gothic | Diversity in Horror Fiction

In These Gilded, Ghostly Hearts by Gwendolyn Kiste

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Creature Publishing

Genre: Ghosts/Haunting, Gothic, Historic Horror, Romance

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Lesbian main character and bisexual side character

Takes Place in: New York

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Child Abuse, Death, Forced Captivity, Homophobia, Suicide

Blurb

In 1955, Daisy Buchanan is found dead in an abandoned West Egg mansion, but her daughter Mel knows she’s really been gone for years. No one knows whether Daisy was murdered, or if it was a simpler, slower death: her yearslong spiral of alcohol, abuse, and helplessness. But when Mel enters the estate, she finds Daisy’s ghost, somehow frozen at twenty-three, and a charming, bleeding phantom that used to be Jay Gatsby.

To free her mother, Mel must carve a path through family secrets and decaying revelers: deep into Gatsby’s starving house as it gorges itself on unfulfilled love and grows stronger every night.

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 year is 1955. Daisy Buchanan is dead, her body discovered in Jay Gatsby’s abandoned estate in West Egg. Daisy’s now adult daughter, Pamela “Mel” Buchanan, and one of Daisy’s few remaining friends, Jordan Baker, travel from New York City to investigate the mysterious death. They learn that Daisy was working with a predatory spiritualist named Harrison to summon the ghost of her lost lover, Jay Gatsby. Harrison convinces the two women to return to Gatsby’s old home, now dripping with ectoplasm, and complete the séance with him. Soon the mansion is filled with ghosts, partygoers from bygone days, Gatsby himself, and Daisy. The partygoers are Stone Tape hauntings, a mere echo of the past. Gatsby’s ghost, on the other hand, is an intelligent haunting who is able to interact with Mel, who soon learns his obsession with Daisy has continued after his death.

Mel and Daisy have a complicated mother/daughter relationship. No matter how badly their mother treats them, children still crave their mother’s love. Mel is parentified by Daisy who is helpless and broken after losing her lover Gatsby, her husband Tom, and her lifestyle. Mel explains “Once the cash dried up and she wasn’t a rich girl anymore, she practically dissolved into sea foam before my eyes.” Daisy is not a resilient woman–understandable since she was raised to be a pretty bauble on a rich man’s arm. Daisy was a fairly passive character in Fitzgerald’s novel, a beautiful woman for Gatsby to idolize and Tom to possess. It was satisfying, however, to read that toxic alpha-male Tom threw himself off the Brooklyn Bridge after losing everything in the stock market crash of ’29. A fitting end to an awful man. Unfortunately, it means he leaves his wife and daughter penniless and alone. Kiste often writes books for “lost” women and girls who are trapped in the past and mistreated by an uncaring society who doesn’t understand them. The Marys in Pretty Marys All in a Row, the Rust Maidens in the novel of the same name, Talitha Velkwood and her friends in The Haunting of Velkwood, and now Mel and Daisy Buchanan.

You don’t necessarily have to have any knowledge of The Great Gatsby prior to reading In These Gilded, Ghostly Hearts but it does certainly help to be able to familiarize yourself with the characters and themes. There are also lots of fun little callbacks to the original book, like Gatsby’s automatic orange juicer machine. Just don’t make the same mistake I did and try and compare the writing in the two. I re-read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous work right before Kiste’s so I’d have a refresher and I do think it made me more judgmental of the writing in the latter. Don’t get me wrong, I generally love Kiste’s writing, two of my favorites being Pretty Marys All in a Row and The Haunting of Velkwood. I’m not at all implying that this is not a well-written story. But very few books are going to be able to stand up to one of the “Great American Novels” and trying to compare the two is a disservice to Kiste’s novella.

While Gatsby is written as a sympathetic character in the original book, I like how Kiste points out how incredibly creepy his obsession with Daisy is. Some might view his grand gestures as romantic but honestly, they always felt like borderline incel behavior to me. Gatsby views Daisy as a prize to be won rather than a person, and if he has enough money of course she’ll leave Tom for him. The main reason we’re sympathetic to Gatsby is because Tom is portrayed as the bigger asshole with no redeeming qualities, and because Nick sees Gatsby as sympathetic. Daisy is “supposed” to choose the heroic Gatsby over the brutish Tom, and when she doesn’t, she’s cast as the villain. Yet, does she really have a choice? Herstory and Daisy Buchanan by Leland S. Person, Jr. quotes the numerous men who have described Daisy as “vulgar and inhuman,” a “Dark Destroyer,” and the “anti-virgin…the prototype of the blasphemous portraits of the Fair Goddess as bitch” who “preyed on” Gatsby. Yikes! But Person viewed Daisy as more victim than conniving, selfish woman. She’s a woman in the 1920s, from an old money family who’s expected to marry an old money man, not some nouveau riche who may or may not have a criminal history. Daisy has no way of earning a living herself, she’s completely dependent on men for her financial security, and always had been. She’s also under immense societal expectations; she can’t simply leave her husband to have the life she wants with Gatsby. We also known Tom is abusive, as shown when he breaks his mistress’ nose.Leaving him was unlikely to be easy. I don’t think any of that necessarily makes her a good person; she’s just an imperfect victim. And this seems to be the characterization that Kiste goes with. Daisy wasn’t a good mother, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve sympathy or Gatsby’s obsessive idolization. Similarly, as a lesbian, Mel is also unable to be with the ones she loves, first Jordan and then her coworker, Vera.

