Annnnd... summer is basically over even though I swear it only just got here a few weeks ago. Sigh. The best months of the year fly by too fast. I'm not ready for sweater and blanket weather.
For August, as fast as it felt like it went by, I managed to read an impressive 14 books, with one DNF (and one or two more that I probably should have DNFd looking back on them but too late for that, lol).
Come check out what I liked and what I didn't, and let me know what you thought of them if you've read any....
Coffin Moon by Keith Rosson
First, a moment of silence for my youth—because apparently the 1970s are now “historical fiction.” I wasn’t prepared to process that, and frankly, I’m still recovering from the existential whiplash.
This is a modern vampire novel with a historical setting, and yes, that oxymoron works gloriously. It’s got the grit of a revenge thriller, the ache of a grief-soaked reckoning, and the pulse of a horror story that knows exactly when to bare its fangs. It’s bloody and tender and it’s coming for you—and it’s not asking permission.
Duane Minor is the kind of protagonist you root for with your whole chest. He’s a man trying to outrun his past, living a quiet life with his wife Heidi and their niece Julia. But when a crew of rough-looking men stroll into the bar he tends, led by a man who looked like he was after trouble, Duane makes the mistake of kicking them out. And that moment? That’s the match strike. And the fire that follows is brutal.
This story is fast, furious, and feral. It’s soaked in regret and revenge, but it never loses its heart. The pacing is relentless and Duane’s character arc? Chef’s kiss. He’s flawed, fierce, and unforgettable.
If you like your vampire fiction with bite, brains, and bruises, this one’s got all three... and then some.
A fave of the year!!
Welcome to Smileyland by Spencer HamiltonA creepy, abandoned amusement park. A group of teens armed with beer, gas station snacks, and flashlights. What could possibly go wrong?
Welcome to Smileyland is a delightfully twisted final girl slasher with sharp queer representation and a killer sense of fun. Ramirez, a nonbinary military brat with zero interest in bonding, gets dragged along by a group of semi-friends to break into Smileyland—a rotting amusement park no one remembers. But Mister Smiley does. And his one rule? Absolutely, positively, never ever stop smiling.
This book is a blast. It’s bloody, it’s violent, it’s just creepy enough to keep you checking the shadows—and the characters? They were so relatable. I sort of cared about them, which made the carnage hit harder. It’s the kind of horror that knows exactly what it’s doing and has a wicked grin while doing it.
It’s all fun and games until the blood starts to flow.
Sister Funtime by Spencer HamiltonWelcome, welcome, welcome Sister Funtime.
Every twisted theme park needs an origin story, and Smileyland’s is deliciously deranged. Before the cotton candy and creepy mascot, there was an orphanage. And inside that orphanage, there was Sister Eustice—better known as Sister Killjoy. She ran the place with the kind of grim devotion that makes you wonder if the rosary beads were for prayer or restraint.
Inside these pages: a nun who refuses to be bullied, a possessed crucifix, and something breathing in the dark corner of the basement that she's instructed never to enter. It’s creepy, it’s corny, and it’s exactly the kind of horror-camp cocktail I want more of.
Spencer Hamilton is building a universe where the grotesque and the goofy hold hands—and I’m already in line for the next ride.
Wake, Siren by Nina MaclaughlinThis. Freaking. Book.
Holy crap.
I’ve walked past this thing countless times at my favorite used bookstore, until my last trip there, when I finally snatched it up and brought it home.
Now, full disclosure: I know next to nothing about Greek mythology (seriously. I googled every name before diving into their stories), and I’ve never read Metamorphoses by Ovid. But these retellings? They slap.
Brutal. Modern. Fiercely feminist. These are stories with teeth, claws, and zero apologies. Blood soaked, rage fueled, and dripping with transformation. Nina gives these women voices, and fists, and they are not afraid to use them.
Go read this. Right now. You’ll be sorry if you don’t.
It gets all the stars.
Habitat by Case Q KernsDNFd at 43%
Now you know how rare and difficult this is for me... don't judge!
