What I Read In April

 You guys, didn't 2025 only just start? How is it May already?! Not that I'm really complaining because it's warmer and sunnier and getting greener out there. This is the best time of the year... bring on the long days and warmer nights!

I had a killer month with book from a quantity perspective - a whopping 16 books in total which is huge for me. Probably record breaking, even. But... I did take a whole week off from work and it was mostly a staycation so I knuckled down and read as much of my book backlog as I could, which, ok, was probably the easiest thing I've ever had to make myself do. And would you believe this didn't even put a dent into it? 

Well, c'mon, let's see what I read and see if I can convince you to read them all too!

A Carnival of Atrocities by Natalia Garcia Freire

I am not sure what I just read.

The title is captivating, the cover is gorgeous, the writing was stunning. But the storyline was a blur of reality and... something else. It was incredibly hard to follow but too intriguing to put down. Did I like it? Yes. It was definitely an experience. Would I recommend it? No. I don't think so. Unless I did it selfishly, so you could finish it and tell me what the heck was happening.

The book opens with a young girl who is forcefully removed from her home when her mother dies and her father disappears. Then, we shift to the perspectives of nine of the townsfolk who remember the girl as a witch and are on a strange journey of sorts to hunt down a group of runaways.

Cursed, afraid, and perhaps completely out of their minds, incredibly odd and horrific things begin to happen to them on this journey. A priest cuts off his own ears, a woman loses her footing and falls to her death and when her husband grieves over her dead body, someone else sneaks up to the woman who is attempting to console him and cracks her skull in with a rock. A man who owes a debt removes the gold teeth straight out of the mouth of a dying traveler; the food for the trip goes rotten; someone sets some of the others, and maybe themselves, on fire; and a young man upon coming face to face with his father, stakes himself in the chest.

Then again, this might all be wrong.

A hypnotic story of treachery and fear that howls like the wind in your ears. There's a message here somewhere but I'll be damned if I can decipher it.

Eat the Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin

Eat the Ones You Love is a fascinating mish mash of "feed me Seymour" LSoH vibes, cringey body horror a la The Ruins, and tosses in some mall rat nostalgia for funsies.

The Woodbine Crown Mall is home to a cute flower shop that's got a Help Needed sign in its window. Shell, recently recovering from a breakup and back home at her parents place, decides to inquire about the position while running errands one day and immediately becomes obsessed with its owner Neve. As the two women begin feeling each other out, and Shell learns the ins and outs of preserving and displaying floral arrangements, we discover that the Mall is also a crumbling sanctuary for a horrifically hungry little plant who is cleverly hiding in a moss encased atrium located at its very heart, the food court. Baby, as Neve calls him, needs to feed, and he will let nothing get in his way.

This is a story about deadly secrets, co-dependency, and the dangers of letting those you care about most getting too close. More weird than scary, sapphic but not sappy, campy but not kitschy, it's plant vs man in the most cannibalistic and creepiest of ways.

It has all the right ingredients to be a great book but I had a really hard time connecting with it. I didn't hate it, but I expected to love it more than I actually did.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

Into outer space I go again!

I picked this up because I saw some of the peeps I follow on #bookstagram talking it up as one of their favorite series and I have a soft spot in my bookish heart for space horror and dark comedic space fiction. Project Hail Mary and The Martian, The Ferryman, Parasite, Starship Grifters, Dead Silence.. all rank up there as standouts in those genres.

And ok, I'll admit this was cute. It's about a self aware, introverted murderbot who enjoys binge watching TV on the down low while ensuring the safety and security of his assigned humans as they conduct surface tests on a remote planet. He found it to be a pretty boring gig... until they nearly get eaten by a hostile fauna. Soon after shaking off that scary encounter, they decide to halt their mission to investigate why the only other team of surveyors on the planet suddenly went silent and murderbot realizes that he is about to travel well outside his area of expertise.