I loved how queer Kiste’s book was. Mel is gay, Jordan bisexual, and Tom’s implied crush on Gatsby is no longer subtext. In These Gilded, Ghostly Hearts takes place during the Lavender Scare of the 1950s, an anti-LGBTQ+ witch hunt, so Mel lives in constant fear of having her sexuality discovered. At one point she and Jordan go to the Bagatelle on University Place. The Bag, as it was more commonly known, was a real lesbian bar that was popular in the 1950s. I love that little bit of realism that Kiste added to the story. Audre Lorde and Ann Bannon both wrote about the bar and how it shaped their pre-Stonewall experience. The Bag was owned by the mafia and frequently raided by police. A red light would go off to warn patrons when they vice squad showed up, which happens to Mel at the bag one night.

Kiste is not the first to write about the Great Gatsby through a queer lens. In 1963 Lionel Trilling characterized Jordan Baker as “vaguely guilty, vaguely homosexual.” Nearly thirty years later The International Fiction Review published The Sexual Drama of Nick and Gatsby by Edward Wasiolek who argued that Nick has “homosexual leanings” and intense feelings for Gatsby. The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo (author of The Empress of Salt and Fortune) also imagines Jordan and Gatsby as bisexual, and Nick and Gatsby have a fling. Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix by Anna-Marie McLemore and The Pursued and the Pursuing by AJ Odasso explore a queer relationship between Gatsby and Nick.

Kiste’s writing can best be described as “haunting;” beautiful, unsettling, nostalgic, and melancholy, lending itself well to a ghost story. Her stories are less “in your face” horror with gore and blood and instead rely on atmosphere to create a general sense of unease commonly found in gothic horror. For some readers, it may feel like the pacing is dragging, as there’s no sense of urgency and not a lot of action because this isn’t that kind of book. This is a novella meant to be savored rather than rushed through. So, while it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, I think fans of slow burn horror and character driven story will enjoy In These Gilded Ghostly Hearts.

I did feel like the book needed a little more show and a little less tell. It seemed like Mel was constantly explaining things to the audience that didn’t necessarily need to be spelled out. At the same time, I thought it was awesome that Mel was middle aged and Jordan in her fifties. It’s so rare to find older women protagonists in fiction. Male protagonists have a wide range of ages, but women seem to always skew young. What’s more, neither character is a wife or mother. While I don’t think In These Gilded, Ghostly Hearts is as strong as some of Kiste’s other novels and novellas, it’s still a solid, spooky read perfect for autumn.

Tags: Adult, Bisexual, Book Review, Ghosts/Haunting, Gothic, Historic Horror, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Own Voices, Romance

Shadows Over Ravenkirk by Vivian Moira Valentine

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Blue Fortune Enterprises

Genre: Dark Fantasy, Gothic, Mystery, Occult

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Trans, lesbian main character and author

Takes Place in: Maine

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Classicism, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Forced Captivity, Medical Procedures, Physical Abuse, Torture, Transphobia, Verbal/Emotional Abuse

Blurb

Victoria Williams, a struggling photographer from Boston, receives a letter informing her of a surprise inheritance. Wilhelmina Bruttenholm of Ravenkirk, Maine, has recently passed away and left her a bequest. Victoria doesn’t know who Wilhelmina is-to her knowledge, she doesn’t know anyone in Ravenkirk-but she travels to Maine anyway to attend the will reading.

But who is this family and what do they really want of her? Struggling to understand the events happening in this unique little town, Victoria is confronted with secrets, magic, and Samantha, one very sweet tarantula. And while she must face the truth about her own mysterious family history, she will have to do so carefully. Because murder abounds in Ravenkirk and nobody is who they appear to be.

I’m doing something a little different for this review and reviewing the first two books in the Shadows Over Ravenkirk series by Vivian Moira Valentine instead of just one book, as I feel the two novellas work better when read together. The overall story is just so big, with so many elements and characters, that I think the series would have worked better as a couple full length novels rather than a bunch of novellas. Of course, that might also be because I’m not a patient person and I want to read the rest of the story now and I’m already impatient for the third book to come out because the second ended on a cliffhanger.

The first Shadows Over Ravenkirk book gives cozy mystery vibes. I hesitate to use the term “cozy horror” as it’s so controversial, with valid points made on both the pro and con sides. Personally, I feel if someone’s comfort film can be Nightmare on Elm Street or they listen to Tales to Terrify to help them fall asleep, then I don’t see why people can’t also find a horror story about a small gothic town “cozy” without sacrificing the elements that make it horror. But I know plenty of folks hate the term so I’ll refrain from labeling the book as such. What I will say is that Valentine’s books quickly became a comfort read for me at a time I really needed it.

In it, we’re introduced to Victoria Williams, a trans, lesbian, goth girl from Boston (yay Boston!). She’s been summoned to the will reading of the mysterious Wilhelmina Bruttenholm, despite not having known the woman in life. With nothing to lose, Victoria sets off to the small seaside town of Ravenkirk, Maine for the reading. While trying to enjoy her book–Ghost Flower by Jessica Conwell–on the train, Victoria is interrupted by a vulpine young man, the deuteragonist of the story, Nicodemus Ruthven. He’s friendly, and thankfully not transphobic as Victoria initially fears, but he also seems to be unpredictable with a dangerous edge to him that makes her nervous.

He may be a rich asshole but I kind of like Nicodemus. Maybe “like” is too strong a word. I’m more fascinated by him. I enjoy a complex, morally gray character, and I love how snarky Nicodemus is, especially toward his awful family. Speaking of his family, the Ruthvens are Ravenkirk’s old money family who are used to being in control. They’re pretty evil (because rich people are inherently evil) and are not at all happy to see Nicodemus return to Ravenkirk, as he was banished from the town for a yet undisclosed reason. But he has returned for Wilhelmina Bruttenholm’s funeral as an invited guest, much to everyone’s shock and dismay.

Victoria meets some other colorful characters in the town, three of whom she immediately starts crushing on. There’s Tabitha Swann, who used to work for Wilhelmina and gives Victoria a ride to her hotel;Bianca Burke, who was hired by Wilhelmina to act as Victoria’s bodyguard while she’s in town;and finally, Thorn Hale, a non-binary femme who works as the hotel’s cook. Victoria also adopts a tarantula named Samantha. The town seems to be divided into factions, none of whom trust the other, so trying to make friends with the townsfolk is tricky. The book felt a little like a queer dating sim where the reader is left to wonder which hot femme Victoria will pick.

Valentine spends a lot of time introducing characters and developing the town. The world building in this story is AMAZING and very in-depth, and I’m a sucker for good world building. Ravenkirk feels like a town trapped in the past, despite the story being set in the modern day, and it reminded me of the strange New England locations Lovecraft invented, like Miskatonic University and the town of Arkham. Valentine clearly put a lot of thought into the setting and the characters. And there are A LOT of characters in Shadows Over Ravenkirk, especially in the second book. So many, in fact, that it can be confusing trying to keep everyone straight. Fortunately, there’s a list at the beginning of the book with short character descriptions to help keep everyone straight.

There are the Talbots, one of the three major families and the local farmers of Ravenkirk. The Gilmans (fishermen and dockworkers) who give The Shadow over Innsmouth vibes, and from the short preview in the end of the second novella, it seems they’ll be the focus of the third book. And of course, the Ruthvens. Then there are the people who work at the hotel Victoria is staying at, the members of a strange cult called “The Yonders,” and Wilhelmina Bruttenholm’s confidants, none of whom seem to trust each other. The downside to having so many characters in such a short book means that there’s not as much time to develop them. Again, this is why I think the two books work better when read together, as the first novella just feels like we’re getting a bunch of quick character introductions and we don’t really get any action until the last third of the book. It feels more like the first few chapters of a much longer story with the setup but not offering much in the way of a resolution. The book is over before the plot has a chance to get going.

The second book leans more into the story’s horror elements with much more violence (including a torture scene that’s cut short) and some hot sex scenes. Instead of Victoria and her friends, the main focus has switched over to the messed-up Ruthven family, fleshing out already existing characters and introducing new ones. Nicodemus takes up residence in the abandoned Mooncroft Manor, the ancestral home of the Ruthvens, who left because their dwindling fortunes made the upkeep too expensive. Nicodemus invites the various cousins to stay with him to help him with his yet unknown plan to restore the Ruthvens to their former glory. The cousins are all varying degrees of evil; one of them makes snuff films, another creates mind altering drugs, and yet another re-animates corpses to be his “servants.”

The second book was also more focused on setting up overarching plot, giving the reader more questions than answers. But rather than leave me frustrated (okay, maybe just a little frustrated), it just left me desperate to read more! That’s right, this series has me completely hooked and I cannot wait for the third book to come out. I need to know what happens next. I absolutely adored Valentine’s voice. She excels at creating atmosphere and intriguing characters. I feel like this is a series, while not necessarily aimed at teens (especially with the graphic sex scenes in the second book), I would’ve loved as a young adult. In terms of representation, the cast is very diverse, especially when it comes to trans and non-binary characters. I can’t wait to read more!

Tags: Adult, Book Review, Dark Fantasy, Gothic, Highly Recommended, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Mystery, Occult, Own Voices, Trans

Until the Last Light Goes Out by Courtney Gould

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Wednesday Books

Genre: Ghosts/Haunting, Gothic

Audience: Young Adult

Diversity: Queer main character and side characters

Takes Place in: Miami

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Bullying, Child Death, Child Endangerment, Childbirth, Death, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Homophobia, Violence

Blurb

You may not escape, but the truth will.

