Category: Kate’s Reviews

Kate’s Review: “Night of the Living Queers”

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Book: “Night of the Living Queers” by Shelly Page & Alex Brown (Eds.)

Publishing Info: Wednesday Books, August 2023

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an ARC at ALAAC23.

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

Book Description: Night of the Living Queers is a YA horror anthology that explores a night when anything is possible exclusively featuring queer authors of color putting fresh spins on classic horror tropes and tales.

All Hallows’ Eve. Samhain. Dia De Los Muertos. Fiesta de Los Aguizotes. No matter its name or occasion, Halloween is more than a Hallmark holiday, it’s a symbol of transformation. NIGHT OF THE LIVING QUEERS is a YA horror anthology that explores how Halloween can be more than just candies and frights, but a night where anything is possible. Each short story will be told through the lens of a different BIPOC teen and the Halloween night that changes their lives forever. Creative, creepy, and queer, this collection will bring fresh terror, heart, and humor to young adult literature.

Contributors include editors Alex Brown and Shelly Page, Kalynn Bayron, Ryan Douglass, Sara Farizan, Maya Gittelman, Kosoko Jackson, Em Liu, Vanessa Montalban, Ayida Shonibar, Tara Sim, Trang Thanh Tran, and Rebecca Kim Wells.

Review: Thank you to Wednesday Books for giving me an ARC of this novel at ALAAC23 and to Alex Brown for signing it!

I am very much the kind of person who is like ‘It’s August? Halloween is going to be here soon!’. I love looking forward to my favorite holiday, and even though it’s still hotter than hell outside and people are still thinking of BBQs and the beach, I’m counting down the days until I can smell leaves and wood fire on the wind and seep up all the witchy spooky stuff of the season. So what better time to read “Night of the Living Queers”, a YA horror collection edited by Shelly Page and Alex Brown, which showcases 13 stories by and about queer BIPOC people? This was one of the books on a Children’s/YA Horror panel I went to at ALAAC23 this summer, and I was lucky enough to hear Alex Brown talk about it, which hyped me up to read it. And once I dove in, I could tell that the hype was real.

As usual, I will talk about my three favorite stories in the collection, and then take on the collection as a whole.

“The Visitor” by Kalynn Bayron: A girl wants to make sure that she is home with her father on Halloween night, as they have their rituals and traditions they do every year. After being tailgated home by a mysterious car, she starts to feel like someone is watching her as she and her Dad wait out the night. This one took a huge swerve in ways that I didn’t anticipate, and it was done in such a well crafted way that I was taken by surprise, and totally thrilled by it. The slow building paranoia of someone maybe lurking outside the house was tense and unsettling, and then the swerve was perfectly executed. That’s about all I can say about it, just know I was impressed and creeped out.

“Nine Stops” by Trang Thanh Tran: A girl who is still mourning her grandmother’s recent death has retreated into the Internet, isolating herself from her loved ones and friends. After going out with friends on Halloween night and taking the subway, she finds a video of a woman talking about her own sister’s death, and begging people to watch all the way through, with deadly consequences if not. I think this was my favorite in the collection, as the dread ratchets up and up until it’s basically unbearable. I also liked the exploration of grief and how it can consume a person, and drive them to do desperate and perhaps horrific things in hopes of finding closure. This one really got under my skin. And who doesn’t love an Internet urban legend as a jumping off point for a horror tale?

“Hey There, Demons” by Tara Sim: When a teenage boy is left to babysit his half sister on Halloween night, he decides that it’s time to take on the poltergeist activity that has been occurring in their new house. But when the way to help take out the ghost is by helping a demon, he finds himself in for more than be bargained for… but perhaps in a more romantic way than he thinks. I did like that there were some cute and fluffy stories in this collection to go with the scares, and I loved this one as we meet somewhat anxious Noah and sassy and snarky demon Kody (a name that he adapts for his adventure with a perplexed human teen). The mythos is solid, the banter is adorable, and I really loved seeing this odd pair take on a poltergeist, as well as a teenage party. Just a hoot!

And as an entire collection, I mostly enjoyed “Night of the Living Queers”! I liked the way that they tied the stories together, with all of them happening on the same Halloween night under a Blue Moon, and how they were still able to do their own thing while having that connection. While some of the stories kind of fell into horror tropes that I don’t really care for (so many surprise ‘and then the ending is totally changed in one moment!’ gotchas), I did think that there were enough sub genres and tones that there is something for horror fans of all kinds. It’s also awesome having so many BIPOC and queer authors writing these stories with these perspectives feeding into the stories. Horror is becoming more diverse, but we still have a ways to go, and this book has a lot of authors who are establishing themselves as valuable voices to the genre. You love to see it.

Halloween is coming up fast, and “Night of the Living Queers” is going to be a must read for the nearing spooky season! Definitely check it out for Hallow’s Eve reading!

Rating 8: A solid and spooky collection of horror stories of all kinds, “Night of the Living Queers” is a varied and entertaining read from some established and up and coming YA horror authors.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Night of the Living Queers” isn’t included on any Goodreads lists as of yet, but it would fit in on “Queer Horror”, and “Great Reads for Halloween”.

Kate’s Review: “Vampires of El Norte”

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Book: “Vampires of El Norte” by Isabel Cañas

Publishing Info: Berkley, August 2023

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

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

Book Description: Vampires and vaqueros face off on the Texas-Mexico border in this supernatural western from the author of The Hacienda.

As the daughter of a rancher in 1840s Mexico, Nena knows a thing or two about monsters—her home has long been threatened by tensions with Anglo settlers from the north. But something more sinister lurks near the ranch at night, something that drains men of their blood and leaves them for dead. Something that once attacked Nena nine years ago.

