Unquiet
Things

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 Hendrix In 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 Clark is, 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 Gonzalez tracks 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

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 Hendrix Before 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 Rekulak Frank 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.

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 Mara As 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 Huang wowowow – 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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