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 Worthy Sequel to Shirley Jackson’s Classic: A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand
From award-winning author Elizabeth Hand comes the first ever authorized retelling of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (1959). A Haunting on the Hill (Mulholland Books, 2023) is a startlingly contemporary and frighteningly vivid take on one of the most well-known haunted house novels of the twentieth century. A Haunting on the Hill follows Holly, a playwright turnedRead More
A Chilling YA Horror: What the Woods Took by Courtney Gould Review
Courtney Gould’s What the Woods Took is a creepy YA horror that follows a group of teenagers who are sent on a hike through the woods as part of an experimental wilderness therapy program: an abusive, exploitative practice with very little oversight. Even before the supernatural horrors began, we have teenagers getting kidnapped out of theirRead More
A Polarizing, Experimental Horror Book: We Used To Live Here by Marcus Kliewer Review
Despite us being firmly being into December, I still have a few horror books on my to-read list that I am working through, and We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer came up on my library holds list. I listened to the audiobook, as I enjoy being able to yell at characters in a good hauntedRead More
Haunted by the Past: She is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran
Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! Horror is a very broad genre, and, I am inclined to say, a particularly personal one, seeing as what scares one person may not scare another, or, on the other hand, it might scare them too much. I myself love a good haunted house,Read More
The Official Sapphic Sequel to Haunting of Hill House: A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand
Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! To say I went into this with high expectations would be an understatement. As soon as I heard there was an official sapphic The Haunting of Hill House sequel coming out, it became my most anticipated book release of the year. I am firmlyRead More
Folk Horror Misogyny: The Low, Low Woods by Carmen Maria Machado and DaNi
Bookshop.org Affiliate Link I read this during Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon in the last hour before I went to sleep, and I think this is a perfect choice for a horror graphic novel to read on an October night. El and Vee are two queer teens living in the small town of Shudder-To-Think. As theyRead More
Childhood Nostalgia is a Trap: Mister Magic by Kiersten White
Bookshop.org Affiliate Link I wasn’t sure if I would review this for the Lesbrary at first, because although the main character mentions that she’s bisexual at the beginning, it didn’t seem to come up again. Once I finished it, though, I realized that queerness is essential to the underpinning of the story. (There are alsoRead More
A Quiet & Queer YA Horror Story: A Guide to the Dark by Meriam Metoui
Bookshop.org Affiliate Link Mira and Layla are trying to make their way to Chicago for the last leg of their college tour road trip when they’re stranded in a small town and forced to stay at the Wildwood Motel. To Layla, this is a minor setback while she’s more focused on figuring out her confusingRead More
A Cult in the Woods—Or Worse? The Wicked Unseen by Gigi Griffis
Bookshop.org Affiliate Link Audre doesn’t fit well in the conservative small town to which she’s moved. She’s from New York City. She’s a lesbian. She’s a determined skeptic. And she’s the daughter of an occult researcher and a mortician. So when the preacher’s daughter, Elle, disappears, suspicion falls on Audre’s family. She works to findRead More