Clocking in at just under 150 pages, I read this in almost one sitting. It's a super fast, engaging story but probably not one I'd be running out to finish any time soon. It was good, don't get me wrong... but not omg I have to get my hands on the rest of the books right this second good.

I know it's been made into a tv series, so maybe I'll just kick back and watch that instead?

The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer 

( I finished Annihilation last month so that one isn't part of my count, I promise!)

I am finally getting around to the 4th book in the Southern Reach Trilogy (erm, tetralogy), one of my all time favorite series ever!

In anticipation of listening to Absolution, I re-listened to the previous books and enjoyed being pulled back into Area X, which I haven't revisited as a whole since I first read them back in 2014.

Funny discovery - my memory is absolute shit because while listening to Annihilation, I realized I had mixed up some parts of the movie (which I didn't love) with the first book.

I typically do not reread books that I love because I'm terrified that I won't like it as much the second time around but that was so not the case here. I still loved it just as much and also caught some connections I had missed during the first go-around.

Overall a great re-read experience and I cannot wait to see where Absolution takes us!

I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness by Irene Sola

Oh boy I have been waiting for a review copy of this one for a while. It sounded so good I just couldn't wait to get it into my hands. No lingering in the TBR pile for this one. No sirree!

IGYEaYLTD focuses on an old woman who lies dying in her bed. Her family and caretakers stroll in and out of her bedroom while she slips in and out of sleep. She knows she will die this way, she has seen it, as she has foreseen the deaths of so many others. Downstairs, the spirits of the women who passed on before her are gathered. Laughing, cooking, waiting, preparing to welcome her.

Her family's story is a dark one, a haunted one, one that is cursed by a pact with the Devil himself. One where children are born with something missing. Where the men are tricked, are disappeared, are murdered. Where mirrors contain alternative worlds. And where none of the women can ever escape their fates.

It's part fever dream, part fairy tale, part hallucination, perhaps even part generational testimony. It's simultaneously mysterious and dizzying and captivating and revelatory. This was not an easy read. I am not even sure I fully understand what I read. But it was beautiful and disquieting and dark and somewhat depraved.

For fans of stories where the past haunts you like a mother fucker and you feel like nothing makes sense and yet everything makes sense, who like books like Hurricane Season, A Carnival of Atrocities, Let Gravity Seize the Dead, and In the Valley of the Headless Men... you should make sure this one is on your to-buy list.

The Glass Garden by Jessica Levai

This book arrived as a total surprise on my doorstep from the publisher and it sounded right up my alley - a space novelette in which a group of salvagers discover a strange and beautiful anomaly in a cave on a deserted planet. It looks like a stained glass work of art, with intricate vines, flowers, and insects depicted over a bioluminescent wall. Lissy, the crew's captain, believes this will make them all rich and feels pressured to move quickly on disassembling it. Her sister, an anthropologist, wants them to take their time with this, to learn as much as possible about the planet, the wildlife, and this terrifyingly wonderful find.

As the book progresses, the 'garden' wall seems to call to some of the crew while the others are determined to understand what happened to the previous settlers, who seem to have simply vanished into thin air. The more they explore, the more questions they have. There are no signs of a rushed evacuation, and yet no bodies.

It's creepy and atmospheric and definitely has that claustrophobic feel that's basically a requirement for this type of fiction. It's a quick and unique read with none of the clunky techy sci-fi terms and all of the anticipation and anxiety that comes with being out of your element on extraterrestrial soil.

My only complaint... it felt a little too rushed at the end. And no wonder, with it clocking in just over 130 pages.

The Emissary by Yoko Tawada

I picked this one up on a whim because it sounded so interesting. Listen - in the near future, Japan has been isolated from the rest of the world due to an awful environmental catastrophe. Its citizens are aging differently - children are born weak and ill and their health only gets worse as they get older while the elderly aren't dying and are now the ones who are physically capable and able. Some are also known to spontaneously change gender. Animals have gone extinct, fresh fruit and vegetables are hard to come by because of the corrupted soil, and most old world terms and habits are now forbidden.

