Honest reviews of the next stars of spooky and speculative!
With thanks to the publishers and NetGalley.com for providing free e-advance review copies.
After falling out of love with Stephen King, I often credit Paul Tremblay as the author who got me back into contemporary horror fiction with his novel A Headful of Ghosts (still my favourite of his books). This is the first time I've been able to read an ARC of his, and I was very excited.
Read MoreBeing one of five half-siblings (seven, if you count my half-siblings’ half-siblings), a story about the dynamics that occur when you’re related but spend a lot of time apart from your closest family struck especially close to the bone. The Birdcage by Eve Chase is about the daughters of famed artist, Charlie Finch, […]
Read MoreAlthough Ward has been putting out amazing horror titles for seven years, she is perhaps now best known for The Last House on Needless Street. The book last year took the horror/thriller reading community by storm and performed that 'transcendence of the genre' which all publishers love to see, […]
Read MoreThe introductory note from the author in a work of fiction is, quite often, something I skim over or forget immediately after reading. However, David Whitton's fun blurb on the weirdness of secret services operations was a perfect introduction to this book all about an operation that goes horribly wrong in a number of small ways. […]
Read MoreThe intersection of mystery and technology is a real area of interest for me, and there are some authors doing brilliant things. There also seems to be a resurgence of love for the epistolary novel (including Hallett's first novel, The Appeal), taking advantage of the many and varied ways social groups contact each other these days using the written word. […]
Read MoreIt is rare that I feel quite so under-qualified to review a book. While I do my best to read widely, I am aware that my interests are niche and among those niches, very British/North American-centric. I have not travelled far beyond Europe and North America, and I don't know as much about other cultures as I should. […]
Read MoreIn The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave, woodworker Hannah is settled into a pretty good life. She has a wonderful, loving husband, and if her relationship with her teenaged step-daughter isn't the best, at least she's working on it. […]
Read MoreContent Warning: Suicide
Those of you who know me will know that, particularly because of my research interests, I love hauntings that aren't quite ghosts, remote rundown houses, dangerous relationships and found manuscripts […]
Read MoreHaving already read (and loved) The Tenth Girl, Faring's first book which came out just a year before, the blurb for White Fox made me feel like this would be a very different kind of book. The Tenth Girl was a Patagonian gothic horror of the classic kind, but with a distinct and playful 21st century twist. […]
Read MoreA quick Google of the term 'fertility crisis' provides a simple explanation for why, since The Handmaid's Tale, dystopic fiction about women forced or coerced into pregnancy has been so popular. Skimming down the entries, I can see a news article on the topic for almost every year. […]
Read MoreOne way or another, Catriona Ward has been present for almost every big thing in my Professional Book Nerd career. The day I quit my job to become a full time editor, I went to an author event where she was speaking. She was the guest author at our first writing retreat, The Writing Haunt. […]
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