Hello!
It has been a little while since I have spoken through this forum. A combination of starting a new job and actively trying to mix up reading all the new great horror stories with those that have been on my list for years has meant that I just have not been reviewing so much as of late.
I have certainly been reading though.
62 books read up until the day I am writing this, the apt date of Friday 13th, and 62 books is by far the most reading I have ever done in a year, and what a great year of horror it has been.
Before moving into my list I would be amiss to not mention some honourable mentions that absolutely deserve your time and appreciation: Memorials by Richard Chizmar; Rest Stop by Nat Cassidy; So Thirsty by Rachel Harrison; Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle; The Angel of Indian Lake by Stephen Graham Jones; A Botanical Daughter by Noah Medlock, Where the Dead Wait by Ally Wilkes.
10: This Wretched Valley by Jenny Kiefer
Four ambitious climbers hike into the Kentucky wilderness. Seven months later, three mangled bodies are discovered. Were their deaths simple accidents or the result of something more sinister?
Adventure horror is one of my favourite niches of the genre and This Wretched Valley carries all the hallmarks of a modern-day adventure horror classic. Honestly this is a very easy one to sell: Rock climbers go missing in the wilderness, leaving 3 mangled bodies and 1 missing; what more is there to say? As far as impressive debuts go this one is certainly up there. This is your classic horror where things slooowly start to go wrong, until all of a sudden everything is wrong. Yet Kiefer earns the madness that she yields like a bloody knife by the end of the novel, lacing every page with dread that plagues your thoughts and has you racing to the story’s bloody end. Just don’t look down.
9: Sacrificial Animals by Kailee Pedersen
Punctuated by scenes from Nick’s adolescent years, when memories of a queer awakening and a shadowy presence stalking the farm altered the trajectory of his life forever, Sacrificial Animals explores the violent legacy of inherited trauma and the total collapse of a family in its wake.
Speaking of impressive debuts, Sacrificial Animals is just that. A delicious slow burn of a novel that first seeps under your skin, and then into your heart, Pedersen’s writing is equally as gorgeous as the content of the story is dread inducing. Fair warning this is a tough read at parts. A family saga with an abusive patriarch at the head of the table, ruling over his rotting empire and two sons. Kailee Pedersen’s writing dazzles even in the bleakness that she portrays, producing a story laced with dread, decay, and shrouded in subtlety. Pedersen masterfully interweaves timelines from the past and present to curate an honest picture of a fractured family in all its dreadful glory.
8: Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman
To eight-year-old Bela, her family is her world. There’s Mommy, Daddo, and Grandma Ruth. But there is also Other Mommy, a malevolent entity who asks her every day: “Can I go inside your heart?”
This is a must read for any fans of the possession sub-genre. Incidents masquerades as a tale of ghosts, hauntings and possessions, and then packs a punch with unexpected brute force. Malerman has perfected the art of the literary ‘jump scare’, and there are plenty of those in this novel, but where the story really shines is its ability to place us in the shoes of an 8-year-old child once again, a child naïve to the darkness that sits in every corner of every room, while we are forced to watch as it creeps ever closer and closer.
7: American Rapture by C.J. Leede
A virus is spreading across America, transforming the infected and making them feral with lust. Sophie, a good Catholic girl, must traverse the hellscape of the midwest to try to find her family while the world around her burns.
If Maeve Fly was an exciting glimpse into C.J Leede’s ability as a writer and storyteller then American Rapture absolutely succeeds in showcasing her depth and ambition as a writer, cementing her as a must-read modern-day horror author. The final pages of Rapture and its trauma will stick with me for a very long time, and C.J Leede earns the heartbreak that she sows through a story that exposes injustices and hypocrisies of our world with a sharp and deft blade. If you read just one more apocalyptic/pandemic driven story then make it be this one.
6: The Redemption of Morgan Bright by Chris Panatier
Hadleigh Keene died on the road leading away from Hollyhock Asylum. The reasons are unknown. Her sister Morgan blames herself. A year later with the case still unsolved, Morgan creates a false identity, that of a troubled housewife named Charlotte Turner, and goes inside.
One of the most important and most carefully and cleverly crafted novels of the year, The Redemption of Morgan Bright exposes the dreadful reality of our present through unshackling the ghosts of the past. Set at Hollyhock a woman-only asylum, Panatier carefully builds a story that is respectful, articulate but most importantly of all, brutally honest and shocking. In a world where identity and bodily autonomy politics are so frighteningly pertinent Morgan Bright stares these realities face-on, reminding us that even as some archaic mental health treatments and diagnoses are a thing of the past, the past is never as far behind you as you might think
5: Deliver Me by Elle Nash
With a child on the way, at long last Dee-Dee can bask in her mother’s and boyfriend’s newfound parturient attention. She will matter. She will be loved. She will be complete. When her charismatic friend Sloane reappears after a twenty-year absence, feeding her insecurities and awakening suppressed desires, Dee-Dee fears she will go back to living in the shadows.