Ultimately, this is the story of Mumei and his great-grandfather Yoshiro and the ways in which they rely on one another, and worry over each other, as the situation they've found themselves in is slowly reveled to us.

Mostly told from the past, as we move deeper into this short novel, the narrative does bounce between the main characters a bit and also weaves forward and backward in time. While it wasn't necessarily distracting, it wasn't always clearly separated and strangled the flow slightly.

Did I like it? Yes. Was I crazy about it? Not as much as I had hoped I would be. It was a slow, enjoyable read that's quite tender and the writing is striking. It's bleak yet hopeful.

The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling

Protect your fingers and your ears my friends, as you attempt to survive the horrific bliss that befalls the starving masses who hide within the walls of the Aymar Castle during a six month long siege. In the moment before the last of the food finally runs out, four saintly beings appear, offering relief in the form of a fabulous feast - glistening dripping meats, the freshest juiciest fruits.

The King and his servants are immediately enthralled and welcome them with open arms. But our three protagonists - Phosyne, an ex-nun with a habit of performing minor miracles; Ser Voyne, one of the King's most loyal knights; and Treila, a serving girl with a taste for revenge - are not so easily fooled. They know this is too good to be true and band together in an attempt to banish the angelic creatures from the castle and restore what little control they might.

As bizarre as it is beautiful, this book is brimming with cannibalism, self mutilation, dark entities, and honey bees. Yes, you heard me right... honey bees. What starts off slowly soon becomes a fascinating deep sea dive into the divine, the devout, the devious, and the delirious.

Once it gets going, you're basically putty in Starling's hands.

Now I'm itching for some more medieval and religious horror. I've got Lauren Groff's Matrix, and Christopher Buehlman's Between Two Fires in the tbr pile and I can hear them calling to me rather loudly right now....

The Weepers by Peter Mendelsund

A group for criers for hire. Professional weepers. To attend your funerals and turn on the waterworks. To fill the seats and set the mood.

"I am a weeper as soon as I awake until the moment I sleep".

Weepers puts a unique spin on grief fiction. Ed and his fellow co-workers willingly attend funerals, immersing themselves in the act of grieving for a few bucks a day. It's their day job, stuffing themselves into grief-wear like we stuff ourselves into corporate-wear. They sit in front of a casket like we sit in front of a computer screen. They ball their eyes out in public like we ball ours out in the privacy of the restroom stalls.

To the others' chagrin, Ed befriends the 'kid', a newbie who starts showing up in the mornings at the lot where they wait for Reg to call their names and assign them their gigs. The kid is practically mute, giving up one word answers when pushed to interact, and Ed becomes overly protective of him when the group of them begin to realize that, while he appears to be effective at the whole Weepers thing, he himself has yet to shed an actual tear. Which, like, defeats the whole purpose of the gig, right?

Oh man, I loved the narrator's voice. This self fancied cowboy with his famous mustache and his middling poetry. This overthinker. This friend till the end.

And while I enjoyed this book overall, I wished it had spent more time focused on the actual Weepers, and less directly on the kid and his weird behaviors and Ed's obsession with him, because it felt at times like the Weeper storyline seemed to get put onto the back burner, which is a shame because, while yes, I see now how it was necessary to move things forward, I really liked the concept of the Weepers and the strange jobs they made a living at.

Dark, comedic, and yes, even a little gosh darn depressing, Weepers shines a light on the weirdness of death and the fear of being remembered by a horribly forgettable epitaph. It's about giving it your all when all you have to give is a good cry.

Strangers by David Moody

Oh hell yeah!

It's been such a long time since I've read something by David and Strangers is such a cool departure from his post apocalyptic worlds... and I'm so here for it!

The Griffiths, in an attempt to escape a past that continues to haunt them, move out to a small Scottish town and soon discover the people there are not especially welcoming of strangers. And no wonder. Shortly after they arrive, people start dying. And not the sweetly passing away in their bed kind of dying. Nope. We're talking brutally mutilated, their genitals an absolutely bloody horrorshow.

