In some ways, I have a harder time describing this book now than I did before I read it. That isn’t to say that it’s dense or confusing. But the tone is unique, which makes it hard to categorize. You could call this a sapphic monster romance, but that doesn’t feel quite right. It’s definitelyRead More
Love and Monsters: Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell
Shapeshifting monster Shesheshen just wants to be left alone in her lair, but the land’s royal family is determined to kill the worm that cursed them. When one of these royals brings a hunting party to her lair as she hibernates, she must fight to defend herself and kill them. She sets out on aRead More
Daphne Fama on the House of Monstrous Women and the Genius of Filipino Horror Lore
House of Monstrous Women is Daphne Fama’s stunning debut novel out August 12, where, “a young woman is drawn into a dangerous game after being invited to the mazelike home of her childhood friend, a rumored witch, in this gothic horror set in 1986 Philippines.” I found it as deeply unsettling as it was tender, andRead More
A Fresh Take on Magic Schools: The Incandescent by Emily Tesh
In what has quickly become one of my top novels of the year, Emily Tesh crafts a unique fantasy world full of violence, intensity, and intrigue in The Incandescent (Tor 2025). In Tesh’s newest novel, which has been compared to fiction by Naomi Novik and Emily Danforth, Doctor Walden is the Director of Magic at Chetwood Academy—a schoolRead More
A Beguiling and Mysterious Fantasy: Where Shadows Bloom by Catherine Bakewell Review
Where Shadows Bloom by Catherine Bakewell describes itself thus: A mesmerizing daydream with a subtle edge of darkness that will leave you utterly unable to put it down, Where Shadows Bloom pits terrifying monsters, chilling secrets, capricious gods, immortal kings, and death itself against the unstoppable love between two girls. Sadly, I found this set my expectations tooRead More
Queer, Revelatory Joy in The Deep Dark by Molly Knox Ostertag
Already a fan of Molly Knox Ostertag’s The Girl from the Sea, I had a good feeling about the weighty tome that is The Deep Dark. Friends, this poignant graphic novel delivered and then some. It’s like someone translated the sensation of waiting for the other shoe to drop and described the steps someone would take toRead 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
The Troubled Teen Industry and Other Monsters: What the Woods Took by Courtney Gould
In this YA horror novel, five teens are forced to participate in a new “wilderness therapy program” called REVIVE. Some of them are kidnapped in the night and escorted here by force. They face 50 days hiking through the wilderness and talking about their trauma with two unqualified twenty-somethings. This is based on real programsRead More
Folk Horror and the Troubled Teen Industry: What the Woods Took by Courtney Gould Review
In European folk and fairytales, a journey through the woods represents the characters’ coming of age—their passage from the pastoral, relative security of familial and familiar hearths into a fraught, shadowy place where metaphors for social anxieties lurk around every corner. Only with wit and friendship can one come out the other side, though theyRead More
The Queer Graphic Novel That Had Me Sobbing at 3 A.M.: The Deep Dark by Molly Knox Ostertag
Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! You’re all fired for not tell me how good this is. I liked The Girl From the Sea, so I put a hold on Ostertag’s newest sapphic graphic novel, but I hadn’t heard anything about it, so I my expectations were pretty grounded. IRead More