Tag: horror

Kate’s Review: “Influencer”

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Book: “Influencer” by Adam Cesare

Publishing Info: Union Square & Co, October 2024

Where Did I Get This Book: I received a finished copy at a panel at ALAAC25

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

Book Description: Aaron Fortin is new in town. He drives a brand-new Acura—a gift from his parents for uprooting him in the middle of senior year. Showing up on his first day at the local public school in that nice of a car? He knows he’ll never blend in, and he doesn’t care to try. The car, the new kid mystique, he can use all that…

Crystal Giordano carpools to the same school in her friend Trevor’s beat-up van. In the van along with Crystal and Trevor are Paul, Harmony, and Gayle. Crystal’s technically part of their misfit group, but most of the time, she feels like she’s the only one who doesn’t fit.

When Aaron Fortin sits at their lunch table, Crystal can see he’s not who he says he is. But how big of a fraud is Aaron Fortin? Crystal clumsily exposes Aaron and becomes his target, falling victim to his insidious campaign to erase her. Only then does she discover who he truly is—and it’s so much worse than she thought.

As her friends begin to follow him one by one, Crystal wonders if she can protect them or if his influence is just too strong.

Review: Thank you to Union Square & Co for giving me a finished copy of this novel at ALAAC25!

So here is a story that perfectly reflects the fates of some of my ARCs. During the ALA Annual Conference in 2024, I picked up an ARC of the book “Influencer” by Adam Cesare. I grabbed it because 1) I have enjoyed other books by Adam Cesare and was happy to see he had a new one, and 2) I just love a thriller or horror story that uses social media influencers as a sticking point in their plots. Fast forward to the ALA Annual Conference in 2025, where I find myself attending a panel that has Adam Cesare, and he is talking about his 2024 “Influencer”…. A book that I wholly left by the wayside the year before. As I listened to him talk I thought to myself ‘ah shit, I really should have read “Influencer” by now, it sounds great’. Well good news! I got a new copy at ALAAC25, and I DID READ IT THIS TIME!

Hooray! (source)

I had a lot of fun with this book! Once it hooked me in the very first chapter (which was a start that had QUITE a shocking bang I must say!), I had a really hard time putting it down. It’s a very readable thriller with a well done narrative structure of two narrators, one being our psychopathic ‘influencer’ Aaron and the other being awkward but observant Crystal. Through both of their perspectives we see the making of a cat and mouse game as Aaron slowly dismantles Crystal’s life and isolates her from her friends, and as Crystal tries to figure out a way to expose him for the dangerous villain he is. We can slowly start to tell what Aaron is plotting on one hand, but on the other we can see Crystal coming up with her own counter moves, and the tension of seeing who ends up on top propels the story. And as someone who used to have an unfortunate hyperfocus on serial killers, I definitely picked up on a lot of what Cesare was referencing. It’s also just a wicked take on how social media stars and influencers build upon parasocial relationships to create a profit, whether that’s money in our world or Manson-like control and violence mongering to make oneself feel powerful in the story at hand. Cesare isn’t afraid to really go balls to the wall in disturbing content in this book, but it makes his point (also, note that this book has instances of animal abuse, sexual assault, and many murders including that of a pregnant person, just to put some content warnings out there. Also, the book has a page of content warnings to refer to). It’s just a thriller that really worked for me.

But my favorite part of this book was the character of Crystal, our protagonist who can see right through Aaron due to her incredible intuition and pattern recognition. Crystal is very observant and perceptive, but she is also riddled with anxiety and awkwardness and constant worries about the status of her friendships and how her friends perceive her. If we’re being honest, Crystal was a LOT like me in high school, never quite feeling like she totally fit in with her peers and even her friends outside of perhaps one or two exceptions, and I thought that she was very, very endearing because of it. In fact, I also really enjoyed (as much as one can, I suppose as a villain’s perspective!) Aaron’s POV chapters as we see his manipulations, his deviousness, and his absolute sociopathy. It’s a shocking contrast between the two main POVs, and I thought that Cesare nailed both of them pretty well. Some of our supporting characters could have used a bit more oomph, specifically Harmony and Paul, as I felt like I didn’t know them well enough to know if I believed their quite heel turns as happy lapdogs to Aaron’s plots and plans no matter how crazed and violent, but I’m willing to suspend my disbelief a bit just because I enjoyed so many other things about the book.

Me finally getting to “Influencer” took some time, but I’m thrilled I finally got the kick in the pants I needed to pick it up. If you are looking for some more fast and fun reads as the summer winds down, check this one out for sure!

Rating 8: Fast paced, twisted as hell, and suspenseful until the end, “Influencer” is a darker tale from star on the rise author Adam Cesare!

Reader’s Advisory:

“Influencer” is included on the Goodreads list “Fiction About Influencers”.

Kate’s Review: “The Between”

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Book: “The Between” by Tananarive Due

Publishing Info: Harper Perennial, October 2021 (originally published 1995)

Where Did I Get This Book: The library!

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

Book Description: When Hilton was a boy, his grandmother sacrificed her life to save him from drowning. Thirty years later, he begins to suspect that he was never meant to survive that accident, and that dark forces are working to rectify that mistake. 

When Hilton’s wife, the only elected African American judge in Dade County, Florida, begins to receive racist hate mail from a man she once prosecuted, Hilton becomes obsessed with protecting his family. The demons lurking outside are matched by his internal terrors—macabre nightmares, more intense and disturbing than any he has ever experienced. Are these bizarre dreams the dark imaginings of a man losing his hold on sanity—or are they harbingers of terrible events to come? 

