Rating: 4/5

Book Blurb: Yellowjackets meets One of Us Is Lying in this masterful survival thriller from award-winning author Sarah Beth Durst. Claire’s grown up triple-checking locks. Counting her steps. Second-guessing every decision. It’s just how she’s wired-her worst-case scenarios never actually come true. Until she arrives at an off-the-grid summer camp to find a blackened, burned husk instead of a lodge-and no survivors, except her and two other late arrivals: Reyva and Mariana. When the three girls find a dead body in the woods, they realize none of this is an accident. Someone, something, is hunting them. Something that hides in the shadows. Something that refuses to let them leave. Irresistible and action-packed until the very final page, The Lake House will have readers glued to their seats as tension builds and danger mounts-and a final, shocking twist is revealed.

Review:

Yellowjackets but throw in an island that has a dark entity on it... and three girls must find a way to survive as a killer is on the loose. Claire has always been afraid of what could go wrong, always thinking of the worst case scenario, fear runs in her veins. Her parents have decided to send her off to an off-the-grid summer camp in order for her to make friends and have fun experiences. Joining her is Reyva and Mariana, all three of them discover that instead of a fun summer camp they arrive to a burned down house with no survivors... and the person who dropped them off won’t be back for a while. With nothing but the bags on their backs they’ll have to figure out who to survive... yet when they discover a body that appears to have been murdered rather they realize that they are not the only ones on the island and that there is also a killer here with them. With barely any survival skills they’ll have to find a way to trust each other to survive as well as find a way off the island. Yet they realize someone or something is hunting them down and that they were sent to this island for a particular reason. Can they escape the island before it’s too late or will they be trapped here forever. This was a fun read and the twist and turns were interesting. I liked the whole evil entity/haunted island meets survival girls storyline and it definitely was a fun spooky read!

*Thanks Netgalley and HarperCollins Children's Books, HarperTeen for sending me an arc in exchange for na honest review*

“An intense horror-action game—like Jumanji but Japanese-inspired and really disturbing.” —Kendare Blake, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Three Dark Crowns series

WHAT’S IT ABOUT

Set in a nightmarish underworld, an estranged group of friends return to an evil game to try and save the boy they thought they killed in Kristen Simmons's masterful breakout horror novel, Find Him Where You Left Him Dead. Four years ago, five kids started a game. Not all of them survived. Now, at the end of their senior year of high school, the survivors—Owen, Madeline, Emerson, and Dax—have reunited for one strange and terrible reason: they’ve been summoned by the ghost of Ian, the friend they left for dead. Together they return to the place where their friendship ended with one goal: find Ian and bring him home. So, they restart the deadly game they never finished—an innocent card-matching challenge called Meido. A game without instructions. As soon as they begin, they're dragged out of their reality and into an eerie hellscape of Japanese underworlds, more horrifying than even the darkest folktales that Owen's grandmother told him. There, they meet Shinigami, an old wise woman who explains the rules: They have one night to complete seven challenges or they'll all be stuck in this world forever. Once inseparable, the survivors now can’t stand each other, but the challenges demand they work together, think quickly, and make sacrifices—blood, clothes, secrets, memories, and worse. And once again, not everyone will make it out alive.

Gothic Fantasy/Folk Horror Books: 10 Recommendations

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

Juniper & Thorn by Ava Reid

The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid

A Far Wilder Magic by Allison Saft

Down Comes the Night by Allison Saft

Not Good For Maidens by Tori Bovalino

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher

The Gathering Dark: An Anthology of Folk Horror by Tori Bovalino and others

kiss (from hello sunshine)

Happy book birthday to this week’s new releases! 📚

“I think books are like people, in the sense that they’ll turn up in your life when you most need them.” - Emma Thompson

Rating: 5/5 

Book Blurb: From the highly acclaimed author of the Bone Witch trilogy comes a chilling story of a Japanese ghost looking for vengeance and the boy who has no choice but to trust her, lauded as a "a fantastically creepy story sure to keep readers up at night"-RT Book Reviews I am where dead children go. Okiku is a lonely soul. She has wandered the world for centuries, freeing the spirits of the murdered-dead. Once a victim herself, she now takes the lives of killers with the vengeance they're due. But releasing innocent ghosts from their ethereal tethers does not bring Okiku peace. Still she drifts on. Such is her existence, until she meets Tark. Evil writhes beneath the moody teen's skin, trapped by a series of intricate tattoos. While his neighbors fear him, Okiku knows the boy is not a monster. Tark needs to be freed from the malevolence that clings to him. There's just one problem: if the demon dies, so does its host. Suspenseful and creepy, The Girl from the Well is perfect for readers looking for Spooky books for young adults Japanese horror novels Ghost stories for teens East Asian folklore

Review:

Vengeance, spirits, and a strange boy covered in tattoos. Okiku is a spirit, she’s been wandering around for centuries freeing the spirits of the murdered and dead... and seeking vengeance against their murderers. Once a vctim herself she now hunts down killers and releases innocent ghosts... but she still hungers for more. She constantly drifts until she meets Tarquin “Tark” a boy who’se mother tried to kill him and tattooed his body with intricate tattoos that turn out to be seals. Okiku starts to notice something about Tark... another spirit that is attached to him... a demon. If the seals on his skin are broken the demon will be free and if the demon dies so does Tark. Soon Okiku will find herself immersed in the lives of Tark and his family as they try and find a cure for Tark as his condition worsens and Okiku might be the only one who can solve it. As a huge fan of horror movies, ghost stories, and East Asian folklore, this was right up my alley. I had a blast reading this and would definitely recommend it! The relationship between Okiku and Tark is sweet, and the horror and ghost element to the story was great, also the folklore was so interesting. 

