In short, Isabel Cañas’ Vampire of El Norte is everything you could possibly wish for in a Mexican gothic, with rich folklore, beautiful and atmospheric prose, complex characters, and a forbidden romance rooted in cultural and historical authenticity, to die for. Not to mention how incredibly it shows the “other side” of the Mexican-American war of the late 1840s, in ways you rarely see in mainstream media.
Gothic
Review: All the Hearts You Eat by Hailey Piper
Synopsis: What really happened to Cabrina Brite? Ivory’s life changes irrevocably when she discovers the body of Cabrina Brite on the sands of Cape Morning, along with a mysterious poem. How did she die, and why does it seem she was trying to swim to Ghost Cat Island, the center of so many local mysteries? […]
Review: All the Hearts You Eat by Hailey Piper
Synopsis: What really happened to Cabrina Brite? Ivory’s life changes irrevocably when she discovers the body of Cabrina Brite on the sands of Cape Morning, along with a mysterious poem. How did she die, and why does it seem she was trying to swim to Ghost Cat Island, the center of so many local mysteries? […]
Review: Graveyard Shift by M.L. Rio
Synopsis The author of sales sensation If We Were Villains returns with a story about a ragtag group of night shift workers who meet in the local cemetery to unearth the secrets lurking in an open grave. Every night, in the college’s ancient cemetery, five people cross paths as they work the late shift: a bartender, a […]
Review: The World to Come (Dark Legacies #3) by Yuval Kordov
The World to Come is the dark, harrowing, emotionally intense, mind-bending, and hugely rewarding, conclusion to the Dark Legacies trilogy.
Review: Brat by Gabriel Smith
Synopsis: Gabriel’s skin is falling off. His dad is dead. He owes his editor a novel. His girlfriend won’t answer his calls. Tasked by his horribly well-adjusted brother with clearing out the family home for sale, Gabriel’s sanity quickly begins to unravel. His parents’ old manuscripts appear to change each time he reads them. A […]
Review: My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna van Veen
Synopsis: Spirits are drawn to salt, be it blood or tears. Roos Beckman has a spirit companion only she can see. Ruth―strange, corpse-like, and dead for centuries―is the light of Roos’ life. That is, until the wealthy young widow Agnes Knoop visits one of Roos’ backroom seances, and the two strike up a connection. Soon, […]
Review: Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward
Synopsis: In a windswept cottage overlooking the sea, Wilder Harlow begins the last book he will ever write. It is the story of his childhood companions and the shadowy figure of the Daggerman, who stalked their New England town. And it is the story of Sky, Wilder’s one-time friend, who stole his unfinished memoir to […]
Review: Words Made Of Flesh by R.A Busby
Synopsis: New Bedford, 1899 Harrison Quire has a problem. Haunted by memories of his lover, he’s only lingered on the periphery of a life. When he visits the Whisperers’ Club to hear a few horror stories, he never expects he’ll become one. Late one winter night, Harrison hears old George Burgess tell his tale of an unusual […]
Review: The House That Horror Built by Christina Henry
Synopsis: Single mom Harry Adams has always loved horror movies, so when she’s offered a job cleaning for revered horror director Javier Castillo, she leaps at the chance. His forbidding Chicago mansion, Bright Horses, is filled from top to bottom with terrifying props and costumes, as well as glittering awards from his decades-long career making […]
Review: Small Town Horror by Ronald Malfi
Synopsis: Five childhood friends are forced to confront their own dark past as well as the curse placed upon them in this horror masterpiece from the bestselling author of Come with Me. Maybe this is a ghost story… Andrew Larimer thought he left the past behind. But when he receives a late-night phone call from […]
Review: Midwestern Gothic by Scott Thomas
Synopsis: In The Door in the Field, a construction worker’s bad day becomes a far worse night when drinks at an off-the-books bar send him down an unforeseeably bloody path. In The Boy in the Woods, something evil has infected the counselors at a summer camp, and a young boy will have to do anything he can […]