As Hilton battles both the sociopath threatening to destroy his family and the even more terrifying enemy stalking his sleep, the line between reality and fantasy dissolves . . . 

Chilling and utterly convincing, The Between is the haunting story of a man desperately trying to hold on to the people and life he loves as he slowly loses himself. 

Review: Back in 2024 when I read Tananarive Due’s “The Reformatory”, I told myself that once I had processed the absolute magnificence of that book I would need to start reading her back catalog. And it admittedly took me awhile, probably not just because I was processing (out of sight, out of mind is basically how I function, unfortunately). But I finally kicked myself in the pants and told myself READ MORE TANANARIVE DUE, and I decided to go back to her debut novel “The Between”. Staring at the beginning is a very good place to start after all! It helped that it had been re-released a few years ago, and my local library had a copy ready to to! So as I read the story of Hilton James, a Black man who nearly drowned as a child but was saved by his grandmother, and who is now married and having horrifying nightmares AND dealing with racist threats on his family, I could tell from the jump that starting here was the right choice.

My initial thought was, as an elder Millennial horror fan, that this has similar vibes to “Final Destination”, but this came out long before that first movie made its grand entrance into the zeitgeist. So it goes to show that Due was ahead of the curve! I really enjoyed the weird and ever building tension as Hilton starts to have weirder and more distressing dreams, just as his wife (and the entire family really) is getting death threats from a stalker with a racist hatred for the family. It makes for some good muddling of the waters, in that it’s not fully clear if Hilton is really experiencing premonitions or harbingers of doom due to something supernatural, or if it’s because of a very real threat of racist violence against his family. Due taps into both the worldly and otherworldly, and I found myself just completely wound up as Hilton spirals more and more and alienates himself from those he loves as things become more and more out of control for him.

But what really stood out to me, and what I have greatly appreciated in Due’s other work, is her take on American racism and the harm it has caused and continues to cause. Setting aside the strange dreams and setting aside the lapses in memory and setting aside Hilton’s history and his potential outrunning of Death when he wasn’t supposed to, the letters and threats that he and Dede and their children receive are terrifying, vile, and, unfortunately still all too real even in the decades after this book was first published. Hilton has a lot of trauma that has been passed down through the generations as well, and the themes of grief, loss, trauma, and race all come together in ways that are incredibly powerful and absolutely heartwrenching. It’s really terrible that so few things have changed in this country since it was first published in 1995.

“The Between” was a stellar debut from a horror author that I really, really enjoy. I’m glad I went back to Tananarive Due’s first novel, as now I am going to work my way through the rest!

Rating 8: Haunting and incredibly tense, “The Between” is a strong debut from a now legendary horror author.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Between” is included on the Goodreads list “BELLETRIST”.

Joint Review: “The Library at Hellebore”

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Book: “The Library at Hellebore” by Cassandra Khaw

Publishing Info: Tor Nightfire, July 2025

Where Did We Get This Book: ARC from the publisher!

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

Book Description: The Hellebore Technical Institute for the Gifted is the premier academy for the dangerously the Anti-Christs and Ragnaroks, the world-eaters and apocalypse-makers.

Hellebore promises redemption, acceptance, and a normal life after graduation. At least, that’s what Alessa Li is told when she’s kidnapped and forcibly enrolled.

But there’s more to Hellebore than meets the eye. On graduation day, the faculty go on a ravenous rampage, feasting on Alessa’s class. Only Alessa and a group of her classmates escape the carnage. Trapped in the school’s library, they must offer a human sacrifice every night, or else the faculty will break down the door and kill everyone.

Can they band together and survive, or will the faculty eat its fill?

Serena’s Thoughts

There are definitely specific sorts of books that Kate and I target for joint reviews: often some sort of dark fantasy/horror lite title. That being the case, the balance between dark fantasy and horror elements often determines where each of lands on any given read. And this one leaned a bit too far into the horror side for me to fully appreciate.

I did, however, enjoy the dark academia vibes of the story. I definitely understand the comparisons to Naomi Novik’s “Scholomance” trilogy. However, for me, this worked a bit against the book too, as Novik’s series is one of the more fully realized, complex world/magical systems that I can remember reading. In contrast, while this book leaned heavily into similar areas of dread and constrained claustrophobia within the school setting, there wasn’t quite as much actually backing up how this world operated.

In place of some of these scene setting or worldbuilding elements, the author peppered in a seemingly inexhaustible number of deep cut word selections. It sometimes felt like a thesaurus was required reading for getting through certain sections (perhaps this is just revealing my own limited vocabulary, but it’s a fairly unique problem I had with this book.) At the same time, there was a lot of emphasis on modern references peppered throughout. Between the high-end academic vocabulary, the modern references, and the choice to swap between two different points in time within the story, the book had a distinctly choppy feel to it as I read through.

I appreciated a lot of what this book was trying to do, and towards the back half I definitely started to become more invested. I also think that, when disconnected from some of the more elaborate word choices, there was a lot of skill to the writing itself. There were some incredibly poetic turns of phrase, and, even if I didn’t enjoy some of the darker horror moments, there’s no denying the author’s ability to write in a way that elicits a strong emotion.

However, in the end, this was simply too gross and too depressing for me to really enjoy. It may work better for true horror fans than the dark fantasy readers who enjoyed “Scholomance” so much.

Kate’s Thoughts

As someone who has read previous works by Cassandra Khaw, this was not my first time the gruesome body and cosmic horror rodeo, as it were, so I think that I was little more prepared for some of the elements than Serena was (also, SORRY SERENA, I should have warned you that Khaw is BRUTAL). I think that going in expecting something truly disgusting along with flowery turns of phrase made my experience a bit better than my blog partner’s, but I also think that I agree in a lot of ways with her review.