Twenty-five years ago, the Ripley Memorial High School senior class entered the luxurious Kaleidoscope Key resort deep in the remote Florida Keys. Despite international intrigue and years of investigation, no one truly knows how the 183 students died. And they never will, since the five survivors of the massacre have never spoken a word about what happened to them that night.

Paige Keller, daughter of one of the Kaleidoscope Key Massacre’s infamous survivors, has grown up determined to steer her life away from the resort and the unsolved mysteries her ex-best friend, KJ, can’t leave alone. Paige has moved to a fancy new college and it seems that, finally, she’s banished the shadows of Kaleidoscope Key completely. But when she’s called home on the 25th anniversary of the massacre, she finds that KJ has gone missing.

Paige knows there’s only one place KJ could be: her obsession, the now-abandoned resort. When Paige and the remaining Survivors’ Kids go in after her, they’re forced to confront their―and their parents―pasts once and for all.

Kaleidoscope Key is waiting, and it’s starving. Once they find their way inside, there may not be a way out. And one way or another, the truth of the massacre will come to light.

Captivating and chilling, Courtney Gould’s Until The Last Light Goes Out is a horror story, a love story, and an ode to the pain passed between generations that you won’t soon forget.

On May 21st, 2001, the senior class at Ripley Memorial high school, along with staff and chaperones, were found dead in their beds at the newly opened Kaleidoscope resort. Only five students survived. Too traumatized to explain what happened, the “Kaleidoscope Massacre” (as it came to be called) remained a mystery for 25 years. Thirteen years later, Casey, one of the massacre’s survivors, returns to the Kaleidoscope for reasons unknown and is found dead inside the resort the next day leaving her daughter, Paige, all alone.

Cut to the present day. Paige, now in college, has returned to Miami for the 25-year memorial of the massacre. When speaking to the children of the other four survivors Paige learns her former best friend, KJ, has been missing for a month. Even though the two had a falling out, Paige will do anything in her power to find KJ, even if it means returning to the site of her mother’s murder. She gets her chance when the son of the Kaleidoscope’s current owner tells Paige that he’s headed there to film some urban exploring videos. But what she discovers at the abandoned hotel is much more than she bargained for.

Patented in 1817 by Scottish inventor David Brewster, the kaleidoscope is a toy made of mirrors enclosed in a cardboard tube that when turned creates ever-changing mandala-like patterns by reflecting the colored glass at one end of the tube. The name kaleidoscope, derived from ancient Greek, translates roughly as “to look at beautiful forms.” An appropriate name for the resort, as the Kaleidoscope is itself dynamic, constantly morphing into something new. But, beneath its surface, beauty hides something sinister and hungry. A neon gothic nightmare that feeds on pain and plays mind games, the Kaleidoscope resort is its own character. Fans of liminal space stories such as Backrooms and Exit 8 will enjoy the never-ending maze that is the Kaleidoscope.

Paige, who’s pragmatic and logical with a need to always be right, deals with the Kaleidoscope by simply ignoring its existence and trying to get as far away as possible. Paige is also the last to admit that something supernatural is going on, much to KJ’s frustration. On the opposite end on the spectrum is KJ who’s obsessed with discovering the resort’s secrets to try and help her mother Tess, who was completely broken from her experience there. Neither has a healthy coping mechanism for the generational trauma they’ve been burdened with. Both girls need to find a healthy middle ground so they can work together to try and find a way out.

I found myself very emotionally invested in the fates of Paige and KJ and loved watching them grow as characters. The sons of the other survivors? Not so much. It was hard to care about the boys being in danger when we never really got the chance to know them, mostly through Paige’s descriptions of them rather than learning for ourselves through their dialogue and actions. It also meant we couldn’t tell if their behavior was “out of character” or just the hotel making them behave a certain way.

The story bounces back and forth between the past, when Casey and her friends first visit the Kaleidoscope for senior night, and the present, when their children are trapped. As the book progresses, the timelines start to blur, emphasizing the liminal space within which they find themselves trapped. Casey’s story focuses on her relationship with her best friend, Tess, who’s rebellious and desperate to be one of the popular girls. Then there’s her other best friend, Summer, an introverted “good girl” who’s been recently outed as a lesbian, leading to her being bullied. Casey is torn between her loyalties to both friends as Tess tries to push Summer out of their friend group for being “uncool.” Instead of standing up to Tess like she should, Casey simply does nothing, unwilling to lose Summer, but not wanting to lose Tess either. Friendship and loyalty are major themes in Until the Last Light Goes Out, with both Casey and Paige fighting to keep their friendships with Summer and KJ respectively after abandoning them. To Gould’s credit, the relationships never feel reduced to superficial “teen drama,” and you can feel the emotional impact they have on their characters.

