this was probably to give Avery more time to develop her character, but to me it came off as unnecessary padding, which just reinforced my opinion that this would have worked better as a shorter story. The only other fault I found is something that’s admittedly, very nitpicky. I just really wished that Avery and Key could have just been friends instead of having an awkward crush get in the way, but that’s just my queer aversion to hetero romance tropes and I feel like most readers won’t care about that. Even though I had some issues with the length of the book I still enjoyed the story and its message, and I think it will be relatable to many BIPOC people who feel disconnected from their culture.

*If you want to learn more about the Haudenosaunee confederacy, I highly recommend the Iroquois Museum in Howes Cave, NY. I visited it years ago and found the museum highly informative and had great conversations with the staff and an elder who had painted the mural in the museum. If you’re not near New York the museum’s website has virtual tours and an online gift shop that sells educational books.

Tags: American Indian, BIPOC, Book Review, Demon, Folk Horror, Mohawk, Own Voices, Recommended, Young Adult

You’ve Awoken Her by Ana Dávila Cardinal

You've Awoken Her by Ann Dávila Cardinal. Recommended. Read if you like Cthulhu, Criticizing Classism

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: HarperCollins

Genre: Eldritch Horror, Mystery

Audience: Young Adult

Diversity: Puerto Rican main character and author, main character with anxiety disorder

Takes Place in: The Hamptons, NY

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Ableism, Child Endangerment, Classism, Death, Forced Captivity, Mental Illness, Racism, Police Harassment

Blurb

All Gabi wants is to spend the summer in his room, surrounded by his Funkos and books, but with his mom traveling, his bags are packed for the last place he wants to visit—the Hamptons. Staying with his best friend should have him willing to peek out of his cave, but ever since Ruth’s nouveau riche family moved, their friendship has been off.

Surrounded by mansions, country clubs, and Ruth’s new boyfriend, Frost Thurston—the axis that Hampton society orbits around—it doesn’t take long for Gabi to feel completely out of place. But when he witnesses a woman being pulled under the ocean water, and no one—not the police or anyone else in the Hamptons—seems to care, Gabi starts to wonder if maybe the beachside town’s bad vibes are more real than he thought.

As the “accidental” deaths and drownings begin to climb, Gabi knows he’ll need proof to convince Ruth they’re all in danger. And while the Thurston family name keeps rising to the top, along with every fresh body, what’s worst is that all the signs point to something lurking beneath the water—something with tentacles and a thirst for blood. Can Gabi figure out how the two are intertwined and put an end to the string of deaths…before becoming the water’s next victim?

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.

As an introvert, being forced out of my cave of books and horror movies and into new social situations is not my idea of a good time. Even more so if it means being surrounded by rich white people. I’ve seen Get Out, I know how that story ends. But that’s exactly how Gabriel (Gabi for short) is meant to spend his summer, with his white, Nouveau Riche best friend Ruth. Ruth has invited Gabi to her new house in the Hamptons to meet all her new, rich friends and basically make sure her bestie doesn’t spend the summer in his room glued to his computer. If you’re not familiar with the Hamptons, it’s a popular seaside resort with a large artist community where wealthy New Yorkers like to summer. But the Hamptons aren’t exclusively white (even if it sometimes seems that way). Sag Harbor was a refuge for upper and middle class Blacks starting in the 1940s and the Shinnecock Nation were the original inhabitants and still reside there today (which Cardinal makes a point of mentioning). And of course, there’s the Hampton’s Latin American population who make up the bulk of the workforce there.

Gabi adores Ruth (platonically): she’s feisty, independent, and extremely loyal to the people she loves. Unfortunately, who she loves right now is a guy name Frost who is the absolute worst. Gabriel has put up with Ruth’s bad taste in men for years, but Frost is definitely the bottom of the barrel:an arrogant hip-hop producer who’s used to getting his way. It’s interesting how Frost (not his actual name) profits off Black music while being white and owns a Basquiat (a Black, neo-expressionist street artist who rose to fame in the 1980s and sadly died of a heroin overdose at the age of 27), without sharing the artist’s anti-capitalist views or even really recognizing the themes of colonialism and class struggle in the artwork. It’s clear he only cares about Black culture as far as it makes him look cool. He also calls Ruth “Tiki” because her paternal great-grandmother was Native Hawaiian. Ew. But Ruth is Gabi’s best friend so he tries his best to get along with her new beau, no matter how loathsome he finds him. Okay, admittedly, he could try and be a little more accepting and less judgmental of everyone in the Hamptons, but Frost totally deserves it. The Hamptons aren’t completely terrible, though. Gabi gets to meet Lars, a pansexual restaurant owner who grew up in South Boston (yay Boston) and Georgina, a bartender and fellow horror fan with a dry sense of humor (and part of the aforementioned Latine workforce) who he strikes up a friendship with.

