book review | dear mothman by robin gow

bookshop.org | waterstones | goodreads After Noah's best friend, Lewis - another trans boy, and the only person Noah was out to - dies in a car accident, Noah begins to leave notes for Mothman, who Lewis believed lived in the woods behind their homes. Their combined research project into Mothman becomes Noah's alone, as …

book review | nothing but the rain by naomi salman

I received a free copy of this novella through Edelweiss+ from Macmillan in exchange for an honest review. The predicted UK/US release date is 14.03.23. 'Guess what the weather's like today! Welcome to Aloisville, rainest town in the rainiest state. Population: we don't recall.' Naomi Salman’s Nothing But the Rain is a short, tense novella …

quickfire reviews | in the cut, the sluts, & more

The books reviewed in this post all provide an individual approach to the relationship between brutality and art. Unsettling, dark, and at times incredibly funny, all of these pieces of work have stuck with me in how they've tested me as both a reader and as a person, and I hope at least one stands …

book review | horseman by christina henry

Ben Van Brunt is the grandchild of Brom Bones and Katrina Tassel. Raised on rumour and gossip, Ben isn’t so sure the Headless Horseman is the myth his grandfather has made him out to be. When a child turns up dead, rid of both head and hands, Ben’s previously safe world in Sleepy Hollow – …

book review | the midnight club by christopher pike

Christopher Pike's The Midnight Club was an unexpected hit for me. If it weren't for the fact that it is soon to be a Netflix series, created by Mike Flanagan and Leah Fong with a different director at the helm every other episode, I most likely would have never picked it up. It's the kind …

book review | record of a night too brief and people from my neighbourhood by hiromi kawakami

Hiromi Kawakami’s shorter fiction is just as promising as her long-form works. Hallucinatory, and simultaneously heart-breaking and tongue-in-cheek, both collections are expertly translated by Ted Goossen and Lucy North (Neighbourhood and Record, respectively). In the titular novella in Record of a Night Too Brief, Kawakami chronicles the life cycle of a woman in a world …

book review | strange weather in tokyo by hiromi kawakami

strange weather in tokyo by hiromi kawakami hiromi kawakami's strange weather in tokyo is a novel that packs a punch. we follow tsukiko, a 38 year old woman who works in an office and lives alone, after she reunites with one of her former high school teachers, a man she still refers to as 'sensei', …

three thriller reviews | lock every door, night film, eight perfect murders

lock every door by riley sager riley sager's lock every door is one of the two thrillers published in 2019 that i constantly mistake for one another: the other is the turn of the key by ruth ware. i only confused them thanks to their similar covers, and the fact that both follow a woman …

three horror reviews | worms, tribesmen, witching hour theatre

Worms by James Montague Goodreads In Worms, James Hildebrand, along with his wife, go on holiday to the Norfolk coast, only for him to be plagued by a haunting vision of.... worms. Just. Loads and loads of worms. This novel was originally published in 1979, so the general treatment of women is... not great. They're all written as hyper-realistic …

book review | wilder girls by rory power

Wilder Girls by Rory Power Goodreads | Wordery It's been eighteen months since the Raxter School for Girls was put under quarantine. Since the Tox hit and pulled Hetty's life out from under her. It started slow. First the teachers died one by one. Then it began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange …