THE FICTIONFOX

Genre: Cozy Fantasy Published: Tor UK, July 2025 My Rating: 5/5 stars “People were cruel to you, and it didn’t make you bitter. What else would you call that?” “Naïve? Needy? Pathetic?” “Strong,” he insisted.” For the longest time, I felt left out of the hype of cozy fantasy. I desperately wanted to like it, but somehow just couldn’t find one I truly loved. Last year, The Spellshop made my Most Surprising-list of the year, for changing that, and this year its sequel cemen

Genre: Fantasy Published: DAW, August 2025 Original publication : HarperCollins India, September 2023 My Rating: 3.75/5 stars “So we wander down the giant corridors in search of what we didn’t know we were missing. We seek to become whole”. I’m starting this review off bold by comping this “ Piranesi meets The Spear Cuts Through Water ”. You're going to have to hear me out on that one, though, because it's not as straigh-forward of a comparison as that may seem. Ambitious, o

Genre: Literary Fiction, Disability/Illness Published: October 2025 My Rating: 2/5 stars ‘I was fearful of disturbing it, like the disorder was some animal that would go berserk if it realised it was confined in the cage of my body.’ One day at work, a young newspaper reporter is suddenly struck with a mysterious pain in her hands that renders her unable to type. A string of doctors offer her a string of diagnoses, ranging from carpal tunnel, to arthritis, to her body’s way o

Genre: Horror Published: Zando Press, September 2025 My Rating: 4.5 stars "Leave the dead. Look after the living." The Story: A woman wakes up inside a wooden coffin six feet underground, with no memory of her identity or supposed “death”. She desperately claws her way to freedom, emerging on the frozen ground of Inishbannock - an island just off the coast of Ireland. Not everyone in the small isolated island-community welcomes Mara’s return though... With the help of a han

Genre: Historical fantasy, Western Published: Quirk Books, November 2025 My Rating: 4.5/5 stars “Romantic love was a clear-cut institution, bolstered by orthodoxy and ritual. When a man lost his wife, it was expected that his world would unravel. But friendship… friendship was a wilderness with no guide. There were no courting rituals one might follow to pursue it, and little sympathy for the gut-wrenching horror of its loss.” Who would have thought that I could enjoy a weste

Gerne: Dark Academia, Mystery, Fantasy Published: St. Martin's Press, October 2025 My Rating: 3/5 stars "The philosopher and critic Tzvetan Todorov defines the fantastic as the hesitation between the supernatural and a mundane explanation of an occurrence. In a work of fiction, when a woman in the woods sees a monster and turns out to be crazy, then that is realism. If it turns out that there really is a monster in those woods, then that is horror. But if one can make an argu

A reading-blog in which I attempt to beat my readingslump by reading recently released horror-novella's until I find a 5-star...

Genre: Contemporary Fiction with Speculative element Published: ECW-Press, October 2025 My Rating: 4/5 stars “If I were to tell someone...

Genre: Literary Fiction, Magical Realism Published: Grove Press, August 2025 My Rating: 5/5 stars ‘Sometimes,’ I said, ‘goodbye isn’t...

Genre: Fantasy Published: Del Rey, January 2025 My Rating: 4/5 stars "Life is about finding joy in the space between where you came from...

Genre: Middle-grade fantasy Published: Quirk Books, January 2025 My Rating: 3/5 stars The Story: Nick and her mother Theo are traveling...

Genre: Horror Published: Wicked House Publishing, June 2025 My Rating: 4/5 stars "Everyone deserves to have someone at their side when...

Genre: Fantasy Published: DAW Publishing, July 2025 My Review: 4.5/5 stars, rounded up because I love Joshua Philip Johnsons creative...

Genre: Literary Fiction, Sci-fi/Speculative Fiction Published: Bindery Books, June 2025 My Rating: 3/5 stars The Unmapping was one of...

Genre: Literary Fiction Published: J onathan Cape, August 2024 My Rating: 4/5 stars "The Echoes. His parents thought it was a good name...

Genre: Horror Published: Night Shade Books, 2012 My Rating: 3.5/5 stars “The deepest cavern in the world is the human heart.” The Croning...

Genre: (cozy) horror Published: ECW Press, September 2025 My rating: 3.5/5 stars I was originally drawn to this novel based on both its...

Genre: Sci-fi Novella Published: Lanternfish Press, May 2025 My Rating: 4/5 stars “…Life permanently fixed in a homage to itself. An...

Genre: Cozy Fiction, Magical Realism Published: Doubleday, September 2024, originally published March 2023 My Rating: 1/5 stars “The...

Genre: Sci-fi, Horror Published: Daphne Press (UK)/ Tor Nightfire (US), May 2025 My Rating: 1/5 stars "We were the weeds of the...