Here are all of the books that I read between mid-July and the end of September. I tried to be better about writing my thoughts immediately after finishing each book this time around. Obviously, I haven’t got any deadline for posting these collections of book reviews, I am only writing for myself here after all…but once I have decided “ok now’s the time!” I’d really like there to be as little work as possible. Doing it bit by bit, one book at a time as I go along is much, much easier than letting all the read titles accumulate and then trying to remember all the details and write about 25 books in one week! If you are someone who shares book reviews, do you tend to write them one by one, or say, 5-10 in one go? What’s your process? Do you take notes while reading, or rely on memory? How do you balance being helpful to other readers without spoiling too much? And does your opinion of a book ever shift between finishing it and actually sitting down to write about it? Sometimes I find that books I thought I loved start feeling more kinda meh once I try to articulate why they worked, or books that annoyed me reveal something interesting or unexpected when I’m forced to be more analytical about them.
Anyway, there were a few books I DNFed (did not finish) this time around, and I am not sure if it is fair to include them, but I do think if I am going to do a round-up of stuff I have read, I want to include all of it, even the books that didn’t work for me. I wonder sometimes if DNF reviews might be more useful than positive ones, maybe there’s something to be said for knowing why someone abandoned a book and at what point, especially if you share similar reading preferences or have the same pet peeves. Plus, acknowledging when books don’t click feels like part of the real reading experience rather than only showcasing the successes.
Writing reviews as I went definitely made me more conscious of my reactions while reading. I caught myself thinking about things like when reveals change everything about a character retroactively, rather than recontextualizing what we already knew, or when the “surprise” feels unearned because no foundation was laid for it. I found myself noticing scenes that felt like filler rather than building toward anything, or when authors don’t trust readers to retain basic character information and keep hammering away at the same points. Sometimes these reactions struck immediately…I’d be one paragraph in and already thinking “this dialogue sounds off” or “I don’t buy this character’s voice” – while other insights crystallized in those first few hours after finishing, when specific moments were still vivid before getting smoothed over by time and other books. The downside is that sometimes I felt like I was reading with one foot outside the story, analyzing instead of just enjoying, though maybe that trade-off is worth it for actually being able to articulate why something worked or didn’t.
Anyway, yeah, yeah, all the backstory before I share the recipes. I know, I know. Get on with it!
Devil’s Day by Andrew Michael Hurley John Pentecost returns to his family’s Lancashire farm for his grandfather’s funeral, bringing his pregnant wife Kat to the isolated Endlands community for the first time. The Gaffer had been the keeper of local traditions and boundary lines that supposedly protect the valley from the Devil, and now John must decide whether to take on that responsibility during the annual sheep gathering and Devil’s Day ritual. Andrew Michael Hurley is fast becoming one of my favorite authors – if you’ve ever read Robert MacFarlane’s lyrical writing about ancient British landscapes and thought “what this needs is some creeping dread and unexplained rural menace,” then you’ve found your writer. The pacing is glacially slow, but it works perfectly for Hurley’s atmospheric style, allowing the bleak moorland and bitter winds to seep into every scene until the landscape itself becomes a character. Kat feels increasingly trapped and unwelcome among the suspicious locals, while John is torn between his old life and his deep, almost mystical connection to this harsh place that demands everything from those who try to survive there.
Swallows by Natsuo Kirino Riki, a broke temp worker in Tokyo, agrees to be a surrogate for Motoi and Yuko, a wealthy couple desperate for a child, after her friend mentions the hefty payout for renting out your womb. Kirino’s exploration of poverty and reproductive choices is genuinely compelling, even when her characters make baffling decisions with zero self-awareness – like Motoi wanting a kid to live vicariously through while Yuko doesn’t even want to raise a child she’s not related to. The frank discussions about sex and bodies caught me off guard (but maybe it shouldn’t have, considering the author) and there’s definitely a lot talking in circles without actually resolving anything, just seemingly endless back-and-forth conversations that don’t seem to go anywhere, but I found myself invested in following Riki’s disaffected journey through this morally complicated situation regardless. It’s messy and uncomfortable, which works for a story about people making terrible choices while desperate for money or babies.
Crafting for Sinners by Jenny Kiefer Ruth has been repeatedly shoplifting from New Creations craft store as revenge after being fired for her sexuality, despite her girlfriend Abigail’s warnings to stop – but when she’s finally caught, the employees lock her inside and hunt her down instead of calling the police. Which is weird enough, but their plans for her are clearly much worse. What should be a tense survival horror of Ruth fighting her way out using crafting supplies turns into an endless slog of her creeping between shelves while fretting about her blood sugar, and bizarre slapstick murder and destruction (I couldn’t tell if this was meant to be funny or not?? )The violence feels repetitively excessive, like it’s doing the work the plot should be doing, and random podcast segments get thrown in that feel like a missed opportunity to actually connect to the story. The ending itself worked until the epilogue takes a sharp turn that feels like something from a cheesy TV movie, completely undercutting everything that came before. I do love Ruth’s internal dialogue, though, which consisted chiefly of “fuck these fuckers.” Which, fair.
Fox by Joyce Carol Oates Since I DNFed this after two chapters, I can only comment on what I experienced before giving up. Francis Fox is a charismatic English teacher at an elite boarding school whose car is found submerged in a pond with body parts nearby, leading to questions about his true identity and dark secrets. Despite Oates’ undeniable command of language and literary prowess, there’s something about her long-form prose style that I find insufferable – she becomes excessively verbose in a way that feels like a terrible slog rather than artful crafting. I love a beautiful turn of phrase and well-crafted sentence, but Oates pushes beyond that into smugly pretentious territory that tests my patience. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” is probably one of the most effectively unsettling things I’ve ever read, which proves she can be brilliant when constrained by shorter forms – but her novels feel indulgent and meandering in comparison. I know a lot of folks think she’s a brilliant genius so I feel like a lowly worm even having an opinion about it, but sometimes literary titans just don’t work for you personally.
With A Vengeance by Riley SagerRiley Sager’s books are wildly inconsistent, and this one lands solidly in the “outrageously worst I’ve read from him” category – yet I somehow continue to eagerly anticipate each new release like a senseless, slavering lunatic. Anna Matheson lures six people who destroyed her family in 1942 onto a luxury train from Philadelphia to Chicago, planning to confront them about their crimes and deliver them to authorities waiting at the destination – but someone starts murdering her targets during the overnight journey. The entire premise is absolutely ridiculous: How does she get six suspicious strangers to just… go along with getting on a mystery train? What authorities would agree to let a civilian deliver six potential criminals like some kind of vigilante instead of investigating themselves? Her whole “confrontation and confession” plan is painfully naive – why does she think these people will suddenly admit to decades-old crimes just because she threatens them with legal consequences? What could potentially be a tense locked-room mystery becomes a repetitive mess where characters stumble across bodies, accuse each other randomly, then move on to the next murder without any real investigation. The plot relies on absurd coincidences rather than clever deduction, and the whole thing falls apart the moment you think about the logistics for more than two seconds.
Death of a Bookseller by Alice Slater Roach is a longtime bookseller at a struggling branch of Spines bookstore who becomes dangerously fixated on Laura, a new children’s bookseller brought in (along with colleague Eli) to help rejuvenate the failing location. When Roach discovers they both have an interest in true crime – specifically that Laura’s mother was murdered by a serial killer – she becomes convinced they’re kindred spirits, but Laura wants nothing to do with her increasingly unhinged attempts at friendship. What’s marketed as a mystery is really more of a psychological exploration of two deeply flawed people, and both main characters are thoroughly unpleasant in different ways. Roach is genuinely repulsive – greasy, stalkerish, and obsessed with killers rather than victims – though I suspect I was so put off by her partly because she mirrors the tiny edgelord in my own heart, sneering at “normies” while thinking she’s more interesting and superior to their beige blandness. Laura and Eli waltz into the store like they own the place, which immediately predisposed me to dislike them from the start. The repetitive routine of work, pub, hangover actually felt surprisingly cozy to read about, even though it was probably meant to illustrate how these characters are stuck and stagnating. The book raises interesting questions about the ethics of true crime consumption (I find the whole “fan” culture around it pretty distasteful myself), but this feels more like watching two awful people circle each other than a compelling thriller…which, perversely, made it quite readable.*
*I make an effort to note the personal synchronicities I experience whilst reading a story, and here’s yet another: “An elderly gent in a stained three-piece tweed suit buys The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared.” I literally just watched the film adaptation of The Hundred-Year-Old Man the weekend before I read that line.
Murder Ballads by Katy Horan Ever since I first heard Ceoltoiri’s haunting version of “The Cruel Sister” on their Women of Ireland CD 25 years ago, I’ve been haunted by that moment when “the harp began to play alone” – those goosebumps still chill me every single time. Katy Horan’s Murder Ballads feels like the perfect companion to that long fascination, bringing together her beautifully unsettling illustrations with meticulous research into twenty traditional murder ballads and their real-world origins. She doesn’t just retell these dark stories but excavates their histories, tracing how some songs evolved from actual murders while others spring from pure folklore and mythic tradition. Her approach is both scholarly and sensitive, restoring humanity to victims often reduced to cautionary tales while examining the genre’s troubling roots in patriarchal violence and white supremacy. Each ballad entry includes recommended recordings, making this as much a gateway into the music as it is a cultural study. Horan’s art has a strange, folkloric beauty: darkly whimsical but never twee, weaving folk tradition and rustic charm alongside a gothic sensibility that’s been touched by shadow and mystery. A quality of illuminated manuscripts crossed with old Appalachian almanacs and herbalist guides. For anyone drawn to the darker threads of folk tradition, this is an essential and beautifully crafted exploration of how real tragedy and timeless myth both become song.
Gifted and Talented by Olivie Blake (with cover art by Tristan Elwell!) The Wren siblings (Meredith, Arthur, and Eilidh) gather after their tech mogul father’s death to await the reading of his will, each harboring their own spectacular failures despite their privileged brilliance. Blake has created something genuinely entertaining here, a darkly comic family saga that shows off her talent for finding perfect absurdity in dire moments and revealing devastating psychological truths through keen observation. Her humor lands just right when describing a turbulent flight where everyone thinks they’re about to die (“The pilot had somehow left his microphone on and was crying audibly, which was not very beneficial for the vibes”) or capturing how someone like Arthur’s wife Gillian protects herself emotionally (“Gillian refused to cut herself on any blade she hadn’t forged herself”). What Blake does so well is find the exact right metaphor for complex emotional states and locate genuine comedy in genuinely terrible situations. The sibling dynamics feel authentically messy and competitive, each character brilliantly flawed in their own way, while supporting players like Gillian and Arthur’s other romantic entanglements add layers to an already complicated family web. But Blake’s narrator can be exhausting in that way a too-clever sibling becomes, the voice that initially presents itself mysteriously as “god” before revealing its true identity, the relentless stream of witty observations that sometimes go on way too long, like listening to someone who knows exactly how brilliant they are and won’t let you forget it. The pacing drags under all this cleverness, with 500 pages devoted mostly to psychological excavation rather than things actually happening. Still, when Blake succeeds (which is often) the insights into family trauma, privilege, and the crushing weight of unrealized potential feel both hilarious and heartbreaking.
The Weird and the Eerie by Marc Fisher Mark Fisher’s final completed work examines two distinct but related modes that haunt literature and film: the weird and the eerie. Fisher defines the weird as “the presence of that which does not belong” while the eerie emerges from “a failure of absence or a failure of presence” – something being where it shouldn’t be, or nothing being where something should be. I’ll be honest: much of this went over my head, particularly when Fisher ventures into theoretical territory about jouissance, transcendental exteriority, and various ontological abstractions. And about a million other concepts. But what’s remarkable is how intensely fascinating it remained even when I couldn’t follow his philosophical threads. Fisher’s discussions of Kubrick and du Maurier were particularly compelling – his analysis of the alien agency in 2001’s monolith and the undisclosed forces lurking in The Shining’s hotel, plus his reading of “Don’t Look Now” as a story about how denying the power of foresight actually contributes to the very disaster you’re trying to avoid. His readings made me want to immediately rewatch and reread everything he discusses, which is probably the highest compliment you can pay a critic. He can find the eerie in everything from ruins to capital itself (describing our economic system as an invisible force with tremendous power to destabilize society), which feels both illuminating and mildly unhinged. Very much the kind of insight that makes you wonder if you’re learning something profound or just getting successfully convinced by a very smart person’s obsessions. A key distinction Fisher makes is that these modes aren’t about horror but about “fascination for the outside, for that which lies beyond standard perception, cognition and experience.” Most people would lump weird/eerie stuff in with horror, but Fisher argues they’re actually about something different – not fear, but a kind of magnetic pull toward the unknown or inexplicable. It’s the difference between being scared of something and being weirdly drawn to it, like staring at a road accident or feeling compelled by abandoned places. Though without that context, it sounds like so much academic throat-clearing.The book works best when he’s doing close readings of specific works rather than building grand theoretical frameworks, though I suspect readers more versed in critical theory would appreciate those sections more than I did. This feels like essential reading for anyone interested in weird fiction or liminal spaces, even if – especially if – you don’t understand all of it.
The Old Ways: A Journey On Foot by Robert MacFarlane I could swear I’d already written about Robert MacFarlane’s The Old Ways – I reference him constantly in my blog, newsletter, and perfume reviews – but it turns out I’ve just been thinking about him so much I assumed I must have written about this particular book already. His dense, poetic prose is both the reason his books take me years to finish (you can only absorb a few paragraphs at a time, plus he keeps leading me to places I know nothing about, sending me down endless rabbit holes of side-reading) and why they’re so deeply rewarding. This exploration of Britain’s ancient pathways – the forgotten drove roads where cattle were herded to market, pilgrim routes to holy sites, smugglers’ tracks, and even sea lanes between remote islands – reveals a vast network of routes that crisscross the landscape like invisible threads connecting past and present. MacFarlane walks the perilous Broomway, a tidal path across Essex mudflats that’s only passable at low tide and has claimed countless lives, sails to the remote rock of Sula Sgeir where men still harvest gannets in an annual ritual unchanged for centuries, and traces the Icknield Way, supposedly Britain’s oldest path. His luminous prose shows how these ancient ways persist alongside our daily world rather than separate from it, whether he’s following Edward Thomas’s footsteps or sleeping rough in Hebridean caves. One passage particularly struck me: “For some time now it has seemed to me that two questions we should ask of any strong landscape are these: firstly, what do I know when I am in this place that I can know nowhere else? And then, vainly, what does this place know of me that I cannot know of myself?” The idea that landscapes hold knowledge we can only access by being physically present in them, and that they might serve as mirrors revealing hidden parts of ourselves, feels like the heart of why his writing resonates so deeply – it suggests our relationship with place is far more intimate and revelatory than we usually acknowledge. The book works as both travel writing and meditation on how landscape shapes consciousness, revealing the stories embedded in every footpath and the ghosts that walk beside us on these old routes.
The Woman In Suite 11 by Ruth Ware Lo Blacklock returns ten years older but somehow spectacularly less wise, apparently not emerging from her last ordeal with better judgment or a more solid sense of self-preservation. When she unexpectedly gets invited to the press opening of a luxury Swiss hotel owned by reclusive billionaire Marcus Leidmann, it reignites her desire to restart her travel journalism career after a decade as a stay-at-home mom in Manhattan. She’s hoping to snag an interview with him, but instead gets a late-night call summoning her to his room, where she finds a woman claiming to be his mistress and begging for help escaping some life-threatening situation. Rather than, say, calling hotel security or literally anyone with actual authority, Lo decides to personally shepherd this sketchy acquaintance across Europe in what becomes an increasingly ridiculous cat-and-mouse chase. Our main character’s decision-making is so spectacularly terrible that you’ll spend the entire book wondering how she managed to keep two children alive for years. I can barely remember The Woman in Cabin 10 from over a decade ago, but this feels like a sequel that exists solely because the first book was successful, not because Lo’s story needed continuing.
The Hunger We Pass Down by Jen Sookfong Lee Alice is an overwhelmed single mother trying to manage her online diaper business while dealing with her resentful teenage daughter Luna, her screen-obsessed son Luca, her hard-edged mother who’s finally ready to share the family’s dark history, and a new boyfriend who doesn’t quite understand what he’s walked into and which sucks for him because Alice isn’t ready to introduce him to her family anyhow. When Alice starts waking up to find all her household chores mysteriously completed overnight, it kicks off a story that uses shifting timelines to focus on each of the women in her family – her great-grandmother’s horrific experience as a comfort woman during WWII, her orphaned daughter, Alice’s mother, and Alice herself – showing how trauma moves and transforms through each generation. You know how the best part of any creepy story is when everyone’s getting increasingly freaked out but nobody wants to say anything because they’ll sound crazy? That mounting dread where people are secretly theorizing and panicking on their own until something finally forces them to compare notes? Most authors can’t stick the landing once that moment hits, and unfortunately, this one falters too, once things start becoming apparent and real conversations start happening. This was an absolutely great story for me until that inevitable moment when the mysterious thing is acknowledged and addressed – Lee builds all of that tension beautifully, but once things come into the open, it all gets wrapped up too quickly and chaotically, leading to a spectacularly bleak ending. Despite my complaints about how everything ends, the parts that worked were numerous – Lee’s mastery at building that creeping dread, the genuine mystery of what was happening to Alice, the complex tension in the family dynamics, and the deep love these women have for each other despite everything they’ve endured. The prowess of both the writing and the storytelling made it worth reading even with the disappointing conclusion, and overall I think it was pretty good.
There’s Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins Makani Young is trying to leave her dark past behind in small-town Nebraska when students at her high school start getting murdered in increasingly gruesome ways. Perkins delivers death scenes that feel ripped straight from a cheesy teen horror flick; they’re weirdly over-the-top yet not terribly disturbing, which gives the whole thing a cozy familiarity that’s actually kind of comforting. This could have been a novelization of just about any teen scream flick, and leaning into the nostalgic recognition of that predictable territory was weirdly satisfying and hard to resist. The problem is that the killer’s identity and motivations are surprisingly weak – we barely know who they are before the big reveal, and their reasoning feels underdeveloped and kind of stupid. The constant hinting about Makani’s mysterious past also gets tiresome when it turns out to be nowhere near as dramatic as all the buildup suggests. It’s definitely more YA contemporary with horror elements than true horror, but as a fast, silly read that doesn’t take itself too seriously (or …at least I didn’t take it too seriously), it was entertaining enough junky fun.
The Locked Ward Sarah Pekkanen Georgia Cartwright is locked in a psychiatric ward for violent offenders after being accused of murdering her adoptive family’s biological daughter, and her only hope is the twin sister she’s never met – Amanda, who gets sucked into Georgia’s drama despite having zero reason to trust someone she literally just learned exists. The instant psychic twin connection thing is pretty laughable and the plot stretches believability to the breaking point with its soap opera-level twists, but somehow I still tore through it in record time despite being annoyed by the short, choppy chapters. It’s frustratingly addictive in that way where you know it’s awfully dumb but can’t seem to put it down.
