Category: book reviews

Review: My Evil Mother

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My Evil Mother
Margaret Atwood

Another short story, easing into the New Year. At 32 pages, another Amazon Prime original story, My Evil Mother details the relationship between mother and daughter and how one bestows strength. I loved the quirky but serious depiction of mother and daughter, the interwoven urban legends of witches and trauma, abandonment, and perseverance.
The depiction of the mother’s self assured, unwavering confidence as her daughter interpreted it pitted against her reality is both heartbreaking and aspirational.

Review: The Autobiography of a Traitor and a Half Savage

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The Autobiography of a Traitor and a Half Savage
Alix E Harrow

This short story, at about 20 pages, has such vivid and beautiful atmosphere which I’ve come to expect in Harrow’s work. She has the ability to create such a complete world in very few pages.
The story follows Oona, a mixed indigenous woman who is forced by circumstance to become a mapmaker for colonizers in order to secure her younger brother’s safety. It is a gorgeous story of culture and revenge and I truly love Harrow’s ability to create a complete life and world rooted in some primal understanding of human behavior.

Please give it a read.

The Autobiography of a Traitor and a Half-Savage

Review: It Waits in the Woods

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It Waits in the Woods
Josh Malerman
From the Creature Feature collection for Amazon available free through Prime as a member

From the same collection as The Pram by Joe Hill, at 51 pages this novella follows a young woman as she seeks answers about her sister’s disappearance three years before. A budding documentarian, Brenda goes into the wilderness with a theory about a creature there that may be responsible for her sister’s disappearance and death; a death which Brenda has already accepted and which her parents have openly blamed her for.
I had initially been reading this story them stopped myself and started over because I felt I was reading it too quickly. It’s definitely a story to be savored so that the build is satisfying. It follows traditional horror novel plotting and slow, crawling progress buffered by world building.
On my second reading, I really enjoyed the way the world was plotted. It’s not something to listen to idly as an audio book or skim over. It also featured a first If seen in quite a while—an actual goddamn monster. Harkening to creature features it’s a wonderful homage to horror stories of 70s film when much of mainstream horror transitioned from Universal Monsters to the unknown, human, and perverse.



10/10, read it babes

Review: Orfeia

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Orfeia
Joanne Harris

Finishing out the year with Joanne Harris yet again, and far from the only Joanne Harris novella I read after indulging in Honeycomb, Orfeia stuck with me in a biting way.
I find with Harris’s work I have a tendency to incorporate it into my understanding of a given mythology. Blue Salt Road is how I always saw selkie stories, isn’t it?
Orfeia was unique and beautiful. I absolutely recommend it, her prose style reminding me of George MacDonald or Edgar Rice Burroughs but deeply cemented in a network of fae stories with Harris has been weaving through her many novellas and Honeycomb.
Orfeia follows a mother who has lost her adult child and is willing to travel into the land of the dead, through various fae traps, to restore her.
It was absolutely lovely.

Review: You Feel it Just Below the Ribs

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You Feel it Just Below the Ribs
Jeffrey Cranor, Janina Matthewson

Wheewwww
I loved it. I struggled with it a bit because it feels at times too unreal and at other times too close to home, which I imagine is exactly the sliver of reality is seeks to exist between.
I have realized something very crucial in reading this book; I would follow Jeffrey Cranor into the ocean. Which I imagine would be terrifying for him, but I love the biting realism in this dystopian thriller.
Typically, I am not a fan of books told in journal format, it’s just not my preference, but this was excellently written, sci-fi horror.
I absolutely recommend it for people who like darker, more realistic portrayals in their fiction.

Review: SisterSong

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Sistersong
Lucy Holland

This book was beautiful; a retelling of the Twa sisters, it follows three siblings through an Arthur-adjacent tale with links both to real history and myths in The Matter of Britain.
As an Arthurian nerd (read: everything nerd), I loved seeing a story I wasn’t familiar with, a murder ballad that I was familiar with, an amazing queer representation, and a new take on Merlin.
The story manages to do all of it without beating you over the head with its source material, instead guiding through a world that feels totally Holland’s creation. The narrative and characters are remarkably organic and conflicted.
I would absolutely recommend it, especially to a queer audience which all too rarely sees representation outside of mundane coming out stories.

