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Book: “Oubliette” by L.V. Russell

Publishing Info: Quill & Crow Publishing, October 2026

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley

Where You Can Get This Book: Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: Rue knows only bloodshed, longing, and isolation. Born into ancient wealth on the Cornish coast, Rue grows up in the crumbling Folkehaven Manor, steeped in rot and haunted by the dead. Twisted specters trail through the halls, the lords and ladies of high society Rue delivered to her mother. For her mother is hungry for attention…and for flesh. During one blood-soaked feast, Rue is drawn to Oren Pengelly, a quiet gentleman whose sister’s betrothed is consumed. Oren sees past Rue’s sins, beyond all the horrors, and sees someone deserving of love. But Rue struggles to leave her mother, for who will keep her fed?

With blood beneath her nails, and a soul darkening by the day, Rue wonders if there might be something more than violence and decay. Something more than hunger… Or if perhaps hunger is all she was ever made for.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

We are starting to wrap up my Horrorpalooza celebration. October always goes so fast, and I am pleased with the varied books that I was able to tackle this time around. I am once again talking about vampires (ish? I feel like perhaps it could be a ghoul tale), one of my favorite sub-genres of horror, and “Oubliette” by L.V. Russell is on the opposite end of the spectrum that my last vampire read. Instead of a dark academia vampire romance, we are now into Gothic territory, with a dilapidated mansion, a Victorian time setting, and a vampire mother who keeps her daughter close, no matter how much the daugther wants to leave. It had great promise, and for the most part it delivered.

I do love a Gothic horror novel, just as I like complex stories about mothers and daughters no matter what the genre, and “Oubliette” combines the two into a vampire/ghoul story as well as a mother daughter tale where the child craves independence while the parent wants to hold on. Rue is a young woman who feels tethered to her vampire mother Sylvatica, and feels like she cannot leave her behind even though she would love to go live a life for herself and away from the rotting home, as well as the rotting parent. Sylvatica’s appetites and gory and gross, going above and beyond the usual ‘vampires drink blood’ and entering into straight up consuming flesh territory in ways that made my stomach turn, though it never got too be too much as I read. It had the right amount of gross horror without being distracting. We also get another well crafted metaphor of vampires feeding off of people in ways that go beyond just blood to sustain their life, as Sylvatica manipulates and guilts her daughter, feeding off of her innocence and her need to be devoted to her mother, no matter how monstrous she can be, because of the need to feel that maternal love from her. I was less convinced of Rue’s burgeoning relationships with the outside world, whether it was a romance with a young upper class named Oren or a friendship with his sister Anne. In Oren’s case especially it felt a bit rushed and like instalove. I suppose it could have been a commentary about how desperate Rue is to get away, latching onto the first thing that seems like an out, but if that was the intent it wasn’t as clear as I would have liked.

But I also appreciated that we did get some flashback backstory to Sylvatica’s past, from her birth to her childhood and young adulthood to her eventual descent into being a monster. I almost enjoyed her chapters more, watching as she went from powerless peasant girl, with no support at home, on a failing farm, so desperate and lonely, to something terrifying, was really gratifying to read. It doesn’t excuse who she becomes and the kind of mother she is to Rue, her insatiable hunger and refusal to let her child go for her own ends always terrible and tragic. It would have been easy to just see the thing she had become and the violence that she left behind, be it the physical of the people she eats (no matter how some may have deserved it), or the emotional of the daughter she refuses to let go of. It made Sylvatica far more well rounded than I expected and I liked it.

“Oubliette” was a spooky and sometimes heavy tale about independence and codependence, and I liked the complexities of it all, even if there could have been more branching out in other areas beyond the mother and daughter relationship. Overall, it was a good read.

Rating 7: A dark and ultimately bittersweet story about toxic parent child relationships and trying to break free from an abusive cycle.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Oubliette” isn’t on any Goodreads lists as of now, but if you enjoyed “Night’s Edge” by Liz Kerin, this would probably be a good fit.

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Book: “Our Cut of Salt” by Deena Helm

Publishing Info: Tor Nightfire, September 2026

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: There is something haunting Nuhad’s childhood home in Haifa. Cats avoid its perimeter, strange noises come from within, and residents have mysteriously vanished without a trace. Although Nuhad has not returned to her home since the Nakba in 1948, she always held a place for the house in her heart.