The Wasp Trap by Mark Edwards Six former colleagues reunite for a dinner party to honor their recently deceased professor who brought them together in 1999 to work on a revolutionary dating website based on psychological testing, but the evening quickly turns violent when they’re held hostage and forced to reveal their darkest secrets. The group includes Will (a failed writer turned teacher), Sophie (his former missed-connection living aimlessly), Rohan (struggling financially and hoping for a bailout), Lily (the brilliant tech mind working on something top-secret), hosts Georgina and Theo (the power couple who built a tech empire but are hiding family tragedy), and mysterious newcomer Fin who no one has ever seen before but who seems suspiciously cozy with the catering staff. Edwards builds the tension efficiently once the house is locked down and cell service disappears, using dual timelines to gradually reveal how their work on the dating algorithm (which could also identify psychopaths – “The Wasp Trap”) connects to their current predicament. Even though I could feel a big reveal approaching, the reality of it was actually unexpected. I enjoyed it despite the book bouncing between serious suspense and moments that felt almost silly, but somehow I still tore through it.
In Hellions, Julia Elliott crafts deliriously bizarre stories of languid Southern Gothic weirdness and the muggy-fuggy fantastical, where teenage Butter keeps a pet alligator while hunting for the Swamp Ape, a college student transforms into a satyress under the tutelage of her shape-shifting Wild Professor, and neighborhood kids become entranced by Cujo, a mysterious trampoline performer who morphs between beauty and hideousness. Each story is drenched in the humid, swampy atmosphere of the South – you can practically feel the heat pressing against your skin and smell the kudzu-thick air as Elliott weaves together folklore, horror, and dark comedy with breathtaking skill. Her prose is lush and intoxicating, building worlds that feel completely, immersively, almost overwhelmingly otherworldly, and profoundly resonant perhaps because I recognized something kindred in her descriptions – she writes about place and atmosphere the way I ramble in my perfume reviews, for example “…brutish, mystical—as though Gregorian monks had been turned into bears by a witch” feels like something I might write about a wild, earthy, resinous woody fragrance. This collection completely transported me, especially reading it in the sweltering August heat, sun-fevered and heat-struck – the perfect companion to Elliott’s sultry, folkloric stories, and I found myself rationing each tale because I desperately didn’t want the experience to end.
Cold Eternity by S.A. Barnes Halley is on the run from a political scandal and takes an under-the-radar job on a massive space barge storing thousands of cryogenically frozen bodies – Earth’s wealthiest citizens from over a century ago, all waiting to be revived when the technology that never quite worked right to begin with catches up to their dreams of eternal life. She’s supposedly not alone; Karl, the guy who hired her, is apparently on another level doing constant repairs, and she can hear him banging around at all hours…but she’s never actually met him in person, only talked to him through comms. The whole setup screams “something is very wrong here,” especially when you’re floating in the void with no escape route, surrounded by thousands of what are basically corpses that might not stay dead, completely dependent on life support systems that could fail at any moment, knowing that if something goes wrong, no one will hear you scream or come to help. Barnes excels at building all of that claustrophobic paranoia as Halley wanders the ship carrying the psychological pressure of being the only conscious person responsible for thousands of “lives” while navigating passages where you could easily get lost forever. The twist itself was actually kind of fun, even though I saw it coming, but the way everything wraps up after that felt underwhelming, and, as always in this author’s books, there’s a hint of romantic tension that felt unnecessary for horror. Barnes has a real talent for atmospheric dread, but I keep waiting for her endings to match the strength of her beginnings.
One Of Our Kind by Nicola Yoon Jasmyn and King Williams move their family to Liberty, California, an all-Black planned community of wealthy, successful residents, hoping to find like-minded people who share their values. I really loved reading about Jasmyn’s family dynamics and her relationships with the few friends she makes who share her growing unease about their new home, but the more I think about this book, the more problematic it starts to feel. Jasmyn is supposedly a compassionate social justice advocate, but she’s constantly judging other Black women for their hair choices and life decisions in ways that feel deeply uncomfortable. The premise is intriguing, this supposed utopia where residents seem more interested in spa treatments than activism, and it becomes genuinely creepy and upsetting as Jasmyn watches people she cares about get increasingly pulled into the wellness center’s influence while she desperately searches for answers, only to be gaslit from all corners. But the execution is full of plot holes that became impossible to ignore, and the pacing is a disaster – Yoon waits until the very last moment to reveal what’s really going on, then rushes through the resolution so quickly that it feels abrupt and unsatisfying. There’s a story here about community and belonging (probably? or is this meant to be satire and I am not seeing it?) but it’s muddled by a protagonist whose rigid ideas about authentic Blackness make her hard to root for, and an ending that left me questioning what message Yoon was actually trying to convey.
What Hunger by Catherine Dang Ronny Nguyen is fourteen, stuck between childhood and high school, spending her summer in suburban limbo while her golden-boy brother Tommy prepares for college. When tragedy hits and destroys her family, followed by assault at her first high school party, Ronny discovers a terrifying new appetite that becomes both her salvation and potential destruction. This isn’t just body horror, though; it’s a visceral coming-of-age story about Vietnamese-American identity, generational trauma, and the particular rage that comes with being a teenage girl surrounded by people who don’t understand, who won’t protect you, who dismiss you and deceive you and disappoint you. Dang writes Ronny’s downward spiral with the kind of raw, raging intensity that feels urgent and deeply satisfying, like tearing off a scab, or finally getting to scream at the top of your lungs at the worst person you know, or really, just push back at everything that’s been crushing you – there’s this sense of escalating release and justified rage that felt inevitable and necessary. Ronny herself is wildly compelling; I found her acting out thoroughly enjoyable because after everything she endures, she’s entitled to her fury. And when the truth about her mother’s past finally comes out, it recontextualizes everything in ways that made me want to immediately reread the whole thing. I’m about to compare two books about Asian American girls with dangerous appetites, which feels reductive in exactly the way that would make Ronny say “that’s another Asian,” but Monika Kim’s The Eyes Are the Best Part really is the closest comparison – though where Kim’s book felt more contemplative, What Hunger is fiercer and more unforgiving (and I’m not pitting these titles against one another, they’re both good).
ITCH! by Gemma Amor Josie was a character I initially found hard to connect with. She’s back in her isolated hometown near the Forest of Dean after escaping an abusive relationship with her ex-girlfriend Lena, staying with her emotionally unavailable father, who offers little in the way of comfort or support while she tries to figure out what comes next. The opening felt sluggish, with Josie doing a lot of nothing while a lot of nothing happened, and even after she discovers a woman’s ant-covered corpse in the woods, the relentless hallucinations and phantom insect sensations kept the story feeling meandering and trapped inside her head. However, as other characters are introduced (Angela, the pub owner where Josie works, who was friends with her late mother; Jacob, an elderly pub regular and town historian; and even surly Detective Wilkes), they energize the entire narrative, and the pacing picks up. As Josie starts engaging with actual people instead of just phantom bugs and her own spiraling thoughts, the story finally comes alive, weaving together the murder mystery, suppressed memories that slowly surface, and the town’s eerie Devil’s March festival, connected to the missing women. The folk horror elements surrounding this festival felt authentic and unsettling in that old-custom way, those passed-down practices we still follow without really knowing why, which makes you wonder what exactly you’re participating in and what dark consequences might result. More than a body horror tale, this turned out to be the atmospheric folk horror I didn’t know I needed this summer. As revelations about her father surface, Josie’s earlier brokenness recontextualizes completely: not weakness at all, but survival. The story takes a genuinely perverse and sadistic turn that I can’t spoil, but the feminist themes around silencing women who speak up are devastatingly effective. Watching Josie slowly reclaim her strength made that slower beginning completely worth it, and by the end, seeing her refuse to be anyone’s victim anymore felt deeply satisfying. A story that will absolutely reward your patience if you can push through the slow drag of the earlier chapters.
Room 55by Helena Kubicek Boye felt like reading a novelized film adaptation – flat, lifeless, and more outline than actual story. Anna Varga takes a position at Sweden’s notorious Säter psychiatric clinic, where her predecessor has vanished under suspicious circumstances and she starts receiving mysterious notes and warnings about the infamous Room 55, but as intriguing as that sounds, the execution never lives up to the premise. The ultra-short chapters (some barely a page) constantly switch between a dozen different points of view, making it impossible to build any momentum or investment, and the individuals Anna interacts with – colleagues, administrators, and patients are basically one-dimensional stock characters – no one is really fleshed out, and we know them mainly by their worst qualities. Despite all the setup about Room 55’s dark secrets, the payoff feels disappointingly thin, and I was expecting something atmospheric and eerie, but this felt slapdash and oddly unengaging for a story set in a creepy psychiatric facility.
The Unseen by Ania Ahlborn If I didn’t have strict bedtime rules, this would have been one of those books that kept me up until 4am, desperate to finish it. Isla Hansen is grieving a recent miscarriage when a mysterious, mute child appears on her family’s Colorado property, and despite having five kids already who desperately need her attention, she becomes immediately obsessed with taking him in. Her husband Luke and their children notice something deeply wrong with the boy – he’s unnerving in ways that go beyond just being traumatized – but Isla won’t hear any criticism of her new foundling. At first, I was so frustrated with Isla’s tunnel vision, especially since she already has all these kids who need her, but as the story unfolds and the true nature of what’s happening becomes clear, being angry with her becomes much more complicated. The book is thoroughly disquieting and creepy in similar ways to how Josh Malerman’s Incidents Around the House scared me so badly that it made me cry. When what’s actually going on finally becomes clear (or as clear as it could be considering how confused I became) it’s an unexpected surprise that I didn’t particularly welcome, but Ahlborn kept me completely invested even as the story went places I wasn’t prepared for. I can’t wait to scour my library for more unsettling titles from this author.
Girl Dinner by Olivie Blake I’m not a new mother (or an old one, I have zero children) and I have never given a single shit about sororities, but Olivie Blake’s story of two women’s desperate hunger for something more than what they have drew me in completely. Nina is clawing her way toward success through The House, the campus’s most exclusive sorority, knowing that as a woman she has to play a rigged game and believing this sisterhood might be her only way to win. Meanwhile, Sloane is drowning in new motherhood and academic mediocrity until she becomes the sorority’s faculty liaison and begins obsessing over these perfect, successful women. As both women get drawn deeper into The House’s rituals and traditions, Nina discovers that the sorority’s legendary success comes with some very specific requirements, while Sloane starts digging into what makes these women so impossibly perfect and realizes the price of perfection might be more than she has an appetite for, that perhaps she’s bitten off more than she can chew (and what exactly is she chewing anyway?). Blake’s writing can be frustratingly dense and overwrought – all meandering sentences and self-indulgent details that make you work for every paragraph – but when it clicks, it’s genuinely impressive, and it starts clicking more often the deeper you get into the story. What really makes this book work are the relationships – Sloane meeting Alex and settling into their friendship, Nina navigating her developing bonds with her “sisters” as well as her frequent chats with her actual sister. Blake captures these moments in ways that make all the verbosity worth it. And I loved how she digs into these bigger philosophical questions about how much darkness you can handle before it breaks you, about the cost of really seeing what’s wrong with the world. Maybe it’s heavy-handed, sure, but she nails these moments where her characters are grappling with impossible choices and the weight of too much knowledge. But then the ending completely lost me – it happens so quickly and confusingly that I couldn’t even figure out what was supposed to have happened, let alone why, and after all that careful character building, it felt like Blake just threw her hands up and decided to wrap things up as abruptly as possible. To sum up, I liked this book–loved it even!–until I hated it.
The Storm by Rachel Hawkins As someone who’s spent most of my life melting through Florida summers, Rachel Hawkins absolutely captured that relentless Gulf Coast humidity that turns everything into a swamp. As much as I hate the reality, reading it fictionalized always makes me feel like I’ve come home, and that’s what St. Medard’s Bay, Alabama does in this story – although home in this case is not just muggy but also murderous. The hurricanes themselves become characters here, each storm named and destructive in its own way, with the approaching weather creating a constant sense of dread that perfectly mirrors the human drama unfolding at the Rosalie Inn, where Geneva Corliss is struggling to keep the family business afloat after being dumped by her boyfriend and left to care for her mother Ellen’s deteriorating memory. When Lo Bailey shows up after forty years away with writer August Fletcher in tow (who’s supposedly helping her tell her side of the 1984 hurricane death of married politician Landon Fitzroy), Geneva quickly discovers that her own family is tangled up in this decades-old mess in ways she never suspected. While Lo is supposed to be this magnetic, charming woman, she mostly comes across as loud and obnoxious; even if age has mellowed her reckless, selfish younger self, I never quite understood what made everyone so drawn to her. And honestly, though, Landon was such a complete piece of shit that I spent the whole book completely apathetic to the mystery of who killed him- whoever did it was doing God’s work. It’s a quick, absorbing read that gets a bit far-fetched in that way mysteries do when every coincidence lines up just a little too neatly, but the oppressive storm-season tension kept me turning pages anyway.
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Herculine by Grace Byron The unnamed narrator of Herculine has been dealing with literal demons since her conversion therapy days, and when one particularly nasty entity starts stalking her through New York, she flees to rural Indiana where her toxic ex-girlfriend Ash has started an all-trans commune utopia. The early sections with the narrator and her city friends actually worked well; there’s genuine warmth in those relationships before everything gets weird and demonic out in the sticks, but once she arrives at the commune and meets the other residents, I found myself struggling to stay invested in what was happening. Byron spends most of the book building this slow atmosphere of something being off (the girls stop talking when the narrator enters rooms, there are cryptic books in the library, weird rituals happening), but then suddenly explodes into full-on demonic chaos so abruptly that it never felt earned. The over-the-top final act with demons running wild and people disemboweled came out of nowhere, and while horror doesn’t usually scare me anyway, by the time everything was falling apart, I was more bewildered than engaged. There are probably interesting ideas here about community and trauma and what happens when desperate people make questionable choices, but too much felt underdeveloped to really connect. While everyone seems focused on how unlikable the characters are or how often someone mentions ketamine, what really struck me about this book is how incredibly horny every single character is – and I mean that both literally (everyone’s bodies are changing, hormones are surging, everything feels electric and overwhelming) and in terms of this raw, almost frantic hunger for connection, validation, belonging, anything that might fill whatever emptiness is eating at them.
Pinky Swear by Danielle Girard centers on Lexi, whose surrogate and childhood friend Mara disappears just days before her due date. When Mara shows up after sixteen years fleeing an abusive husband, their rekindled friendship leads to Mara offering to carry Lexi’s child. The premise immediately drew me in, and I finished it in two days because I genuinely wanted to know why/how/etc. the person carrying the child of their best friend would just up and vanish. But…the execution proved frustrating in several ways. The character relationships felt unclear; Lexi’s husband exists in some undefined separated-but-not-really state that made their relationship hard to parse and their interactions hard to follow. The backstory involving their three-person friend group (including Cate, who died young) unfolds across different timelines and POVs in ways that became confusing. I was more than halfway through before I realized the traumatic event I thought had happened to one character actually happened to another. The ending ultimately broke my suspension of disbelief entirely. Without giving anything away, the resolution relies on the protagonist’s self-taught expertise in a highly specialized field, transforming what could have been a compelling thriller into something that felt implausible. While I’m willing to overlook plenty of dramatic license in summer thrillers, this particular narrative choice pushed beyond what I could accept. The bones of an engaging story were present, but the muddled plotting and strained finale undermined the whole thing.
A Good Person by Kirsten Kingwas an absolute riot. Lillian is spectacularly awful – narcissistic, delusional, and completely unhinged, the type of person who has turned self-destruction into an art form and is immune to embarrassment, which is quite frankly, enviable. Lillian has zero filter and does all the awful things most people would never dare to, she is completely shameless about being the worst. And yet somehow I was rooting for her chaotic journey the entire time. When her undefined non-relationship with Henry ends badly, she drunkenly hexes him… and then he actually dies. Watching Lillian navigate being a murder suspect while simultaneously trying to claim her “rightful” place as his grieving girlfriend is outrageously audacious; this woman is terrible, and I absolutely loved every minute with her.
Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran Emily and her classmates at Briarley School are devastated when their golden girl Violet dies in a horrific accident, so naturally they decide to hold séances to contact her spirit, as you do. What starts as teenage grief and amateur spiritualism quickly spirals as students start dying in increasingly brutal ways and supernatural corruption spreads like an infection, rotting the morals of both students and staff. The cast of girls feels authentic in their messy, complicated relationships – jealousies, crushes, petty cruelties, and fierce loyalties all tangled together, while Emily herself is a prickly, obsessive narrator whose fixation drives much of the tension. I found myself completely absorbed in the mounting dread and genuinely creepy horror elements, even though the ending dissolved into chaos without really resolving much of anything.
The Woman Dies by Aoko Matsuda, which I realized too late was a flash fiction collection, ranges from three-sentence fragments to brief sketches…which explains why so many of these pieces felt rushed and underdeveloped when I was expecting traditional short stories. The feminist messaging is often unsubtle and heavy-handed, and I found myself relying on the author’s explanatory notes at the end to understand what many of the stories were actually about. I ultimately DNFed it halfway through because it was starting to feel like a frustrating slog through someone’s unedited notebook rather than a cohesive collection.
Freakslaw by Jane Flett A traveling carnival of outcasts and misfits arrives in the repressed Scottish town of Pitlaw in 1997, seeking revenge for years of being cast out, never allowed to settle, and punished simply for existing. The premise is compelling – a carnival full of society’s rejects descending on a bigoted town with centuries of pent-up violence ready to be unleashed – but the execution feels oddly toothless despite all the sex and violence. Flett’s writing has this strangely innocent quality that keeps the story from going as dark or wild as it should, like it’s trying very hard to be transgressive and edgy but never quite commits to the chaos it promises. The whole thing reads more like a coming-of-age story than the brutal revenge tale I was expecting.
Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker Cora Zeng works crime scene cleanup in Chinatown, scrubbing away the remnants of brutal murders while trying to process her own trauma after watching her sister Delilah get pushed in front of a subway train. When Cora and her oddball coworkers Harvey and Yifei start finding bat carcasses at their cleanup sites – all involving murdered Asian women – she realizes there might be a serial killer at work, just as the Hungry Ghost Festival begins and strange things start happening in her apartment. Baker weaves together supernatural horror with unflinching commentary on anti-Asian racism during the pandemic, creating something that’s genuinely creepy while also brutally honest about hate crimes and the particular vulnerabilities of Asian American women. The friendship between Cora, Harvey, and Yifei becomes the heart of the story, giving warmth and dark humor to balance the gore and social commentary, and I found myself completely absorbed in their dynamic even amid all the horror. I also loved watching Cora’s relationship with her aunt develop – those scenes added emotional depth that made the bleakness feel grounded in real family connections rather than just trauma. It’s bleak and pretty gruesome material handled with skill – both as effective horror fiction and as a necessary examination of how fear and prejudice turned even deadlier during COVID.