Review: The Night Circus

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The Night Circus
Erin Morgentstern

This was a reread for me, which typically I don’t reread books so soon after the first time I’ve read them. It tends to be a decades later ‘oh yeah, I can appreciate this differently now’ vibe. But I read this book for the first time in 2020 and I’ve probably aged a few decades between them and now.

I remember, both times I’ve read it, immediately thinking of the Hunchback of Notre Dame. The opening lines are from the perspective of and detailing the Night Circus itself, the edifice, and I remember the first time I read it being drawn in by this comparison. It’s something that promises something unusual.

What I find funny, having read this book twice, is that the characters are so crisp and well developed while giving the smallest amount of detail necessary. That’s how a mysterious air is achieved, after all, but it really does smack you in the face to realize how little you know and how much you still attach yourself on.

My opinion of certain aspects has changed given the time and life experiences I’ve had between readings; I am far more sympathetic to Isobel the scorned card reader; far less sympathetic to Tsukiko who betrayed her love.

I still love the man in grey and Chandresh.

The characterization is evocative. The storytelling and pacing; the sense of being out of time in several aspects, is something which manages to draw you in while keeping you separated, exactly as a circus should.

Plus, who doesn’t live a story that comes with an aesthetic?

It’s an absolute recommendation

Review: Thistlefoot

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Thistlefoot
GennaRose Nethercott

I’ll cut to the chase, this was one of my favorite books I read in 2023.
Thistlefoot takes place in a world of magic and not, a world where most things are exactly the same as they are in reality but with an important exception —the scars of an event can awaken the spirit of a place.

One of the early mentioned examples of this is a Burger King that grew eyes after a break in.

Thistlefoot, the book’s name sake, is a house that sprouted chicken legs.

The sibling pair at the heart of the story, Bellatine and Issac Yaga, are the inheritors of Thistlefoot and the generational trauma that both makes them who they are and that has been kept from them by their family. They both have their own unusual gifts, which unbeknownst to them are adaptations to that trauma. The book examines disapora in a fascinating way.

The story follows both the Yaga siblings and the history of the house itself in a slow burn reveal of the tragic events that led Thistlefoot to sprout legs and flee.

All while being hunted by a similar oddity, which intends to destroy Thistlefoot.

This book was such a delicate and well constructed handling of generational trauma and particularly genocide. I had gone into it blind and was taken in immediately with the world and characterization.

It’s an absolute recommendation.

Review: Big Bad

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Big Bad
Chandler Baker


A copy paste disclaimer! :There are several stories available for free download if you are already subscribed to amazon prime, and I took advantage of that recently and thought I’d spend November telling you about the short stories and novellas I picked up that I liked best and thought was worth the read.

These tend to be stories commissioned by Amazon and put into collections by Amazon

Okay, back to review:

From the first line I knew I would like this one; a horror story wrapped in a failed marriage and the other way around.

At 58 pages, it’s a very quick read. The pacing and characterization is a lovely build to the end of the story; the twists are both obvious and not, telescoped well but always leaving the reader with doubts.

It’s another of those stories that is difficult to talk about without spoiling the whole of it, so very worth the read.

I honestly started to say more but am not sure how to without giving it away haha

The characters are extremely well done and feel organic, even under their bizarre circumstances.

Review: What the Dead Know

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What the Dead Know
Nghi Vo

A copy paste disclaimer! :There are several stories available for free download if you are already subscribed to amazon prime, and I took advantage of that recently and thought I’d spend November telling you about the short stories and novellas I picked up that I liked best and thought was worth the read.

These tend to be stories commissioned by Amazon and put into collections by Amazon

Okay, back to review:

Of the stories I read, this one has stuck with me a long time. The narrative is immediately engaging, the characters relatable and enjoyable. It’s one of those stories difficult to talk about without spoiling it because you want to pull others into this same world that you were pulled into.
The gimmick of two con artists, one being utilized for and also taking advantage of the ignorance of those around them because of their race; the communication with spirits and motif of revenge all check very important boxes to me.
Of the ghosts stories I’ve read, which is not a small number, several of the images in this story are so evocative that they’re well stuck in my craw. I absolutely would recommend this story to anyone and at 30 pages it leaves you both wanting more and satisfied.