Since I’m the horror gal here I can focus on that for the most part, and I still think that Khaw has this true knack for pulling truly beautiful words and phrases and literature from unrelenting balls to the wall descriptions of viscera, violence, and despair. This was the first full length novel I’ve read of theirs, and I will say that MAN the body horror and gore just kept going because it wasn’t a novella, and it made for a harder read. But at the same time, I really appreciated the visuals and the descriptions because Khaw is more than willing to go to some disgusting places, and I gotta respect that even if it can be stomach churning. And I also have to give credit where credit is due; they are VERY creative with some of the kills in this book.

I also didn’t mind the time jumps as we went on, as I generally enjoyed getting juxtaposition of the present danger of being trapped in a library with a ravenous faculty outside the door with the background of our main players, and getting to know Alessa and her changing relationships with her dangerous cohorts turned unlikely allies. I also just liked Alessa. She’s not particularly likable but I found her refreshing in her candor and ruthlessness.

“The Library at Hellbore” is exactly what I expected from Cassandra Khaw, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t wholly repulsed as I was reading. I mean that as a compliment.

Serena’s Rating 7: This one was a bit too horrific for me, but if you’re truly looking for a dark DARK academia read, this one might be for you!

Kate’s Rating 7: Gory and horrific but sure to please those who love some really gnarly body horror.

Reader’s Advisory

“The Library at Hellebore” is included on these Goodreads lists: Twisted Tales for Beautifully Damaged Minds and 2025 Dark Academia Releases.

Kate’s Review: “It Was Her House First”

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Book: “It Was Her House First” by Cherie Priest

Publishing Info: Poisoned Pen Press, July 2025

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

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

Book Description: Ronnie doesn’t know it yet, but her fate rests in the hands of the dead. 

Silent film star Venita Rost’s malevolent spirit lurks spider-like in her cliffside mansion, a once-beautiful home that’s claimed countless unlucky souls. And she’s not alone. Snared in her terrible web, Inspector Bartholomew Sloan—her eternal nemesis—watches her wreak havoc in helpless horror, shackled by his own guilt and Venita’s unrelenting wrath.

Now the house has yet another new owner. This time it’s Ronnie Mitchell, a grieving woman who buys the run-down place sight unseen. She arrives armed with an unexpected inheritance, a strong background in renovation, and a blissful ignorance regarding the house’s blood-soaked history. But her arrival has stirred up more than just dust and decay. In the shadows, unseen eyes watch. Then, a man comes knocking. He brings wild stories and a thinly veiled jealousy, as well as a secret connection to the house that can only lead to violence.

Venita’s fury awakens, and a deadly game unfolds.

Caught between a vengeful ghost and a ruthless living threat, Ronnie’s skepticism crumbles. The line between living and dead isn’t as sharp as it seems, and she realizes too late that in Venita’s house, survival might be just an illusion.

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

I’ve read a few titles from the sub-genre so far this year, but MAN I love a haunted house horror story. It’s a gift that keeps on giving for me, as I love ghosts, I love strange occurrences in a new home, and I love the way that horror authors can pull out truly unsettling and scary things from the trope but in so many different ways. I was definitely interested to read “It Was Her House First” by Cherie Priest, because it promised not only a haunted house but also the ghost of Venita, a glamorous Hollywood starlet who now haunts her mansion and brings woe to anyone who moves in. All of this was top notch in theory, and I dove in hoping for a creepy read.

I think that a truly strong haunted house narrative needs to have hauntees that you can engage with and root for, and we definitely got that in protagonist Ronnie. She’s the kind of main character that has some rough edges but still shines brightly, and I found her very enjoyable. Her motivation for buying this house without even seeing it first was believable (she’s mourning, she had an unexpected inheritance, she needs SOMETHING to distract her AND she’s handy!), and seeing her and her friend Katie work through their shared grief of losing Ronnie’s brother to cancer made for bittersweet moments, especially as we learn more about Ronnie’s feelings of guilt. I really liked her, and therefore was invested when this house started messing with her and she started realizing that things weren’t as they seem, whether it was because of strange occurrences in the house or the strange man who has started visiting, claiming a family connection to Bartholomew Sloane, who died on the property. Ronnie having to unravel the history of the home and this man’s motivations were compelling and suspenseful story beats. Especially after she finds the diary of tragic starlet Venita, whose angry spirit is said to haunt the house and bring death to anyone who moves in.

And what of the ghosts themselves? It was a little of a mixed bag. I do think that Venita wasn’t as fury filled as I had hoped she would be, which kind of cut down on the scares. But on the flip side of that, I thought that getting into her thought process through her diary did a good job of peeling back her motivations, and perhaps I didn’t find her as scary as I thought I would because I kind of felt like she was correct and justified about a lot of the things that made her such an angry and unwilling to leave spirit. I did, however, enjoy some of the eerie descriptions of the way that the hauntings would make themselves known, be it furniture moving about or the POV of the other ghost in the home Bartholomew Sloan, who has a connection to Venita and has a lot of guilt associated with that connection as they lead separate afterlives within the halls of the house.

I did enjoy a lot about “It Was Her House First”. It had a pretty stellar main character and some well executed shifts between POVs, and a creepy haunted house with a lot of tragedy attached to it. Ultimately, that’s what I look for in a story like this.

Rating 7: A mysterious haunted house story with an engaging main character bolstered this up, though I admittedly anticipated more scares. But that said, I found “It Was Her House First” enjoyable!

Reader’s Advisory:

“It Was Her House First” is included on the Goodreads list “2025 Horror I Can’t Wait For”.