And, in return, the house did the same for her.

After Nuhad passes away, her granddaughter, Marina, is determined to visit her grandmother’s home after a lifetime of being kept in the dark about her culture and family history. Marina’s mother, Haifa – named for the city that was lost to their family – reluctantly agrees to her trip, though she knows firsthand that some secrets are better left buried.

But the house is no longer a home. It is a painful, festering wound that infects everything it touches. The more Marina digs into her family’s past, the sicker she becomes. Despite Nuhad’s ghostly warnings, Haifa rushes to help her daughter.

As the three women converge in their ancestral home, they must put the haunting to rest before the secrets of the past drown them all.

Review: Thank you to Tor Nightfire for sending me an eARC of this novel via NetGalley!

I always find it funny when people have a knee jerk reaction to horror as a genre that is only there to upset and terrify people in a bad way. I grew up in a household where I was the only horror fan, and I definitely had comments from my parents about why I wanted to watch or read this kind of stuff that is so upsetting and, at times, tasteless (my poor mother, having to go up to the Blockbuster counter to rent YET ANOTHER slasher movie gore fest for her teenage Goth daughter). But I find horror to be a genre that has a capacity for so much empathy and connection, and whenever I read a book like “Our Cut of Salt” by Deena Helm I think of the way the genre can be written off when it can have SO MUCH TO SAY.

This is a haunted house story, but it is moreso a family saga involving three generations of Palestinian women who have dealt with immense trauma and grief, starting with the Nakba in 1948 and up to 2002 (the time this book is set). Marina feels disconnected from her Palestinian heritage, living in Chicago with her mother Haifa and wanting to understand her history, and decides to return to the family home in Haifa (it can be hard to keep track with a place and a character sharing a name, just be warned), which has been long lost to the family after her grandmother Nuhad and her family were driven out by Israeli occupation. Haifa doesn’t want Marina to go back, but she does, and discovers a brutal past and a house that seems to be alive, enraged, and hungry. We have multiple perspectives, jumping from Nuhad’s time during the Nakba, to Haifa’s strained relationship with her traumatized mother, to Marina’s return to a homeland that is now overtaken with hostile colonial violence targeted at her people. The historical and social aspects of this book are brutal and incredibly emotional, and while it is set almost twenty five years ago it is a really stark reminder that this violence in Palestine didn’t begin three years ago, and that the occupation has a long and terrible history. It’s a very difficult read at times, but it’s also an important one, and it is once again a horror story that taps into very real horrors and brings out despair and empathy on a deep and visceral level.

In terms of the haunted house bits, I think what I found most creative about this book was that not only do we see perspectives of our three generations of women, but also from the house itself. The house is angry and hungry, feeding upon settlers who attempt to make claim, and waits for its rightful owners to return, unwilling to allow anyone else inside for long. I liked having the house’s perspective a lot, as that is what kept the straight up paranormal horror afloat in a book that could have been enveloped fully by a family saga and real life horrors. This horror choice really worked for me. And the real life horrors, as mentioned above, really make this book the horrifying story that it sets out to be, and Helm doesn’t hold back. Be warned, this doesn’t take place during the current violence, but it goes to show that it has been happening a VERY long time.

I will say that I did have one criticism of this book, and it’s a criticism that I always need to address whenever it comes up in anything I’m reading, and that is the idea of relying too much of telling versus showing. This book has a very passionate and emotionally charged core (understandably so), and in a horror novel that has a lot of metaphors that it wants to convey, there is a trap that can be fallen into of over-explaining the metaphors and broader messages. This book has a lot of that, with a lot of repeated emphasis on what the reader is supposed to be getting from the metaphors or symbolism at hand, and any time we got an over-explanation it really stood out. The messages are important and I don’t even disagree with them and I understand what is being said, but it felt like there wasn’t enough trust in the reader to understand when I think that the messages and themes were powerful enough to stand on their own two feet, as it were.

But outside of that last criticism, I found “Our Cut of Salt” to be deeply emotional and very timely, a family saga with some real and metaphorical hauntings. Recommended for sure.

Rating 8: Timely, haunting, and filled to the brim with grief, “Our Cut of Salt” is about occupation, family, displacement, and home.

Reader’s Advisory

“Our Cut of Salt” is included on the Goodreads lists “2026 Gothic”, and “SWANA Fiction Books – 2026”.