Diversity in Horror Fiction

Until the Last Light Goes Out by Courtney Gould

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
Deadbeat by Maxim Volk

Deadbeat by Maxim Volk

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Slashic Horror Press

Genre: Comedy Horror, Zombie

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Gay man author and main character

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Body Shaming, Cannibalism, Child Death, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Gore, Homophobia, Mental Illness, Necrophilia, Pedophilia, Physical Abuse, Police Harassment, Slurs, Vomit 

Blurb

Ji-won’s life tumbles into disarray in the wake of her Appa’s extramarital affair and subsequent departure. Her mother, distraught. Her younger sister, hurt and confused. Her college freshman grades, failing. Her dreams, horrifying… yet enticing.

In them, Ji-won walks through bloody rooms full of eyes. Succulent blue eyes. Salivatingly blue eyes. Eyes the same shape and shade as George’s, who is Umma’s obnoxious new boyfriend. George has already overstayed his welcome in her family’s claustrophobic apartment. He brags about his puffed-up consulting job, ogles Asian waitresses while dining out, and acts condescending toward Ji-won and her sister as if he deserves all of Umma’s fawning adoration. No, George doesn’t deserve anything from her family. Ji-won will make sure of that.

For no matter how many victims accumulate around her campus or how many people she must deceive and manipulate, Ji-won’s hunger and her rage deserve to be sated.

A brilliantly inventive, subversive novel about a young woman unraveling, Monika Kim’s The Eyes Are the Best Part is a story of a family falling apart and trying to find their way back to each other, marking a bold new voice in horror that will leave readers mesmerized and craving more.

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.

Your husband Matt expects you to remain monogamous despite constantly going on business trips. Worse, he doesn’t even like video sex because he’s worried someone will hack your phone, though you tell him that it’s a ridiculous paranoia. He won’t even let allow you a quickie before his trip because he’s worried about “smelling like sex” on the plane. You’re feeling pissed off, neglected, and sexually frustrated. You’ve cheated on him before while he’s away on trips, but you assume he’s also cheating on you while he’s away. So now you have a decision to make. Blow off some steam with a casual hook up or be a faithful husband and stay home. You end up dead either way,though how you meet your untimely end varies depending on your choice, ranging from carbon monoxide poisoning to getting murdered in a snuff film. You think it’s all over until you wake up in a basement surrounded by robed figures saying they’ve resurrected you. And you’re hungry. So very hungry. Now all you have to worry about is your insatiable appetite for human flesh, your decaying body, and avoiding Zombie Hunter Rome Samuel.

Deadbeat is a “choose your own adventure” style erotic horror novella. You can run into bigfoot, try to be the Dexter Morgan of zombies/a zombie superhero, eat some cops (because ACAB), or get revenge on a councilman who didn’t approve your backyard pool even after trading sexual favors. My favorite storyline was, in a twist right out of Thirty Rock’s Reunion episode, when the reader discovers that your high school “bully” (whose name you can’t even remember) was actually a good guy who just didn’t put up with your asshole behavior. And you character is an asshole. This may be a turn off for some readers, but personally, I love problematic queer characters. I also loved how we get a reference to “that social media app that has become overrun with Nazis” (Twitter) and digs at AI being used in porn (AI sucks and people who use it are losers). That doesn’t mean this story can’t get dark, though. One of the storylines involves a trafficking ring that kidnaps children, and they aren’t rescued if you don’t make the right decisions.

Deadbeat also addresses something I’ve always wondered about in zombie stories. Stomach acid and bile are no longer produced after death, so how do the undead digest things? Apparently, they can’t because you throw up everything after devouring someone, leaving you hungry again. I thought it was clever how Volk considered some of the science behind the living dead. For example, when you awaken, you find all your blood has been replaced with embalming fluid.

For erotic horror, the sex scenes are super short. I guess that makes sense for a novella, but it means it’s hard to get in the mood, so all the sex and dicks just feel kind of distracting rather than sexy. Of course, I’m also not a gay man, so not really the target audience. Over all it’s a very silly little book, which may take some people out of the story, but I personally thought Deadbeat was tons of fun.