Joint Review: “The Bewitching”

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Book: “The Bewitching” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Publishing Info: Del Rey, July 2025

Where Did We Get This Book: eARC from Netgalley!

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

Book Description: “Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches”: That was how Nana Alba always began the stories she told her great-granddaughter Minerva—stories that have stayed with Minerva all her life. Perhaps that’s why Minerva has become a graduate student focused on the history of horror literature and is researching the life of Beatrice Tremblay, an obscure author of macabre tales.

In the course of assembling her thesis, Minerva uncovers information that reveals that Tremblay’s most famous novel, The Vanishing, was inspired by a true story: Decades earlier, during the Great Depression, Tremblay attended the same university where Minerva is now studying and became obsessed with her beautiful and otherworldly roommate, who then disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

As Minerva descends ever deeper into Tremblay’s manuscript, she begins to sense that the malign force that stalked Tremblay and the missing girl might still walk the halls of the campus. These disturbing events also echo the stories Nana Alba told about her girlhood in 1900s Mexico, where she had a terrifying encounter with a witch.

Minerva suspects that the same shadow that darkened the lives of her great-grandmother and Beatrice Tremblay is now threatening her own in 1990s Massachusetts. An academic career can be a punishing pursuit, but it might turn outright deadly when witchcraft is involved.

Kate’s Thoughts

I was very pleased to see that Silvia Moreno-Garcia was finally taking on a witch story. She has done so many other kinds of genres and sub-genres, sometimes in fantasy and horror, and now she has taken her genre hopping to a witchy tale with “The Bewitching”. I love witch stories as we all know, and I was very excited to see what Silvia Moreno-Garcia would do with it.

Overall, I enjoyed this fantasy tale and the three narratives that we followed. In the early 1900s in Mexico we have Alba, a young woman in the countryside whose home seems to be cursed and bewitched, and who is trying to figure out who is doing it, all while contending with her mysterious uncle and a local man that is infatuated with her. After that we go to 1930s New England, where a University student named Beatrice has a deep connection with her roommate who vanishes. And in the 1990s, University student Minerva is researching Beatrice’s writings, and starts to realize that there are similarities between Beatrice’s experiences and the experiences of Minerva’s grandmother Alba. It’s a LOT, but I felt like Moreno-Garcia balanced it well and wove it all together perfectly. She takes her time parsing out how all of these things fit together, but I never felt like it was poorly paced or glossed over as I was reading.

I also enjoyed the magical and witchcrafty elements, combining elements from New England lore along with lore from Mexico, and blending them in ways that show their similarities as well as their differences. This definitely leaves behind any romanticism of witches and witchcraft, with a focus on the scarier elements from a story like this, and I liked that there were some genuinely scary beats. While it’s true that I like romanticized witch stories, this one was a well executed thoroughly creepy take. I’m always up for that.

“The Bewitching” is another great tale from Silvia Moreno-Garcia! If you can’t wait for the Fall for a witch story, definitely seek this one out!

Serena’s Thoughts

It’s probably no surprise at this point, but I really enjoyed this book! Witches are one of those paranormal themes that easily crosses genres between fantasy and horror, so between the subject matter and the author in question, this was a match made in heaven for Kate and I to jointly review!

Sometimes I struggle to fully become invested in stories that follow different characters in different time lines. Too often, one or more feels less fleshed out than another and I feel the urge to speed read sections. While I did have favorites here, however, all three timelines and stories were interesting in their own ways. You know the tragedy that is written on the wall for some of them, but even knowing this, I was drawn in to the details of their individual stories. It’s the kind of horror that hides in plain sight: you know what’s coming, and that makes the building dread all the worse.

Like many of this author’s novels, the story is a slow-burn affair. She takes her time fully setting the stage, between the various time periods, locations, and women involved. That being the case, the pacing is definitely on the slow side. However, the payout for all three times lines all pulls together in the end in a fantastic manner, so it is well worth the wait. And, as I mentioned earlier this slower pacing works well to increased the suspense (another factor that is easy to identify as quintessentially Moreno-Garcia’s style).

Overall, I really enjoyed this read. It was creepy but mostly in a way that I could handle (though one scene was a bit much for me), and I was fully invested in the story by the time we got to the end. Definitely check this one out if you’re looking for an interesting take on witches!

Kate’s Rating 8 : Witchy, suspenseful, and very unnerving, “The Bewitching” is yet another great read from a true master of many trades within the writing craft.

Serena’s Rating 8: As always, Moreno-Garcia delivers with fantastic, multi-generational story of witches and brewing dread.

Reader’s Advisory

“The Bewitching” is included on the Goodreads list 2025 Dark Academia Releases.

Kate’s Review: “Bad Dreams in the Night”

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

Book: “Bad Dreams in the Night” by Adam Ellis

Publishing Info: Andrews McMeel Publishing, April 2024

Where Did I Get This Book: The library!

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

Book Description: Like a graphic novel version of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark , this collection of original horror tales is packed with urban legends, terrifying twists, and delightfully haunted stories by one of the biggest stars in webcomics. Each story will make you scream for more!

A new take on a classic format, Bad Dreams in the Night is an updated, illustrated take on the horror anthologies the author grew up with as a kid, such as Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and In a Dark, Dark Room . These self-contained stories grew rapidly in popularity among the author’s online audience, and even inspired production of a motion picture from Buzzfeed Studios and Lionsgate Films. Filled with spine-tingling, pulse-increasing tales of mystery and supernatural occurrences, this book of never-before-seen comics will be the perfect gift for people who love  Black Mirror  and  Stranger Things  and listened to podcasts like  Welcome to Nightvale  and  Rabbits. 