Case's book is marketed as a novel, but it’s really a collection of short stories... loosely connected at best. I mean, I made it nearly halfway through, and so far only one story seemed to brush up against another.
Did I not give it enough time? Do they all come crashing together towards the end??
The writing isn’t bad, and the stories themselves are fine. I just came in expecting a more cohesive narrative and ended up with something that felt more fragmented and abstract... a bit like Kawakami’s Under the Eye of the Big Bird, and not quite what I signed up for.
I was all in when I saw “body horror” and “dystopian sci-fi”, but what we're given is much tamer. Less visceral, more muted.
Not a bad book. Just not the book I thought I was getting.
The First Thousand Trees by Premee MohamedIn a surprising shift, the final installment of this fungal fiction, post-apocalyptic series centers not on Reid, but on Henryk. Left behind when Reid departs for Howse University, Henryk is adrift—isolated from the community, haunted by the guilt of the pig hunt gone wrong, and desperate for connection. He does the one thing he thought he would never do, and sets out on his own with a hand drawn map to visit his uncle Dex, his last surviving relative.
But Sprucedown offers little solace. Henryk’s awkward, anxious nature only deepens his sense of alienation, and his attempts to fit in seem to push others further away. That is, until a routine “fire drill” leaves him stranded in the woods—where he encounters a group of raiders with their sights set on breaking in.
Forget Cad, the fungal parasite embedded in most survivors. Forget Reid, the friend who once shielded him from bullies and chaos. If Henryk wants to survive, he’ll have to find the fight within himself.
Mohamed conjures a world that feels both refreshingly original and steeped in familiar post-apocalyptic resonance. There are shades of Earth Abides in its quiet devastation, and yes, the Walking Dead parallels surface—mostly in the bleak terrain and isolated communities—but trust me when I say... this series stands firmly on its own.
This is a story of outcasts carving out space in a fractured world. A story of rebuilding, even when redemption feels out of reach. And it brings this series to a satisfying, unexpectedly subtle close.
The Witch of Willow Sound by Vanessa F PenneyNothing like a killer cover and a knockout prologue to pull this reader in!
The book opens with a witch-burning—deliciously dark, atmospheric, and haunting. While this scene resurfaces later in the story, we quickly shift into what feels more like cozy horror territory, following our badass heroine, Fade. At her mother’s urging, Fade heads to her estranged Aunt Madeline’s cottage after reports surface that Madeline has gone missing.
Set in a small Nova Scotian town, rumors of the Witch of Willow Sound swirl around Fade, who’s instantly pegged as an outsider and, inconveniently, the spitting image of her aunt. The locals aren’t exactly welcoming. They blame Madeline for everything from bad luck to the ominous storm brewing just offshore.
When Fade arrives at the cottage, things feel... off. The house is crumbling, coated in dust, and the guest room she remembers from childhood has been torn apart. The bookshelf that once lined the wall is gone—replaced by a strange, terrifying door that definitely wasn’t there before.
Where does the door lead? And why is everyone so convinced her aunt was a witch?
Determined to find Madeline before the authorities start tearing things apart, Fade teams up with a visiting archivist named Nish. Together, they begin to unearth buried family secrets, hidden cellars, and the burned remains of... someone.
Cozy horror meets creeping folklore in a tale that’s strangely addictive, layered with chummy banter ('go 'way!' 'I will not!') and just enough twists and turns to keep you guessing up to the very end.
Incidents Around The House by Josh MalermanLook. I loved Bird Box. Absolutely lost my shit over how friggen good it was. It was my first Malerman, and no matter how many I read, none come close. They just don’t.
This one came closer than most, if I can forgive the audio narration. Listening to an adult play a child? Grating. The story started off creepy and intriguing, but the repetition wore me down fast. Also, I'm worried my threshold for what's scary is higher than most peoples because I wasn't terrified.
And please, authors—can we stop using infidelity as a character plot point? It’s tired, it’s triggering, and it’s almost always the woman. Have you noticed?