Initially the local police are on the hunt for a serial killer, and there are quite a few obvious suspects. But each time they think they've got a pulse on it, another body is found. Men and women both. Are any of the residents of Thussock safe? And what if they've got it all wrong... what if the town is being preyed upon by someTHING instead of a someONE?

It's dark and a little twisted, with a fun campy horror vibe, only not as in your face. There's also the whole bored teenaged kids getting up to no good, typical creepo dudes and the women who love and defend them that you'd come to expect in a small town novel like this one. Each of the characters are bound to stir up some feelings in you. They are all far from perfect, and none are what you would peg as an immediate hero of the story, which ends up tricking you into paying more attention to the What rather than the Who, if that makes sense?

I think this would make a kick ass movie! Don't snooze on this one, you guys. Oh and don't sleep on that short story at the end!

Dark Matter, a Ghost Story by Michelle Paver

This has been on my radar for a long time and I just purchased it as an ebook for a couple of bucks yesterday. I couldn't wait to dive in. Haunted remote snowy landscapes? Yessiree, sign me up!!

Dark Matter brings to mind books like Stranded by Bracken MacLeod, Road of Bones by Christopher Golden, and All The White Spaces by Ally Wilkes, in which the frozen landscape, bone aching cold, and forced isolation alone sets you up for a creepy and atmospheric read, regardless of what the rest of the story is about.

But the fact that this one also involves a terribly haunted corner of the Arctic Circle... yup... I'm all in!

A group of three young men plan to overwinter on the remote bay of Gruhuken in the hopes of collecting data on the weather patterns and geological anomalies of the area. As they break down the remains of old abandoned shacks to build a cabin of their own, they discover all sorts of rusted tools and bones. Jack immediately feels uneasy, and starts to believe they might not be alone. The fact that they are about to enter into four months of pure night does nothing to help relieve the pervasive sense of dread, either. And when one of the guys suddenly becomes gravely ill, leaving Jack temporarily alone with whatever it is that's out there... he's not so sure it's as harmless as he's been trying to convince himself it is.

A quick and creepy read that sets the tone early and just keeps fanning those fear flames page after unsettling page. There's a subtle intensity here and more than enough tension to get those anxious nerves rattling as the darkness pushes in.

The Rotting Room by Viggy Parr Hampton

Religious horror for the win! And it comes with an unreliable narrator, too? Yes please, bring it on!

I snagged this bad boy on kindle for less than 3 bucks, which is a steal for a new release, but I would happily have spent full price on the print copy because this book was fire.

It follows Sister Rafaela as she attempts to settle in with the Sisters of the Divine Innocence. Rafaela, who has recently transferred from a disbanded Sisterhood, comes carrying some baggage, and is looking forward to a fresh start. That is, until an unexpected visitor knocks on the secluded abbey's door. She is unwell, coughing up blood, and doesn't make it through the night. Her arrival had Rafaela already feeling extremely unsettled, but when Mother Superior has the body placed into the Chamber of Divine Decomposition, a dark reeking place where the Sisters carefully collect the fluids that drip from the rotting corpses of their deceased, Rafaela begins to slowly lose her shit. And when they all notice that the body of the stranger fails to decompose like the others, and they begin to make claims of miracles and sainthood, everything Rafaela believes in comes into question.

We find ourselves questioning everything too, girl. We do too!

It was incredibly atmospheric and unsettling, and oh so fucked up. Themes of isolation, corruption, and past trauma perfectly drive the narrative forward and crank up the sense of dread.

I absolutely loved this book.

We Who Hunt Alexanders by Jason Sanford

I received this from the publisher and while it's not something I think I would have picked up on my own, I decided to give it a read because I'm being more intentional with knocking out the arcs I have and saw no reason to slow that roll right now.

It's a quick read for two reasons: (1) it's barely over 100 pages and (2) it's all surface, no substance.