Review: I’m sure that if you have spent at least some time on the Internet you have stumbled upon something by Adam Ellis. He is a cartoonist whose works have gone viral more than once, and have become memes in some cases. I think that what I was most familiar with him from was his long form Twitter ghost story “Dear David”, where he recorded and shared a ‘haunting’ of his apartment by a child ghost with a caved in head. I thought it was very creative and a really fun way to tell a story and create folklore. I actually hadn’t heard of his horror story collection “Bad Dreams in the Night” until very recently, but once I had I really wanted to read it because I found “Dear David” to be a hoot. Clearly I needed to see what else he could do.

Like most short story collections, I will highlight my three favorite tales, and then address it as a complete product.

“Evangeline”: This book started off with a bang, as ‘Evangeline” really grabbed my attention and went places that I kind of expected, but still found poignant. Ellis reminisces about visiting his grandparents house and watching from the TV recorded horror movies on many VHS tapes, but there was one film that he hasn’t been able to find anywhere else. In the film a farmer has a strange alien land on his property, and he calls her Evangeline and they fall in love, though their love is doomed. Ellis searches far and wide but can’t find this movie anywhere. Perhaps for a reason. Was it easy to see wehre this was going? Yeah, a little, but I still loved the journey and found it to be rather bittersweet and beautiful, in a way.

“Little House in the Sea”: I thought that this was probably the most unique story in the book, and wasn’t so much scary as it was haunting and dreamy. A girl is raised alone on a small island with her mother. She always asks her mom if they can leave, but her mother is a steadfast ‘no’. The girl wonders what is beyond the sea. As a mother whose only child is a daughter this one felt especially emotional, even as the more speculative and odd aspects started to reveal themselves, and it just felt ethereal in its strangeness. This was a favorite based on vibes, I suppose, but man the vibes were great for me.

“Viola Bloom”: Is this pretty much a reimagining of a fairly common creepypasta trope that has been around for many, many years (the cursed chain letter/media situation)? Yes. But I still really, really enjoyed “Viola Bloom”, as even if it’s been done before, Ellis still made it unsettling and scary for me. Framed as autobiographical, Ellis receives a strange card in the mail with the name ‘Viola Bloom’ on it, and shortly thereafter a strange, unearthly woman is stalking him outside of his home, unwilling to leave and merely standing, and staring. But what worked the most for me was the inspiration, as Ellis has had to deal with some really scary real life stalking incidents, mostly from the alt-Right and internet trolls that target him for his identity. By channelling that fear into a story about being stalked by a seemingly unending force it makes for a tale that’s all the more resonant and scary.

As a whole, the stories generally worked for me. Some felt a little more shallow than others (“Butter Corn Ramen” was pretty predictable, and “Murder Party” says the same arguments against the true crime genre that pretty much everyone is saying and didn’t feel interesting beyond being a scold, even if I generally agree with the sentiments), but as a whole I found them all entertaining, and I devoured the collection in one night. I also enjoyed the Millennial nostalgia of some of these tales, whether referencing classic scary tales from our youths or the old comfortable formulas of a sitcom’s narrative design.

“Bad Dreams in the Night” is a quick and creepy read, and given that Ellis has a new collection of horror graphics are coming out, it has put him on my radar as a horror author. Excited to see what else he will do in the future!

Rating 8: A quick paced and creepy collection of scary stories from a creator whose horror chops had promise even before this, “Bad Dreams in the Night” is an devilishly fun ride by Adam Ellis.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Bad Dreams in the Night” is included on the Goodreads list “YA Graphic Novels of 2024”.

Kate’s Review: “The Root Witch”

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

Book: “The Root Witch” by Debra Castaneda

Publishing Info: Second Rodeo Books, September 2022

Where Did I Get This Book: I own it.

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

Book Description: A beautiful forest. A terrifying legend.

It’s 1986. Two strangers, hundreds of miles apart, grapple with disturbing incidents in a one-of-a-kind quaking aspen forest.

Knox is a new Forest Service ranger assigned to a vast, remote territory in Utah.

Sandy is a producer fighting for her place in a tough TV newsroom.

Both have heard about the shadowy figure believed to menace visitors to the forest. When a man disappears and reports of the Root Witch begin coming in, Knox and Sandy are plunged into a living nightmare.

Their lives converge on Halloween. Sandy sends a news crew to investigate the sightings. But when the team goes missing, and a shocking video surfaces revealing the ghastly truth, Knox and Sandy face the biggest decision of their lives.

Review: I’ve spoken of this before, but my favorite horror movie of all time is “The Blair Witch Project”. I remember seeing it in the theater when I was 14, and how transformative the experience was for in when it came to horror. I think that my adoration of this film has really molded my tastes and preferences when it comes to horror as a whole, and nature horror/survival horror is near and dear to my heart. I don’t remember how I stumbled upon “The Root Witch” by Debra Castaneda, but it had been sitting on my Kindle for a couple of years before I stumbled upon it while cleaning up my storage. When I saw it I had an ‘oh yeah, this sounded like “The Blair Witch Project’ moment, and decided then and there to finally take it on.

I’ll start with what I did like. For starters, the premise alone is great: there’s an aspen clone forest in Utah (in real life it’s a real place known as Pando) that is rumored to have some kind of dark entity stalking it referred to as The Root Witch. In 1986 a rookie forest service ranger named Knox moves into a cabin near the forest with his restless young wife, while a Salt Lake City newsroom producer named Sandy, hoping to prove something, wants to send a team into the forest to do a story on the urban legend. The team goes missing, their tapes are found, and something otherworldly is lurking. All of this was solid and absolutely clicked for me. I really enjoyed Sandy’s storyline in particular, as her constant roadblocks in her career, usually due to misogyny, are very real, and because of this her motivations are completely understandable, which in turn makes her guilt over her missing crew all the more stressful. I also really love some good urban legend horror, and the background that Castaneda puts into the Root Witch lore was very enjoyable, and with all of that in mind when we DO get some answers (in the form of found footage described moments) I was very satisfied with the execution.