Believing Nena dead, Néstor has been on the run from his grief ever since, moving from ranch to ranch working as a vaquero. But no amount of drink can dispel the night terrors of sharp teeth; no woman can erase his childhood sweetheart from his mind.

When the United States attacks Mexico in 1846, the two are brought abruptly together on the road to war: Nena as a curandera, a healer striving to prove her worth to her father so that he does not marry her off to a stranger, and Néstor as a member of the auxiliary cavalry of ranchers and vaqueros. But the shock of their reunion—and Nena’s rage at Néstor for seemingly abandoning her long ago—is quickly overshadowed by the appearance of a nightmare made flesh. And unless Nena and Néstor work through their past and face the future together, neither will survive to see the dawn.

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

Given how much I loved “The Hacienda”, I was totally waiting on pins and needles to see what Isabel Cañas was going to do for a follow up to her Gothic ghost story debut. It’s probably no shocker that I was elated when I saw that her next book was going to be about vampires. She approached the haunted house story with such a unique and cool hook, I just knew that she would do the same with vampires.

Much like “The Hacienda”, the time and place of “Vampire of El Norte” makes for the perfect setting for this horror novel. Taking place in the 1840s during the Mexican-American War, where the U.S. started to invade Mexico in hopes of taking more land for itself. Our protagonists Nena and Néstor find themselves swept up in it, as Nena is the daughter of a powerful ranch owner and Néstor is a vaquero who has returned to the ranch after a long absence when Mexicans start to band together to fight against the Anglos. The societal structure of Nena and Néstor’s world is laid out plainly and shows conflict, as these childhood friends are on different footing, but both have reasons to feel confined and oppressed in their own ways. For Nena it is her fear that her father will marry her off like property as a daugther, and for Néstor it is his lower class standing, which makes their lingering attraction from childhood all the more forbidden. But even more so is the fact that white settlers from the U.S. and the United States Government are encroaching in an act of violent colonialism, and for Nena and Néstor their very survival could be at risk, with him on the front lines, her acting as a healing curandera to the soldiers and fighters, and both of them being Mexican citizens who could face violence at the hands of invaders. The horrors of colonialism have a significant part to play in this book, as does classism and misogyny and the traumas that come with both. I really liked Nena and Néstor as they start to reconnect, and how their admiration and attraction is approached in a way that feels realistic while still being wholly satisfying. I also loved them on their own, as Nena is ambitious and capable, while Néstor is sweet and loyal, and their chemistry is simmering off the pages.

And then there are the vampires. It’s the perfect allegor, using vampires against the backdrop of Imperialistic wars as outsiders want to leech off of the people who live on the land that they desire to approrpiate. And I liked the vampire mythos in this book, as they are very animalistic and very brutal, with some interesting systems at play in how vampires function and live within the storyline and world. I really enjoyed the dread that builds as various characters find themselves stalked and hunted by the vampires, sometimes in lonely and vast areas in nature where there is little hope of help and already high stakes due to the war that is raging around them. There were lots of moments that really tapped into the suspense, and I think that if there was one aspect of this book that I needed more from it would probably be that I needed more vampire action.

Once again, Isabel Cañas nails a historical horror story, and brings with it not only supernatural threats and villains, but villains that were very real. “Vampires of Il Norte” needs to be on horror fans book piles!

Rating 8: A suspenseful and engaging horror story about vampires and colonialism, “Vampire of El Norte” is another well done historical horror novel by Isabel Cañas.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Vampires of El Norte” is included on the Goodreads lists “Mexican Gothic”, and “Historical Fiction Set in Latin America”.

Kate’s Review: “Whalefall”

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Book: “Whalefall” by Daniel Kraus

Publishing Info: MTV Books, August 2023

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

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

Book Description: “Whalefall” is a scientifically accurate thriller about a scuba diver who’s been swallowed by an eighty-foot, sixty-ton sperm whale and has only one hour to escape before his oxygen runs out.

Jay Gardiner has given himself a fool’s errand—to find the remains of his deceased father in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Monastery Beach. He knows it’s a long shot, but Jay feels it’s the only way for him to lift the weight of guilt he has carried since his dad’s death by suicide the previous year.

The dive begins well enough, but the sudden appearance of a giant squid puts Jay in very real jeopardy, made infinitely worse by the arrival of a sperm whale looking to feed. Suddenly, Jay is caught in the squid’s tentacles and drawn into the whale’s mouth where he is pulled into the first of its four stomachs. He quickly realizes he has only one hour before his oxygen tanks run out—one hour to defeat his demons and escape the belly of a whale.

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

Sometimes a book will come across one’s path that just makes a reader say, ‘I’m sorry… WHAT?’ It could be a plot description, it could be the abruptness of the book making waves in a community, it could be an upended expectation from an author or a genre. As of late, this kind of book in my literary adventures was “Whalefall” by Daniel Kraus. I stumbled upon the book on Goodreads, and was familiar with Kraus due to previous works like “Scowler” and his collaboration on “The Shape of Water” with Guillermo del Toro. So when I saw that he had a new book in which a diver is SWALLOWED BY A SPERM WHALE AND HAS TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET OUT (I’m type shouting this because it is still astonishing to me), I knew that I had to, HAD to, get my hands on it (slight side track: At ALAAC in June I stopped by the publisher’s table hoping they had copies, but alas they did not, though I DID love their marketing in word of mouth given that the Oceangate disaster had just happened and they were like ‘have you been following that? Well you should keep an eye out for THIS book!’). NetGalley came through, and I sat down to read this book and it kept me so rapt with attention that I finished it in two sittings. This book is BANANAS, guys! Buckle up!

