Courtesy notice to readers: Anbara Salam’s 2025 The Salvage is a haunted novel. Read with care. All playful warnings aside, I hope you’re into slow, creeping dread, because this book is absolutely dripping with it. Set in the early 1960s, on the isolated, insular Scottish island of Cairnroch, The Salvage immediately plunges readers into the icy, freezing waters ofRead More
A Queer Boarding School Gothic: Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran Review
Everything about the summary to Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran (out March 10, thank you to Doubleday for the ARC) made me so unbearably excited to read it. “The untimely death of a student at a girls’ boarding school turns out to be the first in a haunting series of escalating supernatural events. A thrilling debut novel aboutRead More
Southern Gothic Horror Meets Dark Academia: I’ll Make a Spectacle of You by Beatrice Winifred Iker Review
In I’ll Make a Spectacle of You, we meet Zora Robinson, an ambitious graduate student and Hoodoo practitioner, as she enters her first year at the most respected HBCU in the country. Bricksbury University has a long and storied history, with more than a few secrets, the biggest of all involving a beast that roams theRead More
A Deliciously Toxic Sapphic Gothic Thriller: A Slow and Secret Poison by Carmella Lowkis
You know when a bunch of factors work together in your favour to make a book particularly immersive for you? This was my experience, earlier during a holiday weekend (late October), when I read Carmella Lowkis’s sophomore novel A Slow and Secret Poison (February 10, 2026). A wonderfully atmospheric and twisty, somewhat slow-burn sapphic horror thrillerRead More
A Delicious and Grotesque Bite of a Novella: But Not Too Bold by Hache Pueyo
I picked up But Not Too Bold by Hache Pueyo because I heard it was a fun sapphic horror novella, and because I’m always eager to read more genre fiction in translation. (This was originally published in Portuguese and was translated by the author.) At barely over 100 pages, it’s a quick sprint, perfect to read inRead More
The Indefinable, Creeping Dread of Yellow Jessamine by Caitlin Starling
Caitlin Starling’s Yellow Jessamine is the novella to reach for on a dreary day. It was gray and rainy in late October when I read it, so the setting was perfect. Starling’s novella is a thoroughly gothic horror with light sapphic undertones, so if the yearning™ isn’t your thing, this may not be the title for you. Read More
A Claustrophobic Sapphic Gothic: The Salvage by Anbara Salam Review
Before I get into it, I will say that my favourite part of this book was how information was slowly revealed, so I recommend going into this without knowing much about it. If you’re in the mood for a claustrophobic gothic novel set on a small, frozen-over island, pick this one up and skip overRead More
A Knight, A Princess, and Sapphic Soulmates: The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tashi Suri Review
The Isle in the Silver Sea (out October 21, 2025) by Tashi Suri is a story about stories, set in an alternate version of England, called the Isle. In it, we follow two incarnates—people who are reincarnated to follow the path of a written tale, like The Merciless Maiden, or in this case, The Knight and the Witch.Read More
Love in the Times of Seaside Horror: Providence Girls by Morgan Dante Review
In the past couple of years, I have discovered some real gems of independent and self-published sapphic literature. Last May, I read Morgan Dante’s stunning Providence Girls, which won Best Historical Fiction at the 2023 Indie Ink awards. The author pitches it as “a seaside sapphic cosmic horror romance” in the vein of The Handmaiden and The Shape ofRead More
A Haunting Carmilla Retelling: Hungerstone by Kat Dunn Review
From Gothic fiction author Kat Dunn comes a new retelling of Carmilla that is equal parts haunting and thrilling. Hungerstone (Zando, February 18 2025) is one of the best new releases of 2025. Set in mid-nineteenth-century England, Lenore has been married to her husband Henry for a decade. A steel magnate and social climber, their marriage has benefitted fromRead More