We Live Here Now by Sarah Pinborough After a near-fatal accidentEmily and her husband Freddie move from London to a creepy Dartmoor country house called Larkin Lodge , hoping for a fresh start to save their troubled marriage. Emily immediately feels something wrong with the house – especially the third-floor room – but the weird events only happen when she’s alone, so nobody believes her, and her post-sepsis condition means she can’t trust her own perceptions anyway. Pinborough builds a genuinely atmospheric haunted house story with all the Gothic moodiness you’d expect, though the raven narrator felt like an unnecessary gimmick, even if I eventually understood why she included it. Also, I found it hard to believe that someone who calls herself a “bookworm” (my Kindle note said “12% into the book and she’s already told us she’s a bookworm three times, sheesh we get it”) had somehow never read Edgar Allan Poe. That’s…certainly an authorial choice. The concept has potential, and there’s a decent twist, but I had wanted something more clever and inventive than what she delivered – it felt like she had interesting ideas but didn’t quite execute them in a way that felt fresh or surprising. The characters never really came alive for me, and while the atmosphere works, the whole thing felt more predictable than I was hoping for from Pinborough.
The Echoes by Evie Wyld Max has died and now exists as a ghost in the London flat he shared with his Australian girlfriend Hannah, watching her grieve while slowly learning about all the family secrets she kept from him during their relationship. The story jumps between timelines – Max’s afterlife observations, their relationship before his death, and Hannah’s traumatic childhood growing up on a goat farm in rural Australia near a former school for stolen Aboriginal children. Wyld weaves together themes of generational trauma, colonial violence, and how the past haunts the present through multiple perspectives, though the ghost narrator device feels somewhat gimmicky compared to the more grounded family drama. I didn’t find this quite as compelling as The Bass Rock, but both books have their own strengths – this one is perhaps less immediately readable but still thoughtfully constructed, just in a different way.
Too Old For This by Samantha Downing Seventy-five-year-old Lottie Jones has been enjoying her retirement from serial killing, spending her days playing church bingo and gossiping with friends, until investigative journalist Plum Dixon shows up asking uncomfortable questions about her past. One thing leads to another, and suddenly Lottie finds herself back in the murder business, discovering that getting away with killing is much harder when you’re dealing with arthritis, technology you don’t understand, and the general physical limitations of being a septuagenarian. Downing has created an absolutely delightful antihero in Lottie – she’s sharp, witty, and surprisingly relatable despite her murderous tendencies, and I found myself genuinely rooting for this polite, tea-serving grandmother even as the body count climbed. This was a complete hoot from start to finish, and honestly, Lottie felt more authentic and engaging than most of the younger protagonists I’ve been reading lately in thrillers or literary fiction. She definitely needs to team up with Janina from Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk and Beverly Sutphin from John Waters’ Serial Mom for the ultimate Ladies of A Certain Age Murder Club.
Asylum Hotel by Juliet Blackwell What is it that draws people toward abandoned spaces? Is it the eerie appeal of places caught between purpose and purposelessness, the melancholy romance of decay, or maybe our fascination with impermanence – the reminder that even the most solid things eventually fall apart? Whatever the appeal, you’d think a creepy 1920s hotel with a dark history would be the perfect setting for atmospheric horror, but this book squanders that potential entirely. Architect Aubrey Spencer meets YouTuber Dimitri Petroff while photographing the abandoned Seabrink Hotel, they spend one night together, and the next morning he’s found dead at the base of a cliff – so naturally she decides to investigate his death despite knowing him for less than twelve hours. Blackwell seems more interested in writing endless quippy dialogue between Aubrey and her friends than building genuine suspense or stakes. dd constant joking and banter completely undermines any sense of danger, even when people are being stalked and murdered – gallows humor can work as a coping mechanism, but this just made everything feel frivolous and low-stakes. The whole thing reads like an excuse for the author to write witty conversations rather than an actual mystery, with too many pointless characters, too many subplots, and a ridiculous resolution that comes out of nowhere.
These Familiar Walls by CJ Dotson When Amber moves her family into her childhood home after her parents are murdered, freaky supernatural events begin alongside flashbacks to her disturbing friendship with a troubled neighborhood boy. The “little psycho next door” trope makes me deeply uncomfortable, especially when it involves kids too young to trust their instincts about a genuinely dangerous child, and that discomfort carried through this entire book (turns out I needn’t have worried about Amber, though, she’s quite the piece of work.) It was all working well enough for me until about three-quarters through, when the twist became obvious, and while the concept itself was fine, Amber’s character transformation felt jarring – she flipped from morally ambiguous to a completely different person rather than revealing hidden depths organically. The whole reveal felt poorly executed, especially since you get no sense that mild-mannered Ben could have been involved in anything sinister, and I’m still not sure if I missed earlier hints about the kids’ true relationship to her or if the book really did keep that detail under wraps until the reveal.
Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou Burned-out PhD student Ingrid Yang is desperately trying to finish her dissertation on revered Chinese-American poet Xiao-Wen Chou when she stumbles across a mysterious note in the archives that sends her down a rabbit hole of discovery about who this literary icon really was. What starts as academic desperation spirals into campus-wide chaos involving book burnings, protests, white nationalists, and drug-fueled hallucinations as Ingrid’s investigation exposes uncomfortable truths about academia, cultural appropriation, and her own complicity in systems she never questioned. The cast includes her best friend Eunice (who’s dating a terrible tech bro), her Japan-obsessed fiancé Stephen (whose “translations” are really just dictionary work), and her nemesis-turned-ally Vivian Vo, a radical activist who initially seems like a caricature but develops into the book’s most compelling character. I get why some reviewers find this heavy-handed, but Ingrid strikes me as genuinely imaginative and prone to seeing the world in exaggerated terms, which makes the over-the-top satirical elements feel like natural extensions of her perspective rather than authorial hammering. Chou tackles internalized racism, Asian fetishization, and academic gatekeeping with the kind of blunt force that comes with real awakening, it can feel obvious because epiphanies often do, like a philosophy 101 student suddenly understanding power structures for the first time. The character development is satisfying, watching Ingrid evolve from someone who once forbade her parents from speaking Mandarin to her as a child into someone finally engaging with her own identity and community. Vivian’s arc particularly impressed me; she starts as the stereotypical insufferably smug campus radical but becomes the character with the most genuine depth and moral clarity. While some plot points strain credibility (the white nationalist stuff felt a bit much even for satire, and I can’t even believe I am saying that), the emotional core rings true, especially Ingrid’s journey from self-erasure to self-awareness.
If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
I have finally done the thing. You know, that thing I’ve been promising to do for approximately forever? The bookshelf tour. It’s happened. It exists. On YouTube. Right now, as we speak.
Filming in 97-degree Florida heat required a mid-filming costume change. I had to ditch my regular shirt for a midriff top from Reve Brewing (their trippy Feed Your Head IPA design) and put my hair up in a little sprout like a goth radish because I was literally melting. I was weirdly excited about finally owning a midriff shirt at almost 50, thinking, “who gives a fart if anyone sees my belly?” But then came the sad trombone: turns out I have a real short torso, so no one was going to see my belly anyway.
A little preview of what awaits:
You’ll get to see the books I gift most often (spoiler: it’s always Salt is for Curing by Sonia Vatomsky), my collection of Time Life Enchanted World books that shaped my entire aesthetic sensibility as a child, and the gothic romance novels I bought purely for their cover art and have never actually read because the print is too small.
There are art books, folklore, and mythology, my witchy business shelf (that’s the technical term), and the three shelves of books I’m currently selling. I’m keeping mostly nonfiction, art books, science, esoteric studies, philosophy, memoirs, and essays. Things for reference and research. I don’t typically reread fiction (I can think of three examples: Dracula, Rebecca, and Harriet the Spy, and I haven’t reread those in years). I want new stories. My time on earth is limited, so those fiction books are just taking up space and collecting dust. Some of those are brand new, never read…which represents an opportunity for someone else to discover them properly.
You’ll also hear about my recent writing adventures (my Rue Morgue column!) and my summer social media break that’s been gloriously freeing. Plus, I share some very exciting news about the new book I’m working on, which is in that same wonderfully weird vein as my other art books.
Click to embiggen
I forgot to include several things that probably should have been included in the tour. Like my Goodreads challenge progress (I’m at 92 out of 100 books for the year), or a screenshot of all my NetGalley ARCs, or the wheelie cart under my desk that houses the physical books I’m currently reading. That cart is where I keep my nonfiction books, which I read at my desk during the workday, because I find them easier on my eyes. Fiction reading happens in the early morning or evenings when I’m on the couch, the words at a different height and level from my eyes, with more dim lighting. Currently, the cart contains a biography of Hilma af Klint, a book of poetry by Lisa Marie Basile, The Transcendent Brain, How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency, and Scent & Subversion.
Since I mentioned a few books in passing during the video, I thought I’d share the full thoughts here as bonus content. I briefly discussed The Argonauts and Bird by Bird – here are my complete takes on both:
The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson: The Argonauts is like trying to understand a conversation happening in the next room if the room was underwater and the speakers were having a dialogue in a language you don’t know, and then you realized they were actually talking to themselves. This profound disorientation is exactly how Maggie Nelson weaves together musings on Barthes’ idea of love as a constant renewal, Judith Butler’s theories of gender performativity, and her own intimate experiences of partnering with Harry Dodge and becoming a parent. I didn’t recognize half the references, and there were moments when the academic language felt like an impenetrable wall. And yet. Nelson captures something true about the raw, uneven texture of human experience—the way love transforms us, how we struggle to articulate our most intimate experiences. She writes about pregnancy, partnership, and queer family-making with an honesty that cuts through academic jargon. I’m not sure I fully understood everything, but I felt like I was witnessing something important—a story that kept slipping between my fingers every time I thought I’d grabbed hold of it. What does it mean to love someone? To become a parent? To exist outside traditional stories? Nelson explores these questions by diving into everything from avant-garde film theory to psychoanalytic texts, scattering esoteric philosophical breadcrumbs that make you feel simultaneously incredibly brilliant and profoundly stupid. Something about the Argonauts and replacing ship planks, something about becoming—I’m not entirely sure I understood it, but it felt like she was asking: Who are we when we change? When we love? When we exist in ways that challenge how others see us? She doesn’t give you neat answers. Just more questions, more uncertainty.
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Annie Lamottis a treasure trove of wisdom that transcends its categorization as a book on writing, offering a raw, honest, and often hilarious look at the creative process. Lamott’s self-deprecating humor and personal anecdotes create a work that’s as entertaining as it is insightful. Her unflinching acknowledgment of the neuroses and setbacks that plague writers resonated deeply with me – not as a soothing balm, but as a weirdly addicting, pricklingly poison ivy for my spirit. I cannot count the times I cackled whilst reading this book; equally, I lost track of the number of times it moved me to tears.
Also: Writing is hard. I want to hear about how hard it is! One reviewer complained that Lamott made writing sound as painful as passing a kidney stone, and while he disagreed with that takeaway, I sure don’t. So I appreciate having that struggle, that difficulty, validated, even (especially) in snarky, petty, but also really encouraging and inspirational ways.
I underlined the hell out of this book. So much of this advice is good for not just for the writing life, but just…navigating life, itself. Here are a few things she said that I am still thinking about…
Her assertion that “being enough was going to have to be an inside job” hit me like a revelation, echoing my own recent struggles with seeking external validation, particularly through social media. This idea resonated with me as I continue to grapple with building my self-worth, rather than relying on likes or followers.
The author’s emphasis on giving from the deepest part of yourself, and finding reward in that act of giving itself, felt revolutionary in our often results-driven world. As Lamott puts it, “You have to give from the deepest part of yourself, and you are going to have to go on giving, and the giving is going to have to be its own reward.” Publishing and recognition doesn’t solve everything. In fact, it hardly solves anything. It’s a reminder that I need to focus more on the (painful) joy of creating itself, rather than constantly worrying about how my work will be received. But I’ll admit, I often find myself wondering what the point is of writing something if I’m not sharing it. It’s a tension I’m still grappling with – the pull between creating for its own sake and the desire for my words to be read and acknowledged.
This metaphor of writing as a ‘little lighthouse’ really struck a chord with me. It made me think about how my own writing might impact others in ways I can’t predict or even imagine. It’s a comforting thought when I’m struggling with self-doubt – that even if I can’t see it, my words might be illuminating a path for someone out there.
Finally, and maybe most of all, I love how the book’s title comes from Lamott’s childhood memory of her brother struggling with a bird-watching report. It’s become a sort of mantra for me when I’m facing overwhelming tasks, not just in writing but in life generally. ‘Bird by bird’ reminds me to take things one small step at a time. When I’m staring down a daunting project, I try to remember this approach – break it into tiny, manageable pieces. It doesn’t always work, but when it does, it helps me feel like I’m making progress instead of drowning in the enormity of it all. This, and the crappy little elf advice, are probably the most helpful writing suggestions I know.
I also mentioned several artists whose work is featured in my space, and I’ve had the opportunity to interview all of them for the blog over the years. If you’re curious about their creative processes, you can check out my conversations with Alyssa, Lupe, Becky, Han, and author/poet Sonia Vatomsky.
So yeah, this is me, hot and cranky, giving you an authentic glimpse into my actual lived-in space where books exist alongside creepy dolls and commissioned art and the general chaos of someone who prioritizes interesting objects over organizational systems. Witness my heat-addled ramblings about folklore and poetry and books that fall apart from being loved too much. And if you see anything on those selling shelves that catches your eye, you can find it in my Pango bookshop. Seriously, please buy my old books! If I have to schlepp them across the country next time we move, it will kill my soul!
What are you reading lately? And what’s your own philosophy about keeping vs. letting go of books? Tell me in the comments.
Later, weirdos.
If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
Hello there, weirdos and lovelies! To my longtime readers who’ve been following my musings for years—you know all this already, and I adore you for sticking around through every obsession and existential spiral. But for those who’ve recently discovered me through my Ghoul Next Door column in Rue Morgue magazine, found my Midnight Stinks perfume reviews on TikTok (no longer updated in that space, but I’ve been writing about perfume since before TikTok was born and continue to do so literally everywhere else), or stumbled across this blog through some strange artsy rabbit hole mystery revolving the lost and found cover artist of an iconic children’s fantasy book, let me introduce myself properly. I’m a published author. Three times over, in fact.
I’ve spent nearly two decades balancing corporate drudgery with creative pursuits that would make my HR department deeply uncomfortable. (If I had one, if I wasn’t, in fact, the HR department.) While documenting my obsessions with fragrance, fashion, and all things fantastically macabre here on this corner of the internet, I’ve also been working on a trilogy (soon to be a quartet!) of art books. Apparently, I decided that years of research into dead artists and occult symbolism would be a brilliant use of my free time. My bank account remains unconvinced.
The Art of the Occult: A Visual Sourcebook for the Modern Mysticwas my first foray into published territory, a visual feast exploring how artists throughout history have been drawn to mystical realms. From theosophy and kabbalah to alchemy and sacred geometry, this book examines why creators are perpetually pulled toward the esoteric. If you’re the type who finds tarot cards aesthetically compelling even if you can’t tell a death card from a grocery list, who gets shivers from Hilma af Klint’s automatic drawings, or who’s ever wondered about the symbolic mysteries hidden in Pre-Raphaelite paintings, this one’s for you.
The Art of Darkness: A Treasury of the Morbid, Melancholic and Macabre followed two years later, diving headlong into humanity’s eternal fascination with mortality, fear, and the grotesque. This isn’t about glorifying death but rather examining why artists from Hieronymus Bosch to Francis Bacon, Frida Kahlo to Louise Bourgeois have found beauty in darkness, comfort in confronting our demons. If you’re someone who finds Victorian mourning jewelry beautiful, who appreciates the sublime terror in Goya’s black paintings, or who understands that sometimes the most profound art emerges from our deepest fears, this book speaks your language.
The Art of Fantasy: A Visual Sourcebook of All That is Unreal completed the trilogy in 2023, celebrating the impossible, the imaginary, the utterly fantastical. From Blake’s visions to contemporary illustrators conjuring digital dragons, this book asks why artists are compelled to create worlds that never existed. If you’re enchanted by myth and magic, if you’ve ever lost yourself in a museum gallery full of surrealist paintings, or if you believe impossible worlds can reveal unexpected insights about our own, this collection will bewitch you.
The links above will direct you to the Amazon page for each book. However, if you’re in the US and would like a signed copy (and a bookmark!) for your collection, you can order directly from me here.
Want to dive deeper before committing? I’ve written extensively about a handful of the artists and themes in each book—you can find behind-the-scenes stories and detailed features under the corresponding categories right here on my blog.
Here’s something you might not know about me: more than writing books, I’ve always dreamed of selling them. Picture me in some dusty, overstuffed used bookshop, surrounded by towering stacks of forgotten treasures, helping fellow bibliophiles discover their next obsession. While I don’t yet own that quaint little shop (my retirement plan, wheeee!) I’ve found the next best thing.
My Pango bookshop has become my virtual version of that dream. It’s where I sell my carefully curated collection of used books: horror novels with deliciously creepy covers, poetry collections that make your soul ache, esoteric volumes on tons of weird shit. These are books I’ve loved, books that have lived on my shelves until space demanded difficult decisions, books that deserve new homes with readers who will appreciate their particular magic. Also, I am running a 20% off sale right now!
Browsing my bookshop feels a bit like wandering through my personal library, which, in a way, it is. You’ll find first editions alongside well-loved paperbacks, academic texts on occult symbolism next to vintage horror paperbacks with lurid covers. These are books I’ve loved, books that have earned their place through great writing, beautiful design, or sheer oddball charm.
My day job is in jeopardy, which has me scrambling to shore up my side hustles. After nearly 20 years, losing that steady paycheck means these passion projects need to start paying actual bills. It’s terrifying and liberating in equal measure; my fight-or-flight response can’t decide if this is a disaster or an opportunity; I am simultaneously puking and turning ecstatic cartwheels. I’m a fucking mess.
Your support, whether through purchasing my books, browsing my virtual bookshop, or simply sharing a post that resonated with you, helps keep this strange little corner of the internet alive. It allows me to continue exploring the intersections of art and the occult, beauty and darkness, the real and the fantastical, without the pressure of advertising or sponsored content diluting our conversations.
Ways to Support This Work
Not sure which book might speak to you? Are you drawn to mysticism, spirituality, or the esoteric? Start with The Art of the Occult.Do you find beauty in melancholy, comfort in confronting mortality?The Art of Darkness is calling your name. Are you enchanted by myth, magic, and impossible worlds?The Art of Fantasy will transport you to realms beyond imagination.
