Tag: Horror

The Poorly Made and Other Things – Sam Rebelein

WELCOME TO HISTORIC RENFIELD COUNTY.

There’s Edenville College, with its sunflowers and nearby ice cream shop. There are roads that take you on a winding route beneath overhanging trees. There’s even a lake nearby.

Renfield County delivers everything the brochures promise, and more. It’s a great place to find your zen. You may come away feeling like a whole new you.

I hear Harv’s got an opening at his diner if you’re looking for work. It’s a great place to meet the locals; they’re an eclectic bunch.

There’s arts and crafts, and if you’re looking for a quirky souvenir, I’d recommend the cheery aprons. If you ask nicely, Ellie may even show you her collection of ceramic figurines.

If you’re into antiques, this is the place for you. The woodwork in this place is to die for.

This collection of short stories gave me everything I loved about Edenville. Go Crows! It also introduced me to even more locals I’m not likely to forget in a hurry and fleshed out the Renfield history I’d been craving.

History infects everything.

There are stories of deep despair and loneliness, and a reminder that the past is always lurking, ready to pounce on the present.

The body horror is absolutely delicious, the twists and turns are positively deadly and my need to spend even more time in Renfield County is growing. Some might say it’s spreading like a stain…

I tend to have mixed luck with short stories so approach them with a mixture of dread and cautious optimism these days. There’s nothing poorly made about this collection, though. There wasn’t a bad one in the bunch. My favourite was the first story.

Hector Brim evoked the same feelings Roald Dahl’s short stories gave me when I was likely too young to be reading them. They tasted of forbidden fruit taste and the reveals, which probably should have given me the urge to turn away, delighted me. Life has gotten in the way recently and this story rekindled in me the joy of escaping into another world.

And that, of course, is where things get weird.

Yes, I sent test emails to Rachel and Tom’s email addresses. No, they didn’t bounce back, but neither responded. Perhaps they’ve had other things on their minds.

Handy hint: don’t forget to feed the cats on Thursday.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Titan Books for the opportunity to read this book.

Once Upon a Blurb

“You remember all the stories, right? Monsters and giants and kid-eaters and that guy in the tub? Of course you do…”

There’s something wrong in Renfield County. It’s in the walls of the county’s historic houses, in the water, in the soil. But far worse than that — it’s embedded deep within everyone who lives here. From the detective desperate to avoid hurting his own family; to the man so consumed with feeling zen that he will pursue horrific, life-changing surgery to achieve it. From the townspeople taken by ancient, unknowable forces; to those who find themselves lost in the woods, pursued by the beasts who lurk within the trees. 

Yes, there’s something very wrong in Renfield County — something that has been very wrong for a very long time. Something that is watching. 

Something that is hungry.

From the mind of acclaimed author Sam Rebelein, return to the Bram Stoker Award-nominated world of Edenville in this interconnected series of short stories, and discover the true secrets of Renfield County.

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The Watchers #2: Stay in the Light – A.M. Shine

When does a situation become so dire that the only choice is to surrender?

In a world where sequels are rarely better than the first book, this is an exception. I loved the claustrophobia and the threat that was unseen but most definitely heard for the majority of The Watchers.

Its cliffhanger had me searching for a sequel for the longest time. It wasn’t until I had given up hope that I finally found it and, boy, was it worth the wait!

‘Is this about Mina’s monsters?’

You’d better believe it!

Nighttime, which for so long carried the shrieks of unseen nightmares, continues to haunt Mina. She has daily contact with Ciara, who understands all too well the horrors that live in the dark. They have good reason to remain terrified.

They’re everywhere. They’ve been watching you.

Meanwhile, Sean Kilmartin has been continuing his father’s work since his disappearance three years ago. He believes he is on the verge of proving the sceptics wrong. Mina intends to stop him before it’s too late.

Nothing good ever came from beneath the earth, certainly not when a Kilmartin was involved.

Madeline, who I wasn’t overly sure of in the first book, was the standout here. I’ve loved watching her character evolve over the two books and can’t wait to see how her story ends up playing out.