When I first read that the mass deaths in 2001 were called “the Kaleidoscope massacre” I was expecting blood and body parts everywhere, but no, everyone just died in their sleep. The story is pretty safe for more squeamish horror fans, or those just looking for a haunted house (or in this case hotel) story. There are a few scenes where people get stabbed or killed, but the gore isn’t excessive or described in great detail, and a lot of it happens “off screen.”

The story is suspenseful and, for the most part, managed to hold my attention for long periods of time. Towards the middle, things started to feel a little repetitive (you can only wander down so many endless corridors before things start to drag) and the pacing suffered for it. I think the book would have benefited from some tightening up in the second act, but otherwise things moved along well, and towards the end I found I couldn’t put it down. I personally felt that the last chapter, which elaborated on the ending, was unneeded and it would’ve worked better if things were left vague. I believe most readers could’ve inferred what happened on their own. Maybe some editor decided that teens lack media literacy and needed an explanation spoon-fed to them. Despite a few flaws, Until the Last Light Goes Out is deeply moving and has the emotional depth that young adults deserve, but that so much Y/A is lacking.

Tags: Book Review, Ghosts/Haunting, Gothic, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Queer, Recommended, Young Adult

Hemlock by Melissa Faliveno

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Genre: Gothic

Audience: Adult

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

Takes Place in: Wisconsin

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

Blurb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: Adult, Alcohol Use Disorder, Bisexual, Book Review, Gothic, LGBTQIA, Queer, Recommended

The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts by Kim Fu

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Tin House

Genre: Gothic, Psychological Horror

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Chinese American author and main character

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

Blurb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Lanternfish Press

Genre: Gothic

Audience: Adult

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

Takes Place in: South Carolina Sea Islands

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

Blurb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Sunday She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Saga Press

Genre: Gothic, Historic Horror, Werebeast

Audience: Adult

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

Takes Place in: Georgia, USA

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

Blurb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Villa, Once Beloved by Victor Manibo

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Erewhon Books

Genre: Gothic, Myth and Folklore

Audience: Adult

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

Takes Place in: The Philippines

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

Blurb

Some legacies are best left buried…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Portrait of Lysbeth : A Gothic Novella by Rama Santa Mansa

Formats: digital

Publisher: Lingeer Press

Genre: Demon, Gothic, Historic Horror

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Black (African American) main character and author, minor gay character

Takes Place in: Sleepy Hollow, NY

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Antisemitism, Child Abuse, Child Sexual Abuse, Childbirth, Death, Forced Captivity, Homophobia, Kidnapping, Medical Procedures, Oppression, Pedophilia, Physical Abuse, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Sexism, Sexual Abuse, Slurs, Slut-Shaming, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Xenophobia

Blurb

The year is 1676. We meet Lysbeth Luanda, a second-generation African freedwoman in New York, the former Dutch colony seized by the English, who, in a mere decade, have passed more cruel and oppressive restrictions on the free African community already living in the colony.After being orphaned at age 13, Lysbeth is forced to restart life all on her own––while working as a tavern waitress in Dutch and German-owned taverns along the banks of the Delaware and Hudson rivers. In this multinational milieu, she learns cosmopolitan skills and street philosophy from lovable lowlifes, brash buccaneers, African dreamers, indigenous heroines, and globetrotting Scandinavians. Lysbeth eventually finds a mentor in a Sephardi Jewish medical doctor from Curaçao, under whom she studies surgery and anatomy.

As the gloomy autumn season begins in 1676, the gruesome murders of three European women, by an unknown assailant in the isolated village of Sleepy Hollow, shocks the whole of New York.

Lysbeth’s mentor convinces the New York High Sheriff to appoint Lysbeth to go investigate the victims’ inexplicable cause of death and bring back a written coroner’s report. After an initial frosty reception by the villagers of Sleepy Hollow, Lysbeth gains new allies who assist her in her investigation

The Portrait of Lysbeth is set in Sleepy Hollow, but don’t expect mentions of the Headless Horseman or Ichabod Crane in this book. This story takes place about 100 years before the Revolutionary War and centers around Lysbeth, a free born Black woman, sent to investigate a serial killer (although that term wasn’t coined until the 20^th century) in Sleepy Hollow, New York.

Lisbeth Anthonijsen, was a real person born around 1650 into the free Black community of New Amsterdam (what is now New York City). She started working as a servant for white colonists at a young age. In June 1661 she was accused of stealing wampum from the house where she was employed and the court ordered her to be beaten with a rod as punishment. In the winter of 1663, Lisbeth was spotted running away from a housefire at the Cregier household where she was employed. She was blamed for starting the fire and the court sentenced her to be enslaved by the Cregier family. Young Lisbeth was never given a chance. Mansa’s mission, as she puts it, was to get justice for Lisbeth by writing The Portrait of Lysbeth. She did a ton of research for this book, and it really adds to the story. I appreciate the time and effort Mansa put in to creating the setting and her main character, Lysbeth.

