We Shall Be Monsters by Alyssa Wees

Title: We Shall Be Monsters 

Series: n/a
Author: Alyssa Wees
Source/Format: NetGalley; eARC
More Details: Fantasy
Publisher/Publication Date: Del Rey; November 12, 2024

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Synopsis from Goodreads...

A dark, lyrical fantasy blending the world of the Fae with the stories mothers tell to keep their daughters safe - and the consequences of disregarding the truth, no matter how sinister.

Gemma lives with her mother in an isolated antique shop in Michigan, near a small patch of woods that conceals an enchanted gateway to fairyland. She knows she's not supposed to go into the woods - her mother Virginia has warned her multiple times about the monsters that lurk there - and yet defiantly, curiously, she goes anyway. Virginia understands her daughter's defiance. She knows the lure of the woods all too well. Her own mother warned her about the monsters that resided there, and she also did not listen. Until a witch cursed her true love, Ash - Gemma's father - into the form of a beast in the days before Gemma's birth. And if Virginia cannot break the curse before her daughter turns fifteen, Ash will eat Virginia's heart and Gemma will belong to the witch. So Virginia will do whatever she can to protect her daughter - even if it means stealing Gemma's memories away. But everything changes when Gemma inadvertently gets too close to the truth, and the witch steals Virginia away instead. Now it is up to Gemma to venture deep into Fae lands to try and rescue her mother and break the curse.

Told in alternating viewpoints between Gemma and Virginia, this lyrical novel is not only a tale of a girl's fantastical quest through a darkly magical fairyland, but also an examination of the complex bonds of love and resentment that lie between parents and their children.

Some of my favorite fantasy tropes include fairies (or fey equivalent) and woods that may or may not be friendly. Novik’s Uprooted and Spinning Silver come to mind, as well as Ava Reid’s A Study in Drowning, which is why I was drawn to the new Alyssa Wees novel, We Shall Be Monsters.

We Shall Be Monsters had fairies, monsters, and an antique shop wrapped up in a story about mothers and daughters and the three generations that have lived next to and seen the good as well as the worst the nearby woods have to offer. Oh, and the breaking of curses and the unraveling of long held secrets. So when the synopsis called this book a “dark, lyrical fantasy,” that description is accurate. We Shall Be Monsters has its whimsical and magical moments, but it was, at its heart, a darker story that, at times, felt much closer to horror. The woods were eerie, dangerous, and inhabited by fairies and other creatures, some friendly, some who offered dubious ties, or even those that were entirely driven by appetite or greed. There was also imagery of body related horror. However, those aspects worked well, since part of what the book tackled overall was the question of what truly makes a monster; and explored the divide between a hero and a killer. The characters made mistakes and payed for them, but they also learned from them. In that regard, We Shall Be Monsters is a nuanced story, and the characters that inhabited the pages were just as complicated.

Generally, I liked how Wees handled the viewpoints. It was first person, but Gemma and her mother, Virginia, each had quirks in the way they were written, which made it easy to tell them apart.

Gemma, like her mother and grandmother before her, was fascinated by the woods and didn’t recognize the danger posed by it, before she was confronted with the truth and tasked with a dangerous quest. Virginia was stuck in the past, figuratively and literally. Her history had everything to do with the issues that arose in the current timeline of the book, affecting not only her, but her daughter as well.

We Shall Be Monsters was, at the end of the day, right up my alley, and I recommend it to anyone looking for a dark fantasy story.

 

About the author....

Alyssa Wees is the acclaimed author of The Waking Forest and Nocturne. She grew up writing stories about her Beanie Babies in between ballet lessons. She earned a BA in English from Creighton University and an MFA in fiction writing from Columbia College Chicago. Currently she works as an assistant librarian in youth services at an awesome public library. She lives in the Chicagoland area with her husband and their two cats.

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Disclaimer: this copy of the book was provided by the publisher (Del Rey) via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, thank you! 

The Maid and the Crocodile by Jordan Ifueko

Title: The Maid and the Crocodile 

Series: Raybearer
Author: Jordan Ifueko
Source/Format: Publisher; Paperback ARC
More Details: Fantasy; Young Adult; Romance
Publisher/Publication Date: Harry N. Abrams; August 13, 2024

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Synopsis from Goodreads...

The smallest spark can bind two hearts . . . or start a revolution.