The whale did nothing wrong (source)

It probably comes as no surprise that “Whalefall” is a very engaging thriller, because a book about a man being swallowed by a whale almost has to be, but it’s the little things that make it so. The first is that Kraus really knows how to build the tension of the dive itself, with protagonist Jay going into a kind of rough area off the coast of California in hopes of finding the remains of his father Mitt, who committed suicide in the ocean after a grueling fight with mesothelioma. The ocean is already a bit tense, and it just builds until the initial encounter with the whale and aforementioned swallowing. Then the tension enters a whole new level as Jay has to figure out if he can make his way out before he either suffocates or is sent further into the digestive tract, where he would be slowly disintegrated. So obviously this is a race against time and it is so fraught and creative and the stakes are obviously very high. The claustrophobia and horror of being eaten is just so engaging and gripping, I found myself whipping through to see how he was (if he was?) going to get out of this mess! It’s “127 Hours” to an even more horrifying degree I think, and the best part is that Kraus does his due diligence to try and make it as accurate as possible, consulting experts and many books about whale anatomy and facts and so on and so forth. Which makes it all the more amazing and really kept me interested, given that I do love anything to do with the ocean and all the things that come with it.

But along with a relentless ‘time is running out’ thriller theme, we also get to explore a relationship and character study of a teenage boy who is still grappling with the death of his father, with whom he had a very complicated and fraught relationship. When we aren’t spending time inside a whale’s digestive tract, we are seeing snippets of the father and son dynamic between Jay and the now deceased Mitt, and how Mitt’s expectations and frustration with his son (which are probably more frustrations with his own life projected on a weaker target) damaged Jay to the point of estrangement. It’s a layer to the story that adds a whole other kind of tension, as Jay is trying to survive by tapping into the lessons his diver and sea obsessed father forced upon him, sometimes in ways that were hurtful and abusive. The complexities of this relationship, and the fact that Jay is on this dive in the first place because of his own guilt by going no contact not long before Mitt’s health decline and death, really make the story that much more intense. I found myself kind of frustrated with how Jay’s family was more interested in blaming Jay for the estrangement even though, at least to me, Mitt was the one responsible for the rift (so much emotional and sometimes physical abuse, content warnings abound in that regard), but I do think that Kraus was sure to show that there are a lot of gray areas within this kind of situation and the emotional states of the players at hand. It was an angle I wasn’t really expecting from a story about a guy TRAPPED INSIDE A WHALE, but it worked well.

There is also a bit of a personal angle to this book that connected with me, and that is the setting of Monterey, California. I have family in San Jose, and we would go out to visit them nearly every Spring Break when I was a kid. So the references to various things, like Monterey itself, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Point Lobos National Reserve, and Monastery Beach, really amped up the nostalgia for me. This area is one of my favorite places in the United States, and seeing Kraus bring it to life on the page was just lovely. It really brought me to the place, even though I haven’t been back in about ten years.

“Whalefall” would be the perfect thriller for any end of summer vacations or down time. It reads fast, it’s gripping as hell, and it goes places that upended all expectations I had. Definitely recommended!

Rating 8: Gripping, emotional, and absolutely bananas, “Whalefall” is a ride!

Reader’s Advisory:

“Whalefall” isn’t on any Goodreads lists yet, but it would probably fit in on “Best Wilderness Survival Books”.

Kate’s Review: “The Hurricane Blonde”


This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “The Hurricane Blonde” by Halley Sutton

Publishing Info: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, August 2023

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

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

Book Description: A former child starlet is plunged back into the dangerous glitter of Hollywood after discovering a young actress’s body in this scorching thriller about the deadly sides of both fame and family.

Hollywood is a sickness. Few people understand this better than Salma Lowe, progeny of Hollywood royalty and a former child-star turned guide of the Stars Six Feet Under tour bus. Salma spends her days leading tourists around the star-studded avenues of Hollywood, pointing out where actresses have met spectacular or untimely ends. Salma knows better than anyone that a tragic death is the surest path to stardom. Her own sister, Tawney, dubbed the “Hurricane Blonde” for her off-camera antics, was murdered in the mid-’90s, and the case remains unsolved. Salma herself has sworn off acting and just hopes to stay out of trouble…until a real dead body is discovered on her tour, on the property where her sister once lived.

Salma soon realizes something uncanny: it’s not just that this woman is dead at her sister’s address–she also looks just like her, and is wearing Tawney’s distinctive hair clip. When the police investigation goes nowhere, Salma has no choice but to plunge herself back into the world she left behind to search for her sister’s killer…who may have just struck again. But the search for the truth will take her deep into the rot of Hollywood past and present, into her family’s own long-buried and terrible secrets.

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

I can honestly say that the first thing about “The Hurricane Blonde” by Halley Sutton that really caught my attention was the cover. I mean, look at that cover! The unsettling neon pastiche framing an anonymous woman alone is very eye catching, but then reading about the plot of this book it just really clinched it. What says the flashy and attention seeking Hollywood culture more than bright colors and a gauche veneer and an unsettling undercurrent? I didn’t really know what to expect from “The Hurricane Blonde”, and while there were some things that didn’t necessarily reinvent the wheel, there were other things that really impressed me. And unsettled me.

In terms of the mystery side to this story, it’s fairly straight forward with some pretty familiar beats. Our protagonist Salma is trying to distance herself from the past traumas of her murdered up and coming starlet sister Tawney, as well as her addictions, her mental health spiral, and the way that all of that was so very public because of her status of being the daughter of Hollywood icons. When a woman is found dead on Tawney’s old property, and she looks just like Tawney did, Salma is suddenly determined to try and figure out how to prove that Tawney was murdered by her ex-fiancé, who is now a powerful director. The story is told in both the present as well as in flashbacks to the time right before and right after Tawney died, presenting clues and puzzle pieces as Salma pushes herself further and further into the dark truths of show business and the way it makes victims of ambitious young women and girls. I kind of figured out a few of the reveals pretty quickly, and Salma’s investigation was pretty much everything I expected it to be.