The Irony of the Negro Policeman painting done in Acrylic and oilstick on wood. A neo-expressionist painting of a Black man in a midnight blue police uniform with a skull-like face. The red and blue top hat he wears resembles a cage.

Irony of Negro Policeman by Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1981. Acrylic and oilstick on wood.

The class divide is clearly putting a strain on their friendship, with Gabi feeling afraid of getting replaced by Ruth’s new friends and left behind. Ruth is concerned by what she sees at Gabi’s lack off support and is also afraid of losing him. And it doesn’t help that Frost is whispering in her ear that Gabi’s jealous of her new life and trying to ruin it for him. It’s causing understandable tension and neither of them are entirely at fault for it. Gabi tends to deal with his insecurity by being snarky, even when people are trying to be nice to him, while Ruth keeps forcing Gabi into situations that make him uncomfortable and trying to get him to be friends with Frost. Clearly, both of them need to read up on Michael Suileabhain-Wilson’s Five Geek Social Fallacies, namely Geek Social Fallacy #4: Friendship Is Transitive (Ruth doesn’t seem to get that not all of her friends will get along, and that’s okay) and Geek Social Fallacy #3: Friendship Before All (Gabi needs to accept that Ruth is allowed to go off and live her own life without it being a slight on him).

While annoying at times, I think their behavior is not uncommon for young adults who are still learning the intricacies of relationships. As a grown up with a fully developed frontal lobe and years of experience with friendships, yes, the character’s behavior can be annoying. But for teenagers who have been friends since early childhood and are probably facing the idea of growing apart for the very first time, their actions make sense. Hell, I probably would have responded the same way at their age. And here is where I remind everyone this book is written for young adults, so if you’re older, you may not find the characters relatable. But that’s okay, the book isn’t for you. And honestly, I found both Gabi and Ruth well developed and likeable, even when they were acting like brats (again, they’re teenagers, it comes with the territory). I also really appreciated that there was no hint of romance between two friends. It’s nice to see them just be friends, as the “men and women can’t be friends” trope is one of my pet peeves.

I’ve written before about how Lovecraft was a racist, sexist, xenophobic, antisemitic asshole to the point that even his wife and friends were calling him out on it. So, I love when marginalized authors use his works to create their own, progressive stories. The Horror at Red Hook is basically about how Black and Brown immigrants are a plague, so I love that Cardinal subverts this by making the white inhabitants the invaders instead (which historically they are) and gentrification the real plague on society. The wealthy colonizers are repeatedly compared to white poplars, an invasive tree species that was first introduced in the mid-18th century from Eurasia and that outcompetes many native North American species of plant.

There’s also a lot of talk of appropriation in the horror genre. Gabi’s online nemesis, @SonicReducer, points out that modern zombies are a whitewashed version of the original Haitian zombies who were a symbol of slavery. We learn from Georgina that Lovecraft stole his ideas of Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones from other cultures where the creatures actually existed, tying into the book’s themes of colonization. In reality Lovecraft was more likely inspired by Alfred Tennyson’s poem The Kraken and The Gods of Pegāna by Lord Dunsany. He despised anything that wasn’t Anglo-Saxon so I have a difficult time imagining he would have been willing to draw from cultures he viewed as “lesser” for his ideas. Still, fiction requires a willing suspension of disbelief and not me nitpicking a story about an eldritch horror terrorizing the Hamptons, so I’m willing to let it go for the sake of enjoying the story. Plus, it ties into the story’s themes of colonization.

A poorly drawn sketch of Cthulhu in profile sitting on a square drawn by H.P. Lovecraft. The date says May 11th, 1934. H.P. Lovecraft has written underneath the drawing. The words

A sketch of Cthulhu done by H.P. Lovecraft. Clearly Lovecraft was a better writer than he was an artist.

There is some ableism in the book, Gabi describes someone speaking to him as if he has a single digit IQ and refers to another character as looking like a “junkie” (a cruel name for people with substance use disorder), which I was not a fan of. Gabi also refers to Georgina’s make up as “punk rock war paint,” which made me side-eye. But overall, the book wasn’t especially problematic in any way.