In the magic-soaked capital city of Oluwan, country bumpkin Small Sade needs a job—preferably as a maid, with employers who don’t mind her unique appearance and unlucky foot. But before she can be hired, she accidentally binds herself to a powerful god known only as the Crocodile, who is rumored to devour pretty girls. Small Sade entrances the Crocodile with her secret: she is a Curse Eater, gifted with the ability to alter people’s fates by cleaning their houses. The handsome god warns that their fates are bound, but Small Sade evades him, launching herself into a new career as the Curse Eater of a swanky inn. She is determined to impress the wealthy inhabitants and earn her place in Oluwan City . . . assuming her secret-filled past—and the revolutionary ambitions of the Crocodile God—don’t catch up with her. But maybe there is more to Small Sade. And maybe everyone in Oluwan City deserves more, too, from the maids all the way to the Anointed Ones.

I rarely pick up young adult romances these days, except for on rare occasions like this, when a synopsis is enough to garner my attention. The Maid and the Crocodile is Jordan Ifueko’s standalone romance set in the same world as the Raybearer series, and while I still want to check out those books eventually, that didn’t curb my enthusiasm for this story.

Small Sade was a very personable character. Life hadn’t been kind to her and, now that she aged out of the orphanage, she needed a job more than ever, and her ability as a Curse-Eater might just be the thing to do it. Enter a plucky, lovable gecko and the Crocodile, a supposed god with a questionable reputation. When Small Sade and the Crocodile’s paths cross, they end up with an unexpected bond, and embark on a journey of self-discovery in a story set to challenge everything they thought true about themselves.

The Maid and the Crocodile is a slow burn romance through and through. The story spent a good chunk of its page space developing the characters, and bringing them to a place of equal footing. The relationship wasn’t without its troubles and was even tumultuous at certain points. However, that being said, I liked that Ifueko gave the relationship enough time to breathe and develop into something not only believable but also heartwarming and something to really root for.

The relationship wasn’t the only point of the book, though. There was the storyline set at the Balogun Inn. I also enjoyed this look into the Raybearer world, and it is something to keep in mind when approaching The Maid and the Crocodile. If you’re like me and don’t mind spoilers for the other books, then it won’t be an issue. But, as this takes place after Raybearer and Redemptor, there were passages related to events that took place in those books.

That aside, with a cast full of colorful and endearing characters, cute and romantic moments, and even aspects of a race against time, The Maid and the Crocodile was a delightful, heartfelt story. And I can’t recommend it enough.

About the author....

Jordan Ifueko is the NYT Bestselling Author of the RAYBEARER series & the Disney-Marvel comics MOON GIRL & DEVIL DINOSAUR. She’s a Nebula Award, Ignyte Award, Audie Award, and Hugo Lodestar finalist, and she's been featured in People Magazine, NPR Best Books, NPR Pop Culture Hour, & ALA Top Ten. She writes about magic Black girls who aren’t magic all the time, because honestly, they deserve a vacation.

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Disclaimer: this copy of the book was provided by the publisher (Harry N. Abrams) in exchange for an honest review, thank you! 

The City in Glass by Nghi Vo

Title: The City in Glass

Series: n/a

Author: Nghi Vo
Source/Format: NetGalley; eARC
More Details: Fantasy
Publisher/Publication Date: TorDotCom; October 1, 2024

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Synopsis from Goodreads...

In this new standalone, Hugo Award-winning author Nghi Vo introduces a beguiling fantasy city in the tradition of Calvino, Mieville, and Le Guin.

A demon. An angel. A city that burns at the heart of the world.

The demon Vitrine—immortal, powerful, and capricious—loves the dazzling city of Azril. She has mothered, married, and maddened the city and its people for generations, and built it into a place of joy and desire, revelry and riot. And then the angels come, and the city falls. Vitrine is left with nothing but memories and a book containing the names of those she has lost—and an angel, now bound by her mad, grief-stricken curse to haunt the city he burned. She mourns her dead and rages against the angel she longs to destroy. Made to be each other’s devastation, angel and demon are destined for eternal battle. Instead, they find themselves locked in a devouring fascination that will change them both forever. Together, they unearth the past of the lost city and begin to shape its future. But when war threatens Azril and everything they have built, Vitrine and her angel must decide whether they will let the city fall again.

The City in Glass is both a brilliantly constructed history and an epic love story, of death and resurrection, memory and transformation, redemption and desire strong enough to burn a world to ashes and build it anew.

Nghi Vo’s, The Singing Hills Cycle, is one of my favorite series, so I was interested in checking out her latest story, The City in Glass. Essentially, this is a tale about a ruined city that might rise again from its ashes, a demon, an angel, and the strange tumultuous sort-of fascination/love story between the two.