BUT, for the kind of easy to figure out solutions this mystery thriller has, its greatest strength is the way that it absolutely calls out the toxicity of Hollywood culture in regards to the way it treats the young women who aspire to rise to stardom. And how even in death they can continue to be exploited and dehumanized. We not only have the disturbing and tragedy filled lives of Tawney and Salma, the daughters of Hollywood royalty who ended up dead or in a severely damaging addiction spiral (respectively), but we also see the ways that other women in the story within the industry have had to contend with misogyny, abuse, racism, and how the public makes a spectacle out of very real pain. This books pulls no punches whatsoever, going to dark places with some very disturbing moments and reveals. It really pulls apart Hollywood not only within the story, but also in real life, making mention of other young women whose pain and tragedies are either still spoken of as lore (like Dorothy Stratten, or Dominique Dunne, or the Black Dahlia) or have been revealed many years after the fact (like Loretta Young being raped by Clark Gable and ‘adopting’ her own daughter to avoid the scandal of an out of wedlock child). Certain beats of this book take inspiration from all of this, and that is what makes it stand out.

“The Hurricane Blonde” is a relentless critique of Hollywood abuse and violence towards women who want to find success there. Be prepared for the darkness and the triggers that come with it, but it sets itself apart from other thrillers because of it.

Rating 7: A dark and bleak critique of Hollywood culture and the way it chews up women and spits them out, “The Hurricane Blonde” is a twisted thriller with lots of simmering anger.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Hurricane Blonde” isn’t included on any Goodreads lists as of yet, but similar titles include “Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood”, and “The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick”.

Kate’s Review: “Missed Cue”

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Book: “Missed Cue” by Lynn Slaughter

Publishing Info: Melange Books, August 2023

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an ARC from the publisher.

Where You Can Get This Book: Amazon

Book Description: When ballerina Lydia Miseau dies onstage in the final dress rehearsal of Romeo and Juliet, homicide detective Caitlin O’Connor is faced with the most complicated case of her career. She strongly suspects that someone murdered the ballerina, and her investigation uncovers several people close to the star who had reasons to kill her. But the autopsy reveals no apparent cause of death. If Lydia Miseau was murdered, who did it, and how?

Meantime, there’s Caitlin’s hot mess of a personal life. She has a bad habit of getting involved with married men. She knows it’s wrong, so why does she keep entangling herself in unhealthy relationships? She’s finally decided to go into therapy to find out.

Review: Thank you to Melange Press for sending me an ARC of this novel!

This is going to sound really sick, but if I am being honest and vulnerable, I am almost always going to be totally interested in a mystery or thriller or what have you if it involves a dead ballerina. As someone who has always been clumsy and on the, shall we say, more ample side, ballet was NEVER going to be in the cards for me. But I have always been SO interested in ballet as a medium and as a culture that could be rife with drama due to competitive and cutthroat undertones. So when I was offered “Missed Cue” by Lynn Slaughter, I was pretty intrigued. I had read another book by Slaughter (“Deadly Setup”) and had enjoyed it for the most part, so I was more than happy to give her another go, especially since this time it involved a dead ballerina and a complicated female detective.

As a concept I thought that “Missed Cue” was compelling. We all know that I do have a soft spot for crime procedurals, and I did enjoy the character of Detective Caitlin O’Connor with her skills as a competent detective as well as a bit of a mess in her personal life. It may be a bit of an old reliable character trope in many a detective procedural of someone who is great at their job but a bit bad at recognizing their own emotional pitfalls, but it works for the character and I’m not sick of it yet! Caitlin is not only having to deal with a strange and complicated new case, she is also dealing with some fallout from an affair she had with a married colleague, and ALSO dealing with her partner dealing with his own messed up personal life that is leaking into their partnership, and it makes for some interesting beats that can tie into the mystery at hand. I do think that it felt like at times that were were jumping into a characterization that was already halfway through its journey, as at times I was thinking ‘are there previous books that set up these dynamics and plot points and relationships?’ when, in fact, there are not. And this made it feel like some of the things presented weren’t as realized as they could have been.

I thought the mystery was pretty well developed, with some good suspects with understandable motives, and some fairly well done misdirections to boot. While it was mostly from a third person POV involving Caitlin, there were occasional insights into other characters where we would get their perspectives in certain moments that served to either give more clues that Caitlin wouldn’t have, or to muddy the waters a bit. I think that, like with the characterizations mentioned above, there could have been some expansion on the mystery and the details of everything, as as it was it was very straightforward and linear in how it all unfolded. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does leave me wanting more.

The most interesting and effective part of the story for was actually the moments that we got to see Caitlin in therapy. It is so rare, at least in my experience, in procedurals to see characters, protagonists or not, getting mental health help, even if they desperately need it. And seeing Caitlin in her sessions as she works through some of her issues, whether it’s bad choices she’s made or anxieties about her partner and her love life, was a refreshing addition to the story. It added another dynamic to the story, and it felt pretty original and interesting.

So overall, “Missed Cue” is pretty solid. A thriller with some curveballs and some unexpected upending of tropes thanks to the hard boiled detective actually trying to better herself. It’s nice seeing that kind of thing in a genre where damaged characters are the norm.

Rating 7: A solid thriller with a compelling plot, but I would have loved for the mystery to have more drawn out complexities.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Missed Cue” isn’t on any Goodreads lists as of now, but it would fit in on “Women Who Solve Crimes”.

