One thing I love about Gemma Amor: she does not give a f@#! as evidenced by the opening paragraphs of First Date.

In as many words as I’m taking for this review, she subverts sex, beautiful sunsets over the water, and even good old-fashioned run of the mill serial killing. But she does it using language (for the most part) that lulls you into believing you’re reading classical  literature. Don’t fall for it! She’s here to take us on a delightfully disturbing ride.

I was never a big Peter Pan fan; I could never really understand the desire not to grow up; that’s all I ever wanted. But the homage to the Peter Pan story in Catriona Ward’s Nowhere Burning is effective and evocative, as we are introduced to Riley and her little brother Oliver, who are wards of a relative they call Cousin. He forces them to live a meager existence, under feeding them and enforcing punishment on them lest they should succumb to demons. 

I have read most, if not all, the published books in A. G. Slatter’s Sourdough Universe, and A Forest, Darkly is my favorite so far.

As a cranky middle-aged lady with witchy tendencies of my own, I felt a kinship with Mehrab, and her honesty (with us, at least, through the first-person narration) about her negative as well as positive traits made her likable (probably against her will).

A Veritable Household Pet by Viggy Parr Hampton is one of the saddest horror books I’ve read in a while, but, like all of her works, is beautifully written and filled with characters who are complex and imperfect and feel like real people. 

Humboldt Cut by Allison Mick is a beautifully written horror book that combines elements of eco-horror with some body and folk horror.  "A million-million imperceivable eyes barely registered the goldenshine pollen dancing through the forest air." This is how the main character - the forest - of Humboldt Cut is introduced.

The Rotting Room by Viggy Parr Hampton was a wild ride of unreliable narration, religious trauma, and evil nuns (not to mention a little gothic vibe with the creepy nunnery and the damsel in distress), and I couldn't put it down.

Chicano Frankenstein by Daniel A. Olivas reimagines Mary Shelley's work in modern America where reanimation of corpses is an everyday medical possibility for the average young, healthy person, such as the man, a paralegal, whom we follow through his budding relationship with Latina lawyer Faustina Godinez. 

In How to Lose a Goblin in Ten Days, Jessie Sylva builds a recognizable fantasy world populated by halflings, goblins, dwarves, and humans; in this world, halflings and goblins are nemeses, pitted against each other in the last Great War which, though ending several decades earlier, left a lasting resentment between the two.

Much Too Vulgar by Viggy Parr Hampton is a funny, sad, horrific dark academia thriller about a girl whose entire self is consumed by the desire to earn her mother’s approval, which manifests in the tangible goal of becoming a surgeon.

X Marks the Haunt by Lindsay Currie is exactly the kind of book I wish existed when I was in middle grade, and it was a ton of fun - and a little scary! - as an adult.

This debut is tightly written and fast paced, even with so many threads and the psychological heft. It doesn’t sacrifice character for its sharp look at a true crime and fame obsessed society.

The Wind Witch Murders by Casey Dunn is a modern Southern gothic coming-of-age novel that follows Raven, who lives with her strict religious grandmother since her mother Deanne - the Wind Witch - was sentenced to a psychiatric facility, having been convicted of the murders of two boys.

This is going to sound weird, but I’m surprised by how much I liked The Poet Empress by Shen Tao. Epic fantasies are not always my thing - I always feel like I’m going to have to invest all my time on a dozen 800 page books - but this one was recommended to me, and good job whoever that was. 

In 2025, I read 100 Horror Books that were published in 2025, and this is a list of those titles with direct links to my reviews. Can I hit 100 new books in 2026? I don’t know, but I’m going to try!

The Salvage by Anbara Salam is a gothic, feminist, folk horror, haunted ship, Sapphic love story with elements of Cold War hysteria and an increasingly unreliable narrator - and it was totally engaging. 

It’s 1962, and Marta Khoury’s young marriage is over, in part due to her affair with and the accidental drowning of her husband (and boss)’s friend Lewis, on a remote Scottish island where he was from. Soon after, Marta, a marine archaeologist, has a chance to salvage a ship from the 1800s off the coast of that same island, Cairnroch, to recover the remains and effects of “Auld James”, ancestor of the Purdies, who own or control most of the town. 

One of my favorite things about buying used books is finding the little things left behind, from inscriptions and annotations to bookmarks, receipts, and sticky notes, and I am ready for my own (less murder-y) adventure to start from a secret note beneath an endpaper. 

Candy Cain Kills Again by Brian McAuley picks up immediately after the last page of the first book. Emergency crew is on scene, bodies are still smoking, and an eye still has a candy cane ornament sticking out of it. 

Darkrooms by Rebecca Hannigan is an atmospheric mystery that would be perfect for fans of Tana French or shows like Broadchurch - which means it was perfect for me.

Most of the stories in Johnny Compton’s Midnight Somewhere were published before in magazines, anthologies, or podcasts, and my guess is his story was one of the darkest, bleakest, and/or saddest of the lot because these were bleak.

I expected Dark Sisters by Kristi DeMeester to be feminist and witchy, which it was. I did not expect it to be legitimately scary and somewhat gruesome, nor did I expect it to be a virtual treatise for smashing the patriarchy, but here we are, and I am here for it.