Beyond purchasing books (though that’s always appreciated), there are many ways to help keep this creative work flourishing:
Leave reviews if you’ve read my books—your words help others discover this work
Share posts that resonate with you across social media
Request my books at your local library
Engage in the comments—your thoughts and reactions inspire new ideas
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Frida Kahlo age 18 in 1926. Photo by Guillemero Kahlo
We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad follows Sam, now a published author, getting kidnapped by the Bunnies during her book tour so they can tell their side of the story from the original novel. What should have been a return to Awad’s brilliantly unhinged world instead felt like tedious Bunny fanfiction – all the surface elements are there, but the magic that made the first book so weirdly captivating is missing. The mystery and ambiguity that made Bunny so compelling gets replaced with heavy-handed explanations and lore that I never wanted or needed. When a second POV kicks in partway through (the bunny-turned-boy creation), it briefly livens things up with its childish, emoji-filled narration, but even that novelty wears thin across nearly 500 pages. I found myself wishing Awad had left the Bunny universe unexplained and perfect rather than giving us this tedious expansion that somehow manages to be both overlong and underwhelming. (September 23, 2025)
Oddbody by Rose Keating This short story collection lured me into a macabre carnival of bodily oddities that’s occasionally stomach-turning but magnetic in its strangeness. Women lay eggs during breakfast shifts, fathers become worms in bathtubs, and ghosts become unwelcome third wheels in relationships – all described in sparse, matter-of-fact prose that makes the bizarre feel strangely normal. I’m usually pretty oblivious to metaphors, so while other readers point out heavy-handed symbolism about depression, relationships, and societal pressures, I just enjoyed each story at face value, letting the visceral imagery of consumption, transformation and rupture burrow under my skin like a grotesque parasite I’m both repulsed and transfixed by. Keating creates these deeply uncomfortable scenarios where the women protagonists accept their bizarre circumstances with a shrug while continuing about their daily lives. The collection feels like witnessing ten different fever dreams where bodies betray, transform, and consume in ways that made my skin crawl but somehow left me hungry for more.
Root Rot by Saskia Nislow Nine children gather at their grandfather’s lake house, but instead of names, they have labels like “The Liar” and “The Secret Keeper.” This storytelling choice initially confused me, but soon I was pulled into Nislow’s hypnotic collective “we” narration as reality shifts around the children – mushrooms bleed, faces distort, and the landscape seems hungry. The book captures that disorienting childhood experience of being thrown together with cousins, creating a strange mythology while adults remain distant figures doing incomprehensible adult things.. The vacation setting transforms from familiar to alien in ways that feel both disturbing and fascinating. There’s no tidy resolution and I finished the book partly confused but strangely content with a story that perfectly scratched my itch for creative weirdness in the stories I consume.
El Dorado Drive by Megan Abbott Megan Abbott has this strange talent for pulling me into worlds I never expected to care about – first with The Turnout where I found myself invested in ballet despite my complete disinterest in dance, and now with three formerly privileged sisters in post-recession Detroit getting sucked into a pyramid scheme. Harper, Pam, and Debra carry decades of shared history and complicated loyalty as they chase financial salvation through “The Wheel,” an exclusive investment club where women pay thousands to join, recruit others, and supposedly watch their money multiply without selling a single product. The slow-burn story shifts when death enters the picture, casting suspicion across sisterly bonds that were already fragile. Abbott captures the acute anxiety of downward mobility – these women clinging to middle-class respectability while pretending everything’s fine. The ending makes perfect sense in hindsight, though I was too caught up in the sisters’ desperation to properly suss it out.
Party of Liars by Kelsey CoxSophie’s ridiculously Texas-sized Sweet Sixteen becomes a crime scene when a body crashes onto the dance floor from a balcony above, transforming teenage revelry into small-town scandal. Cox structures this whodunit around multiple perspectives – the young stepmother Dani, the bitter ex-wife Kim, the Irish nanny Orlaith, and Sophie’s best friend Mikayla – each hiding their own secrets and resentments. The book plants subtle hints about certain relationships that completely misdirected me until a surprising revelation midway through changed my understanding of the characters and their motives. While there wasn’t anyone I was particularly rooting for and the ending felt a bit underwhelming after all the buildup, it was a quick, entertaining read for when you want rich people behaving badly, petty grudges, and murder all wrapped into one party disaster.
Shy Girl by Mia Ballard Broke and depressed thirty-year-old Gia accepts an unusual offer from Nathan, a man she meets on a sugar dating website – be his pet dog in exchange for paying off her debts. What begins as a strange but seemingly straightforward arrangement quickly turns into something darker, freakier, and more twisted as Nathan reveals his true intentions. As Gia’s bizarre arrangement morphs into captivity, her humanity is gradually stripped away and she evolves into something feral and vengeful, I found myself increasingly disconnected from both the character and the story. I’m honestly not sure if it was the writing style, the heavy-handed metaphors that others pointed out, or simply that this type of story doesn’t appeal to me. Maybe all of the above? This wasn’t terrible by any means – I didn’t connect with it the way others clearly did, and I can’t quite articulate exactly why. I picked up this book based solely on the beautiful cover art, knowing nothing about the story itself. Had I known about the frequent sexual violence throughout the narrative, I would’ve given this one a pass – the animal transformation premise itself wasn’t the issue, but rather the uncomfortable context it was presented in.
The Brood by Rebecca Baum Mary Whelton, a cutthroat NYC lawyer with questionable ethics, crashes her car while fleeing the press and wakes up captive in a remote cabin with a strange woman she only knows as “Girl.” What begins as a Misery-like hostage situation quickly turns bizarre when Mary discovers Girl mistakes her for her missing mother and has an unhealthy obsession with a local cicada population and something called “The Brood” which has disturbing (and that’s an understatement!!) plans for Mary. Baum’s uncomfortably and unpleasantly detailed descriptions of women’s bodies – their secretions, transformations, and functions – made this a challenging read that had me physically, squirmingly ill at times. The constant focus on breasts, feeding, and the grotesque manipulation of female biology created a visceral horror whether bugs freak you out or not. I found myself both repulsed and weirdly captivated by the twisted mother-daughter dynamics and the increasingly strange body transformations. A revolting read that I desperately wanted to put down, yet somehow could not. (October 28, 2025)
The Compound by Aisling RawleImagine waking up in a desert compound with nine other beautiful women, cameras tracking your every move for a reality TV show where contestants must couple up to avoid banishment while competing for increasingly lavish rewards – all while the outside world slowly burns. I’ve always felt smugly superior about not watching reality TV (what does that say about my cultural elitism?), but here I was completely hooked by this book from the first page. There’s something uncomfortable about my willingness to consume the exact same content when it comes packaged as literature rather than television – as if the medium somehow legitimizes my guilty pleasure. It was perfect airplane reading – I was both literally and figuratively a captive audience for this fraught, escapist fantasy. Lily isn’t particularly deep or likable, but I found myself weirdly invested in her journey as she navigates the show’s manipulations, forming strategic alliances and pursuing diamond earrings with single-minded determination. What made this work was how it used the addictive format to deliver an underlying critique of consumerism without ever getting preachy. The strange mix of boredom, forced intimacy, and manufactured drama created an oddly compelling world, while hints of environmental collapse and war in the background create an unsettling undercurrent. I blew through it in one sitting and finished feeling both thoroughly entertained and vaguely uncomfortable with how much I enjoyed it.
Strange Houses by Uketsu A nameless narrator gets roped into examining floor plans for his friend’s potential house purchase, only to discover bizarre “dead spaces” hidden between the walls. With his architect buddy, he embarks on a puzzling investigation where they stare at diagrams and somehow leap to wild conclusions from almost nothing. The prose has that mechanical quality I’ve come to expect from Japanese translations – not unpleasant, just that distinctive flat-affect style I’ve noticed over years of reading translated works. The characters possess about as much personality as the floor plans they’re analyzing, serving mainly as vehicles for the puzzle-solving. Their eye-rolling, far-fetched deductions in the face of minimal evidence was utterly ridiculous, but the sheer absurdity of it all kept me turning pages. I’d honestly be more interested in checking out the manga adaptation, which probably makes the diagram-heavy mystery solving more visually engaging than reading conversations about floor plans.
How To Survive A Horror Story by Mallory Arnold Seven strangers, including six horror authors and one random aspiring writer, get invited to a dead horror author’s mansion for a will reading, only to be trapped in a “deadly” game where they must face their past misdeeds or die trying. The dialogue was as painful, the inner monologue was cringy (OMG, that one quote about Jennifer Aniston…lordy), and what was supposed to be scary or mysterious came across more like a mediocre Halloween haunted house where the employees are required to stay six feet away from the guests. I kept waiting for the characters to develop personalities beyond “selfish jerk” or “slutty blonde,” but no such luck. This seemed like it wanted to be a clever horror-comedy mashup of Clue and House on Haunted Hill, but somehow managed to suck the fun out of both concepts while adding nothing of its own.
The Ghost Woods by C.J. Cooke Set in the 1950s and 60s, this gothic tale follows two unwed mothers – Pearl and Mabel – who end up at Lichen Hall, a crumbling manor surrounded by eerie woods where pregnant women are sent away to give birth in secrecy. The dual timeline structure creates a nice back-and-forth rhythm as we gradually discover the house’s dark secrets through both women’s experiences with the strange proprietors, the Whitlocks, and their bizarre grandson Wulfric. Despite the mushroom angle (add this to the growing pile of fungal horror novels colonizing my shelves), I found myself drawn in by the genuinely atmospheric setting of the decaying manor and the heartfelt relationships that form between the women as they navigate their shared trauma. Oddly enough, this is the second book I’ve read in two months about unwed mothers’ homes, though the villain reveal felt a bit silly and undercut the otherwise creepy vibes.
The Manor of Dreams by Christina Lifollows the aftermath of Hollywood starlet Vivian Yin’s death, when her daughters Lucille and Rennie expect to inherit her sprawling California mansion but discover she’s left it to Elaine, whose family once worked for Vivian decades ago. Both families end up living in the house together while they sort things out, which goes about as well as you’d expect – especially when supernatural occurrences start plaguing everyone and the overgrown garden literally begins creeping toward the house. The story jumps between different time periods, revealing Vivian’s rise to fame and the secrets that tore these families apart, though I found myself wondering why it took so many scenes to establish that certain characters were genuinely terrible people – it felt like beating a dead horse. The exploration of Chinese American identity in old Hollywood felt authentic and added a real sense of depth beyond the gothic atmosphere, and I appreciated how the mansion itself becomes a rotting symbol of broken dreams. By the time everything finally came together in the last chunk of the book, at least the pieces fit, even if I’m still puzzling over some of the earlier hauntings that seemed to drift away unresolved.
Dark Sisters by Kristi DeMeester spans three centuries in the cursed town of Hawthorne Springs, following women who fall prey to a mysterious illness when they step out of line—boils in their mouths, teeth falling out, the whole gruesome package. The setup has potential: Anne Bolton makes a dark bargain in the 1700s, Mary Shephard has a forbidden affair in the 1950s, and Camilla Burson questions her preacher father’s congregation in 2007, all connected by this sinister legacy. DeMeester clearly knows her way around body horror and feminist rage, and the concept of generational curses tied to female rebellion should have been right up my alley. But despite all the right ingredients—witch trials, religious hypocrisy, queer longing—the execution felt sluggish and overly heavy-handed with its themes. The multiple timelines never quite clicked for me, and by the time the big revelations arrived, I was more relieved to be done than genuinely surprised. (December 9, 2025)
Y/N by Esther Yi was part of my challenge to read all the library books whose holds I let lapse in the past few years, and I’m so glad I didn’t let this one slip away. A Korean-American woman living in Berlin becomes obsessed with Moon, a member of a K-pop boy band, and abandons her entire life to fly to Seoul and track him down after he mysteriously retires from the group. It takes exactly three pages for her to go from sneering anti-fandom intellectual (“my spiritual sphincter stayed clenched to keep out the cheap and stupid”) to completely, absurdly fanatic, and she begins writing Y/N fanfiction -where “Your Name” gets inserted so readers can pretend they’re dating Moon- to cope with these emotions too enormous for her body to hold. The story unfolds like a bizarre dream, where random people appear precisely when the narrator needs them, and Yi’s strange, dense writing makes you feel like you’re sinking into someone else’s fixation. I adored this cynical snob narrator even though she made me remember exactly why I find intense fandom so insufferable, but Yi transforms it into something gorgeous rather than just sad.
Le livre de chevet, Leonora Carrington, 1956
The Dead of Summer by Ryan La Sala follows Ollie Veltman returning to the queer vacation island of Anchor’s Mercy after a year away caring for his dying mother, only to find himself in the middle of a supernatural plague rising from the ocean. The setup is solid – an eccentric drag queen-run paradise off the Maine coast suddenly overrun by mysterious contagions and sea monsters – and La Sala structures it as a mix of Ollie’s story and friendships and scattered documents trying to piece together what went wrong. I appreciate La Sala’s writing and characters even when his plots don’t totally land for me (I suspect that I, like many readers, read La Sala through The Honeys-tinted glasses, and even when it’s not perfect, it’s still more Ryan La Sala which is better than the alternative of no Ryan La Sala) and this one kept me reading despite some jarring timeline jumps between past and present. The horror elements work well, especially the genuinely grotesque creatures, but I wanted more time to actually experience this island and its fabulous before everything went to hell. The cliffhanger ending feels a bit manipulative but also makes sense, given how much story is clearly left to tell. (September 16, 2025)
The Myth Maker by Alie Dumas Heidt promised Greek mythology meets serial killer thriller, but what I got was elaborate murder scenes based on the most surface-level goddess details—I kept thinking it would be more fascinating if the killer had tapped into their more esoteric aspects instead of just the obvious stuff. Detective Cassidy Cantwell’s investigation follows a predictable cycle of murder, mythological explanation from a convenient professor, suspect interviews, repeat, and I lost track of the dozens of characters pretty quickly. The video game-influenced killer reveal felt overwrought, and honestly, I’ve already forgotten most of the details despite finishing it just two days ago. I’ll probably read the sequel anyway since Cassidy’s cold case about her murdered best friend seems infinitely more interesting than this by-the-numbers procedural.
When the Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy turns into something much stranger than the werewolf story the title suggests. Struggling actress Jess finds a terrified five-year-old hiding outside her apartment, and after an incredibly violent and extremely bizarre encounter with the boy’s naked father, they’re on the run together. The horror that follows them is more imaginative than I expected, and much closer than Jess realizes, with Cassidy crafting genuinely unsettling body horror while exploring how fear and trauma can literally transform us. Even if you go in expecting some weirdness, it spirals far beyond that into territory I didn’t see coming, all while developing the sweet, unlikely friendship between Jess and this damaged kid.
Blob: A Love Story by Maggie Su delivers exactly the kind of messy, ridiculous protagonist I’m weirdly drawn to. Vi is a 23-year-old college dropout working hotel reception, avoiding her bubbly coworker Rachel, and generally making terrible decisions when she finds a sentient blob outside a drag club and decides to take it home. What starts as a drunken impulse becomes an attempt to mold the blob into her perfect boyfriend, feeding it cereal and pop culture until it transforms into a conventionally attractive man. The premise is absurd, but Su uses it to dig into Vi’s loneliness and self-sabotage and maybe the ways we try to control the people we claim to love.Vi is genuinely awful at times—selfish, avoidant, cruel to people who care about her—which somehow makes her both insufferable and disgustingly compelling. There’s something uncomfortably familiar about watching someone so stuck and stagnating make such spectacularly bad choices, even if you tell yourself you were never quite that terrible.
John Green’sThe Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planetis a collection of essays adapted from Green’s podcast where he reviews random aspects of human existence – everything from air conditioning to cave paintings – on a five-star scale, weaving in stories about his own struggles with mental health and finding hope during dark times. To be honest, I never listened to the podcast, so I didn’t actually know the conceit before I started reading, but what could have been a gimmicky concept becomes something genuinely moving about how we find meaning in small things. The reviews that work best are the ones where Green stops trying to be clever about the rating system and just lets himself be vulnerable – the chapter on googling strangers made me cry because it’s less about the topic and more about how desperately we all want to understand each other. As Green writes, quoting Harvey, “In this world, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant. Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant,” and that shift from smart to pleasant is exactly what makes this book work. So many of his insights, connections, and observations resonated with me on such an immediate and deeply fundamental level that I bought myself a used copy after finishing the library loan.
Fiend by Alma Katsu follows the uber-wealthy Berisha family, whose thousand-year-old import-export empire seems impossibly blessed – their rivals suffer convenient strokes, buildings catch fire at opportune moments, and whistleblowers end up dead. The story alternates between present-day chaos and childhood flashbacks as three siblings, reluctant heir Dardan, power-hungry Maris, and idealistic Nora, discover the ancient evil that’s been fueling their family’s success for generations. This is Katsu’s first contemporary horror after her historical novels, and honestly, it was fine – a quick read that somehow also managed to be a slow burn. The complicated family dynamics – all the backstabbing and competing for power while trying to keep their supernatural secret – work well enough with the horror elements, but I’ve been liking each of Katsu’s books a little less than the one before, with The Hunger still being my favorite. This one continues that trend without being actively disappointing, but it never quite grabbed me the way her earlier work did. (September 16, 2025)
How Bad Things Can Get by Darcy Coates drops Ruth, the sole survivor of a childhood cult, onto Prosperity Island for what’s supposed to be an influencer’s dream party with hundreds of his most devoted fans. When the island’s dark history connects to Ruth’s past and the elaborate games turn deadly, guests start disappearing in increasingly violent ways. I usually love Coates’ work, but this one felt pretty absurd to me – the over-the-top influencer premise, the characters making the most ridiculous decisions, the elaborate scenarios that somehow everyone just goes along with. The cult backstory had potential but got overshadowed by all the island chaos, and while the blood and violence ramp up considerably in the second half, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this would work so much better as a movie. I’d absolutely watch the hell out of this on the big screen with a tub of overpriced popcorn, but on the page it just didn’t quite work for me the way her other books do. (August 26, 2025)
Don’t Let Him In by Lisa Jewell opens when Nina receives an unexpected gift from Nick Radcliffe, claiming to be an old friend of her recently deceased husband Paddy. As Nina falls for Nick’s charm, her daughter Ash grows suspicious and starts investigating his past, while across town florist Martha struggles with her frequently absent husband Alistair’s increasingly suspicious behavior. Maybe it sounds smugly naive to say this, but I genuinely do not get how all these smart women got taken in by this man who manages to be both incandescently diabolical and audaciously mediocre at the same time. The manipulation tactics were so transparent and the red flags so abundant that I spent most of the book wanting to shake sense into everyone involved. That said, I love Lisa Jewell’s work, so I had to see where this story was going, and she does deliver her signature twisty plotting and satisfying resolution. Even if I couldn’t buy into the premise, my affection for Jewell kept me reading through to the end.
I absolutely adored Happy People Don’t Live Here by Amber Sparks, even though it was maybe a bit twee and precious at times – but just the right amount of twee and precious for me. Alice and her young daughter Fern move into a creaky former sanatorium turned apartment building, where Fern discovers a dead body and starts investigating despite her paranoid mother’s warnings. Alice has secrets of her own – there’s a reason they’re always moving and she’s so paranoid – and she’s also a miniaturist, which adds to the book’s precious quality but also speaks to her need to keep things small and controllable. The story unfolds in this wonderfully weird world populated by the kind of people you’d expect to live in a converted sanatorium: there’s someone who performs as a mermaid, a neighbor who communes with spirits, a professor specializing in obscure medieval topics. The writing itself is lovely, but there’s something about the whole story that has this magical, kooky, almost childlike sense of charm to it – not undeveloped or simplistic, just delightfully earnest in a way that feels younger than typical adult fiction. As someone who’s not usually drawn to YA, this hit exactly the right balance of whimsical gothic mystery with enough substance to satisfy, and I found myself not wanting to leave this strange little community Sparks created. (October 14, 2025)
Ghost Music by An Yu was another in my challenge to finally read my lapsed-hold books. Song Yan gave up her concert piano career to become a wife, but her husband Bowen refuses to have children and grows increasingly distant, especially after his mother moves in and starts blaming Song Yan for the lack of grandchildren. When mysterious packages of mushrooms start arriving at their Beijing apartment, Song Yan discovers they’re from Bai Yu, a famous pianist who disappeared a decade ago, and she gets drawn into a surreal world where she talks to an orange mushroom in her dreams. This is one of those spare, eerie books where you’re never quite sure what’s real and what’s metaphor, and honestly I didn’t understand half of what was happening, but something about the dreamlike atmosphere and Song Yan’s quiet desperation had me strangely invested.