But there is a flip side to this, which brought the story down a bit for me. I really liked the due diligence of describing the Root Witch lore and legend, but we don’t really get much direct action with The Root Witch itself. We rely mostly on descriptions, or aftermath moments with dead things being discovered, but in terms of actual building suspense with in the moment reveals? Not so much. I did like the video once we got there, but I had hoped for more scary and tense moments instead of a lot of build up for Knox and Sandy. Had there been a more even distribution of build up AND satisfying payoff, I would have enjoyed it more, but as it is, it just felt uneven and unsatisfying. And on top of that, I wasn’t nearly as invested in Knox’s story, which was a little ironic given that I fully anticipated to enjoy the path following the ranger. But I thought his wife was a bit grating, there was a side plot with a rancher that wasn’t as fleshed out as I had hoped it would be, and there weren’t enough forest moments with him. I just needed more action!

“The Root Witch” was a bit of a disappointment, but I think that I may try out more stories from Debra Castaneda. There is so much promise here, and I would be curious to see if it comes out in other spooky tales.

Rating 6: I really liked the premise and it had some great moments of found footage transcriptions, but I wish that we had more interactions with the Root Witch instead of aftermaths.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Root Witch” is included on the Goodreads list “Botanical Gothic and Plant Horror”.

Kate’s Review: “The Ground That Devours Us”

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

Book: “The Ground That Devours Us” by Kalla Harris

Publishing Info: Entangled Teen, June 2025

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

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

Book Description: The world ended ten years ago. Vampires showed up, took over, and turned the whole planet into their personal all-you-can-drink buffet. The president? Bloodsucker. The government? Bloodsuckers. My social life? Absolutely nonexistent.

But hey, at least I had one thing going for me—slayer training. My twin sister, Ripley, and I were about to go pro, officially joining the ranks of the last people on earth who actually do something about the whole “undead overlords” situation.

And then X had to show up. The vampire boogeyman. The worst of the worst. And instead of killing Ripley, like any decent monster would, he turned her. Now she’s technically a vamp, but something tells me my sister is still in there. Which means I can’t slay her.

What can I do? Break every rule. Lie to my friends. Strike a deal with the most dangerous vampire on the planet: X will protect Ripley from everyone else who wants her dead—like, really dead—until I can snag the cure for vampirism. The catch? Risking my own head to help him free his good-for-nothing BFF from the very slayers who taught me everything.

If I want Ripley back, I’m going to have to play nice with the thing that ruined my life. And the worst part? I think he’s enjoying this.

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

Anyone who has followed my reviews of vampire fiction on this blog can probably tell you that I am VERY particular about the genre, and that in many cases I have a really hard time getting into straight up human/vampire romance. THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS (love Spike and Buffy, I’ve really enjoyed the “My Roommate Is A Vampire” series by Jenna Levine), but overall it’s just not something I like. But when I was sent the description of “The Ground That Devours Us” by Kalla Harris, even though I knew it had romantic elements, I ALSO saw that it was a dystopia. And man I love dystopia. So I threw caution to the wind, hoping that the dystopic angles would outweigh the romantic ones.

This book gave me a mix of general dystopia, the book “The Coldest Girl in Cold Town” by Holly Black, the book/movie “Warm Bodies”, and some sprinkles of various CW vampire shows whether it’s “Buffy” or “The Vampire Diaries” (which was a direct influence according to Harris), and as a whole I found it very enjoyable and to be a well done mish mash. I liked the world that Harris built, with non-vampire survivors training and preparing to try and overtake the bloodsucker threat, while vampires are getting their own stuff in order, bringing more humans into the fold and turning them into vampires. And like with any dystopian stories worth their weight, we have a well established societal system, with our humans in one well guarded sanctuary compound, and our vampires (some sentient, some almost like zombies called ‘bloodwalkers’) outside the walls and living in their own society. I really enjoyed the vampires mythos, with there being more traditional vampires and the zombie-esque ones, and I liked the way that Harris slowly unveils the way that Vaille works, for better or for worse.

I also was a pretty big fan of our cast of characters, finding them all pretty well rounded and fleshed out. Our protagonist is Ruby, and she and her sister Ripley live in the compound Vaille and are training to be vampire slayers under the eye of Barnett, the head of their community. So when Ripley is turned into a vampire by notorious vampire X, Ruby wants to get her sister back because Vaille may be on the verge of a cure. It’s good hook, and Ruby is both an interesting and confounding protagonist, but confounding in a good way. She’s stubborn, bitter, and always on guard and ready to lash out at X, but when she teams up with him in hopes of getting Ripley back on her side, we really start to see her character growth. Especially as her worldview starts to be challenged the community she has put so much faith and devotion into starts to be revealed as not what she thinks. I was surprised by how well done this exploration of clannishness and blind devotion after being flooded with propaganda, and how Ripley has to start deconstructing what she thinks is true about her life in Vaille and being so tied to Barnett. It’s a pretty heavy theme, and Harris clearly trusts her reader to be able to parse out the nuance.

