What I read in August

 

Here's what I read in July.  Ten books total. Of those,  three were 5 star reads,  four were 4 star reads,  one was 3 stars, and two were 2 stars. A pretty strong month,  comparatively.

Seven of them were review copies. Two were audio. Three were print.  The longest book was 400 pages.  The shortest was 176 pages. A total of 2676 pages read. 

Last Day of a Prior Life by Andres Barba

5 stars. Last Day of a Prior Life is a ghost story that might not be a ghost story, but one that will absolutely steal your heart.

Our unnamed narrator is prepping a house she’s trying to sell, moving through the familiar motions of cleaning and staging, when she turns from the sink and sees a boy sitting perfectly still in one of the kitchen chairs. She asks him what he wants, and when he doesn't respond, tells him he can’t be there, that people are coming, and he simply stands up and walks away. A quick search of the house reveals nothing. No boy. Not a trace. Just a lingering sense of unease and curiosity.

She moves through the showing in a kind of waking dream, unable to shake the encounter. She doesn’t tell her The Man She Lives With. She doesn’t tell anyone. Instead, she cancels her appointments the next day and returns to the house, pulled by a strange, quiet desire to see the boy again.

But what she finds is even stranger. A reflection of herself at the sink, turning, reacting to the boy exactly as she did the day before. The cringey moment replaying itself without her permission.

From here, the story slides beautifully into that eerie space where reality thins as she begins to slowly detach from herself and chases the strangeness of the house and the boy who haunts it. It's less about the supernatural and more about the parts of our lives we abandon, neglect, or refuse to face.

This is a captivating, dreamlike meditation on obsession, grief, and the inescapable regret that follows as a consequence of the choices we make. It’s tender and unsettling.

I went in with zero expectations and found myself completely enraptured. If this isn’t on your radar, consider yourself officially on notice.

Summer Fun Masscare by Craig DiLouie

Brought this book with me while vacationing in a cabin in the Smoky Mountains bc I anticipated it would be the perfect horror companion, expecting a full on slasher, dripping with campy ’90s nostalgia and enough bloodshed to make a VHS horror fan grin. Unfortunately, that’s not what this book delivers.

We get maaaaybe five minutes of gory goodness before the story pivots hard into a tongue and cheek police‑procedural. From there, it’s nearly 200 pages of following the local deputies as they try and repeatedly fail to solve the case before it goes cold… just like the eerily similar massacre from the early ’80s. And the one before that. And the one before that. Because this town has a long, strange history of bodies piling up in the same patch of woods, stretching back to the ’60s.

Local legend blames a hare‑masked creature that burrows underground and rises every so often to feast on human flesh. Deputy Tom, however, is convinced the truth is far more human ... and far more personal. With ties to the ’83 killings and this fresh massacre happening practically under his nose, he’s determined not to let the killer slip away again.

I’ve yet to find anything by DiLouie that hits the same unforgettable high as Suffer the Children, though I keep hoping. I really thought Summer Fun Massacre might be the one ... but nope. It’s not a bad book, just not the book I was expecting. Instead of a slasherfest, we get the behind‑the‑scenes politics of small‑town policing and the slow grind of an investigation that may never find its monster.

If you’re looking for a procedural with a horror edge, this might work for you. But if you’re craving a blood‑splattered slasher romp? Adjust your expectations accordingly. Sigh.

Marla by Jonathan Janz

I picked up Marla right after finishing Craig DiLouie’s Summer Fun Massacre, not realizing I was about to tumble into another horror novel obsessed with small‑town police politics. A weird coincidence for vacation reading... almost as if the universe decided I needed a double feature of local cops losing their minds.

But Marla did something different. Beneath the procedural surface, this is straight‑up grief horror. It's packed with small‑town secrets, a string of bizarre deaths that make zero sense, a community that seems to know more than it’s willing to say, and a mother–daughter duo who radiate unease from the moment they appear on the page, with Marla herself becoming a person of interest when she's spotted right before or right after someone dies. Meanwhile Carl, our main guy and local cop, is perpetually one step behind every death, which only makes the whole thing feel more frustrating and cursed.

I’d actually marked Marla as a to‑buy title years ago after seeing people rave about it, not realizing it was a limited release. Trying to track down a copy was fruitless, so when it popped up on NetGalley, I wasted no time in requesting it. And honestly? I found it to be worth the wait.

This was my first Jonathan Janz novel, and it won’t be my last. His writing is super accessible, and quietly unsettling in that creepy WTF way that keeps you glued to your Kindle screen. It's more psychological than splatter, where the atmosphere is thick and the emotional undercurrent of grief, guilt, and the way loss distorts our perception, gives the story a bit more weight than I had expected.

Marla isn’t just another small‑town horror procedural. It’s stranger, sadder, and more haunting than that... and it's left me wanting to dig deeper into Janz’s backlist.

