“I'm going up to my room now, where I may die.”

Don't Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones (3 STARS)

I really struggle to see this series as anything other than "awesome concept, middling execution". The plotting and pacing were tighter than the first novel, but the characters that had charmed me before fell flat here, for some reason.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (3 STARS)

This was my first Jackson book, that I read for a queer horror book club! I loved the writing on a sentence-by-sentence level, and felt like the Gothic atmosphere built to a perfect crescendo in the final image of the two sisters in the ruined house. However, felt like the story was lacking something overall - I ended up enjoying the book club discussion more than the book itself.

The Tapestry of Fate by Shannon Chakraborty (4.5 STARS)

I was really pleasantly surprised by this one! I enjoyed the first book in this series as something that was just fun and a little silly, but it sets this instalment up to hit the ground running - we're in an adventure story, we're looking for Transgressions, we know our protagonist - go.

I think Chakraborty's writing will always captivate me, but the writing of the mystery in this - where Amina Al-Sirafi finds herself shipwrecked on a magical island, that clearly has something very unsettling and wrong with it, but a slow build to pinning down exactly what - was what kept me reading. A perfect mix of mythic imagery and fey glamour.

Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker (3.5 STARS)

I picked this up on a whim as it was due back to the library soon, and was surprised by how readable it was. I couldn't put it down! Although the action was slow, the character work, the writing style, and the way the mystery built was pretty fast paced, and the questions continually being thrown up made me want to keep reading - the stakes felt very high.

I feel like this is a 'gothic' novel with more of a thriller pace, and loved the way the supernatural was mixed with historical atrocity and mundane, human horror. The ending was little hit and miss? But still ultimately satisfying!

reading wrap ups: jan | feb | mar | april | may/june