A decent month of reading, clocking in with 12 books (well, two of them were a DNF but I made it a good chunk of the way through so I'm counting them LOL).
With only one month left before we kick it into a new year... here's the good, the bad, and the beautiful books of November, which were almost all review copies, and looking for more starry goodness in December:
The Barre Incidents by Lauren Bolger
I really wanted to love The Barre Incidents. The premise had promise, and I held out hope for as long as I could but eventually, I had to step away. The story felt too disjointed to keep me engaged, and I found myself more frustrated than intrigued.
Bolger’s commitment to layering in weirdness was bold, but it never really found its footing and felt like the plot kept slipping through its own fingers. The structure never quite settled, and the dialogue and character development felt surface-level and read more like a YA novel than the creepy, slow-burn horror I was hoping for.
I know this book will resonate with readers who enjoy surreal, genre-blurring fiction. It just wasn’t the right fit for me. Sometimes you have to know when to bow out, and for me, this was that moment. And it’s not that the ingredients weren’t intriguing. The town of Barre is allegedly a cryptid magnet, with appearances from Mothman, strange dog people, an ancient tree god, and even a skin-stealing doppleganger of sorts who seems to show up right before all hell breaks loose. But instead of building dread or deepening the mystery, the book kept tossing weirdness at the wall to see what stuck. And for me, not much did.
I wanted eerie. I got erratic. Dropped it like it was hot at page 202, with a sigh and a side-eye.
Exiles by Mason Coile
Psychological space horror done right.
I flew through Exiles in a matter of hours. It’s brilliantly engaging from the first page, with a creeping sense of dread that never lets up.
A three-person crew—Gold, Kang, and Blake—is en route to Mars on a no-return mission. Awaiting them at The Citadel, a biosphere built in anticipation of their arrival, are three robots. But when the crew wakes from deep sleep, they’ve lost communication with the base. When they relay this to their Mission Leader back on Earth, she tells them to proceed anyway.
After a tense, chaotic landing, they scramble to find the Citadel and discover it’s in shambles. There’s a gaping hole where the lab used to be, the entry code to the main quarters won’t work, and their oxygen is running out fast. Just as Gold is about to pass out, one of the bots opens the door and pulls her inside, informing her that the other has been put into sleep mode and hidden away —allegedly for protection from whatever wrecked the base.
Once the crew is safe, they begin questioning the two remaining bots. Shay claims the damage was caused by an alien entity awakened during construction. Wes, on the other hand, suggests it was Alex—the third bot—who went rogue and vanished. Blake and Kang are skeptical, but Gold starts to believe… right as the base is attacked again. And that’s when things really kick off.
Who doesn’t love a little human vs. robot vs. “what in the actual hell is that” set on a hostile planet, where the body count rises and trust erodes with every breath? Exiles delivers claustrophobic tension, psychological unraveling, and just enough sci-fi weirdness to keep you guessing.
Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo
DNF’d with 39 minutes left. I was lost the entire time and, honestly, I just didn’t care. Audio was not the right format for this one—too many characters, not enough clarity, and my attention kept slipping.
Which is a shame, because the premise is solid. A man’s dying mother sends him on a mission to find the father he never knew. He arrives in what turns out to be a literal ghost town, and spends the rest of the story hanging out with spirits and learning what a garbage human his dad was. I think that’s what happened? I’m still not entirely sure.
Great concept, but the execution didn’t land for me. Even the ghosts seemed bored.
Maybe in print it would’ve been easier to follow, but as it stands, I tapped out with a sigh and zero regrets. Ok, maybe there is a teeny tiny regret. But not enough to hit play on that sucker again...
Got this one from the Indie Pub Salon when I ordered a blind box of weird small press fiction from them. And wow—this one delivered. Weird in all the right ways.
The story follows a young sailor assigned to a remote lighthouse as the assistant keeper. His predecessor suffered an "accident" no one wants to explain, and the primary keeper he now lives with is a cranky, eccentric old man with some... unsettling preferences.
It’s a quiet, creeping tale that expertly blurs the line between confidence and confusion, chosen solitude and festering intolerance, boredom and full-blown madness. The descent is subtle, unnerving, and strangely mesmerizing.
It’s not the waves or the wind that get to you—it’s the weirdness between them...
The Emergency by George Packer
Everything was fine—until it wasn’t.
What the book calls The Emergency seems to erupt out of nowhere. Three distinct classes of people, once coexisting and supporting one another—the Burghers with their hospitals and elite schooling, the Yeomen with their farms and working-class ethic, and the Strangers, roving outsiders on society’s margins—suddenly find themselves cut off, suspicious of each other’s intentions, and fueling the fires of fear about what each group might be plotting.