Here, we learn more about the mythology and history of the Watchers. While the unknown generated its own fear in the first book, having an understanding of what they were capable of added a layer of dread and anticipation to this one.

Everything was bigger in this book: the locations, the screams, the bloodshed. Please, please read The Watchers first, though. This book includes major spoilers.

The set up for the third book (because there absolutely has to be a third book!) is even more dramatic than the first book’s cliffhanger. I just hope I don’t need to wait as long to get my hands on it. I need to see what happens in this world and who (or what) survives it.

Favourite no context quote:

History doesn’t sink over time. Tears keep it afloat.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Aries, an imprint of Head of Zeus, for the opportunity to read this book.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

YOU MAY HAVE ESCAPED… BUT YOU’LL NEVER BE FREE.

After her terrifying experience at the hands of the Watchers, Mina has escaped to a cottage on the west coast of Ireland. She obsessively researches her former captors, desperate to find any way to prolong the safety of humankind.

When Mina encounters a stranger near her home, she fears the worst – for she knows the figure is not what it seems. Soon, people she has encountered start to disappear. 

Mina knows the Watchers’ power is growing. She flees for her life, but when she reports her fears she finds her sanity questioned. Can she convince people that the Watchers are real, and ready to strike – or will she suffer the fate she has dreaded since she first encountered those malevolent beings?

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We Kept Her in the Cellar – W. R. Gorman

I love a good retelling. I rewatched Ever After (yet again!) while I was reading this book and I adored it even more than I did when I first saw it, oh, about 25 years ago. This is not that retelling.

This Cinderella is the family secret for entirely different reasons.

Cinderella, when she comes, will show no mercy.

Cinderella is 12 years old when she arrives at the manor and meets her new stepsisters, Eunice (11) and Hortense (5). Told from the perspective of one of Cinderella’s wicked stepsisters, you’ll quickly learn why this Cinderella comes with her own set of rules.

“To see her, as she truly is – it would undo you.”

You see, this Cinderella story has teeth. She’s actually kinda bitey so you might want to maintain a safe distance. Beware of loopholes and be especially careful after midnight.

Kept underground, this Cinderella is more often than not out of sight. She is rarely out of mind.

With copious amounts of vomit splashing across the pages, this is not going to be everyone’s happily ever after. The body horror was everything I hoped it would be and I had so much fun racing through this book.

Hortense, my favourite character, brought the attitude and bugs. She also managed to snag the best lines.

Favourite no context quote:

“Stop, you’re getting tears in my hair!” protested Hortense. “If you’re going to be throwing your bodily fluids around, you could at least have the decency to put them in a glass jar, so I can look at them more closely later.”

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company, for the opportunity to read this book.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Eunice lives her life by three simple rules: One, always refer to Cinderella as family. Two, never let Cinderella gain access to rats or mice. Three, never look upon Cinderella between the hours of twelve and three a.m. 

Cinderella has dark and terrifying powers. As her stepsister, Eunice is expected to care for her and keep the family’s secret. For years, Eunice has faithfully done so. Her childhood flew by in a blur of nightmares, tears, and near-misses with the monster living in the cellar. But when she befriends the handsome Prince Credence and secures an invitation to the ball, Eunice is determined to break free. 

When her younger sister, Hortense, steps up to care for Cinderella, Eunice grabs her chance to dance the night away — until Cinderella escapes. With her eldritch powers, Cinderella attends the ball and sweeps Prince Credence off his feet, leaving behind a trail of carnage and destruction as well as a single green glass slipper.   

With Cinderella unleashed, Eunice must determine how much of herself she is willing to sacrifice in order to stop Cinderella. Unsettling and macabre at every turn, this page-turning horror will bewitch horror fans and leave its readers anxiously checking the locks on their cellar doors.

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Midwestern Gothic – Scott Thomas

Kill Creek was one of my favourite reads of 2017 so I was keen to revisit Blantonville, Kansas. These four novellas were the perfect excuse.

The Door in the Field

Written by Ted Hollister, AKA Sebastian Cole, The Door in the Field describes an apparently indescribable creature on the other side of a … (you gusssed it) door in a field.