Endling by Maria Reva follows Yeva, a malacologist who funds her snail research by participating in Ukraine’s romance tour industry, entertaining Western men seeking “traditional” brides. When she teams up with sisters Nastia and Solomiya to kidnap a group of bachelors as a protest stunt, their plans are disrupted by Russia’s invasion in early 2022. At first, this setup feels almost absurd – a scientist obsessed with endangered snails, romance tourism, a kidnapping scheme involving a mobile lab – but it quickly becomes clear this isn’t some kind of quirky romp at all. The connection between the three women felt genuine and compelling, watching how they were transformed by this brief but intense shared experience gave the story real emotional weight, and I found myself completely absorbed by Yeva’s passion for saving endangered snail species. The sections where Reva breaks the fourth wall and inserts herself as author pulled me out of the fictional world, though I realize how spoiled and selfish that sounds when she’s grappling with how to tell a story while real war unfolds around her relatives and homeland. While I wished those meta elements could have been handled differently – perhaps as an afterword or in a separate section – I also recognize this as essential reading that forces us to confront our own ignorance about what’s happening in the world. This review feels intimidating to write because the work is several layers smarter than me in every regard, and I’m sure there were nuances and historical context I simply don’t grasp, but if nothing else, I appreciated how Reva forces readers into a necessary reckoning with our own limited understanding of the world.
When Noah finds his parents locked in a violent trance in front of the TV, he discovers it’s not just them – it’s happening nationwide in Wake Up and Open Your Eyes by Clay McLeod Chapman. What he uncovers is an epidemic where people become possessed through certain media channels and websites, turning families into literal enemies who tear each other apart. This was…something, and I’m honestly not sure how I feel about it. Chapman’s writing is undeniably skilled – he builds tension expertly and creates genuinely nightmarish scenarios – but I felt bludgeoned to death by the political commentary, and I say this as someone who agrees with his politics completely. I know that was the point, but still – maybe we’ve reached a moment where subtlety just isn’t cutting it anymore. Yes, it was grotesque and extreme and revolting, and okay almost obnoxiously nasty but that’s clearly the territory Chapman is working in here. The social horror metaphor felt both obvious and necessary, even if I’m still not entirely sure what Chapman was trying to accomplish beyond making us all feel terrible about the state of things. And maybe also trying to make us barf.
Reading Girl with Cat by Leonor Fini
More fool am I for picking upNobody’s Fool by Harlan Coben. Former detective Sami Kierce has spent twenty-two years haunted by waking up next to his dead girlfriend Anna in a Spanish hotel room, covered in blood with a knife in his hand, until he spots her very much alive in his private investigation night class. Harlan Coben maybe has okay ideas for stories, but I don’t think he’s a great writer – the plotting felt convoluted and the character motivations never quite made sense, especially Tad Grayson’s, which I still don’t understand. The timeline was completely off, the technology references felt like an old guy trying to sound current, and don’t even get me started on the moment when Sami walks into his kitchen to find his wife talking to Anna and thinks “wow, I have made love to both of these beautiful women.” Oh my god, so fucking gross, Jesus Christ. I kept reading because Coben does know how to keep pages turning, but by the end I was mostly just annoyed at myself for expecting anything better from someone whose writing consistently feels several notches below the premises he comes up with.
The Rotting Room by Viggy Parr Hampton sets up an intriguing premise: Sister Rafaela joins the cloistered Sisters of Divine Innocence, where nuns tend to decomposing corpses in a sacred burial ritual, but she begins to suspect something sinister when a mysterious stranger’s body resists decomposition. This had some fascinating ideas and the concept of the rotting room itself was genuinely disturbing, but Sister Rafaela was as dumb as a box of rocks – insipid and wishy-washy in a way that made me want to shake her. Father Bruno was equally useless, a complete ding dong who spent most of his time being inexplicably horny for Rafaela instead of actually helping solve anything. The worst part was the tiresome amount of time spent on mundane details – “first I went here then I went there then I sat down for lunch but I had no appetite” – rinse and repeat for what felt like endless pages. Hampton clearly did her research on historical burial practices and created an effectively creepy atmosphere, but the repetitive internal monologue and flat characterization made this feel much longer than it needed to be. I kept waiting for either character to do something, anything, decisive, but instead got stuck in their endless hand-wringing until an abrupt and unsatisfying ending.
Colored Television by Danzy Senna Jane is a biracial writer desperately trying to support her family, including her artist husband Lenny whose work doesn’t sell, while they bounce between house-sitting gigs and perpetually unstable housing situations. When her decade-long novel – her “mulatto War and Peace,” as she calls it – gets rejected, she pivots to television writing by stealing an idea from a friend…which is bad enough, but the friend owns the house they are living in! Jane is the worst friend ever. I actually liked this one despite never wanting to be friends with Jane, because Senna pulls no punches about any of it, the financial desperation, the racial dynamics, the creative sellouts, and that kind of unsparing observation is what makes it work. And also Senna lets her characters make jokes and observations that would be completely unacceptable coming from anyone outside their community – it’s the kind of risky writing that only works when you’re writing from the inside.
Wicked Things by John Allison I adore John Allison, and while this wasn’t my favorite thing he’s done, any John Allison is good John Allison. Charlotte Grote gets framed for murder at a teen detective awards ceremony and ends up working with the London police to solve other cases, but the fact that she’s not particularly motivated to clear her own name struck me as genuinely weird for this character whose whole thing is sleuthing and detectivation! Max Sarin’s art is wonderful as always, and Lottie’s character is still that fun combination of charming and Very A Lot even when her priorities seem baffling.
The Sirens by Emilia Hart Lucy wakes up with her hands around some guy’s throat after he shared intimate photos of her, so she flees to her estranged sister Jess’s coastal house where men keep mysteriously disappearing into the sea – except Jess has vanished too, leaving behind only her diary and an unlocked door. Through the diary and her dreams about Mary and Eliza (twin convict sisters from 1800 whose bodies are changing as their ship sails to Australia), Lucy discovers her family’s supernatural heritage as sirens who lure abusive men to their deaths for generations. This was such a letdown after Weyward, Hart basically swapped witches for mermaids, and Lucy is so maddeningly passive that she spends 200 pages wandering around doing a bunch of nothing while her sister is missing!
A Killing Cold by Alice Kate Marshall Theo gets engaged to wealthy Connor after six months and heads to his family’s isolated winter retreat to meet the skeptical relatives, only to discover a childhood photo of herself taken at the very same place. Ugh with the totally convenient coincidences! There’s so many of them in this book! Through recovered memories, Theo realizes she lived there as a small child when something terrible happened that the Dalton family has been covering up ever since. The coincidence of them meeting and falling in love without recognizing each other is absolutely wildly stupid, but Marshall somehow kept me reading anyway with short chapters and enough genuine mystery about what happened to Theo’s mother. I found myself genuinely curious despite knowing the whole setup was completely ridiculous.
The Great British Bump Off by John Allison Shauna enters the beloved UK Bakery Tent baking competition hoping to charm the judges and make friends, but when a fellow contestant gets poisoned during filming, she volunteers to solve the mystery while still competing in the challenges. I don’t actually love GBBO (even though it’s cozy and gentle, it’s still a game show and I find that stressful), but this was such a neat way to enjoy the concept of the show without the stress. Allison basically created a murder mystery version of The Great British Bake Off with all the expected contestant types and a Paul Hollywood knockoff. The mystery isn’t particularly great (you can’t solve it yourself because important clues seem to come out of nowhere) but honestly I’m not here for that anyway – John Allison writes fantastic friendships with quirky character dynamics and excellent hi-jinks, so I didn’t care because the whole thing was just ridiculous fun.
Ladykiller by Katherine Wood Gia, a wealthy heiress, goes missing from her Greek estate, leaving behind only a manuscript detailing the events leading up to her disappearance, including her hasty marriage to a suspicious new husband and the bizarre guests they entertained that summer. Her childhood best friend Abby and brother Benny rush to find her, but the manuscript raises more questions than it answers about what’s real and what’s fiction. This had all the elements I usually love – rich people behaving badly, Greek island setting, messy friendships – but I honestly can’t remember much about how it all wrapped up, which probably tells you everything you need to know about how memorable it was.
The Dollhouse Academy by Margarita Montimore Ramona and her best friend Grace get accepted to the ultra-exclusive Dollhouse Academy, a secretive boarding school that churns out entertainment industry superstars, where they meet their idol Ivy Gordon who’s been trapped there for eighteen years. The first half drew me in completely with its creepy dark academia vibes and the slow revelation that something sinister is going on behind all the glamour and talent training. But my loan expired right when things were getting good, so I bought the book and waited a week or two to pick it up again, which totally killed the momentum – by the second half I just wasn’t as invested and felt like I wasted my money on what turned out to be a pretty predictable “evil entertainment industry conspiracy” story.
Strange Pictures by Uketsu I’m sure there’s an audience for Uketsu’s gimmicky sketchbook picture-puzzle mysteries, but I’m clearly not it. This one is a collection of seemingly unconnected mysteries – from a pregnant woman’s disturbing blog sketches to a child’s drawing of his home that contains a dark secret – that all connect through nine childlike pictures containing hidden clues to various crimes including murders and suspicious deaths. The book starts with a child psychologist explaining how she uses patients’ drawings to understand their mental state, then jumps between different cases where amateur sleuths analyze these creepy pictures to solve the mysteries. Like in Strange Houses, the characters have all the personality of calculators and somehow divine elaborate theories from the flimsiest clues imaginable.
The Unraveling of Julia by Lisa ScottolineAfter Julia’s husband is murdered, she retreats into isolation until a mysterious letter arrives offering her an inherited villa in Tuscany, prompting her to travel to Italy where she starts having visions about a Renaissance duchess and gets caught up in family history and astrology. The supernatural elements had potential but felt more like YA than a proper thriller. A few things that took me out of the story: there’s some casual poisoning that never gets satisfactorily resolved, Julia’s relationship with her best friend is inconsistent and all over the place, and most bewildering is how this woman who became a fearful recluse after her husband’s death suddenly has no problem navigating a foreign country with impossible ease. (July 15, 2025)
The Party by Natasha Preston A group of teenagers throw a party at a remote English castle that’s about to be demolished, but when a storm traps them there and people start dying, they realize there’s a killer among them. I don’t know if this was actually marketed as YA but it sure read like it – the writing feels like it was done by an actual teenager, the characters make zero logical decisions, and the ending is so ridiculous and unmotivated that I actually laughed out loud when the killer was revealed.
I had a good time with Breathe In, Bleed Out by Brian McAuley, even though something about the main character, Hannah, bothered me in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Hannah and her friends head to a spiritual retreat in Joshua Tree where she’s hoping to heal from the trauma of her fiancé Ben’s death during a wilderness trip, but someone starts picking off attendees in increasingly gruesome ways instead, so no healing for Hannah I guess. McAuley clearly knows his slasher tropes and the kills are absurd and creative in that stomach-turning way slasher fans want, plus his satire of wellness culture hits the right notes without being too heavy-handed. But Hannah just never clicked for me – she seemed weirdly assertive and confrontational for someone who’s supposedly been isolating herself and falling apart, like she had zero problem getting in people’s faces or standing up for herself. (This could be just me; traumatized and at my lowest or even on a day I am feeling 100% amazing I could never be as combative as Hannah.) Also, these friends genuinely seemed to hate each other, which made me wonder why they’d vacation together in the first place. The book works as a fun, bloody romp through familiar territory, but I kept wishing I could actually root for the final girl instead of just waiting for the next ridiculous death scene. (September 2, 2025)
The Break-In by Katherine Faulkner turned out to be one of the most enjoyable domestic thrillers I’ve ever read, even though Alice made some brazenly, outrageously stupid decisions that had me wanting to shake her. Also, I hate the term “domestic thriller,” it feels dismissive somehow? But I am not sure what else to call this genre? Anyway. When Alice kills an intruder in self-defense during a playdate at her London home, she can’t let go of the incident despite everyone telling her to move on, especially after strange phone calls and online comments suggest there’s more to the story than a random break-in. This hooked me from the first page and I found myself very resentful and grumpy every time I had to put it down! The plot twists did get a little convoluted as Alice digs deeper into who the intruder really was and why he targeted her house, but nothing that didn’t make sense, which I really appreciated. Sometimes I’ll finish a mystery with a dazed sense of “what just happened here?” but I never got that from The Break-In. Faulkner manages to keep all the threads coherent even as the revelations pile up, and while Alice’s choices often made me cringe, I was too wrapped up in the mystery to get derailed by her mind-boggling behavior. (August 26, 2025)
I liked It Was Her House First by Cherie Priest okay enough, though, is it me, or do a lot of this author’s books involve house restoration? Ronnie buys a run-down mansion sight unseen, unaware that it was once owned by silent film star Venita Rost, whose vindictive spirit still haunts it, along with the trapped ghost of guilt-stricken Inspector Bartholomew Sloan. Ronnie narrates every bit of daily minutiae – brushing teeth, calling contractors, texting her sister-in-law, eating sandwiches – in a way that felt extraneous, maybe meant to ground the story but mostly just slowing things down. This struck me as more of a slice-of-life comedy than horror; these aren’t scary ghosts, they’re just chatty ones. (July 22, 2025)
Rental Houseby Weike Wang was the third in my challenge to read lapsed holds. Keru and Nate are a married couple dealing with the uphill battle of trying to blend their completely incompatible families – her strict Chinese immigrant parents and his rural white working-class family who have nothing in common except mutual bewilderment. We see this unfold over two vacation rental disasters where everyone’s worst tendencies come out, and you watch this couple slowly realize that maybe love isn’t enough to bridge every cultural divide. I enjoyed Wang’s wry take on how exhausting it is to constantly translate between worlds that will never understand each other, and as many reviewers remarked, it’s a perfect illustration that you aren’t just marrying your partner – you’re marrying their whole family.
William by Mason Coile Henry is a reclusive engineer with agoraphobia who’s been hiding in his attic working on an AI robot called William, while his pregnant wife Lily has no idea what he’s been up to. When Lily’s coworkers Adam (with whom Lily may be having an affair) and Paige, a tactless oddball with no concept of appropriate conversation, come over for brunch and want to meet the mysterious husband, Henry decides to show off his creation, which turns out to be a spectacularly bad idea when William starts getting violent. This was pretty corny in that B-horror movie way, but despite all the silliness I did find it genuinely creepy at times, and the twist actually caught me off guard. It wasn’t an amazing book, but I’m not mad about spending time with it – I think I would have enjoyed it more as a film, or even as a Twilight Zone-esque episode of some horror anthology series. The Night of Baba Yaga by Akira Otani Badass, streetwise fighter Yoriko Shindo gets kidnapped by yakuza and becomes reluctant bodyguard to crime boss’s sheltered but sharp-tongued daughter Shoko, sparking a violent story where every male character seems committed to being as over-the-top vile as possible. Despite being crass, vulgar, and packed with misogynistic threats, I found myself weirdly riveted by this blood-soaked grindhouse-style tale of female rage and the unexpectedly tender bond that develops between the two women. Comes with major content warnings for sexual violence, but if you can handle that, it’s an entertaining revenge fantasy that left me unexpectedly moved and more than a little heartbroken.
If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
Good morning to everyone except commenter Leila, because this is another navel-gazing event, and we all know she is not here for that! If, similarly, you thought my last personal blog post on my personal blog was too much personal introspection and not enough hard-hitting journalism, on, this, my unmonetized webspace that I have been paying for for 20 years, probably without any contribution from you, Leila, you might want to skip this one too.
Today, we’re diving even deeper into the premium navel-gazing experience with a therapy session conducted entirely through Kindle highlights. Yes, you heard me right, I’m about to psychoanalyze myself through other people’s sentences, and to be frank, it’s probably more effective than actual therapy sessions I have had.
This sounds ridiculous, but it actually makes perfect sense when you consider how books function in my life. Rereading my own posts, I realize I’ve been circling around the same truth for years without ever naming it directly: books are not objects in my life—they are participants. They are co-conspirators in the grand project of becoming human, active agents in the ongoing conversation between who I am and who I’m becoming. What I’ve been documenting in my writing about bibliomancy, synchronicity, and the deep defense of bookish identity is really a love letter to this particular form of animate companionship, this peculiar intimacy between reader and text that transforms both parties in the encounter. The teenager who hid behind library stacks reading Interview With The Vampire wasn’t just escaping—she was apprenticing herself to a different way of being in the world, learning that books could teach her how to breathe in a world that often felt too loud, too bright, too demanding.
Perhaps what I’ve been documenting all along is the evolution of a reader who has learned to see books not as static repositories of information, but as dynamic partners in the ongoing project of making meaning from the beautiful chaos of existence. Each book I’ve ever loved has left something behind in me—a way of seeing, a turn of phrase, a deeper understanding of what it means to be human—while simultaneously taking something with it: my attention, my wonder, my willingness to be changed. This is the transaction I’ve been celebrating without naming it, the sacred exchange that happens when we allow ourselves to be truly read by the books we think we’re reading.
Anyway, that’s my theory about books as living participants rather than passive entertainment—and maybe this will become a recurring exploration here, this investigation into how literature actively shapes us. But for now, I want to share something more immediate: a collection of Kindle highlights I’ve been saving lately. These are the sentences that made me pause and think “yes, exactly”or “oh shit, that’s me” or simply made me want to remember them. Some felt intensely personal—sharp moments of recognition—while others struck me as good or interesting or solid ways of thinking about life, the universe, and everything.
DANIEL GARZEE FOR SICKY MAG, “THE WEIRDIES”
Marginalia Psychotherapy
“She had always had a hard time seeing potential. It was why she was terrible at thrift store shopping: She needed to see beautiful things presented with fanfare, ideally in a stark white retail space staffed by thin, mean women.” —The Glow by Jessie Gaynor
This one made me laugh out loud because it’s so brutally accurate about my own aesthetic limitations. I am absolutely that person who needs things curated and presented properly before I can see their worth. Put me in a thrift store and I’m overwhelmed by the chaos, unable to spot the vintage treasure buried under a pile of polyester nightmares. But show me the same piece styled in a boutique window, and suddenly I can appreciate its beauty. It’s embarrassing how much I need external validation to recognize value, whether in objects or sometimes even in myself.