The fictional Lysbeth Luanda is an educated freed woman who becomes an indentured servant at the age of 13, after the death or her parents. She’s forced to work as a tavern waitress for the next 22 years, where she learns about the world from her diverse clientele. Eventually, Lysbeth makes her way back to New Amsterdam where she apprentices for a Sephardic Jewish doctor, who sends her to Sleepy Hollow to act as coroner.

Some parts of the book are written in third person present perfect tense, which I felt was an interesting, if uncommon, choice. It’s fine, it just took a little while to get used to. It also jumps around quite a bit, from Lysbeth’s childhood to her time studying under the physician then back to the murder investigation. It can get a little confusing. But once I got used to it, the story flowed much more smoothly. I found the more fanciful elements genuinely creepy, like when a maid becomes possessed and chases Lysbeth through the house. The entire murder investigation has an eerie feeling, and not just because of the way the townsfolk stare at her. There seem to be things lurking in the woods, things Lysbeth, as a woman of science, refuses to believe in.

I appreciated how Mansa not only avoids common racist literary tropes but makes a point to subvert them. In the beginning of the book, Mansa describes an unpleasant white man’s complexion as “milk cream.” I was amused to see, for the first time, a white person’s skin compared to food, something that routinely happens to Black characters written by white authors. It was also a nice change of pace to not have the color black associated with evil, but with spiritual strength and protection from evil. This is seen both is Lysbeth’s horse and the spirit wolf that protects her. Instead, Lysbeth believes that it is white animals that are to feared as they lack the spiritual protection of blackness. I also liked that the enslaved Africans were referred to as “enslaved,” rather than “slaves.” A seemingly small change, but to me a powerful one. By calling someone a slave, their identity is reduced to their circumstance. It dehumanizes them. An enslaved person is a person first, who has had slavery forced upon them.

In the book, both Native and African characters were referred to by their nations and not all lumped into the same group. For example, Lisbeth’s father is Kongolese, a people originally found in what is modern day northern Angola. The man who gave Lysbeth her witch gun is Mbundu. It was also refreshing to see Native history, which is often erased, acknowledged in the story, such as the Wampanoag leader Metacom (also known by the English name King Philip) defending his lands from the Puritans and the Moravian massacre. However, the Native representation did leave me questioning some of the author’s choices. There’s a rather brutal description of the 1643 Pavonia massacre, where the Dutch invaded what is now called Manhattan and massacred scores of Lenape people. I appreciate that it’s made clear that the settlers are living on stolen land (Lenapehoking) and that attention is brought to Native history, however, I felt weird about having a non-Native author write about Native trauma. If this were a white author doing it, it would be a more clear-cut example of exploitation of a marginalized group’s suffering. White people have been stealing from and exploiting Natives for hundreds of years, even though it’s not always done maliciously. As Debbie Reese, a Nambé Owingeh Pueblo scholar and educator, explains on her blog American Indians in Children’s Literature:

“…the history of White people taking from Native people is also filled with White people who befriend us because they have found themselves living in or near our communities.

Of that latter group, I wish they could form those friendships without saying “look at me and my Native friend.” Or, “look at the good I do for my Native friends!” Or, “I worked with them and they asked me to write this story about them.” Or, “I taught their kids and I learned from them and so, I am able to write books about them that you should buy because I know what I’m talking about.” Or, “Look! My book has a note inside from my Native friend or colleague. You can trust what you read in my book.”

They mean well. But I wish they could see past their good intentions. What they’re doing is exploitation.”

But Rama Santa Mansa isn’t white. She is a Black woman who wants to use her book to honor the untold stories of marginalized groups in what is now called the United States, but is that enough to give her a pass? Does her race make the story less problematic? It’s clear that Mansa did her best to portray the Lenape’s plight with respect, and wanted to include them as the first inhabitants of what is now called New York. There’s no colonialism being enforced, as Mansa is a Black author. She also did a significant amount of research for her book, but it left me wondering if she had reached out to Lenape or other Native scholars when writing it. There are certainly no Native books listed in her bibliography, no Native professors that she thanks in the acknowledgement, not even a reference to Indian 101 for writers.

I feel like at the very least a Native sensitivity reader would have been warranted. As Debbie Reese writes in her criticism of Justina Ireland’s book Dread Nation (another historic novel by a Black author), “It became clear to me that the reason her book fails in its representations of Native peoples is because she relied heavily on archival research. The “primary sources” she used are items in government archives–that are heavily biased.” This underlines the importance of using Native sources when discussing Native issues in addition to actually speaking to Native people. It’s also serves as a good reminder that just because a writer belongs to one marginalized group, it doesn’t mean they are qualified to write about another.

Despite the issues mentioned above I found the book overall enjoyable, with a highly detailed and well-researched setting and a strong Black woman protagonist.