And c’mon, we all saw that ending coming from a mile away, right? All that buildup... just to land exactly where I didn’t want it to.
No. Bitch. You cannot go into my heart.
Sister Creatures by Laura Venita GreenSooo... calling non linear, interconnected stories a novel is, like, a thing now?
I just DNF’d Habitat over that recent disappointment, and I came thiiiissss close to DNFing this one too. I wasn’t in the mood for a story collection—I wanted a novel. A real one. And the cover and description made it seem like that’s what I was getting. I feel duped. But then again, I'm also a sucker because I'm the one who requested the review copy. I've gotta read the jacket copy more closely going foward.
The stories? Meh. Some had a weird vibe, some were painfully straightforward. A kid from one story randomly shows up as an adult in another. A creepy hemp doll keeps making the rounds. Crappy people stay crappy. Unhappy people stay unhappy. Rinse and repeat.
This trend of slapping “novel” on a story collection just because a few characters overlap? I'm not digging it. Novels are immersive and character-driven, and allow me to actually follow someone’s arc and get invested... to feel something.
Instead, I got a handful of snapshots and a lot of emotional static.
From the Wreck by Jane RawsonGorgeous cover. Amazing read. All the stars!
Might contain spoilers so tread lightly...
This fictionalized account of the horrific Amdella steamship wreck—where survivors clung to flotsam for eight grueling days, near death, watching rescue attempts fail again and again—is written by the actual great-great-granddaughter of George, one of the few true survivors, who lived to tell the tale.
The story unfolds through three perspectives: George, the haunted survivor; Henry, his son, born with a strange mark and an obsession with death; and Bridget Ledwith, the mysterious woman who clung to George during the wreck, keeping him safe and warm, and promptly disappearing into thin air once they were rescued.
Back on solid ground, George tries to live a normal life: marriage, children, routine. But he’s consumed by the memory of Bridget, convinced she’s cursed him. When his firstborn arrives with an odd mark on his back, George becomes obsessed with finding her, desperate to understand what she’s done to him.
Henry, meanwhile, is a strange, sensitive boy who believes his birthmark—affectionately named Mark—can speak to him, whispering eerie truths and facts about the world.
And then there’s the third voice: Bridget/Mark’s perspective. Cosmic, curious, and deeply fascinating, this entity longs to connect with others like itself, weaving a thread of otherworldly wonder through the narrative.
Beneath the waves, it waited... and it knows their names. Oceanic mysteries paired with cosmic wonder? Oooh yeah!
This book was so much more than I expected. It went places I never anticipated. And I absolutely loved it!
Spread Me by Sarah GaileyPhew! Viral erotica anyone?
I love Sarah Gailey. I’ve genuinely enjoyed everything I’ve read by them, and this book was one of my most anticipated of the year. But… it’s uhm… a little too kinky for me. And if you read the title and jacket copy closely, you’ll see they’re not exactly hiding it.
This one’s far steamier than Gailey’s previous work—but in the strangest ways. Set at a remote research station in the middle of a desert, in a near-future world reeling from yet another pandemic, Kinsey and her team make a thrilling, and deeply unsettling, discovery: there’s life out there in the sand. And now that it’s been disturbed, it’s looking for a way in… and it’s fixated on Kinsey.
It doesn’t help that the virus has an uncanny ability to mimic and replicate. Before long, the team begins to suspect that one—or all—of them have become infected.
Expect heavy nods to The Thing, a generous helping of masturbation, and some truly inventive body horror. It’s weird, it’s wild, and it’s definitely not shy.
I feel like the marketing team missed out on a great tagline (coughcough). "It wants in. And it's learning how to turn you on."
The Salvage by Anbara SalamIn keeping with my recent obsession with watery fiction—first The Burial Tide by Neil Sharpson and Reef Mind by Hazel Zorn, then The Terror TV series and From the Wreck by Jane Rawson, and now 1899—The Salvage by Anbara Salam continues to scratch that itch something fierce.