This story is told by 26 year old April Staudt. It’s about her father, Ray, whose anger gets him in more trouble than he anticipated.

My father was once two people. This is the story of how he became a third.

Wear Your Secret Like a Stone

Tara chose a T.C. Moore book as her contribution to her workplace’s Halloween display.

“I like my horror as dark as my coffee, and it doesn’t get much darker than T.C. Moore’s Puncture. It will disturb you in all the right ways!”

Her search for the woman who complained about this book choice leads Tara down a rabbit hole.

The Boy in the Woods

Summer camp may be officially over but it’s not for ten year old Eddie. He’s got one more night there and, boy, is he going to wish his parents had picked him up on time.

He knew from campfire stories and fairy tales that the darkness welcomed things like him.

It was a place of monsters.

One Half of a Child’s Face

Things have been weird in that apartment building since the painting arrived. Sienna should know. Her ex lives there and she people watches its residents from her home a couple of blocks away. What? That’s not creepy…

“Remember what you lost. But never forget what you still have.”

When I first heard about this book, the novella I was most looking forward to reading was The Boy in the Woods. My favourite read was Wear Your Secret Like a Stone.

While the authors who visited Finch House are all mentioned in these novellas, you don’t have to have read Kill Creek first. It’s such a fun read, though, so I’d definitely recommend it.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Inkshares for the opportunity to read these novellas.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

From Kill Creek’s Kansas — four gothic novellas.

In The Door in the Field, a construction worker’s bad day becomes a far worse night when drinks at an off-the-books bar send him down an unforeseeably bloody path.

In The Boy in the Woods, something evil has infected the counsellors at a summer camp, and a young boy will have to do anything he can to survive the night.

In One Half of a Child’s Face, a woman spying on her daughter and ex-husband notices an odd painting hanging in an empty apartment … one that seems to call to the building’s children.

In Wear Your Secret Like a Stone, a big-box clerk discovers that her book pick for a Halloween display echoes a dark secret hidden beneath the idyllic facade of her hometown.

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Fears – Ellen Datlow (editor)

Anthologies tend to be a mixed bag. Sometimes you get more stories that suit your taste, sometimes you don’t. Because there’s a chance I’m going to find a new favourite author amongst them, I tend to read more anthologies than I plan to. There’s always a draw card, the author who sucks me into the experience when my TBR pile is shouting at me to look away. Here, that was Stephen Graham Jones.

They’re about serial killers, hunters of murderers and the blowback this can cause in the hunter, about cruel traditions, horrific appetites, toxic friendships, dysfunctional intimate relationships, revenge for real and imagined slights.

Although I love most sub-genres of horror, psychological horror is one of my favourites because, let’s face it, humans are the real horror story. While there were quite a few stories here that I could take or leave, there were also some standouts.

A Sunny Disposition by Josh Malerman

Grandpa Ray wanted to see the world like Grandma Meryl did.

“You ever feel haunted, Benji?”

Singing My Sister Down by Margo Lanagan

Today is Ik’s day.

“I’m stuck now”

Souvenirs by Sharon Gosling

Reg only wants to take one thing with him to Wisteria Lodge.

“Your daughter’s told us all about you – we’re all excited to hear your stories about travelling.”

Teeth by Stephen Graham Jones

Naturally. This story was the reason I was here.

“And then, one day, one day you … you see it.”

All of the stories included were reprints, originally published between 1964 and 2022.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for the opportunity to read this anthology.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Your grandfather confesses his heinous crime to you alone. You try to save a young girl from sexual assault, but she’s not really a victim. Your child is sacrificed in compensation for your social misstep. You compete in a sick game to save your loved ones. Your mum is insane, your dad is dying, your brother is not your brother, and you’re stuck in the same house until one or all of you are dead.

Far below the unlikeliness of the supernatural lives something worse: the depths of human depravity. We live in fear of the cruelties of respected leaders and of the despicable crimes of neighbours who seem normal. We live with anxiety about our innermost desires and the unforgivable things we might do in a moment of passion. Or, if we fail to curb our urges, we live with the terrible secrets of our unfettered resentments.