I enjoyed the mystery elements, as I’m a total nerd when it comes to research and love when characters go to the library to discover the town’s dark past. In this case, Gabi and Georgina try to discover why people keep disappearing in the town, and if Frost’s family might be behind it. It’s pretty obvious who the bad guys are from the beginning so the mystery elements come more from how they’re making people disappear, why, and who’s next. There’s a sense of dread the hangs over the whole story that I found very effective. The pacing was decent, with enough horror elements to keep the book moving without sacrificing character development. Overall, You’ve Awoken Her is a good book for those looking for scares that aren’t too intense or gory. Body parts are found on the beach, but that’s about as gruesome as things get. While Gabi makes many references to horror films (both real and fictional) you don’t have to be a hardcore fan to enjoy the book.

Tags: Anxiety Disorder, BIPOC, Book Review, Disability, Eldritch, Hispanic/Latinx, Latine/Latino, Mental Illness, Mystery, Own Voices, Puerto Rican, Recommended, Young Adult

They Bloom at Night by Trang Thanh Tran

They Bloom at NIght by by Trang Thanh Tran. Recommended. Read if you like oceanic horror, found family.

 

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Genre: Body Horror, Eco Horror

Audience: Print, audio, digital

Diversity: Lesbian, transgender, and gay characters, non-binary author, Vietnamese Author and main characters

Takes Place in: Louisiana

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Animal Death, Animal Cruelty, Death, Homophobia, Pedophilia, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Sexism, Transphobia, Verbal/Emotional Abuse

Blurb

A red algae bloom has taken over Mercy, Louisiana. Ever since a devastating hurricane, mutated wildlife lurks in the water that rises by the day. But Mercy has always been a place where monsters walk in plain sight. Especially at its heart: The Cove, where Noon’s life was upended long before the storm at a party her older boyfriend insisted on.

Now, Noon is stuck navigating the submerged town with her mom, who believes their dead family has reincarnated as sea creatures. Alone with the pain of what happened that night at the cove, Noon buries the truth: she is not the right shape.

When Mercy’s predatory leader demands Noon and her mom capture the creature drowning residents, she reluctantly finds an ally in his deadly hunter of a daughter and friends old and new. As the next storm approaches, Noon must confront the past and decide if it’s time to answer the monster itching at her skin.

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.

They Bloom at Night is a queer, coming of age, environmental horror story. What at first appears to be a classic tale of “Man vs Nature,” quickly shifts to show that“monster” and environment are not the main antagonists, so much as the greedy human, and, to an extent, the environmental destruction caused by humans.

Since Hurricane Arlene destroyed the town of Mercy, Louisiana two years ago, a red algae bloom on the Mississippi River has become the longest-lasting known to humans. The algae have made fishing difficult for the teenaged Noon (real name Nhung, but most white people can’t pronounce that) and her mother, Tien. The two women have taken over fishing after the disappearance of Noon’s brother and father, who Tien believes are either still alive or have been reincarnated as sea animals and are waiting for rescue out there somewhere. Their family has a guardian water spirit, named Sông, who Noon sees as little more than superstition. Sông is said to have kept her father’s family safe as they made their perilous journey from Vietnam to the United States by sea, and Sông is the reason Tien is convinced that her husband and son are still out there.

Even though, both have likely drowned, Noon’s mother insists they must stay in Mercy to find them, despite her daughter’s desperation to leave the small town. Mercy holds nothing but bad memories for Noon. After her brother, Jaylen, was born, her parents began to ignore her and favor their son. Their home was all but destroyed by Hurricane Arlene. Noon has never felt welcomed among the racist, sexist town folks who hurl jeers at her and her mother when they dock their boat. Loan Shark and businessman Jimmy, the man who controls most of the town through money and fear, still owns their boat and demands Noon and Tien bring him strange, mutated sea life to sell. And Noon was sexually assaulted at Mercy’s Cove by an older boy who had groomed her. When her mother found her, Noon’s hair had turned white and her skin was flaking off. Her body continues to change, her fingernails all fall out and she can only digest raw meat.

When Noon and Tien get to the dock, a girl named Covey who seems to be overseeing things says they must go see her father, who is revealed to be Jimmy. Jimmy explains he wants them to look for a sea monster. People around Mercy have been disappearing, most recently a government scientist studying the algae bloom named Dr. Lucía Delgado. The government wants to close the fishing season early and possibly designate the whole area a disaster zone, and Jimmy can’t have that. He orders Noon and Tien to find whatever creature is causing the disappearances and bring it back to him in three weeks’ time. He informs them that Covey will be accompanying them on their mission. After Tien becomes ill from a rusty nail injury she receives from Jimmy, the two teens are forced to work together to find Jimmy’s monster. A tense relationship between Covey and Noon slowly blossoms into friendship and then into something more as they race to solve the mysterious disappearances and face their own trauma. On their journey Noon reconnects with her old friend, Wilder, who has run away from home, and meets Saffy, who was kicked out of her home after her parents discovered she was transgender.