“Mia does this a lot, an achievement immediately becoming the new baseline and needing the next new thing.” —Happiness Falls by Angie Kim
The hedonic treadmill in one perfect sentence. I do this constantly—finish a project, get a small success, and instead of savoring it, immediately reset to “okay, but what’s next?” My brain refuses to let me sit with accomplishment for more than five minutes before it starts badgering me about how this achievement doesn’t really count and I need to prove myself all over again. It’s exhausting being unable to just be satisfied with where you are, even momentarily.
“Most people, whether they like to admit it or not, find pleasure in discussing things that are none of their business. Talking about people is fun.” —Ghost Music by An Yu
Thank you, An Yu, for giving me permission to admit what we all know but pretend we don’t: gossip is delicious. Not the cruel, destructive kind, but the basic human fascination with other people’s lives and choices. I love knowing who’s on the outs, who had a dramatic breakup and a spectacularly unhinged meltown on Facebook, who’s having a weird midlife crisis. It’s anthropological curiosity dressed up as social connection, and I cannot pretend it’s beneath me. It’s actually one of my favorite pastimes.
“I think engrossed is what I really want to feel most of the time. It’s such an ugly word, ‘engrossed,’ for such an absolutely beatific experience.” —The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green
John Green articulated something I’ve always known about myself but never pinned down to words: that complete absorption in something is my preferred state of being. Whether it’s a book, a project, or even just watching someone else be passionate about their thing—I want to disappear into it entirely. The word “engrossed” does sound clinical and unattractive, but the feeling itself is exhilirating. It’s when I feel most like myself, most alive, most present. Everything else feels like I’m just marking time until I can get back to that state of total immersion.
And then there are these three quotes that hit me like a triple punch to the ego, all circling around the same uncomfortable truth about my relationship with ambition and effort:
“There’s never been a reality in which I could be a serious thinker, a serious writer. I’m a Floridian.” —Worry by Alexandra Tanner
“Seeing yourself in print is such an amazing concept: you can get so much attention without having to actually show up somewhere.” —Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
“I’d spent my life reaching for something bigger but wanting something easier.” —Just Like Mother by Anne Heltzel
These three quotes form an unholy trinity of my deepest writerly insecurities. Tanner’s Florida comment made me snort-laugh because yes, there’s something inherently unserious about being from here, about having been shaped by strip malls and humidity and Florida Man headlines. How can you be a profound intellectual when your formative experiences happened in this broke down shithole?
Lamott’s observation about print attention hit even harder because it’s so perfectly calibrated to my introverted writer’s dream: all the validation, none of the human interaction. I want people to read my words and think I’m brilliant, but I absolutely do not want to have to stand in front of them and prove it in real-time. Give me the byline, skip the book tour.
And then Heltzel just went ahead and summarized my entire life philosophy in one devastating sentence. Yes, I want to write something important, something that matters, something bigger than myself—but can I do it from my couch, in my pajamas, without having to network or pitch or perform? Can greatness come with early bedtime and minimal social anxiety? These quotes forced me to confront the uncomfortable truth that I want the rewards of serious ambition while maintaining the comfort of my small, manageable life.
“I am missing some fundamental element of preservation.” —The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld
And finally, this one, (and I know exactly what’s missing: common sense.) Basic self-preservation instincts that normal people seem to have been born with. Like not eating pizza that’s been sitting on the counter for two weeks, or avoiding abandoned streets at 4am, or using the safety doodadder on the mandolin slicer. I’m the person who will think “eh, it’s probably fine” in situations where a little healthy self-preservation would serve me well. It’s not that I’m actively trying to harm myself—it’s that I’m missing that little voice that whispers “maybe don’t do that” before I do something that could easily be avoided with just a tiny bit of forethought.
Ways of Thinking About Life, the Universe, and Everything
“Words aren’t enough, which is where art comes in, I suppose—but that’s just as complicated in a different way.” —Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle
We spend so much time trying to articulate the ineffable, to capture complex emotions and experiences in words, and sometimes we just… can’t. Art fills that gap—painting, music, movement, whatever—but then you’re dealing with interpretation and subjectivity and all the messy complications that come with trying to communicate through something other than direct language. It’s a beautiful acknowledgment that all forms of expression are imperfect, but we keep trying anyway because the alternative is silence.
“Through art, paradoxes of consciousness resolve for me. I see what I will never see. I know what I will never know. And I survive what I will not survive.” —John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed
Encountering someone else’s creative work that allows us to experience impossible things—to live through experiences we’ll never have, to understand perspectives that aren’t our own, to process emotions and situations that would destroy us in real life. Art is a safe way to expand the boundaries of what it means to be human without actually having to endure everything humanity has to offer.
“This is why I respect chain-smokers like myself,” O said. “I make my own body a room of bad air.”
“Don’t you have an air purifier in your room?”
“Yes,” she said with a sigh. “Being human is like that.” —Y/N by Esther Yi
The perfect response to basically any frustrating, contradictory, or inexplicable aspect of existence. Someone simultaneously using an air purifier while chain-smoking, creating and solving the same problem at once, then shrugging about it with the ultimate explanation for human contradiction. It’s the most relatable thing imaginable: our endless capacity for self-defeating behavior paired with resigned acceptance of our own absurdity. Why do we doom-scroll while trying to meditate? Why do we buy organic vegetables and then eat them with processed cheese? Being human is like that. It’s simultaneously an explanation and a cosmic shrug. Very Homer Simpson-esque.
“Now, what in God’s name could happen to you in sight of your own house?” —‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King
This is Susan trying to convince herself she’ll be safe investigating the vampire-infested Marsten House because she can see her own home from there. Within pages, she’s grabbed from behind, and by the end of the book she’s one of the undead stalking the streets of Salem’s Lot. It’s such a perfectly human bit of magical thinking—creating arbitrary boundaries around danger and then actually believing in them. Of course proximity to safety doesn’t make you safe, but we tell ourselves these stories anyway because otherwise we’d never leave the house. Susan’s logic is so reasonable and so completely useless, which makes what happens to her even more devastating.
“The world was filled with forgotten places that had been something else once, had contained something else once, renamed by whatever you did there now.” —Absolution (Southern Reach, #4) by Jeff VanderMeer
Transformation is never clean, we’re always building on top of something usually without fully understanding what we’re covering up. Reading Absolution, I kept thinking about how certain catastrophes feel predetermined, how the past keeps bleeding through no matter how thoroughly we try to rename it. There’s something unsettling about the idea that every space carries the weight of what it used to be, that our attempts to reinvent places (or ourselves) are always incomplete.
Your turn: what quotes have been psychoanalyzing you lately? Please feel free to share your own marginalia therapy sessions in the comments!
If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
I was watching a BookTube video a few months ago when someone casually mentioned they didn’t start reading until a few years ago. I weirdly found that comment upsetting, and it sent me spiraling back to sixth grade, wondering if these newly-minted book enthusiasts were the people who made reading feel weird and wrong when I was small. I thought about Mary Josenhans, who wasn’t even in my class but somehow knew enough about my reading habits to tell one of my younger sisters that I was a big nerd – not even bothering to insult me directly, just trying to make a kid feel ashamed of her sibling. Mind your own business, Mary. (Shoutout to Mrs. Haney, though, who gave eleven-year-old me a copy of Pet Sematary and changed my life.) I wasn’t really even properly bullied as this was just one incident, not a pattern; mostly I was just ignored and neglected by other kids – but that one moment taught me that reading marked you as socially unacceptable.
I bet Mary J. has a popular BookTok account where she uses trending audio to arrange her book spines by color and has half a dozen Stanley cups prominently displayed. And that’s where my petty, intrusive thoughts really kick in: what if some of these people building careers off books are the same ones who once made bookworms feel like freaks? Don’t get me wrong – I’m genuinely glad when anyone discovers the joy of books, no matter when it happens. There’s no timeline for falling in love with stories, and I’m not trying to be some literary gatekeeper deciding who gets to call themselves a reader. It’s probably unfair, and maybe it’s just my algorithm, but reading genuinely seems to have become trendy in a way it never was when I was growing up hiding out in bathroom stalls reading Interview With The Vampire. Suddenly everyone’s a book influencer, BookTok is a thing, and reading is… cool? After decades of it being decidedly not cool.
Which brings me to what’s really been bothering me. In true Taurus fashion, I’ve been stewing over something that I read all the way back in 2019 – an essay arguing that “liking books isn’t a personality.” The author positioned bookishness as essentially a consumer identity, a performance of intellectual superiority rather than genuine love of reading. Their argument fits into this broader pattern where there’s apparently a cultural sweet spot for how much you’re supposed to care about things – not too little (then you’re basic or uncommitted) but not too much (then you’re obsessive or weird). Their ideas have been bouncing around my head ever since, especially as I’ve watched similar takes spread through think pieces and comment sections. I’ve been meaning to write something about it, but I didn’t know what. I still don’t know exactly what my point is, but I have a lot of thoughts. (And as I have shared before, “I don’t know” is perfectly ok and a great place to start!)
John Lavery, Miss Auras, The Red Book
I was a shy, scared child who didn’t want to talk to anyone and desperately didn’t want them to talk to me. In a world that felt perpetually too loud, too bright, too demanding of interaction I wasn’t equipped to give, books offered something revolutionary: a place to direct my gaze that felt entirely legitimate. Here was conversation where no one had to speak aloud, where I could disappear so completely that teachers would have to call my name twice to pull me back from whatever story had claimed me.
I was that kid spacing out in class because I was thinking about Nancy Drew’s latest mystery or Harriet’s tomato sandwiches – why did they sound so appealing when I’d never even tried one? During recess and lunch, while other children navigated the complex social ecosystems of playground politics, I found corners – behind the library, under slide, in a classroom corner – anywhere I could unfold a paperback and follow Meg Murry through time and space or wander Middle-earth with Bilbo.
Reading became my escape mechanism. Books taught me how to be alone without being lonely, how to find richness in solitude, how to build an entire interior universe that no one could take away or mock or misunderstand. When I read now about people dividing readers into “authentic” versus “performative” categories, I wonder: what do you call the child who read to survive?
As I grew older, books remained my refuge, but the reasons I needed refuge kept shifting. When our mother’s alcoholism escalated during my teenage years, I escaped into Stephen King’s horror and The Exorcist – fictional demons somehow made more sense than the chaos at home. As a broke twenty-something, I fell into a weird Russian literature phase – Dostoevsky and Tolstoy felt appropriate for the existential weight of those years. I discovered Francesca Lia Block’s Weetzie Bat, a splendid book of pink bougainvillea and gritty fairies that showed me Los Angeles could be magical, that weirdness could be beautiful. It made me start looking for that same magic in Daytona Beach – which was a stretch, but still. In my thirties, trapped in an abusive relationship, I discovered gothic classics – The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Castle of Otranto, The Monk – stories of women trapped in crumbling castles that felt uncomfortably familiar.
Now, in my forties, nearing fifty and increasingly aware of mortality, I find myself terrified that I will never read everything I want to read before I die. This isn’t anxiety about missing some arbitrary cultural literacy checklist – it’s the particular grief of knowing there are entire worlds I’ll never get to visit, entire conversations I’ll never get to join.
The stories that save you when you’re seven don’t just disappear when you turn twenty-seven, or thirty-seven, or forty-seven. They become part of your emotional foundation, layers of experience that shape how you interpret everything that comes after. When I was eight and read about Lucy Pevensie finding Narnia in the back of a wardrobe, I internalized the possibility that magic might be hiding in plain sight, behind any (maybe every!) door. When I discovered Rebecca at nineteen, I became obsessed with the unnamed narrator’s invisibility, how small and uncertain she felt in a world of people who seemed so sure of themselves. Years later, after my mother, aunt, and both beloved maternal grandparents died, I reread Beloved and understood something fundamental about how trauma lives in bodies, how the past never stays buried.
Books are not separate from my personality; they’re foundational to it. To suggest otherwise feels like suggesting that your childhood doesn’t count toward who you are, or that formative experiences are somehow less authentic than casual preferences.
Ethel Porter Bailey, Reflections
What irks me about this conversation is how everyone seems to have forgotten what it was actually like to be a reader before reading became cool. There’s this weird revisionist thing happening where people act like loving books was always socially acceptable, like bookishness is some invented consumer identity instead of something kids actually got teased for.
I don’t disagree that performative bookishness exists – it’s everywhere now. But this framework completely erases people like me, for whom books weren’t about performance or status. They were necessity. When that essay discussed the Marie Kondo backlash, dismissing people’s reactions to throwing away books as mere attachment to consumer objects, I wondered: has the author never met someone for whom those books were actual lifelines?
Yes, book culture gets commodified like everything else. But the existence of BookTok lifestyle branding doesn’t cancel out the reality that books genuinely changed some of our lives in ways that go much deeper than aesthetic choices or social signaling
When I post about a book that moved me (and if you follow me anywhere, you know I do this all the time!) I’m not performing bookishness for social credit. I’m doing what humans have always done with stories that matter: trying to share them, trying to find other people who might be changed by them the way I was. The impulse to say, “You have to read this,” isn’t about demonstrating intellectual superiority – it’s about the very human desire to connect over shared wonder.
What these critics don’t understand is that loving something deeply doesn’t preclude also enjoying the social aspects of that love. The fact that I sometimes read for community doesn’t invalidate the times I read for survival. The fact that I enjoy discussing books doesn’t mean my attachment to them is somehow less authentic than someone who reads in perfect solitude.
For those of us who were shaped by books from an early age, reading isn’t something we do – it’s something we are. It’s in the way we process emotions through narrative frameworks, the way we understand complex situations by thinking about which stories they remind us of, the way we’ve learned to find meaning by paying attention to the kinds of details that writers notice.
When people say “liking books isn’t a personality,” I wonder what they think would be left if you removed all the ways that books have shaped how I think, how I feel, how I understand relationships and power and beauty and loss. What personality would remain after you extracted all the stories that taught me how to be human?
Maria Bashkirtseva Konstantinova, At a Book
Some of us remember when being caught with a book at the wrong moment meant social death. Some of us remember teachers who rolled their eyes at the kid who finished assignments early and pulled out a novel, remember classmates who treated reading for pleasure like a personal attack on their lifestyle choices.
The fact that reading has become trendy, that bookish aesthetics are now Instagram-worthy, that literary culture has been monetized in ways previous generations couldn’t have imagined, none of this changes the reality that books saved some of our lives in ways that went far beyond entertainment or education or cultural capital.
The people who dismiss deep engagement as performance are often the ones who have never experienced anything deeply enough to understand what they’re critiquing. They mistake intensity for pretension because they’ve never felt intensity themselves. They confuse passion with performance because they’ve never been passionate about anything that couldn’t be contained within socially acceptable boundaries.
But I think some of us know better. Some of us know what it means to be saved by books, to be formed by stories, to carry entire libraries inside ourselves as emotional infrastructure. Some of us understand that reading isn’t just something we do – it’s something we are.
Let’s maybe switch the focus. Instead of me defending what I love, I want to know: what gets you jazzed? What deep passion have you been made to feel freakish for? What thing that formed you have people dismissed as performative or shallow?
Tell me about the thing you love that supposedly “isn’t a personality.”
If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
When I reached out to Asheville Raven & Croneabout carrying signed copies of my book, The Art of the Occult, I had to laugh at myself. What was I going to say? “Hi, I’m an author! My book exists! Want some?” But they said yes, and now here I am, promoting myself as a “kinda sorta local author” to Asheville, which feels both ridiculous and perfectly accurate.
(Still waiting to hear back from Mr. K’s, by the way. Call me, Mr. K’s!)
The truth is, I’m not local to Asheville at all. I live hundreds of miles away and visit maybe once a year when I can manage it. But Mary – my sister – chose this place, built her whimsigoth paradise here among the artists and musicians and people still rebuilding after the hurricane. Through her, I’ve gotten to see how this town works, how it holds space for mystics and weirdos and creative people who’ve found their community.
When I thought about it, that’s what the “kinda sorta” qualifier really captures – the way belonging works when you’re a creative person. It’s not zip codes or voter registration. It’s recognizing something familiar in a place, even when you’re technically just passing through.
The Art of the Occult works the same way. While you can read it cover to cover, you can also – as I would highly suggest – open it anywhere and find what you need. Creative bibliomancy, if you will. Like wandering through an unfamiliar city and stumbling upon exactly the right street, you might flip to a page about Symbolist paintings when you’re feeling stuck, or find yourself drawn to automatic drawings when you need to tap into your unconscious. It’s a book made for drifting through, for discovering what calls to you in the moment. The book was written for the seekers and the dreamers – for people who understand that art and magic share the same impulse: the desire to peer beyond the visible world and uncover hidden knowledge. It’s for readers who draw inspiration from weird Surrealist dream imagery and find meaning in inscrutable ancient symbols, who might spend an afternoon in a metaphysical bookshop and feel like they’re coming home. The book creates space for both art lovers and practitioners to explore these intersections – whether you’re drawn to the spiritualist artworks of Hilma af Klint, the mythical images of the Pre-Raphaelites, or just love getting lost in spiral doodles that might hold sacred shapes.
Those kinds of connections – between person and object, between seeker and what they seek – are what make certain places magical.
I think about those antique shops my sister mentioned, the ones that got washed away in the hurricane, “all the little trinkets floating downstream.” Those were repositories of other people’s kinda sorta belongings – things that mattered enough to someone that they ended up in a shop, waiting for the next person to recognize their value.
Raven & Crone feels like that kind of place. The kind where seekers and dreamers might stumble across exactly what they didn’t know they were looking for, or where your book finds the readers who need it most. The kind of place that makes you think, “Oh, this feels right.” Even if you’re only visiting.
Maybe especially if you’re only visiting. There’s something about being a literary nomad – showing up in bookstores and metaphysical shops across the country with your wares – that teaches you to recognize kinship quickly. You learn to spot the places that understand what you’re trying to do with your work.
So sure, why not! I’m claiming my kinda-sorta local author status. My book is there, my name is on copies sitting on their shelves, and for now, that’s enough geography for me.
If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
Florence Welch in Elle Magazine Russia 2020; Photographer: Ina Lekiewicz
The Forest Brims Over by Maru Ayase caught my eye first with its cover, and then pulled me in with its premise – a woman transforms herself into a forest after being endlessly mined for material by her novelist husband. Through multiple perspectives (everyone except our forest-woman, interestingly, until the very end), we see how her husband used their relationship as fodder for his books, molding her into a fictional version who existed purely for male pleasure. Like much Japanese literature I’ve read, the story’s power lies in what’s left unsaid, letting the metaphor of transformation speak louder than any explicit commentary – at least until the final chapter, which shifts into something more direct. There’s something deeply satisfying about the image of choosing to become nature rather than remain someone’s muse – it’s like those fantasies of disappearing into the woods to become local folklore made literal. Though the cover drew me in more than the concept initially, that resonance has stayed with me.
