Haunted mansions! Thunder and lightning! Brooding antiheroes! Women running down corridors wearing long white gowns! I love the tropes of Gothic literature: they’re campy, they’re spooky, they’re sexy. What more could you possibly want from a genre? Well, sapphic romance, obviously. As it happens, the Gothic is a pretty gay genre to begin with. ItsRead More
Mary reviews A Bittersweet Garden by Caren J. Werlinger
Ireland? Ghosts? A hot horse trainer? What more could you ask for?! Nora is spending her summer exploring the Irish town her grandparents hail from when she discovers her cottage is haunted by a tragic history. She falls in love with the country and the people, her cousins and new friends (and one friend thatRead More
Bee reviews Unspeakable: A Queer Gothic Anthology edited by Celine Frohn
This book had me in two words: queer. Gothic. I have long-held passions in both areas. The gothic is the realm of the outsider, the rejected, the monstrous. It lends itself to queer interpretation–and that is mostly what queer gothic is. Just interpretation. The height of gothic literature was, of course, the 18th and 19th Centuries, beginning with TheRead More
Meagan Kimberly reviews From A Shadow Grave by Andi C. Buchanan
This paranormal fantasy novella follows “you,” who is Phyllis Avis Symons. She’s a young girl living in New Zealand in the early 1930s, in the years leading up to World War II. Her contentious relationship with her parents leads her to run away and fall in love with an abusive man that becomes her downfall.Read More
Mars reviews Hocus Pocus and The All-New Sequel by A. W. Jantha
All her life, Poppy Dennison has known the story of the frightening and magical events that took place in Salem on Halloween night back in 1993. It’s otherwise known as the day her parents really met, or alternatively as the one time her cool Aunt Dani got kidnapped and almost eaten by witches. To beRead More
Alexa reviews Into the Mystic Volume 3 by NineStar Press
Her ghost had once told Clotho that no proper ghost story has a happy ending, because ghosts don’t end. It’s no secret that I have a soft spot for fantasy, paranormal and fairytales, so of course I had to pick up an anthology that has nine F/F stories with paranormal elements. While the stories hadRead More
Danika reviews As I Descended by Robin Talley
When I heard a YA book was coming out that was a lesbian boarding school Macbeth retelling, I was already on board before I had even heard that it was by Robin Talley, the author of one of my favourite lesbian YA books. This isn’t a direct retelling of Macbeth, but it does cover mostRead More