Tags: Adult, Book Review, Gay, Horror Comedy, LGBTQIA, Own Voices, Recommended, Zombies
Funerals Are for the Living by Sami Ellis

Funerals Are for the Living by Sami Ellis

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Amulet Books

Genre: Occult, Thriller

Audience: Young Adult

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

Takes Place in: North Carolina

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

Blurb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Tor Nighfire

Genre: Blood & Guts, Sci-Fi Horror

Audience: Adult

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

Takes Place in: Palm Springs, California

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

Blurb

Poppy Stringer was born to be a star.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Hemlock by Melissa Faliveno

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Genre: Gothic

Audience: Adult

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

Takes Place in: Wisconsin

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

Blurb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eat Your Heart Out N.J. Gallegos

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Black Hare Press

Genre: Comedy Horror, Romance,

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Lesbian main character and author

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

Blurb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Moonflow by Bitter Karella

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Run for It

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

Audience: Adult

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

Takes Place in: California

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

Blurb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: Adult, Blood & Guts, Book Review, Eco Horror, Eldritch, Highly Recommended, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Myths and Folklore, Own Voices, Queer, Trans
These Bodies Ain’t Broken Edited by Madeline Dyer

These Bodies Ain’t Broken Edited by Madeline Dyer

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Page Street Publishing

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

Audience: Young Adult

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

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

Blurb

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

These stories showcase disabled characters winning against all odds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: ADHD, Agender, agoraphobia, Anthology, Anxiety Disorder, Autism, BIPOC, Biracial, Bisexual, Body Horror, Book Review, Cane user, Celiac Disease, Chronic Pain, Crohn’s disease, Demon, diabetes, Disability, Down syndrome, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, Haitian, Historic Horror, LGBTQIA, MCAS, Monster, Myths and Folklore, Neurodiversity, neurofibromatosis, Non-binary, Own Voices, POTS, PTSD, Recommended, Romance, Substance Use Disorder, Trans, vampire, Wheelchair user, Young Adult
On Sunday She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield

On Sunday She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Saga Press

Genre: Gothic, Historic Horror, Werebeast

Audience: Adult

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

Takes Place in: Georgia, USA

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

Blurb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: Adult, African American, BIPOC, Black, Gothic, Highly Recommended, Historic Horror, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Own Voices, Werebeast
The Villa, Once Beloved by Victor Manibo

The Villa, Once Beloved by Victor Manibo

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Erewhon Books

Genre: Gothic, Myth and Folklore

Audience: Adult

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

Takes Place in: The Philippines

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

Blurb

Some legacies are best left buried…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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Until the Last Light Goes Out by Courtney Gould

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
Deadbeat by Maxim Volk

Deadbeat by Maxim Volk

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Slashic Horror Press

Genre: Comedy Horror, Zombie

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Gay man author and main character

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Body Shaming, Cannibalism, Child Death, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Gore, Homophobia, Mental Illness, Necrophilia, Pedophilia, Physical Abuse, Police Harassment, Slurs, Vomit 

Blurb

Ji-won’s life tumbles into disarray in the wake of her Appa’s extramarital affair and subsequent departure. Her mother, distraught. Her younger sister, hurt and confused. Her college freshman grades, failing. Her dreams, horrifying… yet enticing.

In them, Ji-won walks through bloody rooms full of eyes. Succulent blue eyes. Salivatingly blue eyes. Eyes the same shape and shade as George’s, who is Umma’s obnoxious new boyfriend. George has already overstayed his welcome in her family’s claustrophobic apartment. He brags about his puffed-up consulting job, ogles Asian waitresses while dining out, and acts condescending toward Ji-won and her sister as if he deserves all of Umma’s fawning adoration. No, George doesn’t deserve anything from her family. Ji-won will make sure of that.

For no matter how many victims accumulate around her campus or how many people she must deceive and manipulate, Ji-won’s hunger and her rage deserve to be sated.

A brilliantly inventive, subversive novel about a young woman unraveling, Monika Kim’s The Eyes Are the Best Part is a story of a family falling apart and trying to find their way back to each other, marking a bold new voice in horror that will leave readers mesmerized and craving more.

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.

Your husband Matt expects you to remain monogamous despite constantly going on business trips. Worse, he doesn’t even like video sex because he’s worried someone will hack your phone, though you tell him that it’s a ridiculous paranoia. He won’t even let allow you a quickie before his trip because he’s worried about “smelling like sex” on the plane. You’re feeling pissed off, neglected, and sexually frustrated. You’ve cheated on him before while he’s away on trips, but you assume he’s also cheating on you while he’s away. So now you have a decision to make. Blow off some steam with a casual hook up or be a faithful husband and stay home. You end up dead either way,though how you meet your untimely end varies depending on your choice, ranging from carbon monoxide poisoning to getting murdered in a snuff film. You think it’s all over until you wake up in a basement surrounded by robed figures saying they’ve resurrected you. And you’re hungry. So very hungry. Now all you have to worry about is your insatiable appetite for human flesh, your decaying body, and avoiding Zombie Hunter Rome Samuel.