Meat Bees by Dane Erbach

Serendipity and I? Besties. I swear, half the books I pick up at random end up weirdly connected, like they’re conspiring behind my back. My last two reads both dove into small‑town police politics and the absolute clown‑show attempts of local cops trying to handle supernatural chaos.

Then Meat Bees waltzed in with the same vibe. And here’s where it gets freaky. My husband, our son, and our daughter‑in‑law had just come home from a trip to the Smoky Mountains. And not just the Smokies — the Tennessee side. And not just the Tennessee side — but a tiny town right outside Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, where this book goes completely off the rails. Dolly Parton Stampede? Drove right past it because we opted for the Pirate dinner show instead. Mountain coasters? Planned, but the weather said “lol no.” Souvenir shops full of Dolly merch and chaotic tourist tchotchkes? We lived in those and are 100% guilty of leaving with arms full of fun merch.

So tell me — what are the chances of picking up a book set in the exact place I just visited for the first time ever? I love when the universe aligns like that. It feels intentional, like life is unfolding on a track you’re meant to follow.

Erbach wrote this after their own Smokies trip, when their kids got attacked by wasps. Thankfully, we avoided that nightmare. Aside from some aggressively hungry nighttime mosquitos, nature pretty much minded her own business. And thank god, because if I had stumbled across skeletonized bodies or heard the mountain whisper “leave now,” girl… I would’ve sprinted. I am not built for wilderness horror. Scarlet, Liz, and their Stovetop Outfitters co-workers? Bless them. I would not have made it.

Hard pass.

Four solid stars. The writing is sharp, the pacing is wild, and the story barrels forward like a zipline you can’t get off. There's some gore here but not the kind that would make anyone vomit in their mouth or get that weird fuzzy feeling behind thier knees. And good lord, I tore through it all because I had to know how it all wrapped up.

The Burn Line by Jonathan Sims

Damn, this book had me by the throat.

Sims plunges you straight into the dark, claustrophobic labyrinth of the London Underground, where something is stalking commuters on the Central Line... yet no one remembers a thing. Five strangers wake without having realized they dozed off, full of anxiety they can’t explain, faintly smelling something sweet and rotten, brushing greasy ash off their clothes like it’s no big deal, but also realizing they’ve all experienced the same thing.

As they gravitate toward one another and begin unlocking the memories that were taken from them, the novel tightens like a noose. And once they start remembering? Oh, they regret it immediately.

Sims excels at atmosphere — the claustrophobia, the tension, the sense of being hunted. The book toys with you, unsettling you in all the right ways. But when the creature finally steps into full view, the reveal is simultaneoulsy satisfying and disappointing, shifting the story from something uniquely eerie into something a little more cliche. The pacing mirrors this - slow, deliberate dread that give way to bursts of frantic momentum.

Even still, The Burn Line remains an engrossing, grimy journey through the London Underground and the social machinery grinding beneath it. Imperfect, yes but undeniably compelling. Even so, I tore through it. It’s creepy, it’s weird, it’s sweaty in that summer‑subway kind of way. A perfect pick for a gross, humid afternoon when you already feel like something is breathing down your neck.

Tapeworm by AP Thayer

FFS, you guys. Two pseudo‑vampire wannabe novels back‑to‑back, completely by accident. I started The Burn Line right as I queued up Tapeworm for my commute, and somehow I ended up in the exact same situation twice: books insisting their weird little creatures were vampires when they were very clearly… not. The synchronicity was almost unsettling and this one was just...sigh.

This book was weird, the sex was icky, and I still have no clue if those things were supposed to be vampires or just desert parasites with a superiority complex.

The opening drags — we’re stuck with a miserable couple on a desert vacation with their equally miserable couple‑friends. Fast‑forward a year: same trip, except now the husband shows up solo and refuses to talk about the split. Then he meets a hot desert girl and immediately loses all brain cells.

Nothing actually happens until the last 2.3 hours — which I listened to at 1.9x speed because the narrator read so slowwwww — and then suddenly it’s chaos. Are they vampires? Parasites? Worm‑people? I finished the book and still couldn’t tell you.

And the sex scenes. LORD. I am not built for “daddy do me dirty” desert kink. These scenes were physically painful to endure. I have yet to encounter a monster‑spice moment that isn’t cringe, and this book doubled down.

In the end, Tapeworm is a strange, uneven novel that left me more perplexed than satisfied. Entirely too horny, completely confusing, and absolutely not the vampire book it thinks it is.

Our Cut of Salt by Deena Helm

Our Cut of Salt is presented as a haunted house novel, but what it really offers is a multigenerational family narrative with a light supernatural undertone. The pacing is slow, the prose more clunky than not, and the ghostly elements feel symbolic rather than frightening — with nearly all the actual “haunting” crammed into the final few pages.

The premise had real potential - a house shaped by grief, resisting new occupants, waiting for the return of those it lost. It’s evocative, even cinematic at times. But the novel devotes most of its energy to the inner lives and hidden traumas of three generations of women, leaving the haunting underdeveloped and rushed.