In this uniquely unsettling anthology, editor Ellen Datlow has unearthed twenty-one exemplary tales of what humanity fears most: People.

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I Was a Teenage Slasher – Stephen Graham Jones

I Was a Teenage Slasher cover image, featuring a belt

I will never tire of final girls. Against all odds, they have what it takes to survive. But for every final girl running for their life, there’s a slasher casually walking behind them and I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a part of me cheering the slasher on. (Unless the final girl is Jade Daniels. She’s off limits.)

The body count can never be too high. The river of blood should be cascading. The more organs on show, the better.

I love watching slashers follow and, every so often, break the rules. I search every scene for potential weapons. Horror movie soundtracks tend to earworm their way through my life. (My texts tell me Jason is nearby. The Halloween theme is my ringtone.)

I always want to know what makes the slasher tick, though, and it’s not like they’re the chattiest bunch so a lot is usually left to my imagination. I get the flashback scene so I know what those camp counsellors were up to when they should have been making sure Jason’s lungs weren’t filing with water. Jason now? He’s doing some walking and some killing but he’s not exactly inviting me to sit in on his therapy sessions.

What makes him a slasher and not someone else? Someone like me?

Schting!

That’s where Tolly comes in. This is his story.

Places to be, people to eviscerate.

This is also Amber’s story. Tolly is writing this for his best friend, who he hasn’t seen for half a lifetime. While Tolly didn’t even know what a slasher was before all of this started, Amber knows all of the rules.

This time, we get to see insides become outsides from the slasher’s POV and with Tolly talking me through it, I finally got the inside scoop (sorry!) I’ve been waiting for. Tolly isn’t quite who I was expecting, though.

He’s a slasher with heart. No, not one he ripped from the chest of one of his victims. One who has the ability to make me tear up, because he’s just so relatable and I want everything to turn out well for him. (Is there ever going to be a Stephen Graham Jones book that doesn’t make me cry?)

These kids are my kind of outcasts. The fact that they’ve been cast in this genre is just a bonus.

Favourite no context quote:

If she’d had sad eyes earlier, then now what she was about to tell me was that the moon was hurtling toward the Earth, and our only shot at stopping it was to catapult all the Earth’s puppies up at it.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Titan Books for the opportunity to read this book.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

1989, Lamesa, Texas. A community driven by oil and cotton – a town where everyone knows everyone else’s business. 

Tolly Driver, seventeen, a good kid with more potential than application, exists on the outskirts with his best friend, Amber. They navigate the hellscape of the teenage social scene, sticking together in a place that doesn’t know how to be different.

But when they go to a fateful party at Deek Masterton’s house – a party that ends in a series of gruesome, brutal and extravagant murders – Tolly’s world gets flipped upside-down. Because some slashers are born in violence and retribution, some were born that way – and some were just in the wrong place, at the wrong time…

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Bury Your Gays – Chuck Tingle

Being in the splash zone when someone is Wile E. Coyote’d piano style isn’t the strangest thing that’s happened to Misha this week. He’s been nominated for an Oscar and he’s probably about to lose his job. Oh, and a bunch of the characters he’s written are out to get him. If he’d chosen any genre besides horror, this might not be quite as scary, but here we are.

Misha is dealing with the evils of AI in creative spaces and the unscrupulousness of the entertainment industry, with a good dose of past trauma intruding on the present thrown in for good measure.

“It’s no fun when your plotline goes sideways, is it?”

Supporting Misha through the ups, downs and OMG, we’re gonna die! are his boyfriend, Zeke, who’s the kind of too good to be true that you really want to be true, and his aromantic and asexual best friend, Tara.

I loved Zeke and Tara in their supporting roles and spent much of my time with them hoping they wouldn’t be collateral damage. I needed more page time with Tara, though. There aren’t enough asexual characters, especially ones with personalities that bound off the page.

“They’ve got everyone up there besides an ace character,” she observes. “Every fucking time.”