Deadbeat is a “choose your own adventure” style erotic horror novella. You can run into bigfoot, try to be the Dexter Morgan of zombies/a zombie superhero, eat some cops (because ACAB), or get revenge on a councilman who didn’t approve your backyard pool even after trading sexual favors. My favorite storyline was, in a twist right out of Thirty Rock’s Reunion episode, when the reader discovers that your high school “bully” (whose name you can’t even remember) was actually a good guy who just didn’t put up with your asshole behavior. And you character is an asshole. This may be a turn off for some readers, but personally, I love problematic queer characters. I also loved how we get a reference to “that social media app that has become overrun with Nazis” (Twitter) and digs at AI being used in porn (AI sucks and people who use it are losers). That doesn’t mean this story can’t get dark, though. One of the storylines involves a trafficking ring that kidnaps children, and they aren’t rescued if you don’t make the right decisions.

Deadbeat also addresses something I’ve always wondered about in zombie stories. Stomach acid and bile are no longer produced after death, so how do the undead digest things? Apparently, they can’t because you throw up everything after devouring someone, leaving you hungry again. I thought it was clever how Volk considered some of the science behind the living dead. For example, when you awaken, you find all your blood has been replaced with embalming fluid.

For erotic horror, the sex scenes are super short. I guess that makes sense for a novella, but it means it’s hard to get in the mood, so all the sex and dicks just feel kind of distracting rather than sexy. Of course, I’m also not a gay man, so not really the target audience. Over all it’s a very silly little book, which may take some people out of the story, but I personally thought Deadbeat was tons of fun.

Tags: Adult, Book Review, Gay, Horror Comedy, LGBTQIA, Own Voices, Recommended, Zombies
Funerals Are for the Living by Sami Ellis

Funerals Are for the Living by Sami Ellis

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Amulet Books

Genre: Occult, Thriller

Audience: Young Adult

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

Takes Place in: North Carolina

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

Blurb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Tor Nighfire

Genre: Blood & Guts, Sci-Fi Horror

Audience: Adult

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

Takes Place in: Palm Springs, California

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

Blurb

Poppy Stringer was born to be a star.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Hemlock by Melissa Faliveno

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Genre: Gothic

Audience: Adult

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

Takes Place in: Wisconsin

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

Blurb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eat Your Heart Out N.J. Gallegos

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Black Hare Press

Genre: Comedy Horror, Romance,

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Lesbian main character and author

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

Blurb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Moonflow by Bitter Karella

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Run for It

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

Audience: Adult

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

Takes Place in: California

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

Blurb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: Adult, Blood & Guts, Book Review, Eco Horror, Eldritch, Highly Recommended, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Myths and Folklore, Own Voices, Queer, Trans
These Bodies Ain’t Broken Edited by Madeline Dyer

These Bodies Ain’t Broken Edited by Madeline Dyer

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Page Street Publishing

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

Audience: Young Adult

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

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

Blurb

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

These stories showcase disabled characters winning against all odds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: ADHD, Agender, agoraphobia, Anthology, Anxiety Disorder, Autism, BIPOC, Biracial, Bisexual, Body Horror, Book Review, Cane user, Celiac Disease, Chronic Pain, Crohn’s disease, Demon, diabetes, Disability, Down syndrome, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, Haitian, Historic Horror, LGBTQIA, MCAS, Monster, Myths and Folklore, Neurodiversity, neurofibromatosis, Non-binary, Own Voices, POTS, PTSD, Recommended, Romance, Substance Use Disorder, Trans, vampire, Wheelchair user, Young Adult
On Sunday She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield

On Sunday She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Saga Press

Genre: Gothic, Historic Horror, Werebeast

Audience: Adult

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

Takes Place in: Georgia, USA

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

Blurb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: Adult, African American, BIPOC, Black, Gothic, Highly Recommended, Historic Horror, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Own Voices, Werebeast
The Villa, Once Beloved by Victor Manibo

The Villa, Once Beloved by Victor Manibo

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Erewhon Books

Genre: Gothic, Myth and Folklore

Audience: Adult

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

Takes Place in: The Philippines

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

Blurb

Some legacies are best left buried…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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