Two of my favorite books are Jane Eyre and The Turn of the Screw - classic Victorian governess stories - and Victorian Psycho is a new classic for me.

Blood Cypress by Elizabeth Broadbent is an atmospheric Southern Gothic with elements of folk and supernatural horror. 

Story collections are always a mixed bag, but I liked most of these a lot. 

A Cold Night for Alligators was a lot of fun. I didn’t expect to find a single novel that had so many elements that I enjoy: science, humor, thriller, and a touch of supernatural. I’m

Love Is a Crematorium starts with a strong introduction from Gabino Iglesias, and his promise of what you will find in Mercedes Yardley's stories is fulfilled in the most perfectly gut-wrenching way. 

Sometimes the hype is right. The Reformatory has horror - both the deep, existential kind and the turn on all the lights to scare the shadows away kind, it has tragedy - big tragedy like the system was and is broken and personal tragedy, it has tension, it has humor.

The Lamplighter is a YA novel which tend to be hit or miss for me, and this one has some of the pitfalls that make it a miss, such as overwrought, almost melodramatic language, but inconsistently so which makes it feel unintentional and unnecessary. However, there was a lot I liked about it.

House of Cotton, though it had horror elements, was not scary (except in the way that living as a woman in society is scary).

If I could ask for anything from Withered, it would be “more”, especially as relates to the inner workings of Ellis’ mind.

Grey Dog lulls you into a sense of security with its opening chapters, a first person narrative of an unwed woman on her way to a new teaching position.

While having some knowledge of Call of Cthulhu or Lovecraftian mythos in general would provide some fun Easter eggs, Lauria is effective at describing the rituals and monsters that anyone would enjoy this Regency horror with a touch of “fake dating” romance.

Asylum was a fun, quick read with plenty of danger and creepy moments but touched on some serious topics like partner abuse, drug addiction, recovery, and relapse.

The Invisible Hotel did what many novels attempt which is to make me feel what the protagonist was feeling through description, not by telling me she (and I) felt that way.

Even though we are warned in the prologue that the island has been abandoned and only allowed visitors once a year, we quickly forget this as we are caught up in the first person narrative of Agnes, the main character.

Something happened when I read The House of Last Resort that doesn’t often happen to me. I cared about these characters - Tommy and Kate - like I knew them. 

I would have liked it more if the horror were turned up a notch or two and the romance turned - either way a notch or two - as it was, it was tepid and uninteresting.

I am sure listening to the audiobook is responsible for at least some of why I enjoyed it so much because the conceit is that the story is told through a series of interviews and because the voice actors are so good; it made this all the more immersive and realistic.

The quirkiness and the addition of the fungi & the backstory of pronoun variance made it feel modern and timeless at the same time.

This is one of those sci-fi novels that is way more about how people treat each other than about the science (although there is plenty of that).

I don't know how I've made it this far as a horror fan without reading this.