The City in Glass was engaging from the very first page. It begins with a revelry, the fall of the city, and the demon, Vitrine’s effort to rebuild what she lost. Despite the book’s short length, the actual timespan of the story was hundreds of years with sporadic time skips, which sometimes spanned as long as decades. The book was written incredibly well and with enough detail to give the characters—particularly Vitrine—and Azril a rich history.

A large part of the book was dedicated to—and lingered on—Vitrine’s grief as well as her memories of the people and the place she’d lost. During these flashbacks, it was clear how much she’d loved the city of Azril, following generations of families, shaping the place into what it was before everything ended, like a gardener. Her grief was, for lack of better terms, consuming, and The City in Glass allowed Vitrine to go through these stages. It was messy—she was prone to giving into her rage, lashed out, and wanted to be left alone with memories and ghosts—but it drove home the devastation. The way she wanted to linger in the past reminded me of a short story I read earlier this year (Something Small Enough to Ask For by Anamaria Curtis), and the lesson for that main character was ultimately a similar one. Stay in the past or finally move forward? As character arcs go, Vitrine’s was a good one.

One avenue that I was pretty undecided on (and still am), was how the relationship landed, whether it worked as well as some of the other aspects of The City in Glass or not—especially with the way the story ended. On one hand, I understand Vitrine had to work through her grief and come to terms with the angel’s role in it. While on the other hand, some of the angel and Vitrine’s best moments were when they communicated, when there was this push-and-pull albeit with a sense of burgeoning closeness and understanding (even frustration and anger) with each other. However, I wish there had been more of it, or at least a little more of the angel’s perspective on the situation, particularly before the end.

Despite how conflicted I was about the aforementioned, it wasn’t bad actually. In fact, The City in Glass was thoroughly engaging and enjoyable, and I know I’ll be thinking about it for a long time.

 

About the author....

Nghi Vo is the author of the novels Siren Queen and The Chosen and the Beautiful, as well as the acclaimed novellas of the Singing Hills Cycle, which began withThe Empress of Salt and Fortune. The series entries have been finalists for the Locus Award and the Lambda Literary Award, and have won the Crawford Award, the Ignyte Award, and the Hugo Award. Born in Illinois, she now lives on the shores of Lake Michigan. She believes in the ritual of lipstick, the power of stories, and the right to change your mind.

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Disclaimer: this copy of the book was provided by the publisher (TorDotCom) via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, thank you! 

Clock Striker Volume 2: The Sharing Society by Issaka Galadima and Frederick L. Jones

Title: Clock Striker Volume 2: The Sharing Society

Series: Clock Striker #2
Author: Issaka Galadima; Fredrick L. Jones
Source/Format: NetGalley; eARC
More Details: Manga; Teen
Publisher/Publication Date: Rockport Publishers; September 10, 2024

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Synopsis from Goodreads...

Clock Striker, Volume 2, is the exciting follow-up to the acclaimed first volume, featuring shonen manga’s first Black female lead character! Combining sci-fi, steampunk, action-adventure, and insightful humor, this new volume explores teenage hero Cast’s desire to (once again) save her friend Klaus while dealing with an entire town that confounds her with its unique sharing culture. Something is off—and Cast and her mentor, Ms. Philomena Clock, engineer-warriors called SMITHS, are determined to find out what it is before it’s too late.

Klaus is a runaway prince who has been captured by cybernetic outlaws, the Demon Bandits. Cast has almost never ventured past her hometown, so the demanding trek, including rough terrain and the strange kingdom of Alter, will test her beyond anything she has encountered before. With a rival SMITH and STRIKER on their tails, as well as the mysterious King of Alter—who seems to have a powerful kingdom despite rejecting cutting-edge technology—can our female dynamic duo save the day?

**Note: mild spoilers for volume 1 past this point, you’ve been warned.**

Another one of the sequels I was keeping an eye out for was Issaka Galadima and Fredrick L. Jones’ second volume of Clock Strikers. The series opening was one of my favorite manga releases of 2023, and I have been eagerly awaiting its sequel since.

Titled, The Sharing Society, the story charges right ahead and quickly picked up where the last volume left off. It combined a couple of humorous moments with plenty of action, while also continuing to explore some of the darker and far more complex themes present in the series. It had echoes of the conflict that took place in the first volume, but while the core was similar, this time around it was under vastly different circumstances—which kept the volume interesting as well as moving at a good pace. I flew through this one, and enjoyed every second of it.