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady HendrixIn 1970, at the Wellwood Home in Florida, pregnant teenage girls are hidden away, their stories silenced, their futures predetermined. Fern arrives scared and alone, joining other girls who’ve been cast aside by a world that refuses to see them. This book broke my heart wide open. When Hagar, the cook, (one of the most empathetic–but also most grumpy and put upon– adult characters in this book) snaps at a male character that ‘nobody sees these girls,’ I felt something fundamental shatter inside me.” Her words captured the profound violence resulting from the denial of their humanity—how they are punished for circumstances often beyond their control and stripped of every choice The story follows Fern and the other girls as they discover a form of power through witchcraft—a metaphorical and literal reclamation of agency in a system designed to erase them. It’s a narrative about survival, friendship, and the quiet, fierce magic of girls who refuse to be forgotten. I finished the book in tears, overwhelmed by its power. Some stories punch you in the gut. This one reaches into your chest and rearranges your entire heart. I will say the witchcraft aspects feel somewhat uneven—more a tool of a specific character’s agenda than a fully realized magical system. And a serious content warning: the birthing scenes are graphic, almost gratuitously so. It’s as if Hendrix is overcompensating, trying so hard to authentically tell a story he’s not sure he has the right to tell that he pushes the visceral details to their absolute limit.
Hailey Piper’s A Game In Yellow seems a lot like Robert W. Chambers erotic fanfic to me- though I’ll admit I haven’t read the source material, which made it tricky to tell what’s creative reimagining and what’s original lore. At the center of the story are Carmen and Blanca, a young couple caught in that intense, everything-feels-life-or-death phase of a relationship. Carmen becomes fixated on what she sees as their sexual problems – though I was never sure if these issues were real or just in her head. The setup has potential – an underground drug den where they meet the enigmatic Smoke, who deals out passages from a cursed play. Read just enough without going mad, and apparently you get this survivor’s euphoria that gets you super horny. But while these elements hint at cosmic dread, they never quite coalesce into something truly unsettling. I found myself more drawn to the supernatural elements – the reality-warping effects of the play, the mysterious Smoke, the hints of something larger lurking at the edges of reality – but even these took too long to really manifest. I found myself disconnected from pretty much everything about Carmen and Blanca’s relationship. Carmen’s desperate pursuit of… something… left me baffled – I couldn’t grasp what was driving her or why everything felt so urgent. Maybe it’s that particular brand of twenty-something relationship intensity that I just can’t relate to anymore. And while I have no judgment about how other people choose to explore intimacy and power dynamics, the sexual content here felt needlessly complicated and fraught. It didn’t help that Blanca remains this oddly distant figure throughout the story, making it even harder to understand what exactly Carmen was so worked up about. The ending finally delivers the cosmic horror I was waiting for, but getting there means wading through relationship drama and sexual tension that I never cared about. I wanted more weird horror and less of everything else. Publish date August 2025; ARC supplied by NetGalley
Gothictown by Emily Carpenter reminded me of those creepy small-town horror novels by John Saul I devoured in the 80s, which has me thinking about how horror changes when we center different perspectives. Where those stories followed men who seemed to exist outside the domestic sphere of daily life, Gothictown’s Billie is firmly grounded in the minutiae of family life – running a restaurant, dealing with a six-year-old, managing a marriage. When she uproots her family from New York to a suspiciously cheap mansion in Georgia, we’re tied to her daily rhythms even as the horror creeps in. It’s different reading this at 48 than reading Saul at 11 – the domestic details that make Billie’s world feel real also somehow dilute the eeriness (I hate writing this; it feels like I am dismissing domestic labor and family work…but that was my honest thought as I was having it.) The book doesn’t help itself by revealing too much too early. We know the town’s secrets, and we’re left to watch Billie stumble toward revelations we’ve already pieced together.
Nothing Ever Happens Here by Seraphina Nova Glass I am always interested in a new story from Seraphina Nova Glass, and this may be my favorite yet. A quintessential winter mystery set in northern Minnesota, the book captures the isolation and quiet tension of a snow-covered small town. Shelby Dawson is trying to rebuild her life after a brutal attack, but when threatening notes start appearing on her windshield, her fragile sense of safety shatters completely. At the Oleander assisted living facility, a group of seniors becomes unexpectedly central to her story. Florence leads the charge, transforming local gossip into a viral podcast investigation. Their involvement isn’t just comic relief—it’s a really neat exploration of how marginal voices can drive a narrative, as these seniors bring collective wisdom, stubborn determination, and an outsider’s perspective to Shelby’s desperate situation. The multiple perspectives could have felt disjointed, but Glass weaves them together through a shared sense of uncertainty. Mackenzie’s mysterious missing husband, Shelby’s ongoing threat, and the seniors’ investigation create a web of tension that keeps things moving along. Set against the cold, isolating backdrop of Minnesota, the story explores how community—in all its messy, imperfect forms—can be a lifeline. The bad guy is almost comically predictable, but there’s something oddly satisfying about that predictability—it’s part of the book’s cozy, hygge-like charm. I found myself completely caught up in the ride.
The Bachelorette Party by Camilla Sten I keep reading Camilla Sten’s books even though they never quite hit the mark for me. After picking up The Lost Village (which I’d hoped would channel the unsettling vibes of YellowBrickRoad), I’ve found myself in a pattern of reading her work with diminishing returns. This one lands somewhere in the middle – a locked-room mystery on a remote Swedish island where, a decade ago, four friends vanished without a trace. Now there is a new group arriving for a bachelorette party, including a mysteriously disgraced true crime podcaster hoping to solve the original disappearance. All the ingredients for something interesting and fun and tense are there, but like Sten’s other books, the execution just doesn’t deliver–in fact, I find it falls pretty flat. The characters never quite come alive, the plot twists veer into absurd soap opera territory, and by the time we get to the dramatic reveal, I found myself more puzzled at the predictability than shocked at the surprise. Yet somehow, I know I’ll probably pick up whatever she writes next, banking on the promise of something I’m probably projecting onto these books but which I will never find in their pages. Publish date June 2025; ARC supplied by NetGalley
The Ghostwriter by Julie Clarkis, oddly enough, the second book about a ghostwriter I’ve read lately. This one’s definitely better than the last, though that’s not saying much. It follows Olivia, a ghostwriter who’s carefully kept her connection to Vincent Taylor under wraps – after all, who wants to advertise that their father is a renowned horror novelist who might have killed his siblings fifty years ago? But when she finds herself broke and desperate for work, she ends up ghostwriting the memoir where he’s finally promising to tell the truth about that night. The bones of a good story are there, but I kept getting hung up on things that didn’t quite work – like how Olivia’s mother is just… completely absent from her life with barely any explanation, or how we’re supposed to believe in these deep relationships between characters who’ve been lying to each other from day one. Publish date June 2025; ARC supplied by NetGalley
Hungerstone by Kat Dunn Do we really need another Carmilla retelling/reimagining? Absolutely. Of course we do. Kat Dunn’s Hungerstone reimagines the classic vampire narrative through Lenore’s eyes, transforming a familiar story into something entirely her own. Set against the violent backdrop of the industrial revolution, the novel follows Lenore, trapped in a loveless marriage and a suffocating social system, whose world shifts with the arrival of the mysterious Carmilla. The story is Lenore’s through and through—her hunger, her awakening, her rage. While some might complain about the lack of extensive backstory for Carmilla, that misses the point entirely. Carmilla is a catalyst, a spark that ignites Lenore’s transformation. The novel burns with a slow, deliberate intensity, building to a climax that leaves you wishing a certain character had met an even more devastating end. Dunn crafts a narrative that is part gothic horror, part feminist manifesto, exploring desire, oppression, and a woman’s monstrous potential.
Mayra by Nicky Gonzaleztracks the reunion of Ingrid and Mayra, childhood best friends whose connection has long since dissolved. When Mayra unexpectedly invites Ingrid to a secluded house in the Florida Everglades, what begins as a potential rekindling quickly transforms into something far more unsettling. The story weaves between past and present, revealing the intricate, often fraught landscape of their friendship—a relationship that was never comfortable, which in fact, seemed awfully fraught, tenuous, and one-sided, with Ingrid never quite knowing where she stood with Mayra. Ingrid’s imagination drives the narrative, making her an unreliable yet captivating guide through the novel’s increasingly strange terrain. Her internal world is so big, so ridiculous, that even when the plot threatens to unravel, she remains compelling. The house itself becomes a character—isolated, labyrinthine, as mercurial as the swamp surrounding it—mirroring the unpredictable dynamics between Ingrid and Mayra. While the book occasionally feels like it’s losing its way, particularly towards the end, there’s an undeniable magnetic pull to the story that keeps you turning pages, curious about what bizarre turn might come next. Publish date June 2025; ARC supplied by NetGalley
Florence Welch in Elle Magazine Russia 2020; Photographer: Ina Lekiewicz
Heartwood by Amity Gaige follows Valerie Gillis, a nurse who goes missing while hiking the Appalachian Trail in Maine. The story unfolds through multiple perspectives, primarily focusing on Valerie’s struggle to survive in the wilderness, Beverly Miller’s search efforts as a game warden, and Lena, a retirement home resident whose connection to the story feels tenuous. Valerie writes fragmented letters to her mother, revealing her physical and emotional journey as she tries to stay alive in the Maine woods. While Lena’s narrative initially seems disconnected and somewhat frustrating, her perspective offers an intriguing outsider’s view that subtly echoes the book’s underlying themes of absence and maternal connection. Beverly leads the ground search, wrestling with her own internal conflicts, while Lena contributes an unexpected layer to the investigation. The book moves between Valerie’s survival, the search efforts, and the intricate backgrounds of the characters, exploring loss, resilience, and the complex bonds between mothers and daughters.
The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld is a haunting exploration of women’s experiences across centuries; the story follows three women linked by a Scottish coastal house and the enduring weight of male violence. Sarah flees accusations of witchcraft in the 1700s, Ruth navigates a less-than-ideal post-war marriage, and Viv uncovers family secrets while mourning her father. Evie Wyld weaves these narratives together with a raw, unflinching intensity that makes the novel both deeply painful and impossible to look away from. I love how place becomes more than a backdrop, becoming a silent keeper of memory, a geological record of human struggle—the Bass Rock itself feels almost sentient, watching these women’s stories unfold across time. There’s a profound ache in narratives that are this bleak and uncompromising, that insist on bearing witness. It’s weird to say you “enjoy” a story like this, which is less a traditional story and more an examination of how women survive, but I found much about this book to love, too.
Heads Will Roll by Josh Winning A summer camp for cancelled celebrities turns into a bloodbath in Heads Will Roll. Willow, a sitcom star who tweeted herself into infamy, finds herself among a group of strangers with their own secrets at Camp Castaway – a no-phones, no-real-names retreat where people go to escape their public disasters. What starts as a chance to reset quickly becomes a nightmare when campers start dying in increasingly gruesome ways, pursued by a local legend known as Knock Knock Nancy. It’s pure horror movie nonsense: mindless fun with plenty of gore, jump scares, and the kind of campy horror that feels like a throwback to classic slasher films. It’s not trying to be high art, just an entertaining escape.
The Hitchcock Hotel Stephanie Wrobel A Hitchcock-obsessed hotel owner invites his five college friends to a themed reunion weekend, each harboring deep-seated secrets and old grudges. Alfred Smettle’s meticulously planned gathering at his Victorian hotel—complete with movie screenings, props, and an ominous aviary of crows—quickly becomes a pressure cooker of long-buried tensions and potential revenge. The twist was, frankly, disappointingly dumb.
This Might Hurt by Stephanie Wrobel A story weaving multiple perspectives about a cult-like retreat on a remote Maine island, This Might Hurt follows sisters Natalie and Kit as they navigate a world of psychological manipulation and hidden secrets. Natalie receives a threatening email from Wisewood, the isolated self-improvement center where Kit has been living for six months, cut off from the outside world. The threat implies Natalie has a secret that could destroy her relationship with Kit forever, pushing her to investigate the mysterious retreat. Set on a remote Maine island, Wisewood promises to help its members become their “Maximized Selves” through intense psychological conditioning that quickly reveals itself as something far more sinister. The cult’s methods are both fascinating and horrifying—a system designed to strip away individual identity under the guise of conquering personal fears. A third perspective adds depth to the narrative, slowly unraveling a haunting backstory that connects to the sisters’ present-day struggle. At its core, the book is less about the cult itself and more about the complex dynamics between sisters, childhood trauma, and the various ways people try to escape their past, whether it’s denial, magical thinking, or radical reinvention.
The Universe in Verse: 15 Portals to Wonder through Science & Poetry by Maria Popova The Universe in Verse is the kind of book that makes you want to call someone you love and read passages out loud, just to share how incredible it is to be alive. Maria Popova explores scientific wonders not as cold, distant facts, but as living, breathing stories that connect us to the vast, mysterious universe we inhabit. She pairs scientific discoveries with poetry in a way that feels like watching two old friends finally meet—each illuminating the other’s beauty. Reading this, I found myself stopping constantly, struck by how a poem about mushrooms or a description of dark matter could suddenly make me feel both impossibly small and unimaginably significant. It’s a book that doesn’t just inform you, but reminds you to look at the world with something close to reverence—to see the magic in a mathematical equation, the resilience in a tiny flower, the wild possibility in every moment of existence.
Horrorstör by Grady HendrixBefore Grady Hendrix became a horror darling, he wrote Horrorstör, a novel that feels very much like a writer finding his footing. Amy’s just another retail drone at Orsk, the IKEA knockoff that’s slowly crushing her soul, when things get seriously weird. What starts as random store vandalism turns into a nightmare that proves working retail might actually be hell—literally. The book’s catalog-style design is clever, and the early stages of supernatural weirdness are genuinely unsettling. But for all its promise, the story feels like exactly what it is—a first novel. The characters never quite escape being types, and the horror elements become increasingly scattered as the night wears on. It’s an interesting experiment that hints at the brilliance and imagination of Hendrix’s later work, but remains more interesting in concept than in delivery. As a huge Grady Hendrix fan, it pains me to write those words, but I suspect that’s why I put off reading this book for so long.
The Last One at the Wedding by Jason RekulakFrank Szatowski gets the call he’s been waiting for—his daughter Maggie inviting him to her wedding after three years of silence. What should be a moment of hope quickly turns weird at a billionaire’s estate where Maggie’s marrying into a family that feels completely off-kilter. Frank is that guy who means well but manages to make everything awkward, stumbling through interactions with a mix of desperation and social ineptitude that’s painful to witness. He’s so determined to reconnect with Maggie that he misses—or refuses to see—how many red flags are waving around her new family. The novel wants to be a tense family thriller, but gets bogged down by Frank’s relentless inner monologue that’s more exhausting than intriguing. It’s like watching a well-intentioned but utterly clueless person bumble through a situation that’s clearly going sideways, and you just want to look away—but for some reason, you can’t. Imagining that Frank may have been based on a real person honestly makes me die inside a little bit (ok a lot, actually.)
Bloom by Delilah S. Dawson A sapphic horror that starts at a farmers’ market, Bloom completely captured me with its delicate, meticulously crafted world. Ash’s little booth—with its handmade soaps, perfectly arranged honey jars, and lush plants—felt like something I’d stop at every Saturday, totally charmed. There’s something magical about these small-town cottage industry operations, and Dawson nails that intimate, almost ritualistic feeling of local market culture. Rosemary, an assistant professor fresh from a breakup, becomes completely entangled with Ash. Her obsession builds slowly, and I found myself both fascinated and horrified by how the book plays with desire—the way attraction can make you ignore every single red flag waving right in front of your face. The horror elements aren’t jump-scare scary. They’re the kind of unsettling that makes you go, “Wait, what?” followed by a genuine “Holy shit.” I read a lot of horror, so I’m not easily surprised, but this book went places I absolutely did not expect, in a sort of “Wow, she really went there.” kind of way. Rosemary’s inner dialogue was my biggest struggle. It seemed as if it were trying for poetic and intense, but landed in this strange space between feeling performative, bordering on some real “My inner goddess is doing the dance of the seven veils” bananas-baloney-bullshit ala 50 Shades Of Grey. That ending, though! Kudos to you, Delilah Dawson.
The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson The Argonauts is like trying to understand a conversation happening in the next room if the room was underwater and the speakers were having a dialogue in a language you don’t know, and then you realized they were actually talking to themselves. This profound disorientation is exactly how Maggie Nelson weaves together musings on Barthes’ idea of love as a constant renewal, Judith Butler’s theories of gender performativity, and her own intimate experiences of partnering with Harry Dodge and becoming a parent. I didn’t recognize half the references, and there were moments when the academic language felt like an impenetrable wall. And yet. Nelson captures something true about the raw, uneven texture of human experience—the way love transforms us, how we struggle to articulate our most intimate experiences. She writes about pregnancy, partnership, and queer family-making with an honesty that cuts through academic jargon. I’m not sure I fully understood everything, but I felt like I was witnessing something important—a story that kept slipping between my fingers every time I thought I’d grabbed hold of it. What does it mean to love someone? To become a parent? To exist outside traditional stories? Nelson explores these questions by diving into everything from avant-garde film theory to psychoanalytic texts, scattering esoteric philosophical breadcrumbs that make you feel simultaneously incredibly brilliant and profoundly stupid. Something about the Argonauts and replacing ship planks, something about becoming—I’m not entirely sure I understood it, but it felt like she was asking: Who are we when we change? When we love? When we exist in ways that challenge how others see us? She doesn’t give you neat answers. Just more questions, more uncertainty.
Florence Welch in Elle Magazine Russia 2020; Photographer: Ina Lekiewicz
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May is the kind of book that feels like a conversation with a friend who’s trying to make sense of life’s difficult moments, albeit a friend with a seriously cushioned life plan. Katherine May explores “wintering” through experiences that are decidedly not available to most—cold water swimming in picturesque locations, watching the aurora borealis, investigating dormice hibernation between trips to Iceland. She weaves together personal stories of her husband’s illness, her son’s school challenges, and her own medical issues, connecting these moments to broader reflections on nature’s cycles with a kind of privileged introspection. May’s journey winds through homeschooling, literary references to C.S. Lewis and Sylvia Plath, and explorations of how various creatures and cultures endure difficult times. I kept wondering what this book would look like if written by someone who can’t simply step away from work, who doesn’t have the luxury of metaphorical (or literal) winter retreats. Her perspective is undeniably comfortable, with chapters about bathing in Icelandic hot springs and walking through bare winter woodlands. Yet there’s still something compelling about her core message: that we all need times of rest, of pulling back, of allowing ourselves to be less than productive. It’s a book that compelled me to ponder how I might adapt its sentiments to my own low cycles and cold seasons, even as I recognized my own wintering might be of the bargain bin variety. And yet, I really loved the book—May’s writing is beautiful, her ideas profound, her turns of phrase incredibly moving. I struggled to reconcile my appreciation for her insights with the recognition that this approach to healing is simply not accessible to most people.
Dearest by Jacquie Walters Flora’s husband is deployed, leaving her alone with her newborn daughter in a quiet, empty house. Exhausted and isolated, she begins experiencing strange occurrences—voices in the baby monitor, glimpses of something just out of sight, her childhood imaginary friend reappearing. When her estranged mother suddenly shows up after years of silence, Flora believes her salvation has arrived. But something isn’t right. The atmosphere grows more unsettling, with an increasing sense that something fundamental is off. Midway through, a revelation drops that made me actually gasp out loud—the kind of twist that completely reorganizes everything you’ve been reading. Jacquie Walters (who incidentally has the same name as my stepmother who died a few years ago, so this was super weird to see in my “new for you!” book lists) creates a suffocating exploration of one woman’s most vulnerable moment, where motherhood, memory, and …something darker… intersect.