*Thanks Netgalley and SOURCEBOOKS Fire, Sourcebooks Fire for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

“Heart-pounding, immersive, and chilling. I couldn’t put this book down, and can’t get it out of my head!” —Margaret Rogerson, New York Times bestselling author of An Enchantment of Ravens

WHAT’S IT ABOUT

Set in a nightmarish underworld, an estranged group of friends return to an evil game to try and save the boy they thought they killed in Kristen Simmons's masterful breakout horror novel, Find Him Where You Left Him Dead. Four years ago, five kids started a game. Not all of them survived. Now, at the end of their senior year of high school, the survivors—Owen, Madeline, Emerson, and Dax—have reunited for one strange and terrible reason: they’ve been summoned by the ghost of Ian, the friend they left for dead. Together they return to the place where their friendship ended with one goal: find Ian and bring him home. So, they restart the deadly game they never finished—an innocent card-matching challenge called Meido. A game without instructions. As soon as they begin, they're dragged out of their reality and into an eerie hellscape of Japanese underworlds, more horrifying than even the darkest folktales that Owen's grandmother told him. There, they meet Shinigami, an old wise woman who explains the rules: They have one night to complete seven challenges or they'll all be stuck in this world forever. Once inseparable, the survivors now can’t stand each other, but the challenges demand they work together, think quickly, and make sacrifices—blood, clothes, secrets, memories, and worse. And once again, not everyone will make it out alive.

Promo art for Amy Goldsmith's recent YA horror release THOSE WE DROWN 🖤

I have a complicated relationship with books. When I was a kid, I devoured them, I wouldn't discriminate, whatever I could get my hands on would be gone within hours. I took pride in my reading and what I gained from it. It was a huge part of my life and personality. And then my mental health started to get real bad. And I got bored and couldn't concentrate for long enough to sit and read a whole book. But mostly I got tired of books where I could guess what was gonna happen. I knew the patterns of ya fantasy or romance or dystopia or those new mental health books that made metaphors out of like a repeated motif of toast or whatever. I could always guess the ending and it left a bland taste in my mouth. I didn't want escapism anymore, I just wanted something new. I wanted characters I could relate to. I wanted nuance in a way that didn't feel performative. And now I'm neck deep in tma and I'm getting back into reading, trying to find books with queer poc, trying to read new genres (im getting more into horror), trying to read books with characters who feel real. And honestly tma played a huge role in getting me back into reading. The characters are what made me stick with it. I could talk forever and ever about how much I love when a story focuses on how a character changes within the plot, how they react to things, how they interact with others, how that is compared to other characters. I love reading about trauma responses and unreliable narrators and people making the best choices they can with the resources they have and royally fucking up and falling in love and hating themself and hating other characters and falling apart and bringing themself back together and positive character development and negative character development. That's the shit that gets me going. The fact that tma did all of that? Makes me feel like a kid again, flipping through the same Scooby Doo annual over and over.

Many Alexes (from Hello Sunshine)

– Lee Mandelo, Summer Sons

The Raven King is terrifying. There is a bit of horror in all the books which blew right past me on first read because I was so caught up by delight with all of the characters, but the Raven King is downright horrifying.

If that ever gets made into a show, I don’t know if I could watch it. I don’t want to know what Noah looks like when he shows his decaying soul, i don’t want a darkness that is more than an absence of light and is dangerous to touch, I don’t want to see Orphan Girl falling into a lake of acid, i already cannot get the image of aurora’s body as a chain of viscera being dragged through the forest out of my head, i can’t watch adam fight his own body as it tries to pull Ronan apart, Ronan being forced into dreams and gasping back over and over, and please don’t show me what “unmaking” a human looks like.

I uploaded my PDF collection of Christopher Pike books for y'all to enjoy

I've been on a huge nostalgia kick for Christopher Pike lately, a horror YA author I adored in my teen years. If you never read his books, perhaps he's more familiar to you as the source material for Netflix's/Mike Flanigan's The Midnight Club (which not only was a book of his, but from what I've heard the series adapts several of his other books as stories the characters tell. Unfortunately the series got the axe despite being successful because it was on Netflix, of course it did)

Thanks to the Internet Archive and other independent archivists, I've managed to accumulate almost everything Pike ever wrote. There are some gaps, but thankfully most of my faves have been preserved!

If you're curious to get into some 90s horror goodness but don't know where to start, I can recommend some of my old faves:

The Season of Passage: VAMPIRES on MARS!!!

Monster: VAMPIRES from MARS ANOTHER PLANET!!!

The Immortal: Retelling Greek mythology before Percy Jackson made it cool again.

The Eternal Enemy: A Terminator-esque story that legit made me cry every time I read it as a 14-year-old (if you're wondering why, it's because the main character's nobility and love for humanity really struck a chord with me).

The Last Vampire series: A fun series (6 original books + 3 reboot books) about a hot, powerful 5,000-year-old vampire named Sita and her many escapades. I can't vouch for the reboot books but I loved the original series; it was my Twilight, lol.

Remember Me: The ghost of a teenage girl must solve her own murder. The first book is super strong; there are two sequels but tbh they're not nearly as good.

Honorable mentions go to Last Act, Witch, and Die Softly. Scavenger Hunt also gets a mention for being absolutely fucking insane in an entertaining way (it involves sexy immortal lizard teens and ritual sacrifice).