Kate’s Review: “What Never Happened”


This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “What Never Happened” by Rachel Howzell Hall

Publishing Info: Thomas & Mercer, August 2023

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an ARC from the publisher via Spark Point Studio.

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

Book Description: Colette “Coco” Weber has relocated to her Catalina Island home, where, twenty years before, she was the sole survivor of a deadly home invasion. All Coco wants is to see her aunt Gwen, get as far away from her ex as possible, and get back to her craft—writing obituaries. Thankfully, her college best friend, Maddy, owns the local paper and has a job sure to keep Coco busy, considering the number of elderly folks who are dying on the island.

But as Coco learns more about these deaths, she quickly realizes that the circumstances surrounding them are remarkably similar…and not natural. Then Coco receives a sinister threat in the mail: her own obituary.

As Coco begins to draw connections between a serial killer’s crimes and her own family tragedy, she fears that the secrets on Catalina Island might be too deep to survive. Because whoever is watching her is hell-bent on finally putting her past to rest.

Review: Thank you to Thomas & Mercer and Spark Point Studio for sending me an ARC of this novel!

We are once again in a situation where a new to me author’s new book showed up in my inbox, this time in the form of “What Never Happened” by Rachel Howzell Hall. I am pretty sure that I hadn’t heard of Hall until I read about this book, and the description was enough to catch my eye and reel me in. I mean, the very idea of an obituary writer having to deal with a sinister mystery in her day to day life is just eye grabbing, right? I didn’t really know what to expect, but dove on in, and for the most part was pretty happy with what I found!

As a thriller it has a lot of good to great elements. I liked the character of Coco for the most part, with her return to Catalina Island in the midst of a divorce a good plot device that lends room to explore the many things that have made her a complex and damaged person. I found her to be pretty believable in her caginess, and I found the small town hiding darkness under a veneer of community to be well done. There are a few different mysteries at hand, whether it’s who is sending Coco threatening messages in the mail, to what is happening to a number of elderly women on the island whose deaths are ruled accidents or natural (when they are very potentially NOT), to who killed Coco’s family when she was younger and living on Catalina in the house she has returned to. It’s a lot of balls to juggle, but I did feel like Hall juggles them pretty well and manages to make decent connections as the story goes on. There is also the very real aspect of Coco being one of the few Black people in the community, and the way that her race others her, and in other ways puts a target on her back. Whether it’s microaggressions, general ignorance, or outright hostility, it adds another dimension to the thriller elements at hand.

But here is what worked best for me in this book: Hall uses the COVID 19 pandemic, specifically the early days of complete disarray, confusion, fear, and lockdowns, to create a very unique locked room mystery as Coco is not only on an isolated island that is hiding sinister secrets, but is now potentially going to be cut off because of spreading illness. Now that we are in a less acute phase of this pandemic I’m more able to tackle books and media that uses it as a theme, and what I liked about this is that while it certainly isn’t centered (like in the fun thriller “56 Days”), it makes for a plausible and familiar tension that makes Coco all the more isolated and closed off in a potentially dangerous place, whether it’s because of her history, her investigation, or her race. It also really captured those first weeks of the pandemic, and how disbelief feels like it completely shifted seemingly overnight into ‘oh shit this is really happening’. It’s never heavy handed and doesn’t feel overdone, but it’s present enough that it really gave me the willies because man. THAT was a trip.

I do think, however, that the pacing was a little off. Mostly because I found it sometimes felt a bit draggy in the middle. I’m not sure if it was that there were a lot of working parts that had to be addressed or that some of the investigations and inner thoughts of Coco were a little circular, but I do think that the middle could have been tightened up just a bit. Once we got towards the climax it really picked up, though, and a fair number of the reveals made it feel like it was worth the wait.

“What Never Happened” is a solid thriller with some creative locked room elements and always (sadly) relevant notes about racism, small town facades, and who gets to be seen as a victim by greater society.

Rating 7: An enticing thriller that tackles trauma, small town secrets, and the ever present spectre of racism in America, “What Never Happened” is a claustrophobic read.

Reader’s Advisory:

“What Never Happened” is included on the Goodreads list “Mystery/Thriller/Detective Books Featuring and Written by Black Women: Part 6”.

Kate’s Review: “Delicate Condition”


This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “Delicate Condition” by Danielle Valentine

Publishing Info: Sourcebooks Landmark, August 2023

Where Did I Get This Book: I received and ARC from the publisher.

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

Book Description: Anna Alcott is desperate to be pregnant. But as she tries to balance her increasingly public life with a grueling IVF journey, she starts to suspect that someone is going to great lengths to make sure her pregnancy never happens. Crucial medicines are lost. Appointments get swapped without her knowledge. And even when she finally manages to get pregnant, not even her husband is willing to believe that someone’s playing a twisted game with her.

When the increasingly cryptic threats drive her out of her Brooklyn brownstone and into hiding in the cold, gray ghost town that is the Hamptons in the depths of winter, Anna is almost at the end of her rope.

Then her doctor tells her she’s had a miscarriage—except Anna’s convinced she’s still pregnant, despite everything the grave-faced men around her claim. Could it be that her mind is playing tricks on her? Or is something more sinister at play? As her symptoms become ever more horrifying and the sense of danger ever more present, Anna can’t help but wonder what exactly she’s carrying inside of her…and why no one will listen when she says something is horribly, painfully wrong.

Review: Thank you to Sourcebooks Landmark for sending me an ARC of this novel!