Tags: African American, American Indian, Black, Book Review, Demon, Gay, Gothic, Historic Horror, LGBTQIA, Own Voices, Recommended

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: ‎Peachtree Teen

Genre: Blood & Guts, Body Horror, Ghosts/Haunting, Mystery, Gothic

Audience: Young Adult

Diversity: Neurodiversity (Autism), transgender characters, queer character

Takes Place in: LA, California

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Abelism, Animal Death, Bullying, Child Abuse, Child Death, Child Endangerment, Death, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Gore, Homophobia, Kidnapping, Medical Torture/Abuse, Medical Procedures, Miscarriage, Oppression, Pedophilia, Physical Abuse, Rape/Sexual Assault, Self-Harm, Sexism, Slurs, Slut-Shaming, Torture, Transphobia, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Victim Blaming, Violence

Blurb

Mors vincit omnia. Death conquers all.

London, 1883. The Veil between the living and dead has thinned. Violet-eyed mediums commune with spirits under the watchful eye of the Royal Speaker Society, and sixteen-year-old Silas Bell would rather rip out his violet eyes than become an obedient Speaker wife. According to Mother, he’ll be married by the end of the year. It doesn’t matter that he’s needed a decade of tutors to hide his autism; that he practices surgery on slaughtered pigs; that he is a boy, not the girl the world insists on seeing.

After a failed attempt to escape an arranged marriage, Silas is diagnosed with Veil sickness—a mysterious disease sending violet-eyed women into madness—and shipped away to Braxton’s Finishing School and Sanitorium. The facility is cold, the instructors merciless, and the students either bloom into eligible wives or disappear. When the ghosts of missing students start begging Silas for help, he decides to reach into Braxton’s innards and expose its guts to the world—if the school doesn’t break him first.

Featuring an autistic trans protagonist in a historical setting, Andrew Joseph White’s much-anticipated sophomore novel does not back down from exposing the violence of the patriarchy and the harm inflicted on trans youth who are forced into conformity.

Silas is an autistic trans boy living in Victorian London who wants nothing more than to be a surgeon like his brother, George, and his idol James Barry. Unfortunately for Silas, the world still sees him as a young girl with violet eyes.

In White’s alternative history people born with violet eyes are Speakers, those who can open the Veil that separates the living and dead to communicate with ghosts. But only violet-eyed men are permitted to be mediums. It is believed that women who tamper with the Veil will become unstable and a threat to themselves and others. Veil sickness is said to be the result of violet-eyed women coming into contact with the Veil and is blamed for a wide range of symptoms from promiscuity to anger, but is really just the result of women who don’t obediently follow social norms. Thus, England has made it strictly illegal for women to engage in spirit work. After Silas’ failed attempt to run away and live as a man, he is diagnosed with Veil sickness and carted off to Braxton’s Finishing School and Sanitorium to be transformed into an obedient wife. Braxton’s is your typical gothic school filled with sad waifs and dangerous secrets, namely that girls keep disappearing. The headmaster is a creep and his methods for curing young girls are abusive. Despite the danger, Silas is determined to get to the bottom of the mysterious disappearances and find justice for the missing girls.

Violet-eyed women are highly valued as wives who can produce violet-eyed sons and are in high demand among the elite. Silas is no different, and his parents are eager to marry him off to any man with money. If being made to live as a girl weren’t bad enough, the idea of being forced to bear children is even more horrific to Silas. As someone who struggles with Tokophobia myself, I found White’s descriptions of forced pregnancy to be a terrifying and especially disturbing form of body horror. Because of Silas’ obsession with medicine, the entire book is filled with medical body horror. There are detailed descriptions of injuries and surgeries, medical torture, and an at-home c-section/abortion. Personally, I loved all the grossness and the detailed descriptions of anatomy and medical procedures. But The Spirit Bares its Teeth is most definitely not for the squeamish or easily grossed-out. I appreciated that in the afterword White made a point of mentioning that in the real world, it was usually racial minorities who were the subject of medical experimentation (rather than wealthy White women), and then recommended the books Medical Apartheid by Harriet A. Washington and Medical Bondage by Deirdre Cooper Owens for readers to learn more.

I was also happy to see an autistic character written by an autistic author. Stories about Autistic individuals often are told by neurotypical people who characterize autism as “tragic” or as an illness that needs to be cured. In The Spirit Bares its Teeth, neurodiversity is humanized and we see how harmful a lack of acceptance and understanding of autism is. Silas is forced to mask by society, and we see how difficult and harmful masking is to him. He is taught by his tutors to ignore his own needs in favor of acting the way others want. They reinforce the idea that acting “normal” (i.e. neurotypical) is the only way anyone will tolerate him. Silas’ tutors use methods similar to the highly controversial Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) to force him to behave in a manner they deem appropriate. He is not allowed to flap his hands, pace or cover his ears at loud noises, and is forced into uncomfortable clothing that hurts his skin and to eat food that makes him sick. He is mocked for taking things literally and punished if he can’t sit still and keep quiet. It’s horrible and heartbreaking.