It’s not a bad story — just not the one I signed up for. If this had been marketed as a generational narrative with a haunting twist, I’d have been less disappointed. And if it had leaned harder into the “rage house” concept, it could’ve been something wild and memorable.

I came for the angry house. What I got instead was a family epic with a ghostly garnish.

Jaws by Peter Benchley

It's about time I read this, right?! Born in the 70's, I grew up on the Jaws films, but I'm honestly not sure I would have ever picked up the book if I hadn't seen it on sale on Chirp.

The narration wasn't horrible. Erik Steele has a weird, slightly transatlantic accent, unless he's softening up a Lawng Island accent but it's defintely not the New Yawk accent I grew up with. His women voices were a little cringe and some of his male characters sounded a little too similar to each other, but Benchley's writing had a tendency to overstate who was speaking so it was really easy to follow.

The writing has that very dated, very direct "why you listen here, you" flavor to it which was kind of refreshing, and there was tons of male posturing, which was quite entertaining - all of which lends itself really well to audio.

While the movie ruined beaches and ocean swimming for a lot of people, calling Jaws, the novel, horror... I dunno. The book definitely focused more heavily on the relationship between Brody and his wife, and the politics that drive a summer tourist town, than it did the actual people eating, blood spraying, terrifying, man eating shark. And when it did focus on the shark, it was kind of neat because we were given the shark's perspective... which I enjoyed. Sadly though, once Brody, Hooper, and Quint all hit the ocean together, it felt like Benchley chucked that approach into the water with the chum. Oh well.

And was the affair subplot really needed? A forever pet peeve of mine... authors throwing in cheating spouses, especially when it's not really doing much to drive the story forward and just creates an unnecessary distraction. Book Brody was angry and violent enough. Why anger him more by making his wife sleep with someone else while he's already fuming over the giant fish who keeps killing the tourists and the mayor who refuses to let him close the beaches?

I know it sounds like I'm bitching a lot but keep in mind, I'm comparing book to movie and you will almost never hear me say this because I'm firmly camp "the book is better" buuuuttt... not in this case.

If I just take the book at face value, it's a 4 star. I really enjoyed it. And I looked forward to hitting play on the app every time I got into the car soooo....

Maybe I'll take a peek and see if Benchley's other book is marked down on Chirp... to keep the fish vibes going a little longer!

The Instruction Manual to Being a Vampire by Craig Wallwork

Hold up. Just hold up one freakin’ minute. Truborn Press dropped an unexpected front‑runner for my favorite read of the year, and somehow you’re all sleeping on it. How is no one else reading this book yet? It’s flying under your radars and frankly, you should be ashamed.

The book opens with a woman strolling into a police station covered in blood, wearing a necklace made of severed fingers, calmly announcing she’s the witness to thirty‑three murders. That’s page one. From there, Wallwork hits the gas and never lets up.

As the investigation unravels, we learn our narrator narrowly escaped a late‑night attack thanks to an elderly vampire priest named Roth — the same priest who recently appeared at her grief counseling session, which she reluctantly attends after her father’s death in an attempt to find connection and eavesdrop on other's sufferings. After witnessing the brutal way he dispatches her attacker, she teams up with Roth to help him hunt the “bad blood” he needs in order to survive. Think Dexter, but swap the forensics for fangs. Both murderers with weird moral codes.

Wallwork shines a whole new light on the vampire genre and torches the tired damsel‑in‑distress narrative while he’s at it. Our leading lady is nobody’s victim. She goes toe‑to‑toe with anyone who has the balls to cross her path.

But here’s the kicker: beneath all the gore, the book digs deep into loneliness, grief, and the hollow ache of trying to keep living when life keeps taking. It’s as much about redemption as it is about revenge... a fist punching straight up through blood, bile, and despair. And just when you think you’ve got the whole thing figured out, Wallwork’s like… uh… no ya’ don’t.

This one’s a wild, bloody, unexpectedly tender standout... and absolutely a contender for my top reads of the year.

For fans of In The Valley of the Sun and Coffin Moon.

Last Days by Brian Evenson

This book had been sitting in my Kindle TBR for waaay too long, and landing a NetGalley copy of the sequel Phantom Limb, which is coming out in October, was exactly the shove I needed to bump Last Days straight to the tippy top of the pile.

I adore Brian Evenson. Not only does he write fiction like no one else, he’s genuinely one of the coolest humans walking around. He was incredibly generous with his time the few chances I had to meet him, and hosting him as a #SMOLfair keynote speaker was one of those pinch‑me moments I’ll never forget.

All that gushy admiration aside, I am kicking myself for waiting this long to read Last Days. This thing is a phenomenally fucked‑up masterpiece and gets every single star from me. Kline might be one of the calmest, most unhinged MCs I’ve ever encountered, and I am fully obsessed.

I wasn't feeling well yesterday and took a sick day from work, and devoured this book with every scrap of energy I could muster... and honestly, it was the perfect story to disappear into. I cannot wait to dive into Phantom Limb today and keep riding this Evenson high.