Perhaps you have noticed, readers, that we are getting a fair amount of horror books centered around pregnancy and motherhood as of late. Which shouldn’t come as a shock to any well versed and in touch horror reader, given that horror trends tend to like to tap into social anxieties that are going on at the time. And seeing as reproductive rights have been getting struck down and attacked in the United States ever since Roe v Wade fell, it’s just par for the course, anxiety wise. “Delicate Condition” by Danielle Valentine is the newest entry to this sub genre, and it already has a bit of hype going in because it is going to be the inspiration for the new “American Horror Story” season coming out later this year. With all these things swirling around in my mind, I dove into this book, eager to see the directions it went. And I really, really loved it.

“Delicate Condition” has gotten a lot of comparisons to “Rosemary’s Baby”, one of the earliest pregnancy horror tales that really captured the mainstream consciousness, but it tweaks and twists it into something far more powerful. There are so many themes that Valentine addresses when it comes to pregnancy, reproduction, motherhood, and misogyny that on paper it would seem like too much to have to juggle. But it is all done so well. We have Anna, an actress in her late thirties whose career has just had a massive windfall right when she is trying to start a family with her husband Dex, and who has been unable to get pregnant thus far and has started IVF treatments. Already we have so much to work with. For one, we have the woman who wants to have a career and is proud of it but now wants to have a family as well, and feels torn between two desires that seem to compete with each other. We also have the frustrations and heartbreak of infertility that has no explanation, and pregnancy loss, and the stresses and trauma around that. We ALSO have the themes of how the medical field can feel somewhat dismissive and callous when it comes to Anna and her infertility (with notes and acknowledgements that it is even worse for BIPOC women and non gender conforming people), and then her actual pregnancy struggles (more on that in a bit), with her doctors being condescending at times and at other times straight up rude or hostile. On top of all of THAT, Anna is also possibly contending with a stalker, and as that starts to ramp up and even seemingly focus on her pregnancy, her fear is written off as stress or paranoia or hormones by most everyone around her. It captures the real life horrors of the way that people treat and view women, be they pregnant or trying to become pregnant or already mothers, and it made my blood boil.

And then there are the more, shall we say, supernatural horrors of Anna’s pregnancy in this story. Early in her pregnancy Anna seems to have a miscarriage, but as time goes on something is still growing inside of her. Her doctors are unwilling to believe that this is anything outside of a hysterical pregnancy at first, but as time goes on she is clearly pregnant, though her symptoms go from run of the mill to extreme nightmare fuel. I loved how Valentine tackled this, as all of the things that Anna experiences, like hair loss, and skin issues, and pain, these are all things that do actually happen to pregnant women, just to the nth degree. And as these things happen, once again they are dismissed as just normal things an she is basically told to take a Tylenol and drink some water. Even as someone is clearly following her. Even as she is having visions of talons trying to cut through her body. It’s exaggerated, but again, boy does it reflect the actual horrors of pregnancy. I was especially sympathetic to all of the ‘just take Tylenol and rest’ bits, given that early in my own pregnancy (which was generally pretty uncomplicated and easy) I had such bad cramping that I called the generic nurses line and was just told to take a Tylenol and drink more water. I ended up fainting from the pain. It all turned out fine, but in that moment being told to just drink more water and take a painkiller that did NOTHING was stressful and confusing. So as I was reading all of these things that are depicted as a body horror tale, knowing FULL WELL that a lot of it is really something that pregnant people deal with, even if it’s to a less degree, I was just super, super impressed.

And finally, there is also the way that Valentine brings together a broader story of other women throughout the centuries who are dealing with a similar thing that Anna is dealing with. We get cut scenes and vignettes of women who are pregnant, or have just given birth, or are trying to become pregnant, who are having the same weird encounters, visions, experiences, and horrors that Anna is encountering. It’s all pretty vague and mysterious, but it is done in a way that when Valentine does eventually weave it all together, it fits so well that I just blew my mind. I’m not going to spoil anything here because I just loved the execution and I loved the ultimate reveal as to what exactly is happening. What I will say is while “Rosemary’s Baby” is an obvious comparison that people will know, there is so much more going on, and not everything is as obvious as it seems.

I really loved “Delicate Condition”. It’s another great pregnancy and motherhood related horror tale that cuts to the bone.

Rating 10: A feminist reimagining of “Rosemary’s Baby” themes with a lot of bones to pick with those who discount the experiences of pregnant people, “Delicate Condition” is a perfect read to reflect the horrors of pregnancy, and the culture that touts it as uncomplicated while ignoring its darkness.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Delicate Condition” is new and isn’t included on any Goodreads lists of of now. But if you liked “Graveyard of Lost Children” or “Rosemary’s Baby” this would probably be a good book for you.

Kate’s Review: “Turtle Bread”

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Book: “Turtle Bread” by Kim-Joy & Alti Firmansyah (Ill.)

Publishing Info: Comixology Originals, May 2023

Where Did I Get This Book: I own it.

Where You Can Get This Book: Amazon

Book Description: Yan is looking for a place to belong. She struggles with social anxiety and low self-esteem, making it hard to maintain a job or relationships. When the chance comes along to step out of her comfort zone, Yan joins Baking Club, hoping to share her passion with people who love pastries and cakes as much as she does.

At first, Yan is intimidated by the other members, but as she gets to know them better, she comes to love Baking Club. In fact, Yan realizes that she’s not alone in trying to hide her mental health struggles from her friends. The members of the Club come together to support each other and to bake their way through any problem!

From celebrity baker, cookbook author, mental health advocate, and Great British Baking Show star Kim-Joy, and fan-favorite artist Alti Firmansyah (Star-Lord and Kitty Pryde), TURTLE BREAD is a touching story about community, healing, finding yourself, and–of course–baking!