Wow. Probably the most viscerally shocking novel on my list, Deliver Me is not one for the faint hearted. This is a story that lavishes in its transgressions. Nash is unflinching in her writing, emboldened to cross boundaries that even the most seasoned of horror writers often veer away from. This of course does not come without trigger warnings. Sections involving pregnancy and miscarriage are known and to be expected, but what comes more as a shock are the instances of animal cruelty within the story that truly are difficult to get through. Simply put, Deliver Me is mean and ruthless to both character and reader. Elle Nash rolls together themes of co-dependency, obsession, social conformity and religious trauma into a tight and compact little ball, and then delights in the murky chaos as it explodes in our faces.
4: Diavola by Jennifer Marie Thorne
Anna has two rules for the annual Pace family destination vacations: Tread lightly and survive. The gorgeous, remote villa in tiny Monteperso seems like a perfect place to endure so much family togetherness, until things start going off the rails—the strange noises at night, the unsettling warnings from the local villagers, and the dark, violent past of the villa itself.
The most fun story on my list, Jennifer Thorne’s latest novel is a family drama set in a haunted villa. A story filled with juicy and satisfying family drama, Diavola quickly evolves into an exploration of family bonds, the monotony of urban life, and what it truly means to be free. There is a lot going on and Jennifer Thorne tackles each thread head on. Diavola proves that ghosts come in all different shapes and sizes. Anna is entrapped and haunted by her bloodline, their expectations of her, and her less than inspiring job that exists only to pay her rent and keep her alive. Diavola is about a haunted villa, but it is also about feeling trapped by familial expectations, the endless monotony of everyday life, and the fight to escape what imprisons you.
3: Lost Man’s Lane by Scott Carson
For a sixteen-year-old, a summer internship working for a private investigator seems like a dream come true—particularly since the PI is investigating the most shocking crime to hit Bloomington, Indiana, in decades. A local woman has vanished, and the last time anyone saw her, she was in the backseat of a police car driven by a man impersonating an officer.
First of all, a very big thankyou to our very own Anna for making me aware of and sending me this gem to read!
I will always have a soft spot for a quality coming of age story and Lost Man’s Lane is precisely that. Carson beautifully illustrates how growing up is a transformation and an evolution of the self, but leaving your old self behind is also a sacrifice that is often wrapped up in change, regret and mourning. Lost Man’s Lane shows that although growth and pain go hand in hand, heart will always be the greatest antidote. In a story wrought with so much uncertainty and anxiety, its defining characteristic is the connections that bind us. Scott Carson’s novel takes a stand for love, understanding and acceptance when faced with the great unknown, a message that, regardless of our age, we all need to hear sometimes.
2: Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay
Horror Movie is an obsessive, psychologically chilling, and suspenseful twist on the “cursed film” that breathlessly builds to an unforgettable, mind-bending conclusion.
If I’m completely honest, Tremblay novels have been a bit hit and miss for me… until this year. Firstly through reading A Headful of Ghosts and now Horror Movie, Paul Tremblay is now absolutely a must buy author for me. Horror Movie has the impossible task of creating satisfying endings for three separate yet diverging stories and yet they all merge together into a truly devastating conclusion. Horror Movie is Tremblay’s jewel in the crown, the novel that propels him from being one of the most successful contemporary horror authors and into the stratosphere of the all-time greats. Horror Movie brushes against decades of horror with a deft touch, culminating in a timeless classic.
1: I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones
1989, Lamesa, Texas. A small west Texas town driven by oil and cotton—and a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. So it goes for Tolly Driver, a good kid with more potential than application, seventeen, and about to be cursed to kill for revenge. Here Stephen Graham Jones explores the Texas he grew up in, the unfairness of being on the outside, through the slasher horror he lives but from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography. Find yourself rooting for a killer in this summer teen movie of a novel gone full blood-curdling tragic.
It feels almost as if we are cheating as fans of horror by following the works of Stephen Graham Jones. Indeed, the blood had scarcely just dried, and our wounds barely healed after reading the heart-wrenching conclusion of Jade Daniels’ story in ‘The Angel of Indian Lake’, before we were summoned once again to draw our weapons, sharpen our blades, and prepare for more bloodshed with Jones’ latest slasher novel ‘I Was a Teenage Slasher’. SGJ has spoken about the relationship between these two novels himself and so I will simply add that it is a testament to his creativity and master of craft that both novels are individually brilliant in their own right. It is only the slasher genre that loosely ties them together, and in fact the rules that genre stories are typically confined within has never been a hinderance for SGJ. In the works of SGJ the slasher sub-genre has always seemed like a playground of infinite bloody possibilities, and ‘I Was a Teenage Slasher’ offers in my opinion, not just another example of how genre can be subverted and bent to the creator’s will to create something fresh from tired and worn parts, but the greatest example of such in SGJ’s burgeoning catalogue of stories.
What sets the story apart from the rest is its relationships. The autobiographical nature of the story offers us a level of honesty and intimacy with Tolly that simply cannot be replicated in any other way. Take away the killings and you just have Tolly and Amber, two teenage best friends with their lives ahead of them, and the world right up against them. I am an absolute sucker for a story masquerading as something else, while in reality being a love story, and I think that this tragic love story will always represent the landmark year of 2024 for me and all the reading it encompasses.
See you next year!
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