Taking place in the same universe and after the events of Camp Damascus, this book has the body horror, the heart and the WTF that I was looking for.

I didn’t even attempt to try to figure out what was going on when the impossible started showing up. I was happy to sit back and enjoy the ride, and enjoy it I did. This was such a fun blend of what’s going to happen next? and I need to see that movie! I wanted to watch every TV series and movie described, even the crappy sequels. Especially the crappy sequels.

Best lamb ever!

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Titan Books for the opportunity to read this book.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Misha is a jaded scriptwriter working in Hollywood, and he’s seen it all. All the toxic personalities and coverups, the structural obstructions to reform, even dead actors brought back to screen by CGI – and finally, maybe, the hint of change.

But having just been nominated for his first Oscar, Misha is pressured by his producers to kill off a gay character in the upcoming season finale — “for the algorithm” — on the same day he witnesses to gruesome death-by-piano of treasured animator (and notorious creep) Raymond Nelson. 

Success, it seems, isn’t the answer to everything. 

With the help of his best friend and paranoid database queen, Tara, and his boyfriend, Zeke, Misha has face down his traumatic childhood and past mistakes. But in a paranoid industry that thinks nothing of killing off talent, it’s not so simple to find a way to do what’s right.

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Cuckoo – Gretchen Felker-Martin

You’re forcibly removed from your home by strangers, shoved in the back of a van and driven into the desert. Your destination? Camp Resolution. Welcome to conversion therapy.

The people who signed you up for this horror show? Your family. This is what nightmares are made of.

“There’s something wrong with her.”

I was really looking forward to this read but unfortunately it ended up not being the book for me. While I loved the body horror, I wasn’t a fan of the sex scenes.

This isn’t something that generally happens for me but I got to the stage where I wasn’t always sure which character was which. The initial introductions made me think I was going to connect with at least a few of the teens but there were so many points of view and they switched so frequently that I ended up losing the thread of who was who and what their backstory was.

I usually try to avoid comparing books but one of the reasons I was so keen to read this book was because of how much I loved Chuck Tingle’s Camp Damascus. This inadvertently led to unrealistic expectations and disappointment because I set the bar too high.

Reading other reviews, it seems like views are divided. Some absolutely adore this book. Others seemed to struggle even more than I did. I’d encourage you to read some of the five star reviews so you have a better idea of whether this is the book for you.

“Has anyone else been having nightmares?”

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Titan Books for the opportunity to read this book.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Something evil is buried deep in the desert.

It wants your body.

It wears your skin.

In the summer of 1995, seven queer kids abandoned by their parents at a remote conversion camp came face to face with it. They survived — but at Camp Resolution, everybody leaves a different person.

Sixteen years later, only the scarred and broken survivors of that terrible summer can put an end to the horror before it’s too late.

The fate of the world depends on it.

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Small Town Horror – Ronald Malfi

We were doomed from the beginning.

A group of adults reunite in the town they all grew up in. The secret they’ve been hiding since they were kids is about to be exposed. I’ve read so many books with variations of this theme but I keep going back for more.

There’s something about nostalgia, even when it’s someone else’s, that draws me in. Nostalgia contaminated by unspoken trauma that’s been dragged into adulthood is intoxicating.

While I want to run in the opposite direction when drama threatens to knock on my door, I can’t get enough of it where fictional characters are involved. I blame a steady diet of shows like Days of Our Lives during my formative years. I mean, who can watch Marlena get possessed and not become a drama junkie?! But I digress…

Even though I was fairly convinced I’d been there, done that, I still wanted to read this book. It was in part because I’ve yet to meet a Ronald Malfi book I haven’t enjoyed. However, I also needed to know what the secret was and watch it bring together or destroy the friendship of the people who’d been living with it for so many years.

Andrew has secrets. There’s the big one from his past but there’s also the fact that he owns a house his wife doesn’t know about because … reasons. At least it gives him somewhere to stay when he takes an unwanted trip down memory lane.

“The five of us are cursed, man.”

I love so many of the books I read but, for whatever reason, they rarely surprise me these days. This one did. I was blindsided more than once and it absolutely delighted me when my assumptions kept being proved wrong.