Someone in the Attic by Andrea MaraAs the story opens, Anya (who seems like a real piece of work) is murdered in her own home while in the tub enjoying a glass of wine, after a masked figure drops from the attic—setting off a chain of events that pulls in her old school friend Julia, newly returned to Ireland from San Diego. Julia then discovers a TikTok video showing an intruder in her own house, a nightmare scenario made more chilling by her young son Luca’s repeated warnings about someone watching him at night. As someone who lives and breathes horror, I would have taken those warnings seriously from the first moment…unlike these characters who seem frustratingly oblivious to the danger. The novel taps into a web of past connections, mysterious neighbors, and the uneasy feeling of a supposedly secure gated community. While the premise is dread-inducing (an ex broke into my home once, and I know how it feels to have the sanctity of your safe space violated), the story gets tangled in multiple subplots and red herrings that blunt its initial terror. What starts as a sharp exploration of domestic fear slowly loses its edge, ending with a resolution that feels more forced than frightening.
Sick Houses: Haunted Homes and the Architecture of Dread by Leila Taylor was a delightful rabbit hole for anyone fascinated by creepy architecture and the psychology behind our fear of certain spaces. Taylor takes us through everything from real-life haunts like the Winchester Mystery House to the gothic Victorian mansions of cinema, exploring why these places make our skin crawl. I particularly loved her examination of the “witch house” and how aging women living alone somehow became symbols of dread in our collective imagination. The book has that perfect encyclopedic quality – like chatting with a fellow horror enthusiast who’s connecting dots you never considered before. While sometimes feeling like a collection of thoughtful essays rather than a cohesive whole, Taylor’s scholarly approach paired with her genuine enthusiasm for horror references both familiar and obscure makes this a fascinating journey for anyone interested in the psychological underpinnings of haunted houses.
Immaculate Conception by Ling Ling Huangwowowow – this book is an exhilarating, terrifying examination of art and agency and trauma and what is real and who is real and it absolutely consumed me. It’s a deeply intense narrative about two artists, Enka and Mathilde, whose friendship spirals into an extraordinary meditation on creativity, obsession, and the boundaries between people. Huang is doing something so original and provocative that I’m not sure any other contemporary writer is exploring these territories with such depth and insight. This is the kind of novel that will set your brain on fire. If you loved Natural Beauty and were eagerly anticipating Huang’s next move, this novel will exceed every expectation. What makes the book truly remarkable is how Huang constructs its narrative. The setup is so precisely calibrated, circling subtly around profound ideas before delivering them with seamless grace. At its core, the novel wrestles with an extraordinary paradox: despite an almost impossible intimacy with the characters’ inner worlds, there remains something fundamentally unknowable about human nature. Enka emerges as a particularly complex force—a character who seems to be perpetually destroying the connections around her, embodying a raw exploration of art, agency, love, and loss. The book becomes a profound meditation on the boundaries between creation and destruction, between knowing someone and the ineffable mystery of human experience. Publish date May 2025; ARC supplied by NetGalley
Julie Chan Is Dead by Liann Zhang When supermarket cashier Julie discovers her estranged influencer twin sister Chloe dead, she impulsively steps into her glamorous life – only to discover it’s not nearly as picture-perfect as the filtered Instagram posts suggest. I loved the bitchy, snarky voice of Julie throughout – her outsider perspective on influencer culture is both hilarious and cutting as she navigates Chloe’s superficial friendships and brand deals. The tension builds when Julie joins a retreat with Chloe’s fellow influencers on a secluded island, where it becomes increasingly clear that someone might know her secret – or worse, had something to do with Chloe’s death. The second half kicks the story up into the kind of weird supernatural/magical realist territory that I really appreciated. While I didn’t necessarily connect with any of the characters (they’re all pretty terrible people), the absurdity of influencer culture and the emptiness behind their carefully curated personas made for an entertaining read with some genuinely funny moments. Publish date April 2025; ARC supplied by NetGalley
Saltwater by Katy Hays I had high hopes for Saltwater, and the premise was certainly interesting – the suspicious death of Sarah Lingate in Capri and her family’s annual return to the scene, only to find her necklace mysteriously reappear 30 years later. The story initially appears to be following Lorna, a family assistant who accompanies the Lingates to their annual Capri trip. We’re led to believe she’s helping Helen Lingate escape her controlling family, but then Helen becomes more central to the narrative. But nothing is really what it seems, and by the end, I wasn’t quite sure whose story it was meant to be. This narrative misdirection could have been intriguing, but the twists that followed were wildly implausible and stupidly unbelievable. I was intrigued enough to keep reading so I could find out what they were, and then mad at myself and the author once they were revealed. Capri makes for an interesting setting – steep cliffs, luxury villas, and the isolation of island life all contribute to the mystery. The Lingates themselves are a properly toxic bunch, which helps maintain interest even as the plot becomes increasingly far-fetched. I kept turning pages to see what happened, drawn into the mystery despite my growing skepticism. By the time the final twists arrived, I felt more frustrated than satisfied with where the story had gone. Without spoiling anything, the revelations require such stretches of logic that they undermined what could have been a fantastic family mystery.
Television for Women by Danit Brown wasn’t the supernatural tale I was hoping for (not sure where I even got that idea from) but rather a stark portrait of postpartum struggles. Estie is an absolute mess – and I mean a MESS. I have never encountered in all my years of reading a character who made such perplexingly asinine decisions. She’s uncertain about her pregnancy, her marriage to a newly unemployed professor, and then motherhood itself. To be fair, her husband Owen got fired because he lied about his degree, so he’s a bit of a self-pitying shithead himself. Not exactly the rock you’d want beside you when bringing new life into the world. There’s also a fair bit of generational trauma at play – Estie’s mother suffered similarly and was extremely depressed many years after her children were born. You can see Estie wrestling with the fear of repeating her mother’s patterns, crying in the bathroom while her daughter stands outside wondering if she’s okay. Her best friend Alice has gone silent since learning about the baby, which I found confusing since Estie seems to have many fond memories of their friendship. But from what we see in the story, Alice doesn’t seem to care much about Estie at all, making me wonder if their connection was largely one-sided or if Estie overinflated its importance. The book’s unflinching look at the realities of early motherhood – the endless dirty laundry, sleep deprivation, and identity crisis – felt brutally honest. Estie’s relationship with her cat Herbert was more developed than her connection with her baby for much of the story, which made the cat’s fate particularly disturbing. I more or less enjoyed this, but found myself frequently exasperated by Estie’s relentless self-centeredness. While I can’t speak to the accuracy of the postpartum depression portrayal (being happily child-free myself), I found myself repeatedly wondering what on earth this woman was thinking. Publish date June 2025; ARC supplied by NetGalley
The Dream Hotel by Leila Lalami presents a chilling near-future where dream surveillance technology can detain people for crimes they haven’t yet committed. Sara Hussein, a mother of infant twins, finds herself detained at LAX after returning from a conference when her Dreamsaver device flags her as a threat to her husband based on her dreams. What’s supposed to be a 21-day observation becomes months of detention in a facility where rules constantly change and every infraction extends her stay. I enjoyed the book’s exploration of dream analysis and surveillance technology – these themes are always fascinating to me. Sara’s struggle against this dehumanizing system while desperately missing her family created a compelling narrative throughout the story. The introduction of the second POV character (I think her name was Julie?) wasn’t as well-integrated. She appears initially as a new inmate but gets released suspiciously early. Later, we discover she was gathering data on the inmates while undercover, with some connection to the technology company. We get a few chapters from her privileged perspective, hosting dinners and such, but then this thread fades away. The contrast between her freedom and Sara’s confinement could have offered more insight if their stories had remained more connected. I found the premise incredibly fascinating and Sara’s character well-developed – her frustration and determination felt authentic as she navigates this Kafkaesque nightmare while missing her husband and infant children. The dream analysis technology felt disturbingly plausible, which made the story all the more effective.
King Sorrow by Joe Hill I don’t know if I’m as enamored with Joe Hill’s writing as I was a decade ago; I think (and I know this is unfair to say) it’s because he’s sounding more and more like his father. I know Joe Hill is not that much older than me, but somehow, his characters and dialogue all have a “How do you do, fellow kids?” energy that had me cringing out of my skin in certain scenes. King Sorrow follows Arthur Oakes and his friends, Donna, Van, Allie, Collin, and Gwen, at Rackham College in Maine as they summon a dragon (just a casual, totally logical plan) to free Arthur from local drug dealers forcing him to steal rare books. At Colin grandfather’s estatewhere the friends often gather, surrounded by the old man’s extensive occult collection, they call forth King Sorrow to do their bidding- and of course, deals with dragons being what they are it becomes an uncontrollable nightmare. The narrative feels like several stories in one, which might explain the nearly 900-page length. I didn’t have any problem with the length in theory, but found myself falling in and out of the story as it shifted between different time periods and character perspectives. For all its supernatural elements, the book is ultimately about the weight of terrible choices and how they ripple through decades of these friends’ lives. Despite my frustrations with the dialogue and structure, I still cried like a baby at several points. Hill’s true gift is creating characters you care deeply for and friendships that feel genuine and earned. No matter how dorky their language/exchanges sometimes became, I loved these characters and felt invested in their struggles with guilt, responsibility, and the consequences of their choices. Publish date October 2025; ARC supplied by NetGalley
Eat the Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin Shell is 32 and freshly derailed from her bland, planned life—broken engagement, lost job, and now living back in her childhood bedroom in her hometown, despite being surrounded by family, feeling increasingly untethered. When she lands a job at a flower shop in the Woodbine Crown Mall, it feels like a last-ditch attempt to reclaim some sense of direction. Neve, the shop’s owner, offers her a chance to restart, but something else is watching—Baby, a sentient orchid with intentions that go way beyond photosynthesis. Sarah Maria Griffin’s novel moves with a quiet empathy, tracking the strange ecosystem of a dying mall and the workers finding unexpected connections. The growing tension between Shell and Neve provides a tender undercurrent to the story, even as Baby’s hungry consciousness threatens to consume everything around it. Despite the horror threading through its pages, the novel finds something deeply human in its exploration of survival and desire. A wolf in orchid’s clothing, indeed.
Jennifer Higgie’s The Other Side: A Journey into Women, Art and the Spirit World is absolutely brimming with information and insight about women artists connected to spiritualism and the occult. I found myself constantly pausing to look up artworks, exhibitions, and quotes mentioned throughout – from familiar figures like Hildegard of Bingen and Hilma af Klint to fascinating spiritualist artists I’d never encountered before. The memoir elements woven throughout added so much to my reading experience, despite some reviewers apparently hating this approach. When a book’s subject fascinates me this much, I naturally want to know about the person behind the words! Higgie’s personal reflections give the historical accounts a warmth and resonance that purely academic writing would miss. What made this book particularly special for me was experiencing so many “literary synchronicities” while reading – those magical moments when Higgie’s explorations seemed to be in direct conversation with other texts I’ve been thinking about or concepts I’ve been mulling over. As for the complaints about not enough images – this was never marketed as an art book in the first place, so I don’t understand that criticism at all. The rich descriptions and historical context Higgie provides created vivid mental images that sent me on numerous research rabbit holes, which is exactly what I want from this kind of book.
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cover art by Rudy Nappi for The Secret of the Old Clock
Long before I lost my heart to ladies in billowing nightgowns fleeing from ominous manors, I fell head over heels for a teenaged titian-haired sleuth with a penchant for stumbling upon—and solving—mysteries full of hidden jewels and midnight whispers. Nancy Drew, with her blue roadster and ever-present flashlight, was my first literary love. And it was Rudy Nappi’s captivating cover illustrations that first beckoned me into her world of hidden clues and intrepid adventures.
I can still remember tucking those yellow-spined books into my bookbag after library day (the most anticipated school day, obviously!), counting the moments until I could unfold their mysteries on the bus ride home. Nappi began illustrating Nancy Drew in 1953, bringing a distinctive magic to the series. His Nancy always seems caught in that perfect moment of suspense—peering around corners, examining cryptic objects, or caught in mid-investigation.
cover art by Rudy Nappi for Mystery of the Moss-Covered Mansion
Looking at Nappi’s work now, I love how he captured Nancy. She’s smart and composed, her face alert and searching, but never scared. Even when she’s facing shadowy strangers or weird phenomena, she has a confident calmness that fascinated me as a kid who was afraid of everything from motorcycles and helicopters and other loud noises to Lou Ferrigno as The Incredible Hulk to Dr. Kneehaus, who I suspected was always itching to jab me with a needle. But Nancy never ran from noises in the attic or anywhere else—she walks straight toward them, flashlight in hand.
cover art by Rudy Nappi for Mystery of The Mystery at Lilac Inn
I always loved his color choices—those deep blues, rich greens, and warm glowing windows against dark backgrounds. His moonlit scenes where Nancy’s investigating abandoned places, her figure bright against the darkness, pulled me right into the story before I’d read a single word. The Lilac Inn cover was always my favorite. I had a particular fondness for anything adorned with flowers, a preference that hasn’t changed much over the decades.
And the covers with jewels or gems held a special enchantment for me. The Clue in the Jewel Box? The Spider Sapphire Mystery? I was instantly captivated. My childhood attraction to glittering treasures clearly foreshadowed my adult appreciation for all things that shimmer and sparkle.
cover art by Rudy Nappi for The Spider Sapphire Mystery
cover art by Rudy Nappi for Mystery of the Brass-Bound Trunk
Nappi had a theatrical flair to his compositions. Nancy often stands in doorways, on staircases, or at garden gates—right at that exciting moment between safety and mystery. Her practical skirts and sensible shoes (I desperately wanted those penny loafers) kept things grounded, even when the stories ventured into the wonderfully far-fetched. Nappi really knew how to use light and shadow, drawing your eye exactly where he wanted—usually to Nancy or the clue she’s finding. His buildings, whether crumbling mansions or abandoned lighthouses, feel both specific and somehow timeless.
I see so many connections between these Nancy Drew covers and the gothic romance art I collected later. Many of the same artistic techniques appear in both: dramatic lighting that creates suspense, architectural elements that frame the protagonist, and compositions that guide the eye to critical details. Both genres showcase women in atmospheric settings – old mansions, shadowy gardens, moonlit landscapes. Both capture moments of tension and revelation. Nancy’s poised alertness with flashlight in hand represents one approach to mystery, while the emotional intensity of gothic heroines embodies another. Rather than opposites, they feel like different facets of the same attraction to the unknown. As my reading tastes evolved, I found myself drawn to both visual languages – the clear-eyed investigation and the emotional response to mystery, each compelling in its own way.
cover art by Rudy Nappi for The Crooked Bannister
Nappi had an extraordinary ability to conjure an aura of mystery in every illustration. Even covers for stories I initially thought wouldn’t interest me drew me in through his visual alchemy. What captivated me wasn’t simply his skill at depicting scenes from the books, but how he manifested the very essence of mystery—that delicious sensation of secrets waiting to be uncovered, of ordinary objects and places harboring extraordinary significance. These covers sparked my lifelong love affair with mysteries and the mysterious, teaching me to see the world as a place where wonder hides in plain sight, waiting for the observant eye to discover it.
I’d spend hours with these books, mentally placing myself alongside Nancy as she solved each mystery. (Poor Bess and George—in my imagination, they frequently found themselves bumped to make room for me.) The covers themselves became doorways to adventure, promising stories that would satisfy my growing appetite for mystery and revelation.
cover art by Rudy Nappi for The Secret in the Old Attic
There’s something comforting about Nancy’s world in these illustrations. The danger feels real enough to be exciting but never truly terrifying. The mysteries seem complex but always within reach of solving. Nancy herself has this perfect mix of caution and bravery that spoke to my curious but fearful younger self. These covers promised that smart thinking would always win out—and I was here for it.
cover art by Rudy Nappi for The Secret of Mirror Bay
Looking back, I can trace the genealogy of my aesthetic obsessions directly to these Nancy Drew covers. The seeds planted by Nappi’s illustrations eventually blossomed into my fascination with gothic romance art. The visual vocabulary he established—secrets lurking in shadowed doorways, mysterious objects holding untold stories, architecture as a character in itself—became the foundation for my later artistic attractions.
I see a clear connection between Nancy and the gothic heroines I’d later fall in love with, one that goes deeper than their surface differences. Both have a special way of noticing what others miss, even if Nancy expresses it through methodical sleuthing while gothic heroines often rely on intuition and emotional awareness. The visuals evolve beautifully between genres too – Nancy’s trusty flashlight beam sweeping across dusty attics becomes the gothic heroine’s flickering candle casting shadows on stone walls. What draws me to both is how they remind us that truly seeing the world around you – paying attention to details others ignore – reveals life’s hidden stories. As a child, I found this lesson in Nancy’s careful observations; as an adult, I discovered it again in the atmospheric worlds of gothic covers, where I realized that perhaps mystery itself isn’t just something to solve, but something to savor – a state of heightened possibility that awakens our most vivid imagination.
cover art by Rudy Nappi for The Mystery of the Glowing Eye
These books, which I first found in my elementary school library in second grade, didn’t just entertain me—they shaped how I see the world. Just look at the titles: moss-covered mansions, crumbling walls, whispering statues, tolling bells, broken lockets, twisted candles, crooked bannisters, spider sapphires, glowing eyes. This is the vocabulary that still colors my imagination—a gothic kaleidoscope I’ve never outgrown.
I see a clear connection between Nancy and the gothic heroines I’d later fall in love with, one that goes deeper than their surface differences. Both have a special way of noticing what others miss, even if Nancy expresses it through methodical sleuthing while gothic heroines often rely on intuition and emotional awareness. The visuals evolve beautifully between genres too – Nancy’s trusty flashlight beam sweeping across dusty attics becomes the gothic heroine’s flickering candle casting shadows on stone walls. What draws me to both is how they remind us that truly seeing the world around you – paying attention to details others ignore – reveals life’s hidden stories. As a child, I found this lesson in Nancy’s careful observations; as an adult, I discovered it again in gothic illustrations, where I began to appreciate what might be called the art of the unknown – that exquisite space between question and answer where possibilities shimmer like jewels in candlelight, sometimes more precious than certainty itself.
cover art by Rudy Nappi for The Whispering Statue
cover art by Rudy Nappi for The Clue In The Jewel Box
cover art by Rudy Nappi for The Clue of the Velvet Mask
cover art by Rudy Nappi for The Scarlet Slipper Mystery
cover art by Rudy Nappi for The Hidden Window Mystery
cover art by Rudy Nappi for The Witch Tree Symbol
cover art by Rudy Nappi for The Ghost of Blackwood Hall
cover art by Rudy Nappi for The Secret of the Wooden Lady
cover art by Rudy Nappi for The Clue in the Crumbling Wall
cover art by Rudy Nappi for The Mystery of the Tolling Bell
If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