This volume was story heavy and threw the characters into a number of perilous situations. Klaus is in a bind. He’s back in Altar and at the mercy of his father. However, there’s trouble in paradise for the Demon Bandits who were his captors, but it seemed like it was a deal/exchange that was always destined to go sideways. On the other side, our Striker and Smith duo, Philomena Clock and Cast, are in pursuit—while also being pursued. Some of the most unexpected twists arrived while the majority of the cast was in Altar, the supposed “sharing society.” The story peeled back the layers of that society and delved into the underlying darkness of the situation, and those were among the most compelling areas of the volume.

And, while a lot of ground was covered, the last chapter ends on a cliffhanger with the beginning of another mystery. However, that nicely set up the potential for the next volume.

Overall, Jones and Galadima have hit it out of the park with the second volume of Clock Striker.

 

Disclaimer: this copy of the book was provided by the publisher (Rockport Publishers/ Quarto Publishing) via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, thank you! 

Haunt Sweet Home by Sarah Pinsker

Title: Haunt Sweet Home

Series: n/a
Author: Sarah Pinsker
Source/Format: NetGalley; eARC
More Details: Paranormal; Novella
Publisher/Publication Date: TorDotCom; September 3, 2024

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Synopsis from Goodreads...

On the set of a kitschy reality TV show, staged scares transform into unnerving reality in this spooky ghost story from multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Sarah Pinsker.

“Don’t talk to day about what we do at night.”

When aimless twenty-something Mara lands a job as the night-shift production assistant on her cousin’s ghost hunting/home makeover reality TV show Haunt Sweet Home, she quickly determines her new role will require a healthy attitude toward duplicity. But as she hides fog machines in the woods and improvises scares to spook new homeowners, a series of unnerving incidents on set and a creepy new coworker force Mara to confront whether the person she's truly been deceiving and hiding from all along―is herself.

Eerie and empathetic, Haunt Sweet Home is a multifaceted, supernatural exploration of finding your own way into adulthood, and into yourself.

I’ve mentioned SurrealEstate on the blog before. Well, its second season had an episode that was essentially a parody (or recreation) of a ghost hunting show. It was comedic but also told a heartfelt story about the fictional show’s host, a parallel to the interpersonal arc of Luke Roman. The concept was simple: manufactured haunting on a niche show that inevitably encounter a scenario outside of their control. So I’m more than familiar with a setup like that, which was why I was looking forward to Sarah Pinsker’s latest, a novella called Haunt Sweet Home.

It’s no secret: I like house stories (or stories involving houses). It’s why a show like SurrealEstate was so appealing, and Haunt Sweet Home fell into that same category. It combined home renovation and supposedly haunted properties into the titular show, while also shaping up into a narrative of self-discovery for the story’s main character, Mara Billings.

Mara started things but never committed; she often thought of herself as the black sheep of her family and was uncertain of her future and struggled with building connections with others. So when she gets the opportunity to work for her cousin’s niche show as a production assistant for the night crew, she’s hopeful it’ll be the thing to stick. It wasn’t an easy job. However, half the fun of the story for the reader, was watching the scenarios unfold/ the show being filmed as well as how Mara would handle being so far outside of her element, with a secondary cast also navigating a cut throat environment. Mara was sympathetic but also at times abrasive. However, I liked the nuance of Pinsker’s characterization of Mara. She almost haunted the narrative, even when she wasn’t fulfilling the role of a ghost. So when the inevitable confrontation happens, the proverbial shoe drop, when she could no longer run from herself, the emotional payoff was just chef’s kiss.

In Haunt Sweet Home the houses were secondary while much of the page space was devoted to a great ghost story and an exceptional character exploration. I highly recommend this one!

 

About the author....

Sarah Pinsker is the author of over fifty works of short fiction, two novels, and one collection. Her work has won four Nebula Awards (Best Novel, A Song For A New Day; Best Novelette, "Our Lady of the Open Road," Best Novelette, "Two Truths And A Lie," Best Short Story, "Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather,"), two Hugo Awards ("Two Truths And a Lie" and "Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather"), the Philip K Dick Award, the Locus Award, the Eugie Foster Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Award, and been nominated for numerous Nebula, Hugo, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards. Her fiction has been published translated into almost a dozen languages and published in magazines including Asimov's, Strange Horizons, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Uncanny and in many anthologies and year's bests. Sarah's first collection, the Philip K Dick Award winning Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea: Stories, was published by Small Beer Press in March 2019, and her first novel, A Song For A New Day, was published by Penguin/Random House/Berkley in September 2019. Her latest book is We Are Satellites, published in May 2021. Her second collection, Lost Places, will be published by Small Beer Press in March 2023. She is also a singer/songwriter with four albums on various independent labels (the third with her rock band, the Stalking Horses). She lives in Baltimore, Maryland and can be found online at sarahpinsker.com and twitter.com/sarahpinsker.