And okay, I probably have to talk about the romance, which was the element that I was the most nervous about. As mentioned above, I am really picky about my vampire romance. But I ended up really enjoying the relationship between Ruby and X. It wasn’t instalove, which is always a plus (and how could it be? He turned her sister into a vampire!), but it was done in a way that actually felt believable, going slowly enough that she could work through her anger, so he could help her understand his position, and so they could connect at a steady and acceptable pace (and there are some mitigating factors, too, but I won’t go into it here). X is a fun foil to Ruby, and I was definitely harkening back to some of the snide banter between Buffy and Spike in earlier seasons of “BTVS”.

I am such a predictable sucker for that kind of thing, take me back to swooning on the phone with my cousin after an episode of especially good Spike and Buffy banter! (source)

So overall, “The Ground That Devours Us” is a unique vampire dystopia tale that I found to be incredibly engaging. If Harris wanted to write more stories in this universe, I would read them for sure.

Rating 8: A unique and entertaining vampire dystopia that goes into some existential meditations on clannishness, blind allegiances, and propaganda. Oh, and vampire romance, too, and it didn’t make me want to pull my hair out.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Ground That Devours Us” is included on the Goodreads list “YA Novels of 2025”.

A Revisit to Fear Street: “Fear Street: Prom Queen”


Given that I did a re-read of R.L. Stine’s original “Fear Street” series a few years ago, as well as a few “Super Chillers” and a couple special Trilogies within the Universe, when Netflix started releasing modern “Fear Street” films I had to review those too! And four years after the original trilogy released, we now have a NEW “Fear Street” film, this one loosely adapting the book “The Prom Queen”! So we once again find ourselves on another Revisit to Fear Street!

Film: “Fear Street: Prom Queen”

It’s been four years since Netflix debuted the campy, gory, and altogether nostalgic “Fear Street Trilogy”, a set of films that gave us a new imagining of the iconic R.L. Stine YA horror series. They were not only fun (albeit VERY different) adaptations of the books I have loved so much for so long, they also built and interesting backstory and lore for the plagued town of Shadyside and all the murder and mayhem that befalls it. So imagine my pleasant surprise when I saw that there was a brand new “Fear Street” movie coming out this year, and not only was it taking inspiration from one of my first “Fear Street” revisits on the blog, “The Prom Queen”, it took place in 1988! Not only does that reopen the door for a cursed Shadyside (as the trilogy wrapped up with an end to the curse of Sarah Fier), but it has SO MANY opportunities for homages to 1980s slasher movies and all the tropes that come with them! Suffice to say, I was STOKED.

So a quick plot summary: Somewhat similar to the book that it takes its name from, “Prom Queen” takes place leading up to and on Prom at Shadyside High, with multiple girls vying for the title, and a killer taking them out one by one. In THIS, it’s 1988, and our group of nominees are a group of mean girls, led by Tiffany Falconer who wants the title of Prom Queen REALLY badly, bad girl Kristy Renault who entered the race just to piss people off, and Lori Granger, school outcast with a tragic past. But a masked killer is taking out the girls one by one, as well as anyone who may get in the way.

To just get it out of the way, this was a little bit of a let down for me, and I’m not sure if it’s just because the momentum from the original trilogy has long since passed, or if it was just an overall less engaging film. It has glimmers of what I really liked about the Trilogy, and even has some references to it (the camp massacre in the second movie is what really sprang to mind). But I think that the problem was that it never REALLY connected to the trilogy, and it could have been just any generic slasher film. I know that that was something of a criticism of “1994”, “1978”, and “1666”, but at least in those movies they were building up a mythology for the series that DID have some references to the “Fear Street” books (the Fier Family, Camp Nightwing, the Shadyside Mall) and fit well within it. In “Prom Queen” it just felt like this could have easily been a remake of “Prom Night”. Also, talk about a missed opportunity to reference MY GAL RUBY DAY, one of the ghosties from the trilogy, who had her OWN murderous and bloody prom night! This one created a different bloody history with Shadyside Prom involving Lori’s mother, setting up a reason to want to win to remove herself from a tragic narrative, which was fine, but kind of hack. OH, and not to get into spoilers too much, but this movie also has some contradictions to the curse in regards to Shadyside vs Sunnyvale and the way that the curse doles these things out. And on top of that, I wasn’t really invested in any of the characters either, outside of Lori’s bestie Megan, who is a horror movie Goth weirdo stoner who may or may not be in love with Lori. Everyone else was fairly two dimensional, be it tragic Lori, or uber bitch Tiffany, or her lapdog girl gang. One of the things I liked best about the trilogy was that I genuinely cared about the characters, so it was extra upsetting when they were ultimately brutally murdered, and in this one I just didn’t feel it for most of the players. I honestly would have liked more from bad girl Kristy, but she was played by Ariana Greenblat who is making her own way these days and didn’t stick around too long so that it felt more like a cute cameo of a rising actress.

But, sloppiness aside, the VIBES of this movie gave me everything I needed. I thought that the costuming department and the design department was pretty spot on for a lot of the styling of the time, REALLY enjoying the looks of Megan and Kristy (what can I say, I’m a Goth/punk chick at heart), but even the more preppy and ‘in’ styles seemed pretty on point to me. Hell, just the whole feel and tropes and execution of this movie tapped into the 80s era of slasher films, with lots of gore, pretty bland characters only there to add to the body count, and melodrama melodrama melodrama. This movie knows what its references are, just take a look at the poster I picked. Full on “Nightmare on Elm Street”, 80s horror VHS sleeve panache! Even if the story itself was kinda ho hum, this is the kind of case that I’m willing to grant some leniency because of VIBES, baby.