Review: Unlike Serena, and many people I know and love for that matter, I never got super into “The Great British Bake Off”. I’ve seen a few seasons here and there, and did like what I saw, but haven’t really sought it out. So when I saw a huge advertisement at ALAAC23 for “Turtle Bread”, a new graphic novel by “GBBO” finalist Kim-Joy, it was more the artwork that caught my attention. But once I started looking into it, and learned about Kim-Joy not only as a baker, but also as a mental health advocate, I was even more interested in reading the book. And once I had it on my Kindle, it was a breezy and enjoyable read. Score one for advertising at a library convention!

The plot is fairly straight forward. Yan is a young woman who is living at home with her family, is struggling to find a job, and stumbles upon a random baking club after having another failed interview. She joins up with the members, even though she is very anxious around unfamiliar people and situations, and eventually finds a new passion for herself and starts to find confidence thanks to the support of her friends and her love of baking. I suppose this isn’t too shocking given that it’s written by a “Great British Bake Off” alum, and you know she clearly knows her stuff when it comes to the food that is being discussed and created in the book. I liked the way the group learns and grows from each other, mostly seen through Yan’s eyes, and I really liked the camaraderie and the feel good aspects of this story. It’s simple and charming, and while it doesn’t reinvent any wheels the gentleness of it makes for a very relaxing read.

But the biggest theme in this book is that of Yan’s deep social anxiety and how that affects her relationships with other people, her perception of herself, and her day to day life. I thought that this portrayal of social anxiety and how devastating it can be was pretty spot on, without making it the central focus or feeling like an after school special. Yan slowly opens up to her fellow baking club members, with the gentle encouragement of club head and mom friend Bea. It felt like a pretty realistic depiction of social anxiety and low self esteem, and I liked that it didn’t make it seem like a very clean and cut and dry progression, as Yan doesn’t totally shake the feelings she has and does have moments of stumbles and setbacks. But it’s never done in a way that feels like it’s just milking for more drama or disingenuous. As someone who has some social anxiety of her own, perhaps not to Yan’s degree, it just felt like an honest depiction of how it can affect so much of a person. I also liked the way that the other members of baking club slowly reveal that they too are dealing with personal emotional and mental struggles, and how that doesn’t necessarily define them as human beings who can find joy.

And finally, the art. It’s pretty darn cute. I like the character designs with some clear manga-esque influences, but then the sometimes realistic takes on ingredients to food. And yes, there are indeed recipes in this book, and I really liked how we not only get the instructions on ingredients and how to bake them, but also some really cute visuals that make it all the more easy to understand.

(source: Comixology)

“Turtle Bread” is a very cozy story about baking, friendship, and self discovery and acceptance. I’m happy it caught my eye, and I can’t wait to try out some of the recipes from the book!

Rating 7: A gentle and sweet story about baking, finding one’s passion, and working through social anxiety through supportive community and joyful pursuits.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Turtle Bread” isn’t on any Goodreads lists yet, but I think if you liked “Measuring Up” this could be a good fit!

Kate’s Review: “A Twisted Love Story”

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Book: “A Twisted Love Story” by Samantha Downing

Publishing Info: Berkley, July 2023

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

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

Book Description: Wes and Ivy are madly in love. They’ve never felt anything like it. It’s the kind of romance people write stories about. But what kind of story? Because when it’s good, it’s great. Flowers. Grand gestures. Deep meaningful conversations where the whole world disappears. When it’s bad, it’s really bad. Vengeful fights. Damaged property. Arrest warrants.

But their vicious cycle of catastrophic breakups and head-over-heels reconnections needs to end fast. Because suddenly, Wes and Ivy have a common enemy–and she’s a detective.

There’s something Wes and Ivy never talk about–in good times or bad. The night of their worst breakup, when one of them took things too far, and someone ended up dead. If they can stick together, they can survive anything–even the tightening net of a police investigation.

Because one more breakup might just be their last…

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

As we all know, I really enjoy books that have soap opera levels of drama, and if you have it happening within one of my preferred genres that’s all the better. This usually happens within thrillers, and I am far more likely to read one if it has some interpersonal dramatic nonsense to pad out and prolong the mystery and suspense. With all this in mind, “A Twisted Love Story” by Samantha Downing really caught my eye. The cover is pretty neat for one, and for another it promised two toxic people in an on again and off again relationship whose terrible romance led to something deadly. That just reeks of the kind of extra-ness that I love in a story. And I have also had luck with Samantha Downing in the past. So really I thought this was going to be a slam dunk. And, unfortunately, it was not.

But, as we always do, let’s start with the good. The premise definitely has a lot of promise, and there were things that I did like about it. I particularly liked it when we had a POV focus on the detective that is kind of keeping her eye on Wes and Ivy, Karen, as we get enough insight into her character to make her pretty fleshed out and interesting in her motives for doggedly pursuing cases that involve abusive relationships. Is it a unique insight? Not really. But it’s still fun to get into her mind and to see how this has become a bit of an obsession for her, and how her own experiences and biases can affect her ability to do her job to a certain extent.

But ultimately, I had a hard time getting through this book, and I think that the main reason for that was that Ivy and Wes are very, very unlikable, and not really in the kind of fun way that I look for in ‘people behaving badly’ books. At first I enjoyed seeing their weird egging each other on dynamic, but it was a pretty static relationship progression in that they were always really shitty to each other, and weren’t really fascinating or well rounded to make up for it. I do love a hot mess of a story, I will be the first to admit that, but Ivy and Wes just didn’t interest me. There wasn’t anything really ‘fun’ about their really toxic relationship, and I just had a hard time keeping interested mainly because not only were they difficult, the supporting characters weren’t really engaging either. And to make matters worse, the mystery itself wasn’t super enticing to me. I kind of figured out one of the twists pretty early on, and on top of that it just wasn’t very compelling of a mystery. We know that Wes and Ivy did something really bad during one of their toxic meltdowns and then never spoke of it again, but I wasn’t given much reason to really care about what it was because they were such trash people that the suspense wasn’t there.