The hurricane that nearly destroys Mercy has clear parallels to Hurricane Katrina, the 2005 hurricane that decimated New Orleans and caused nearly 1,000 fatalities. Noon refers to her life after Hurricane Arlene as post-Apocalyptic, even though everything is business as usual outside Louisiana. Mercy has some electricity and running water, but it’s unreliable at best. A Rolling Stone article about Hurricane Katrina entitled it Apocalypse in New Orleans. Vanity Fair has one called Hell and High Water: American Apocalypse. Noon explains that politicians think the people who chose to stay in Mercy deserve what they got. A research paper entitled System Justification in Responding to the Poor and Displaced in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina states

“One sentiment that took hold following Katrina was that those who lived in New Orleans were at fault for having chosen to live there in the first place, and for not having evacuated when the officials issued a mandate. Some went so far as to ask why people would choose to live in a city that lies beneath sea level. Talk show hosts and local newspapers blamed victims and asked why the government was obligated to help those who did not evacuate.”

Two men paddle in high water in the Ninth Ward after Hurricane Katrina.

A photo of the Ninth Ward after Hurricane Katrina. Mario Tama/Getty Images

Besides environmental disaster, one of the major themes of the books is the fraught relationship between parents and their children. Noon states “…the people who hurt us most, who forced us here, have been those responsible for our care.” Saffy’s parents forced her to choose between being her authentic self or living with them and pretending to be a boy. Similarly, Wilder runs away from home because his parents want him to be something he’s not. Because boys are more highly valued then girls, an effeminate boy is a disappointment, and Wilder simply couldn’t continue to fit his parents’ idea of what a man should be. Noon is also a victim of toxic masculinity, and is treated as having less value than her brother Jaylen. Even after her brother and father go missing, presumed dead, her mother continues to place a higher importance on them than her living daughter.

I appreciate that, while all the parents had problems, the Asian parents at least seemed to love their children, and were doing their best while burdened with generational trauma and a traditionally sexist culture. Tran is able to challenge the sexism in Vietnamese culture while also making clear that sexism and bad parenting isn’t exclusive to Asians. Wilder has a tense relationship with his parents who are uncomfortable with his bisexuality and even pressure him to be more manly. But at least they don’t disown him like Saffy’s parents do. There’s at least some hope Wilder will one day be able to reconcile with his mom and dad. Jimmy, on the other hand, is completely irredeemable, not just as person but as a parent. Noon says “Like so many parents Jimmy thinks his daughter is only fit for his hopes. But when we inherit those, we also inherit the mistakes. We are the ones to live with the consequences. Every generation before had a semblance of a chance, but we have the end of the world.” He sees Covey only as an extension of himself, just another tool on his belt. Tien at least tries to be a good mother to Noon, trying to protect her, singing her to sleep at night, and performing Cao gio (coining) to relieve her headaches.

I also liked all the random facts about ocean animals strewn throughout the book. Noon is a huge nerd and I’m totally here for it. Through her we learn that the red algae bloom is not toxic to marine life like the red tide (which can be worsened by hurricanes), but it does seem to cause mutations. We also learn how algae have mutualistic symbiotic relationships with several species, like Coralline algae, a red alga which plays an important role in the ecosystems or coral reefs. A similar type of algae lives in Cassiopea jellyfish, which gives the jellies their color and helps them get food.

An aerial photo of a red tide near the FLorida coastline.

Photo of a red tide from WMBF News.

As a story about embracing the “monstrous” parts of yourself, rather than hiding them away to please your family and society They Bloom at Night will especially appeal to queer and trans readers. I suspect Noon may be non-binary, but hasn’t cracked her egg  yet as many of the things she says and feels about being in a “girl’s body,” like “Monsterhood is a girl’s body you don’t belong in”  and not knowing what it means to be a girl, felt familiar to me as a non-binary AFAB person. She feels more comfortable in a “monstrous” body than one that belongs to a girl. The “body horror” is less horror than it is freedom. Tran is also non-binary and uses they/she pronouns so I wonder if they had similar feelings as a young person. There’s a decent amount of trans and queer representation in the book, with Saffy being transgender, Wilder bisexual, Covey a lesbian, and the lead scientist researching the algae bloom, Dr. Delgado, is non-binary. There may also be some neurodiversity among the group as one of the teens quips that they’re “Team Neurotic Kids with Very Specific Interests,” something else that people are expected to hide away for the comfort of the neurotypical.