And we once again have a GREAT soundtrack, very 80s centric, but not even necessarily only obvious 80s songs but also some less thought of ones. I mean sure, we still got things like “Hungry Like The Wolf” and “I Think We’re Alone Now” but I actively screeched in glee when they played the song “Gloria” by Laura Branigan! And what’s more, the music didn’t stop with the pop music at the time, but the instrumental tracks were tailored to sound like they were from 80s slashers at the time with a huge emphasis on synthesizers and electronica. I kept thinking about John Carpenter scores, like from “The Fog” or “Christine” (honestly the man’s whole musical catalogue) or even things like the scores to “C.H.U.D” or “Suspiria“. Or hell, even a more modern score like in “It Follows” that REALLY hit the synth wave hard, GOD that is a banging score. The music was my favorite part of this film.

So, overall, a bit of a mixed bag. Story and plot execution, meh. But candy coated slasher homage to 80s horror schlock AND books that were incredibly formative to me serving as a backbone? FUN AS HELL! I certainly won’t pass up on the opportunity for more “Fear Street” movies, especially since, given the lore and mythos, they will all be historical fiction horror, and that opens up a lot of opportunities.

Kate’s Review: “The Manor of Dreams”

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

Book: “The Manor of Dreams” by Christina Li

Publishing Info: Avid Reader Press, May 2025

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

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

Book Description: Mexican Gothic meets Everything I Never Told You in Christina Li’s haunting novel about the secrets that lie in wait in the crumbling mansion of a former Hollywood starlet, and the intertwined fates of the two Chinese American families fighting to inherit it.

They say what you don’t know can’t hurt you. But silence can be deadly.

Vivian Yin is dead. The first Chinese actress to win an Oscar, the trailblazing ingénue rose to fame in the eighties, only to disappear from the spotlight at the height of her career and live out the rest of her life as a recluse.

Now her remaining family members are gathered for the reading of her will and her daughters expect to inherit their childhood Vivian’s grand, sprawling Southern California garden estate. But due to a last-minute change to the will, the house is passed on to another family instead—one that has suddenly returned after decades of estrangement.

In hopes of staking their claim, both families move into the mansion. Amidst the grief and paranoia of the families’ unhappy reunion, Vivian’s daughters race to piece together what happened in the last weeks of their mother’s life, only to realize they are being haunted by something much more sinister and vengeful than their regrets. After so many years of silence, will the families finally confront the painful truth about the last fateful summer they spent in the house, or will they cling to their secrets until it’s too late?

Told in dual timelines, spanning three generations, and brimming with romance, betrayal, ambition and sacrifice, The Manor of Dreams is a thrilling family gothic that examines the true cost of the American dream—and what happens when the roots we set down in this country turn to rot.

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

Haunted house stories are one of my favorite sub-genres of horror fiction, and I don’t think that I will ever get sick of the trope of a family moving into a new home, unaware of the horrors that await. And we’ve been getting a few books like this as of late, with “The Manor of Dreams” by Christina Li being one of the more recent ones. And when I was reading about this one, it was pretty clear to me that not only were we going to get a haunted house story, but also a family saga with some shades of dysfunction and the racist undertones of American society. Which meant that I was even more on board to read it.

As a haunted house story, “The Manor of Dreams” is solid and effective. There is a slow build of dread as two families, Elaine and her daughter Nora, and Lucille, her sister Rennie, and daughter Madeline, start a legal fight over the inheritance of an estate that had been in Lucille’s family for years, but ended up being left for Elaine by the owner, actress Vivian Yin. Elaine’s parents had worked for Vivian and her husband Richard, and Elaine harbors enough resentment that she wants to keep the house, while Lucille is furious. But as both families decide to camp there while it all gets sorted, Nora and Madeline, and Rennie too, start seeing things, and realizing something is VERY wrong in the house. From weird images, to shadowy figures, to a very, shall we say, ACTIVE garden, the haunted house trope is alive and well in this book, with a rot seeping not only into the house, but into the women who are fighting over it. We start to learn the various tragedies and moments that may be contributing to the haunting, with a sad and devastating history of the house playing a role, but also with reveals that are well hidden and pulled off as the story goes on.

I also really connected with the ways that Li weaves in themes of racism, identity, and generational trauma into this haunted house story, making it about so many different things that can haunt a person. In the past storyline, we have Vivian, whose fame is growing as she establishes herself as a serious actress on the arm of her actor/producer husband Richard, making a splash as the first Chinese American actress to win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, but then finding the roles drying up due to a lack of interest in non-white actresses (amongst other things). We also have tensions relating to Vivian’s identity in regards to the history of the house itself, with Richard’s family estate having ties to the Chinese Railroad workers, as his ancestor was a magnate who had no qualms taking advantage of workers who were being exploited in dangerous conditions and cast aside. Add in the tension as Vivian’s marriage starts to deteriorate, and the complexity of Vivian oozes off the page. And in the present day we have Lucille and Rennie, who have darker memories of their childhood in the home and the terrible losses they endured, and the complicated relationship they both had with their mother, and how that informs both of them and their motivations. Which in turn passes down to Lucille’s relationship with her own daughter Madeline. And THEN we have Nora and her mother Elaine, with Elaine having her OWN motivations as the daughter of former staff to Vivian and Richard, and bitterness towards the family that lived there throughout the years. It adds layers to the supernatural haunting angle, and I truly enjoyed how well Li pulled out the family dysfunction along with the haunting itself.

Overall, “The Manor of Dreams” is a creepy and poignant horror story that touches upon family dysfunction and identity with a deft hand. If you like haunted house novels, definitely check this one out.

Rating 8: A suspenseful, creepy, and very poignant story about family secrets, generational trauma, and how bitterness can wreak havoc on the living and the dead.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Manor of Dreams” is included on the Goodreads lists “Horror To Look Forward To in 2025”, and “Queer Releases May 2025”.