Ultimately, it's monster vs man but with a monster we've never encountered before. Oh, and there's a little monster-rom com sprinkled in there too, I guess, for funsies.

Basically, the girl is a monster who can pass as human but with magic powers and millions of teeth who, by nature and necessity, is compelled to devour men of violence, which they dub Alexanders. Her ill and aging mom teaches her to hunt so she can be self sufficient. On their first hunt together, girl and mom kill a guy who beats his family, then wipes the wife and son's memories and charms them into letting them crash at their place. The girl and the son hit it off, bff style, reading penny dreadful books in his mom's shop while her mom sleeps off the hunt and heals, because hunting and using magic drains you, and soon the girl decides she has to hunt on her own to allow her mom to conserve her energy, and to bring back the bad guys she kills so her mom can eat, because eating Alexanders replenishes their powers and strength.

Meanwhile, a bad priest and even badder cop are aware that these monsters exist and are keeping an eye out for them, and while trying to avoid being caught by them but still needing to prowl the town for Alexanders to eat, the girl befriends another of her kind, and then all kinds of hell breaks loose.

I'm making it sound more exciting and interesting than it really was. The writing wasn't doing it for me and the whole thing was just kind of meh. The characters are flat as pancakes and so is the world they are navigating. I nearly DNFd it a few pages in but stuck with it because it wasn't like it was a huge time commitment. That sounds horrible doesn't it? But you guuuuuuys, DNFing is so haaaaard!

Father of Lies by Brian Evenson

It's been a while since I've read me some Evenson and I felt the itch, so I pulled this one down off the shelf. I bought it back in 2017 so about damn time too, lol.

A human monster hides within these pages.

Good lord. He does it again, doesn't he?!

Depraved, disgusting, dark and twisted. A man with absolutely no remorse, and who is mightily f'd up in the head, preys on the children in his congregation under the guise of God and cleansing away their sins. It's everything you worry about and handled exactly how you'd imagine... which is where Evenson's brilliance lies. He takes our everyday fears and makes them a horrific reality.

Q: What's your favorite Evenson? My first will always be my favorite... Immobility is simply untoppable in my opinion.

Absolution by Jeff Vandermeer

Good lord, what a way to wrap up The Southern Reach and Area X!

Absolution is set 20 years before Area X, where a group of scientists are tracking alligators out at the Forgotten Coast, a place already on Central's radar for its strange activity. The scientists come into contact with a slew of white rabbits manically munching on crabs in a mud puddle who have strange cameras on their necks. (Are these the same rabbits from Authority, that ones that Whitby tells Control about, that The Southern Reach attempt to introduce into Area X and that just all disappeared into thin air when they hit the border?! WTF?!) And the movies the cameras play change with each viewing, showing people doing things they've never done. And what's with all the electronics being weird in the first place?

Then we're pushed forward 18 months before the border comes down around Area X, following Old Jim around as we uncover his backstory with Central and learn why he's kicking around the Forgotten Coast (if you recall from an earlier book in the trilogy, he was a short referenced bartending side character). And we encounter a shadowed, mysterious figure referred to as The Rogue who intends Old Jim and his partner some real harm.

And then we're standing at the frontlines of Area X as the first expedition crosses through the border and lose their ever loving minds (and yes, some of them lose their lives too) as they wade knee deep into the cosmic terrors that have made that land home. We stick closely to the very drugged and very obnoxious Lowry, too close if you ask me, whose Tourette's tick of saying FUCK every other god damned word, if I'm being honest, nearly caused me to DNF the audio because omg how many times can I listen to Bronson Pinchot say that fucking word, fuckety fuck fuck Ffff Ffffft Ffffffft Fffffuuuuuuuck.

So does Absolution answer some questions? Yes, I believe it does. I feel like I have a better understanding of Area X, slightly. Kind of. and yet does it also leave us asking more than we had before? Yes, yes 100 million times yes. But was it worth it, you ask? Oh hell to the yes, you guys!