Marta is a recovery diver, summoned to the remote coastal island of Cairnroch by the Purdie family after they’ve had an ancestral Victorian shipwreck hauled from the Arctic Ocean to their quiet corner of the world. As an outsider, Marta is met with frosty indifference from the locals. Her goal is simple: retrieve the captain’s remains and any valuables still clinging to the wreck, then get out.
But on her first dive, while cataloging the ship’s submerged chambers, she glimpses a dark figure hunched in a corner, watching her. Panicked, she flees to the surface.
When she returns to the depths, ready to salvage the items, she finds many of them missing. Unwilling to admit to a possible theft on her watch, Marta bargains for more time and enlists Elsie—a hotel worker she’s quite drawn to—to help uncover who stole the artifacts and reclaim them before the next ferry arrives.
All the while, that shadow seems to follow her across the island, forcing Marta to confront a past she’s tried desperately to bury. And as the mystery deepens, so does her connection with Elsie.
This is a slow-burning, atmospheric, sapphic horror story—less jump scares, more creeping dread and quiet unease. It lingers like sea mist and leaves you chilled.
We Are Always Tender With Our Dead by Eric LaRoccaThis book is a wretched little thing, isn't it? I wanted to like it, I really did. It promised so much but the writing just failed to deliver. Listen, tell me this doesn't sound amazing...
We’re dropped into the eerie town of Burnt Sparrow, which has just suffered a horrific massacre—the dead left sprawled in the streets, the surviving residents assigned to watch over the corpses in shifts. And when the three faceless strangers are captured, the town’s wealthiest resident offers his basement as a site of punishment—an underground chamber for endless, unspeakable torment.
Into this fevered nightmare stumbles Rupert, a teenage boy caught in the middle of communal rage and personal trauma. As he bears witness to grotesque acts of retribution, Rupert is forced to confront the ghosts of his own past as well as the skeletons of those around him —whether he’s ready or not.
The massacre is only the beginning.
"It's sad to think how a corpse is very often worth more than a living thing. At least there's some value left in a dead body, however little, however insignificant. But what becomes of us when even the dead have little meaning? Perhaps that's when the world finally and truly rots. Either way, I'd give anything to watch this godforsaken place burn to the ground."
I loved Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke. LaRocca shines brightest when he leans into nontraditional, experimental body horror—when the prose is jagged, intimate, and unrelenting. We Are Always Tender With Our Dead could have been so much more effective if it embraced that fragmented style: a series of vignettes and interludes, each one tight and punchy, with sharp paragraphs that bite and sting. Instead, the narrative here feels stretched thin, its horror diluted by structure. LaRocca’s best work doesn’t explain—it breathes and bleeds.
Shitshow by Chris PanatierOooh... this one was so much fun.
Just a dude named Sunday, taking care of his moms, who’s battling early onset dementia, and working a truly shitty job. Literally. He vacuums porta-potty poop water for a living. Things are going pretty okay until he’s delayed on one of his rounds at a fairground crawling with cops, all searching for a teenage couple who vanished at the carnival the night before.
Once they give him the all-clear, Sunday gets the hose and starts sucking... until something jams the nozzle. He’s used to fishing out garbage, so he figures it’s just another potato chip bag. Only... it’s someone’s face. Or rather, the skin of someone’s face.
Now it’s a crime scene. The porta-potty is officially evidence, and Sunday’s stuck hauling it away after signing for chain of custody. With nowhere else to dump it, he brings it home, along with a giant stuffed rabbit someone left behind near the toilets.
As missing persons reports pile up across county lines—all of them last seen at fairs and festivals, all heading for the crapper—Sunday starts to suspect something diabolical. And when his mom disappears, he decides to take matters into his own hands.
What follows is a wild, weird ride that leads him to a local museum run by the descendant of a dark carnival. From there, all hell breaks loose. It’s pure brain candy: fun, tropey, twisted, and surprisingly tender in all the right places.
To quote the author: “It’s like Doctor Who, except the Tardis is a shitter.”
Glad I got to read this one on the eve-eve-eve of its release!
