#litsy

5/5 Stars

Pub Date: Oct 25, 2022

I’m just going to say it. I think this book is the most overlooked horror novel of 2022. Philip Fracassi has written a fucking stunner.

In search for a quick payday, a group of criminals concoct a plan to kidnap a child for some ransom money. A carefully curated plan that seems to be going smoothly. Until they get the boy, Henry Thorne, back to the hideaway: a derelict cabin in the middle of the woods.

Theres something waiting for them in the cellar below. Something more terrifying than the baddies that kidnapped him, and it’s reaching out to Henry. Telling him they are not welcome here. That they need to leave before it’s too late. Mother wants them gone.

This book combines some of my favourite things: Spooky kids! Violence! Revenge! Gross siblings! Eldritch horror! Grief! Bucketloads of grief. Like, so, so much grief.

The sense of dread and tension I felt the entire time I was reading this book is unrivaled. I needed to finish this one quickly so I could breathe again.

Thank you so much to Skyhorse Pub and NetGalley for an arc of this title.

3.5/5 Stars

Pub Date: rereleased Oct 11, 2022

If you’ve had the previous pleasure of reading a Catriona Ward novel, you know her ability to create a living world.

Every page of Little Eve breathes. You can smell the briny waves lapping against the lichen covered rocks. You can feel the dampness seeping out of the castle walls. The bite of a snake clamping down on the webbing between your thumb and forefinger, and the poison slithering through your veins.

It’s all atmosphere, and I enjoyed spending time in its pages.

The only problem here is that I’ve read the Last House on Needless Street and Sundial. You can see Ward developing her style and storytelling in these pages, and how far her writing has come since Little Eve’s initial release.

Comparing her novels to each other is maybe not fair. This book is still wonderful! But I expected a more impossibly knotted plot that gets tighter as I pick at it’s ends.

If you’re looking for a dual timeline, super moody cult thriller though you should definitely pick this one up.

4/5 Stars

Pub Date: Sep 20, 2022

It’s rare to see a person in Settlement Five who has all their limbs still attached. Whether a finger is missing or an entire leg , these are the visual representation of their crimes and misdoings. Atonements for their evil ways.

Every settlement has a Butcher, an inherited title that doles out these punishments. When the current butcher, Winona, refuses to maim a child, she’s brutally disposed of her role. Forcing her daughter Lady Mae to take on the mantle of the most hated person in the settlement.

The world building in this novel is terrific. It cleverly folds you into this society where this extreme form of corporeal punishment is still not a deterrent to crimes of opportunity or lack of.

It balances themes of redemption and forgiveness and isolation so well.

4/5 Stars

Pub Date: Aug 16, 2022

About 15 years ago I very deeply debated going to mortuary school. As a child I went to many funerals (which it seems is unusual) and I think having many people die around you gives you an insight into life and death. Death and corpses weren’t and aren’t something to fear. Death is a guarantee. An inevitable. And voiding yourself of seeing the dead perpetuates this fear.

One issue that plagued me was the commodification of death and the expenses of funerals: The pressure of showing your fondness and love through the fanciest body box and the sanitation of our experience of a dead body.

As an always macabre leaning person I felt a real connection to Hayley Campbell’s exploration of what happens after death. The many processes of handling and dismantling, identifying and remembering a person after they’ve left their body.

This book casts a wide net, and I think is a great companion piece or introduction into the death positivity movement. It’s harrowing and heartwarming and fascinating. My only suggestion is maybe to not read the chapter on Disaster Victim Identification WHILE on an airplane like I did. 😂

4.5/5 Stars

Pub Date: July 12th, 2022

Sometimes, when you read almost entirely horror stories, it’s hard to articulate the pleasure you feel from reading abhorrent things. The desire to read the blackest truths as a form of painful escapism.

What does it say about us if our escape is terrifying, perverse, deranged? Bloody and violent and hateful.

Reading stories that are fucked up and difficult, for me, is a way of reclaiming the darkest moments of living in this world. A process of rebuilding and reevaluating. And hell, sometimes it’s just this desire for the adrenaline burst of being scared. Horror just tickles that special part of my brain.

Three Days in the Pink Tower is a small but powerful book. EV Knight is taking a truly terrifying moment, the events around her own sexual assault and kidnapping, and reshaping it into a hell of a revenge novella. I took many deep breathes, and breaks from reading, because it was a hard story to read.

It’s excellent and I hope some of you pick this one up.

4/5

Pub Date: Mar 29, 2022

Freshly divorced, and on her way to a girls weekend, Addy nearly collides with a van parked in the middle of the road. Nerves frayed, she stops at the next truck stop to regroup and calm down before she tackles the miles ahead of her.

Witness to her near miss, she meets a friendly trucker, Mads, who offers to guide her through the impending storm. Armed with CB radios, they take off.

But the winding path is treacherous, and it isn’t long before an accident happens.

Addy has a decision to make: try to rescue her new friend, or stay on the road and try to signal for help? But the blizzard whirling around her is the least of her worries, as something more sinister is lurking, hunting in the mountains around her.

Below is a story of self discovery and empowerment under the pressure gage of supernatural danger. It kept me guessing until the very end. And it’s spooky and gory. Everything you want from a horror novella.

4.5/5 Stars

Pub Date: Jan 15, 2020

"Who cares what happens to the meat after it's off the bone?"

What book from your TBR do you keep putting off despite knowing that you’ll love it?

True Crime is one of many of mine. A book lauded by many of my favourite people around here, and it definitely lived up to the hype.

Suzy’s most precious items are her illicit issues of True Crime, tucked away where no one can find them. The broken bodies an escape from the violence she endures at the hands of her mother, as a plaything for her and her boyfriends.

It’s no surprise when Suzy finally snaps. Walking in on the scene her brother Lim knows their only hope is to flee, starting a journey absolutely soaked in blood. Two wounded children inflicting pain on anyone who gets in their way.

4.5/5 Stars

Pub Date: Mar 1, 2022

All Rob wanted was a normal life. A family of her own far away from the compound she grew up on. But things at home are anything but normal.

Her husband is cruel and unfaithful, belittling her if she dares to call him out on his affairs. Brandishing her past as a tether. A history she cannot escape.

But more disturbing is the behavior of her eldest daughter Callie. A solitary child. A collector of dead things. While unsettling on its own, her macabre obsession seems to be taking a more extreme turn. Speaking to shadows. Punishing her little sister Annie in progressively more dangerous ways.

A missing bottle of pills. The blue lips of an overdose.

Rob knows there’s only one place where she can help Callie out. Sundial. Her family home. A place to reveal to Callie the secret in her families blood.

Told through dual timelines, the mystery of what happened in Rob’s past starts to reveal itself. Packed with twists that only Catriona Ward is capable of bending. I’m in awe with how she fools me.

Supernatural elements, medical experiments, family traumas, gaslighting, aggressive dogs. There are loads of themes stuffed into these pages, but it’s brisk and propulsive, and while I don’t feel it was as seamless as Needless Street it’s a hell of a follow up effort. Seriously, Ward has become an auto-but author for me.