Although I’m not autistic, I do have Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), a condition which has many overlapping symptoms with autism, including being easily overstimulated by sensory input. I have texture issues and White’s description of the uncomfortable clothing Silas is forced into made my skin itch in sympathy. It sounded like pure hell, and poor Silas can’t even distract himself with stimming so he just has to sit there and endure it. After meeting a non-verbal indentured servant whose autistic traits are much more noticeable, he also acknowledges that his ability to mask gains him certain privileges as he can “pass” as neurotypical (even though he should never have to pass in the first place and doing so is extremely harmful to his wellbeing).

In addition to its positive autism representation, White also does an excellent job portraying the struggles of being a trans person forced to live as their assigned gender. Interestingly, this is the first book with a transgender main character I’ve read where said character isn’t fully out or living as their true gender. Part of the horror of the story is that Silas can’t transition as he’s in an unsupportive and abusive environment. I also found it interesting that Silas is both trans and autistic as there’s an overlap between autism and gender identity/diversity.

The Spirit Bares its Teeth is a suspenseful and deeply disturbing gothic horror story about misogyny, ableism, and how society tries and controls women. I was absolutely glued to this story and could not put it down, no easy feat when my ADD demands constant distraction. Each revelation was more horrifying than the last and by the end I was terrified of what secrets Silas would uncover next.

Tags: Autism, Blood & Guts, Body Horror, Book Review, Ghosts/Haunting, Gothic, Highly Recommended, LGBTQIA, Mystery, Neurodiversity, Own Voices, Queer, Trans

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In These Gilded, Ghostly Hearts by Gwendolyn Kiste

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Creature Publishing

Genre: Ghosts/Haunting, Gothic, Historic Horror, Romance

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Lesbian main character and bisexual side character

Takes Place in: New York

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Child Abuse, Death, Forced Captivity, Homophobia, Suicide

Blurb

To free her mother, Mel must carve a path through family secrets and decaying revelers: deep into Gatsby’s starving house as it gorges itself on unfulfilled love and grows stronger every night.

Tags: Adult, Bisexual, Book Review, Ghosts/Haunting, Gothic, Historic Horror, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Own Voices, Romance

Shadows Over Ravenkirk by Vivian Moira Valentine

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Blue Fortune Enterprises

Genre: Dark Fantasy, Gothic, Mystery, Occult

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Trans, lesbian main character and author

Takes Place in: Maine

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Classicism, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Forced Captivity, Medical Procedures, Physical Abuse, Torture, Transphobia, Verbal/Emotional Abuse

Blurb

Tags: Adult, Book Review, Dark Fantasy, Gothic, Highly Recommended, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Mystery, Occult, Own Voices, Trans

Until the Last Light Goes Out by Courtney Gould

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Wednesday Books

Genre: Ghosts/Haunting, Gothic

Audience: Young Adult

Diversity: Queer main character and side characters

Takes Place in: Miami

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Bullying, Child Death, Child Endangerment, Childbirth, Death, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Homophobia, Violence

Blurb

You may not escape, but the truth will.

Kaleidoscope Key is waiting, and it’s starving. Once they find their way inside, there may not be a way out. And one way or another, the truth of the massacre will come to light.

Captivating and chilling, Courtney Gould’s Until The Last Light Goes Out is a horror story, a love story, and an ode to the pain passed between generations that you won’t soon forget.

Tags: Book Review, Ghosts/Haunting, Gothic, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Queer, Recommended, Young Adult

Hemlock by Melissa Faliveno

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Genre: Gothic

Audience: Adult

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

Takes Place in: Wisconsin

Blurb

Tags: Adult, Alcohol Use Disorder, Bisexual, Book Review, Gothic, LGBTQIA, Queer, Recommended

The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts by Kim Fu

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Tin House

Genre: Gothic, Psychological Horror

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Chinese American author and main character

Blurb

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

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

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

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Lanternfish Press

Genre: Gothic

Audience: Adult

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

Takes Place in: South Carolina Sea Islands

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

Blurb

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

On Sunday She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Saga Press

Genre: Gothic, Historic Horror, Werebeast

Audience: Adult

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

Takes Place in: Georgia, USA

Blurb

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

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

The Villa, Once Beloved by Victor Manibo

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Erewhon Books

Genre: Gothic, Myth and Folklore

Audience: Adult

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

Takes Place in: The Philippines

Blurb

Some legacies are best left buried…

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

Portrait of Lysbeth : A Gothic Novella by Rama Santa Mansa

Formats: digital

Publisher: Lingeer Press

Genre: Demon, Gothic, Historic Horror

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Black (African American) main character and author, minor gay character

Takes Place in: Sleepy Hollow, NY

Blurb

As the gloomy autumn season begins in 1676, the gruesome murders of three European women, by an unknown assailant in the isolated village of Sleepy Hollow, shocks the whole of New York.

“…the history of White people taking from Native people is also filled with White people who befriend us because they have found themselves living in or near our communities.

They mean well. But I wish they could see past their good intentions. What they’re doing is exploitation.”

Despite the issues mentioned above I found the book overall enjoyable, with a highly detailed and well-researched setting and a strong Black woman protagonist.