Uncanny Valley Girls

I didn’t know it, but apparently one way I know a book is for me is when it opens with a quote from Ginger Snaps.

Part memoir, part examination of gender, trauma, disability and more “otherness” - as well as the universal desire for love and belonging - through the lens of horror films, in Uncanny Valley Girls, Zefyr Lisowski invites us in and shares vulnerably about growing up with a debilitating illness, her time in therapy and psych wards, life as a trans woman, and how horror films were her refuge.

Written in the second person, Uncanny Valley Girls reads like a confessional and makes it feel like we are intimate friends privy to her innermost thoughts.

The paragraphs on film theory and criticism were interesting, well researched, and thoughtful, but what makes Uncanny Valley Girls stand out is how Lisowski connects the theory to her personal experience, starting in the opening chapter where she discusses sickness as otherness in films like The Ring and Pet Sematary to how The Texas Chainsaw Massacre impacted her feelings about growing up in the South.

As someone who also grew up in the South as an “other” (though not in the same ways), a lot of this really resonated with me on a personal level which I did not expect, and I definitely expect to go back over some of these paragraphs and chapters again from a mindset of personal growth vs. entertainment and review purposes.

Though many of the themes in Uncanny Valley Girls by Zefyr Lisowski are dark - illness, otherness, suicidal ideation - the overall tone is hopeful; many chapters end with the idea of freedom, and the overarching theme is about love and survival through horror.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Perennial for the advance copy in exchange for my honest review. Pub. date: 10/7/25

Support your favorite indie bookstore (and give us both 20% off if it’s your first purchase) by using my link at https://refer.bookshop.org/candidanorwood.