In the midst of this upheaval, young adults seize the disruption to dismantle the existing government and implement a new system they call Togetherness. At first, it sounds like an ideal utopia: a mindful, humanitarian society where no one person rules and everyone has a voice in shaping the rules. But the experiment quickly unravels, breeding further division between city folk and country folk, until everything collapses into one tumbling ball of chaos.
While I appreciated the ideas in theory, the execution often felt like a slog. The book could have been more thought-provoking and engaging at half the length, trimming away much of the extraneous detail.
More than once, I was tempted to DNF—it was hard to connect, and I struggled to care about the characters. Still, I’m glad I stuck with it, because the story does improve as it goes along.
This novel will resonate with fans of The Handmaid’s Tale, Earth Abides, 1984, and Lark Ascending—stories where you either fall in line with the new regime or fall at its hands.
Dear Stupid Penpal by Rascal Hartley
I wasn’t prepared for how much I’d like Dear Stupid Penpal. I just want to grab it by its chubby little cheeks and pinch its adorable little face!
It oozes existential cosmic horror vibes—and why shouldn’t it? Set aboard a spaceship drifting into deep space, a handful of astronauts are tethered to Earth only by their government-assigned penpals. Finch, one of the crew, has a lot of time to brood, reflect, and spiral. The void is vast. The silence is louder.
But his penpal Aku? Pretty cool dude. Worldly, poetic, chill, and maybe... a little flirty? Told entirely through texts and letters, we get to eavesdrop as these two stumble through awkward introductions, muse on the banality of being earthbound versus floating helplessly among the stars, and somehow land in a meet-cute bromance that defies the ever-growing dilation of time between them.
I adored the little easter eggs Aku kept tossing Finch’s way—each one missed with steadfast obliviousness. To be fair, my own head was initially pointed in a different direction than Hartley’s. But once I caught up? I was chuffed. Cosmic horror, sci-fi, speculative fiction—they’re all holding hands in the same eerie sandbox. Add a dash of romance and you’ve got quite the little book on your hands.
If you too feel the inevitable weight of the universe and the crushing insignificance of humanity pressing down from the inside out, you are going to el-oh-vee-ee Dear Stupid Penpal.
Strange and Perfect Account From the Permafrost by Donald Niedekker
This is one weird-ass mofo of a book.
Our narrator was a crew member aboard a ship attempting to find the Northeast Passage. Buuutt, he didn’t survive the journey and was promptly buried in the frozen ground.
His consciousness has been trapped under the ice for 'four centuries and a few decades'. Now the ice is melting, his corpse is thawing, and he’s feeling chatty. He spends all 196 pages musing on... well, basically everything. Memories of his father and grandmother. His time on the boat. The parade of animals that have visited the shipwreck—which, of course, never made it to the Passage because the ocean froze around it.
It’s like The Terror told by the ghost of one of the first guys to die—only this time with a cuddly polar bear who hibernates year after year beside our narrator’s body.
Did I like it? Sure.
Was it a little too weird and rambly? Yeah, a bit.
Did I skim some parts wondering where the heck he was going and how it all connected? Absolutely.
If you are still curious about it, here are some pretty passages I pulled out while reading:
"go, go my friend"
"we saw fountains. We saw gleefully spouting fountains above the sea. In the fountains we saw mist."
"Zero is a dream in the polar night. Zero is a faraway summer. Zero is a fever dream. Zero does not exist in the polar night."
"My voice comes from the polar night, from a hibernation lasting four centuries, from the void of four hundred years of ice, ice, and more ice. There is no one to share the bottomless void with."
"we entered into the deliberate darkness of the polar night, that derisive shadow waiting for you like the open maw of a predator. It only has to open its mouth and wait until bedraggled bunglers like us walk into its blackness. Munch, swallow, and gone."
Child of These Tears by Molly McNett
Like early eighteenth century stories set in the time of Queen Anne's war?
Child of These Tears is a polyphonic tale of a family shattered by violence, each voice tracing its own path through loss, captivity, and the search for belonging.
Set in the 1700s, the English and French—alongside their Native American allies—collide viciously in a small hamlet, leaving the Baker family at the center of the devastation. When the chaos subsides, Constance and her mother are swept up with the surviving villagers. Her siblings are brutally murdered, her father has vanished, and the captives are marched into the woods, their futures uncertain.
The story unfolds through a mix of narration, journal entries, and letters as they all try to find thier way back to each other: her father’s decent into madness, her mother’s grief, the observations of a French priest at the camp, and Constance’s own captivity story—a traumatized young girl, separated from her family, clinging to survival. Together, these perspectives weave a chorus of sorrow and resilience.
It’s not a pleasant story, but it is a compelling one. The prose moves quickly, carrying you through brutality and tenderness alike, and leaves you sitting with the weight of what survival costs.
I don't think this will be for everyone, but for those who enjoy epistolary historical fiction, you won't want this one to fly under your radar.
A Veritable Household Pet by Viggy Parr Hampton
A Veritable Household Pet tells the story of a girl lobotomized as a child, and the brutal, heart‑wrenching life that follows. It’s dark, twisted, hopeful, soul crushing, and horrific all at once.
But let’s be clear: this isn’t gory horror, or body horror, or even spooky horror. This is help‑I’m‑trapped‑in‑a‑body‑that‑can’t‑speak-the-thoughts-in-my-head horror. This is toxic family dynamics and psychological trauma horror. This is people‑can‑be‑the‑absolute‑worst horror.
Imagine living every day with the awareness of what’s been stolen, carrying the impossible hope of ever being whole again, and knowing those around you will never truly grasp what you’re struggling against. This is the kind of book that unsettles not because of monsters in the dark, but because of the cruelty and silence that can live inside a home.
I couldn’t help but feel the story would have flowed more seamlessly if Darla’s sister’s notes had been given space as alternating chapters. In full form, their voices could have echoed against each other, amplifying the weight of their shared grief instead of being diluted in fragments.
The ending didn’t completely surprise me - the foreshadowing was strong - but it still managed to twist in a direction I hadn’t anticipated.
Alicia is in the Basement by Santiago Eximeno
Throwing all the stars at this one... it's easily going to rank as one of my favorites this year. @tenebrouspress went for broke here and this is by far thier best!!
Alicia Is In the Basement is the painstaking, demented journey of a man who loses his daughter in a public park one afternoon. It's a dark, terrifying glimpse into what it means when a child goes missing, and how far a parent is will go to bring her back home.
Already trapped in a fractured marriage, with another child on the way, the disappearance shatters Santi and Maria. Maria needs to move forward. Santi cannot. Will not. After months of realizing the police will never find her, Santi begins his own investigation. What he uncovers is a chilling pattern of missing children and a trail that leads to a mysterious entity known only as He Who Does Not Speak With Children.
The final pages will leave you staring into the abyss, where hope and horror blur together in the most devastating way.
For fans of Ben Tanzer's The Missing and Nicholas Cage's Pay the Ghost.
Fit into Me by Molly Gaudry
I'm not typically one for non fiction but if it's published by Rose Metal Press and it's written by Molly Gaudry, it's got to be magical, right?!
Fit Into Me is an innovative novel within a memoir, which doesn't sound like it would work but strangely does. Through this mix of narrative autobiographical storytelling, speculative nonfiction, and fiction writing, you get to follow along as Molly manuevers the reader through intricate memories and moments in her life. Meanwhile, we also navigate a parallel series of moments in the life of the tea house woman, a character who has appeared in Molly's previous books.
Also, sprinkled within are beautiful and poignant quotes about the relationship between a writer and their readers, the art of writing, and excerises in writing where she had created word banks (pulling individual words from texts) and chosing 10 of them at random to then build a story around.
It's quite an interesting thing, what Molly's done. I can't pretend to fully understand it, but it seeps inside and moves you nonetheless.
Here are some of my favorite borrowed quotes, the ones that spoke to me the loudest:
'Because every book is a private act, but it joins us across continents and times.'
'Because think of this - that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.'
'Because every book is dead until a reader activates it.'
The Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan
I don’t usually reach for historical fiction, especially when it comes in a tome as hefty as this one, but The Red Winter was ultimately impossible for me to resist. Marketed as the origin story of the very first werewolf and “a tragic love story, a bewitching twist on history, and a blood-drenched hunt for purpose, power, and redemption”, it delivers all that and more.
Set against the backdrop of the late 1700s and the French Revolution, the novel unfolds as the memoir of Sebastian, an immortal narrator whose morally grey complexity makes him as magnetic as he is unpredictable. He thrives on mystery and mayhem, and Sullivan captures his voice with a mix of menace and wit that keeps the pages turning.
What struck me most was how well balanced it was: it’s dark, queer, and gloriously gory, yet cheeky enough not to drown in its own seriousness. Sullivan juggles three timelines and multiple subplots with the ease of a seasoned storyteller, weaving them into a narrative that feels both epic and intimate. I found myself loathe to put it down, wishing that I didn't have to tend to my real life responsibilities until I had fully devoured it.
For a debut, this is nothing short of smashing — a bold, blood-soaked, and irresistibly entertaining entry into the genre. Cameron Sullivan has announced himself with a howl, and I can’t wait to see what he conjures next.
If you fell hard for Alex Grecian's Red Rabbit, Karen Russell's The Antidote, or Keith Rosson's Coffin Moon, I think you would love this!
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