And then there is also a random curveball thrown in that I couldn’t make heads or tails of as to why it happened. I don’t want to spoil anything and it was probably a way to keep the detective connected to Wes and Ivy, but it felt clumsily done. Overall, a lot of it fell pretty flat for me. Which is too bad because I definitely was enticed by the description!

So ultimately “A Twisted Love Story” wasn’t for me. I can appreciate a story of awful people doing awful things, but ya gotta give me a little bit of fun with that, and this one didn’t feel like a lot of fun.

Rating 5: Two reprehensible main characters and a kind of weak mystery made “A Twisted Love Story” less of a fun sudsy read and a bit more of a slog.

Reader’s Advisory:

“A Twisted Love Story” is included on the Goodreads list “2023 Mystery Thrillers Crime To Be Excited For”.

Kate’s Review: “Camp Damascus”


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Book: “Camp Damascus” by Chuck Tingle

Publishing Info: Tor Nightfire, July 2023

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

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

Book Description: A searing and earnest horror debut about the demons the queer community faces in America, the price of keeping secrets, and finding the courage to burn it all down.

They’ll scare you straight to hell.

Welcome to Neverton, Montana: home to a God-fearing community with a heart of gold.

Nestled high up in the mountains is Camp Damascus, the self-proclaimed “most effective” gay conversion camp in the country. Here, a life free from sin awaits. But the secret behind that success is anything but holy.

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

I have been aware of Chuck Tingle for about ten years now, as he has been a huge Internet meme in and of himself for a number of reasons. The first is that Chuck Tingle is a pseudonym and the way he presents himself is almost assuredly (I don’t want to say assuredly, however) performance art to an amazing and endearing degree. The second is that up until now he is predominantly known for writing short story monster erotica, with titles like “Space Raptor Butt Invasion”, “Bisexual Mothman Mailman Makes A Special Delivery In Our Butts”, and “Absolutely No Thoughts of Pounding During My Fun Day With This Fun T-Rex Because I’m Aromantic and Asexual And That’s a Wonderfully Valid Way of Proving Love Is Real”(oh man, I LOVE this). I also have a memory of spending an evening hyperfocusing on scrolling his Twitter feed and laughing so hard I was crying. When I saw that Tingle was going to be writing two actual, full length, non-monster erotic horror novels, I was absolutely fascinated by the entire concept, and when I read the plot for “Camp Damascus” I knew that I needed to read it. Firstly because I’m always down for horror that plays on real life fears (in this case, conversion camps and fundamentalist Christianity), and secondly because what would a mainstream Chuck Tingle book look like?

“Camp Damascus” works on so many levels for me, the first of which being that lately LGBTQIA+ people are being maligned, vilified, and threatened by so called culture warriors and bigots, with more and more laws passing that target trans people and drag queens, and people losing their minds over the slightest hint of a rainbow on a mainstream product. The unfortunate and horrible truth is that places like Camp Damascus and the people who run it are, while perhaps not supernatural, causing harm to LGBTQIA+ children. It’s a book that calls out that hateful bullshit through metaphors and demonic imagery, and it is done in a way that is very scary, very earnest, and very affecting. Our protagonist Rose is a teenage girl living in the deeply fundamentalist community of Neverton, Montana, her family members of the Kingdom of the Pine Church, and she is living a life of true belief and pragmatism. But when she starts seeing images of a menacing demon, and starts coughing up bugs, and it is all connected to a hidden to the world (and in some ways herself) attraction, she starts to realize that there are parts of her life that have been suppressed and hidden from her, and that it ties back to the community conversion camp Camp Damascus. The demons in this book as described are unsettling and creepy, and Tingle has a few wonderfully described moments that freaked me all the way out just through the way he paints a tense picture to its snapping point. And there is, of course, the real life horrors of how queer people can be demonized by fundamentalist groups, and having it connect back to literal demons involved with a conversion camp just feels absolutely correct. Horror as religious trauma and bigotry isn’t something I expected from the guy who brought us “Taken by the Gay Unicorn Biker”, but it works incredibly well.

And the other thing that I really, really enjoyed about this book is Rose as a character, as not only is she queer, she is also autistic. As someone who is neurodivergent herself, I’m always eager to see characters who are ASD or ADHD or what have you, and I really liked the exploration Tingle does with her character as a very literal person with many curiosities who is living in a community that is VERY threatened by curiosity in general. Exploring a queer person living in this reality was a choice I liked, but it also made me think about what it would be like to live in this kind of community with a different neurotype and how challenging that would also be. I also really love how heartfelt Rose is, and how Tingle never lets her become too cynical, or worn down. She is determined to figure out what is going on with her, and once she does she is determined to make sure that the trauma she has experienced doesn’t happen to anyone else, making friends and connections with other people like her along the way. It shouldn’t surprise me that there is so much hope in this story, as Tingle has always exuded hope with his saying ‘love is real’, and it makes this battle cry against bigotry pulse with joy.

“Camp Damascus” is an impressive jump to the mainstream by Chuck Tingle, who is a horror writer I am going to be keeping my eye on.

Rating 9: Relevant, searing, and incredibly heartfelt, “Camp Damascus” is a solid and enjoyable mainstream horror review novel from Chuck Tingle.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Camp Damascus” is included on the Goodreads lists “Queer Horror”, and “Horror to Look Forward to in 2023”.