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Disclaimer: this copy of the book was provided by the publisher (TorDotCom) via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, thank you! 

Devil is Fine by John Vercher

Title: Devil is Fine
Author: John Vercher
Source/Format: Celadon Books; Paperback ARC

More Details: Literary Fiction; Contemporary Fantasy
Publisher/Publication Date: Celadon Books; June 18 2024

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Synopsis From Celadon:

Reeling from the sudden death of his teenage son, our narrator receives a letter from an attorney: he has just inherited a plot of land from his estranged grandfather. He travels to a beach town several hours south of his home with the intention of immediately selling the land. But upon inspection, what lies beneath the dirt is much more than he can process in the throes of grief. As a biracial Black man struggling with the many facets of his identity, he’s now the owner of a former plantation passed down by the men on his white mother’s side of the family.

Vercher deftly blurs the lines between real and imagined, past and present, tragedy and humor, and fathers and sons in this story of discovery—and a fight for reclamation—of a painful past. With the wit of Paul Beatty’s The Sellout and the nuance of Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, Devil Is Fine is a darkly funny and brilliantly crafted dissection of the legacies we leave behind and those we inherit.

When I finished reading Devil is Fine by John Vercher, I had so many initial thoughts that it made it difficult to summarize what I felt about it. And I didn't even know where to start.

So I guess I'll start with the story. It revolves around the unnamed narrator's identity and the throes of that. While it mostly seemed to pertain to his professional life and having to deal with owning a plantation, it was also carefully woven into a story about a man dealing with grief and somehow coming to terms with where he is in life. Of course it was not a smooth road since there were odd and disconcerting experiences along the way. He was aided by the occasional words of wisdom from the more frequent characters, Freddy and Clarence. A bar owner and frequent bar customer respectively, their own life and experiences tended to add a different angle to what the narrator was going through. On the flip side, there were a lot of times where I wondered just why he was doing what he was, but some of that was answered much later on.

Another thing I noticed was the writing. It's in first person and begins shortly before the burial of the narrator's son, Malcolm. From the beginning to the end, the main character often thinks of and addresses him while chronicling his ongoing life. Sometimes he would wonder what Malcolm would say if he was there during a conversation, for example. Along with the main character's musings, it is mainly through occasional chapters in between that showed who Malcolm was growing up. I honestly wasn't sure how I felt about these chapters at first. But, about half way through, I felt it both added to and left breathing room from the tension that was building throughout the book. Some of that was also probably from the general back and forth of the current time and various past memories from the narrator's own life and experiences.

Speaking of that tension, I was constantly on the edge of my seat wondering what was going to happen next. Some of the story was predictable for me. But there were parts that weren't at all. The conclusion and ending are an examples of both of these feelings. Based on a few pages of conversations beforehand, I had thought that a particular scene was going to go a certain way. But I was wrong. Instead it was rather mundane (for the lack of more spoiler-y but probably better words I could use). It is at this point the character growth is fully realized with many truths coming to light. Even being a little sad and grim, overall it definitely felt more in line and satisfactory with the way the bulk of the story was written. So I was somewhat happy to be wrong. As for the last pages, the end? Well, it was a tear jerker.

As a whole, I truly liked Devil is Fine. The surreal nature of it, dialogue, complicated relationships, and even the tougher, more serious tones mixed with some lighter ones. All that to say, it became a page turner and I really enjoyed reading it.

Thanks for reading!

Disclaimer: I received an ARC copy of this book from Celadon Books for this review. Thank you!

Note: this review was originally posted on Toile, Think, Go (HERE)

Give Me Something Good To Eat by D.W. Gillespie

Title: Give Me Something Good to Eat

Series: n/a 
Author: D.W. Gillespie
Source/Format: NetGalley; eARC
More Details: Middle Grade; Horror
Publisher/Publication Date: Delacorte Press; August 13, 2024

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Synopsis from Goodreads...

Perfect for fans of Hocus Pocus and Stranger Things, this middle grade debut tells the story of a boy who travels into an alternate version of his Halloween-obsessed town to save his sister from an evil witch and free the town from the witch’s curse. 

Fear comes home.Welcome to Pearl, a town obsessed with the spooky decorations, the costumes, the candy. No one seems to notice that every October 31st, a kid goes missing. Mason Miller does, though. Somehow he’s the only one who has any memory the person existed at all.When Mason’s sister, Meg, vanishes while they’re trick-or-treating, Mason and his friends are pulled into an underworld where monsters roam the streets. They need to fight the evil taking over Pearl, but none of them know the true danger they're facing.Meg has been stolen by a witch who has no plans to let her go. Shadows of death curl around trees and behind doorways as Mason must use every ounce of bravery he has . . . or be haunted forever with the memory of a sister that only he remembers.

Living in a town like Pearl, which is obsessed with Halloween, seems like it should be fun, at least in theory anyway. Well, that gets put into frightening perspective in D.W. Gillespie’s new middle grade horror novel, Give Me Something Good to Eat. Billed as perfect for fans of Stranger Things and Hocus Pocus, the story is a magical and nightmarish foray into spells, monsters, and what is functionally a curse lurking under the veneer of what should be all fun and games.

Mason Miller has something better and more important to do than take his little sister, Meg, trick-or-treating. Kids are going missing, and he’s one of the few who remembers. So he enlists the help of his closest friend, Serge. And Meg just wants her brother to go back to how he used to be. Most of the character motivations were simple. Mason wants to be the hero of the story, but his drive to solve the mystery is also far more personal. Serge wants to help out his best friend, while juggling Halloween night and a crush. Meg just wants to have fun and is annoyed when the night isn’t turning out how she wanted. It set up a tense dynamic, which offered an opening to the villains of story. It was, effectively, all about cause and effect, despite the good intentions of the character’s involved—they were just kids, and mistakes were bound to happen.

The Stranger Things and Hocus Pocus comparison is apt. The story, very early on, felt like an echo to the start of the film, while the TV show’s comparison won’t make much sense until after the story takes off, and Meg winds up being the next kid to vanish on Halloween night. That in itself provided one of the more intense sequence of scenes in the novel, where the anxiety, fear, and frustration was almost palpable—but it was only the start. The pop culture references aren’t what make the story. Instead its Gillespine’s spin on the monster genre and creative usage of spells and magic—as well as how intrinsically it was linked to the underlying horror, tension, and stakes of Give Me Something Good to Eat—that does.

Give Me Something Good to Eat is another good foray into middle grade horror, and I would recommend it to those who have enjoyed books like It Came From the Trees by Ally Russell and Bumps in the Night by Amalie Howard.

 

About the author....

A long time fan of all things dark and spooky, D.W. Gillespie began writing monstrous stories while still in grade school. At one point, his mother asked the doctor if there was anything she should be concerned about, and he assured her that some kids just like stories about decapitations. He's been writing on and off for over a decade, quietly building a body of work that includes horror and dark sci-fi. His novels include Still Dark, The Toy Thief, and a short story collection titled Handmade Monsters. He lives in Tennessee with his wife and two kids, all three of which give him an endless supply of things to write about

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Disclaimer: this copy of the book was provided by the publisher (Delacorte Press) via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, thank you! 

Holly Horror: The Longest Night by Michelle Jabès Corpora

Title: Holly Horror: The Longest Night

Series: Holly Horror #2
Author: Michelle Jabès Corpora
Source/Format: NetGalley; eARC
More Details: Young Adult; Horror; Paranormal
Publisher/Publication Date: Penguin Workshop; August 13, 2024

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Synopsis from Goodreads...

In this terrifying sequel, Evie Archer and her friends face a new evil ready to devour their town whole.

Find him, find me. It's been two weeks since Evie escaped the mines after solving the mystery of Holly's disappearance only to discover that Desmond followed her but never came back. Evie knows he’s alive, lost wherever the Patchwork Girl resides. When Evie tries to reach out to Holly again for help, she realizes that her connection to the Lost Girl—and the shadow world itself—has been severed. Desmond is gone, and it’s all her fault. Ravenglass slowly begins to move on from the tragedy of losing Desmond, but as winter creeps closer and the days grow shorter, a sinister being begins to threaten the lives of Ravenglass residents, stealing them away and bringing them back different. Wrong.Evie knows that the only way to stop it is to connect to Holly again. With the help of her friend Tina, and the troubled newcomer Sai, Evie begins to follow the clues Holly left behind, determined to find the Lost Girl once more, at any cost.

I read Holly Horror last year. And while it was a good story overall—and relatively self-contained—by the end there were still some lingering mysteries as well as the massive curveball thrown by the cliffhanger. As the saying goes, out of the oven and into the frying pan. So its sequel, titled Holly Horror: The Longest Night, was near the top of my list of sequels releasing in 2024. And it’s one of my favorites too.

Holly Horror: The Longest Night took what I liked about the previous installment and carried it over into Evie Archer’s second adventure, which pitted her against the shadowy and menacing forces buried beneath the town of Ravenglass.

Part of The Longest Night had aspects of a coming of age story, where Evie had to confront her past—her strained relationship with her father as well as her history with Holly Hobbie and Sarah Flower. She had a lot to work through in her personal life too. She was dealing with grief and guilt, which was tangled with the fallout from Holly Horror’s ending. And, considering how, in the previous book, she’d erroneously assigned blame to herself for the collapse of her family. She’d had this habit of hiding her emotions as well as her distrust of those who she should’ve been able to confide in the most, and it had opened her up to supernatural manipulation. In The Longest Night, enough time was devoted to fully exploring and resolving the complicated nature of Evie’s familial ties and her relationship to the abilities she was just beginning to accept. Her character arch is one of my favorite parts of this story.

On the other hand, the story had this creeping sense of dread, which was always in the background casting a shadow (both literally and figuratively) over the events of the story. One of the pivotal characters of these books, Desmond King, was missing. And the story was, ultimately, something of a race against time. And it was the case: Would they be able to save him or not? I knew something bad was going to go down, and it was about seeing when and how the shoe was going to drop. And Corpora did this to great effect, subtly building a mystery full of secrets around the spookiest aspects of The Longest Night.

The ending was effective with resolving the above mentioned mysteries, and even offered clarity to the tragedy that had given Hobbie House its nickname. Suffice it to say, the questions Holly Horror had left behind were more than answered in its sequel.

So, I got everything I was looking for out of Holly Horror: The Longest Night. It works as a sequel, and sufficiently wrapped up the story in a way that was satisfying for the mystery as well as the characters. And, if you’ve read Holly Horror, then this one is a must read.

 

About the author....

Michelle Jabès Corpora is a writer, editor, and martial artist. In addition to working in the publishing industry for more than seventeen years as an editor and concept developer, she is the author of two historical novels for middle grade readers, two horror novels for young adult readers, and soon-to-be the author of the Children of Khetara fantasy series for Young Adults. She has also ghostwritten five novels in a long-running middle grade mystery series. In her spare time, Michelle trains in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu as a blue belt at Crazy 88 MMA, and enjoys making home-cooked meals, doing tarot readings, and playing Dungeons & Dragons with her friends. Michelle lives in Maryland with her husband, two daughters, two guinea pigs, and a dog named Charlie.

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Disclaimer: this copy of the book was provided by the publisher (Penguin Workshop) via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, thank you! 

It Came from the Trees by Ally Russell

Title: It Came from the Trees

Series: n/a
Author: Ally Russell
Source/Format: NetGalley; eARC
More Details: Middle Grade; Paranormal; Horror
Publisher/Publication Date: Delecorte; July 30, 2024

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Synopsis from Goodreads...

The legend of Bigfoot gets a bone-chilling update in this scary story about a young girl and her scout troop who are willing to brave the woods to find her missing friend when no one else will. Perfect for fans of Daka Hermon and Claribel A. Ortega!

The wilderness is in Jenna’s blood. Her Pap was the first Black park ranger at Sturbridge Reservation, and she practically knows the Owlet Survival Handbook by heart. But she’s never encountered a creature like the one that took her best friend Reese. Her parents don’t believe her; the police are worthless, following the wrong leads; and the media isn’t connecting the dots between Reese’s disappearance and a string of other attacks. Determined to save her friend, Jenna joins a new local scout troop, and ventures back into the woods. When the troop stumbles across suspicious huge human-like footprints near the camp, scratch marks on trees, and ominous sounds from the woods, Jenna worries that whatever took Reese is back to take her too. Can she trust her new scout leader? And will her new friend Norrie—who makes her laugh and reminds her so much of Reese—believe her? After the unthinkable happens, the scouts, armed with their wits and toiletries, band together to fight the monster and survive the night.

It Came from the Trees, Ally Russell’s debut, is a new middle grade paranormal horror novel set in the great outdoors. With a Black main character who loves camping and the wilderness, and a mystery surrounding strange occurrences (and disappearances) at Sturbridge Reservation, there was so much to like about It Came from the Trees.

Norrie, like Reese, was a character who could worm her way into anyone’s heart. And, in fact, the Owlet Scouts were a far more personable and colorful group to follow. And then there was Jenna, who was a great main character, and I liked her enthusiasm and knowledge about the outdoors. This was shaken, of course, with the disappearance of her best friend as well as the situation she subsequently found herself in, where she felt silenced and isolated. It was part of her character arc, where the author showed her bravery and determination but also didn’t shy away from her vulnerability and fear. Her POV was nerve-wracking to read, and I’d credit that how immersive and atmospheric the writing was.

Another area of note was how Russell utilized camping. The woods were the perfect location for the story, especially after the sun was down and visibility was low. There was no quick way to run from any issues.

The story also touched on a negligent troop leader who played favoritism and was willing to lie, if it meant covering her own culpability when one the scouts in her care went missing. It was a difficult (and frustrating) situation that felt all too familiar, but the author did a great job with it, creating a balance between real world issues and a story which was, at its heart, paranormal.

Going into It Came from the Trees, I was expecting Russell’s spin on Bigfoot. It’s one of the main hooks of the synopsis. However, even knowing that much didn’t erase how tightly the legend was woven into the story. The way it was written was enigmatic and incredibly menacing. It wasn’t an isolated occurrence only Jenna knew about either, but there were clues sprinkled throughout the book about how deeply the strange occurrences were connected to Sturbridge Reservation—even in the form of blog entries and comments. And while I was reading It Came from the Trees, I kept remarking to one of my co-bloggers about how much tension there was as well as the intensity of its most frightening scenes.

At the end of the day, It Came from the Trees was excellent, and it has plenty to offer for fans of middle grade horror.

About the author....

Ally grew up on a steady diet of Halloween parties, horror films, Unsolved Mysteries, and Goosebumps books. She has always loved scary stories, and got her MFA from Simmons University and, eventually, a job working in children’s publishing. She hails from Pittsburgh—ground zero for the zombie apocalypse. Ally lives with her husband and her two black cats, Nox and Fury. She’s afraid of the woods, the dark, and heights. It Came from the Trees is her debut novel.

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Disclaimer: this copy of the book was provided by the publisher (Delacorte) via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, thank you! 

In the Shadow of the Fall by Tobi Ogundiran

Title: In the Shadow of the Fall

Series: Guardians of the Gods #1
Author: Tobi Ogundiran
Source/Format: NetGalley; eARC
More Details: Fantasy; Novella
Publisher/Publication Date: Tordotcom; July 23, 2024

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Synopsis from Goodreads...

A cosmic war reignites and the fate of the orisha lie in the hands of an untried acolyte in this first entry of a new epic fantasy novella duology by Tobi Ogundiran...

Ashâke is an acolyte in the temple of Ifa, yearning for the day she is made a priestess and sent out into the world to serve the orisha. But of all the acolytes, she is the only one the orisha refuse to speak to. For years she has watched from the sidelines as peer after peer passes her by and ascends to full priesthood. Desperate, Ashâke attempts to summon and trap an orisha—any orisha. Instead, she experiences a vision so terrible it draws the attention of a powerful enemy sect and thrusts Ashâke into the center of a centuries-old war that will shatter the very foundations of her world....

I’ve read Tobi Ogundiran’s short fiction before—The Nine Jars of Nukulu, which was published in The Book of Witches edited by Jonathan Stahan and illustrated by Alyssa Winans. So, when I heard about his 2024 novella, In the Shadow of the Fall, I knew it was going to be at the top of my list for July releases. And like The Nine Jars of Nukulu, Ogundiran packs a lot into this novella’s pages.

It begins with Ashâke, an acolyte, attempting to and ultimately failing at a desperate bid to bind an orisha. Sounds bad, right? The story makes it abundantly clear her sentiments were unwittingly fostered by her feelings of being rejected and ostracized for failing in areas where other acolytes had succeeded. She wanted to belong in the only place she’s ever known. So the epiphany she has, her crisis of faith—for lack of better words—that desire and her failings, is why I found her instantly sympathetic and likeable as a character.

The story is pretty fast paced and it doesn’t stay in one setting, even so it never felt rushed. The world building was one of my favorite aspects. I was engrossed with following Ashâke’s journey as she discovered the nuance of a history she once believed she was well versed in. And I liked how Ogundiran turned her understanding upside down as well as how the information was imparted to me, the reader. It was often through song, storytelling, and conversations between the characters.

This, however, was by no means a light story. Every secret was consequential, and it got pretty dark at times, what with how the villains operated.

That being said, In the Shadow of the Fall was excellent.

 

About the author....

Tobi Ogundiran is the Shirley Jackson, British Science Fiction Association Award, Nommo and Ignyte award-nominated author of the acclaimed collection of stories, Jackal, Jackal: Tales of the Dark and Fantastic (Undertow Publications). He's called many places homes, including Lagos, Russia, and now Oxford, Mississippi.

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Disclaimer: this copy of the book was provided by the publisher (Tordotcom) via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, thank you!