Tags: Asian American, BIPOC, Body Horror, Book Review, Eco Horror, Gay, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Non-binary, Recommended, Trans, Vietnamese, Young Adult
I’m Sorry if I Scared You by Mae Murray

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
Malicia by Steven dos Santos

Malicia by Steven dos Santos

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Page Street Publishing

Genre: Blood & Guts, Demon, Monster, Mystery, Myth and Folklore, Occult

Audience: Young Adult

Diversity: Gay and bisexual man characters, Dominican Americans, character with anxiety disorder

Takes Place in: The Dominican Republic

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Ableism, Child Death, Death, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Gore, Medical Torture/Abuse, Mental Illness, Suicide, Torture, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence, Vomit

Blurb

Four friends, three days, two lovers, and one very haunted theme park.

On a stormy Halloween weekend, Ray enlists his best friends Joaquin, Sofia, and Isabella to help him make a documentary of Malicia, the abandoned theme park off the coast of the Dominican Republic where his mother and brother died in a mass killing thirteen years ago.

But what should be an easy weekend trip quickly turns into something darker because all four friends have come to Malicia for their own.

Ray has come to Malicia to find out the truth of the massacre that destroyed his family. Isabella has come to make art out of Ray’s tragedy for her own personal gain. Sofia has come to support her friends in one last adventure before she goes to med school. Joaquin already knows the truth of the Malicia Massacre and he has come to betray his crush Ray to the evil that made the park possible.

With an impending hurricane and horrors around every corner, they all struggle to face the deadly storm and their own inner demons. But the deadliest evil of all is the ancient malignant presence on the island.

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

The story is told through alternating first-person perspectives between the four main characters; Raymundo, Joaquin, Sofia, and Isabella. The friends are traveling to spend Halloween weekend in Raymundo’s family’s abandoned, horror-themed amusement park, Malicia. The park was closed after a mysterious mass murder took place, claiming the lives of Raymundo’s mother and brother. The island on which Malicia was built is only accessible by boat, and there’s a massive hurricane headed right toward them, so good luck trying to escape if anything goes wrong. You may question the teens’ decision to go to what is very obviously a cursed murder island during a hurricane, but each of the four have their own reason for being there. Raymundo wants to try and summon his brother’s spirit, Isabella wants to film a documentary about the island, and Joaquin wants to sacrifice Raymundo because the cult he belongs to told him to. (Don’t worry, that’s revealed early in the story, so it’s hardly a spoiler.) Sofia is  there because her friends are, and because she very firmly doesn’t believe in the supernatural or scare easily.

I think the characters were somewhat underdeveloped and one-note, and the exposition felt awkward at times. But honestly, the characters were just an excuse to explore the super cool setting. I mean, an abandoned, horror-themed, cursed, amusement park? Could there be a more perfect location for a horror story? And Santos clearly put a lot of thought into describing Malicia in loving detail. There’s an entire map in the beginning of the book (and I’m a sucker for maps) showing the different areas of the park, like Serial Springs, Paranormal Place, and Creature Canyon. I also liked the ride descriptions, which all sounded like tons of fun.

Malicia strongly reminded meof the island setting in Umineko When They Cry, where the characters are trapped by a typhoon on a remote island that is slowly overtaken by the supernatural (and everyone there dies horrible deaths). As both stories progress, the scares move from strange shadows and murders that could’ve been committed by a human to horror that’s clearly the work of demonic forces.

I enjoyed how the author not only used Spanish frequently throughout the book (which I appreciate that the publisher did not italicize) but words and phrases specific to the Dominican. The friends name their little group the Quisqueya Club, a word of Taíno origin that refers to the inhabitants of Hispaniola. Raymundo and Joaquin refer to each other as pana and tiguere, the friends informally greet each other with “Qué lo que” (what’s up?), Raymundo calls his parents Mai and Pai, and he admits to himself that he’s a Jablador (liar). Many of the monsters are also specific to the Dominican like Los Biembiens and La Jupia. The four friends also prepare Dominican food like mangú and yaniqueques.

Malicia an incrediblya spooky, gory, fun read. Even though it’s a 300+ page book, it felt like a quick read because the chapters are short and the suspense was able to grab my attention, although, admittedly, the story did drag a bit in the middle. The shifting viewpoints throughout the book helped build the suspense as the characters all started to become suspicious of each other. Because it was written for teens, it felt like a PG-13 horror movie with R-rated violence, which, of course, you can get away with in a book. The descriptions of mutilated bodies and rotting flesh are very graphic so this one is definitely not for the squeamish horror fan.

Tags: Anxiety Disorder, BIPOC, Bisexual, Blood & Guts, Book Review, Demon, Disability, Dominican, Gay, Latine/Latino, LGBTQIA, Monster, Mystery, Myths and Folklore, Occult, Own Voices, Young Adult

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