I’d argue that every horror story needs a lighthouse. This one also has turkey vultures and itchy eyes. Counting has never been so creepy. This was such a fun read!

“You shouldn’t have come back here.”

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Titan Books for the opportunity to read this book.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Maybe this is a ghost story…

Andrew Larimer has left his past behind. Rising up the ranks in a New York law firm, and with a heavily pregnant wife, he is settling into a new life far from Kingsport, the town in which he grew up. But when he receives a late-night phone call from an old friend, he has no choice but to return home.

Coming home means returning to his late father’s house, which has seen better days. It means lying to his wife. But it also means reuniting with his friends: Eric, now the town’s deputy sheriff; Dale, a real-estate mogul living in the shadow of a failed career; his childhood sweetheart Tig who never could escape town; and poor Meach, whose ravings about a curse upon the group have driven him to drugs and alcohol. 

Together, the five friends will have to confront the memories — and the horror — of a night, years ago, that changed everything for them. 

Because Andrew and his friends have a secret. A thing they have kept to themselves for twenty years. Something no one else should know. But the past is not dead, and Kingsport is a town with secrets of its own.

One dark secret…

One small-town horror…

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When I Look at the Sky, All I See Are Stars – Steve Stred

It takes a lot to disturb me. I’m disturbed. And that was from reading the author’s note before the first chapter. Besides disturbing me, it also made me more keen than ever to read the Father of Lies trilogy. Because disturbing me definitely doesn’t equate to stopping me coming back for more.

This is one of those books where I would recommend you read the content warnings. I’ll be quoting them at the end of my review. Had I read them first, I probably would have baulked at the “scenes depicting sex and sex acts”. Even now, my brain is interjecting, ‘Or whatever the hell that was!’

Despite wanting to scrub those images from my mind, I enjoyed this read. Okay, maybe I shouldn’t say enjoyed. Do you enjoy depravity and gore? Do you admit it if you do?

Psychologist Dr Rachel Hoggendorf has a new patient, David. If you believe him, though, he hasn’t been new for a long time. Not for centuries, in fact.

“He’s an interesting case.”

It’s not clear when Rachel meets David but I assume it was a few decades ago because Dissociative Identity Disorder is still known as Multiple Personality Disorder. David’s story is … let’s go with disturbing.

No matter how ick, ew, I’m not sure I want this image permanently etched in my brain thank you very much, the urge to keep reading won. If this book had been written by pretty much anyone else, I wouldn’t have even ventured past the content warnings, but it’s a Steve Stred book.

Steve’s taken me hiking in the Canadian wilderness. He introduced me to Bruiser. I’m so many books behind but he’s already cemented his place in my must read list. Even when it’s uncomfortable. Especially when it’s uncomfortable.

This book is absolutely worth all the stars. For the ick. For the what the fuck did I just read. For the disturbance.

Also, that cover is incredible! I would have read this book even if it wasn’t a Steve Stred book.

“Be careful. If it gets out … just be careful.”

Thank you so much to NetGalley and DarkLit Press for the opportunity to read this novella.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Dr. Rachel Hoggendorf has seen it all. An accomplished psychiatrist, she’s always prided herself on connecting to the patients who’ve been brought to the facility, no matter how difficult or closed-off they are. That is, until David arrives.

At first, she listens to what David has to say. How he claims to be four hundred years old and possessed by a demon. She diagnoses him as having multiple personalities and approaches his treatment as such.

But as their time together continues, David begins to share details he shouldn’t know and begins to lash out violently. When Rachel brings in her colleague Dr. Dravendash, David’s behaviour escalates and it’s not long before they begin to wonder if David just might be telling the truth. That he’s possessed by a demonic presence… and it wants out.

A visceral, edge of your seat novella, When I Look to the Sky, All I See Are Stars is everything you’d expect from 2x Splatterpunk nominated author Steve Stred. Frantic pacing, hooves and horns and the growing dread that what lies beyond this plane is a land filled with ash and a place we never want to visit.

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