THE FICTIONFOX

Some people call it "summerween", but for me it was a complete coincidence that I happened to read three recently released horror-novellas almost back to back. This provided me with a perfect excuse to review them together in this three-of-a-kind post. All of these were effective bite-sized pieces of horror in their own right. Whether you're in the market for grief-horror, Lovecraftian terrors or a mix of domestic-tension-meets-body-horror: I've got a recommendation for you..

My Suspiciously Specific recommendations have so far often centered micro tropes that I happen to love and am drawn to. This time, I have one that is very hit-or-miss about half the time: child narrators in adult novels. As a framing device, this has so much potential for creating a unique point of view. Yet in the hands of the wrong author, a juvenile or even unrealistically mature child-narrator can ruin the story in just a few paragraphs. Here, I give you 15 recommendation

Although there’s a lot to like here, I have to be honest and say that this book and I never clicked. On paper, it had all the potential to become something I loved. In reality, I feel this was far more forgettable than I wanted it to be… The Story: Marine biologist Harper Hafdóttir travels to the isolated Bell Island off the coast of Boston to search for evidence of a mysterious new species of octopus. But the fog-shrouded island holds secrets far older—and darker—than the cr

Genre: Historical Fiction Published: Knopf, June 2026 My Rating: 3/5 stars "To map is to assume power." Fair warning; this review actually upset me… I was desperately willing (and expecting) to love this book based off my previous experience with the author and the almost unanimous 5-star rating this has gotten from friends and reviewers that I trust. Therefore, my 3-star experience almost feels like a personal failure on my part… The important take-away here is this: 3-stars

Genre: Literary Fiction, Sci-fi/Speculative Published: Riverhead Books, June 2026 Actual Rating: 3.5/5 stars "We were all of us, at least in the beginning, Marnie thought, thrust back inside ourselves by circumstance. Back into the refuge of our humanity because we thought we could now be certain there was something outside it; something which, though it was here now fully extant and recognisable, might not entirely understand that we were here too. The contemporary fear was

Genre: literary/contemporary fiction Published: Union Square & Co, July 2026 Actual rating: 4.5/5 stars “I am still stuck on January 26, I say. Everything after that never happened because Dad left. White Rabbit was never performed, and Dad is still not here to turn the page. I am stuck on January 26 and I do not know how to get to January 27.” Stories told through the point of view of children experiencing traumatic events that they’re far too young to grasp are a different

Genre: Horror novella Published: Honford Star, August 2026 My Rating: 4/5 stars “If my husband had looked human, whatever the circumstances, if he had looked even a little more human, you wouldn’t have killed him like that.” A Plagued Sea is a translated Lovecraftian horror novella, originally published last year in Korea. Often times, the words “Lovecraftian” and “cosmic” horror are used interchangeably, but in this case I specifically mean “inspired by Lovecraft’s mythology

Genre: Literary Memoir Published: House of Anansi Press, January 2018 My Rating: 3/5 stars "In this moment, I am that hulking computer filling the room with my burning incomprehension, unable to reconcile the impossible equation of your body divided by infinity." Part personal memoir, part philosophical essays and musings on life in general, this might be one of the most marmite-books I read all year. For as far as there’s a story here at all, it takes place over the course o

Genre: Gothic horror mystery Published: Kensington (print) & Tantor Media (audio), July 2026 My Rating: 2/5 stars I am easily excitable when it comes to gothic tales with isolated island settings. Bonuspoints if those islands are Irish and/or Scottish or otherwise haunted by bleak weather year-round. Unfortunately, this specific Irish gothic murder-mystery was a miss for me. had this not been an ARC for review I would’ve almost certainly DNF-ed it. The story: Off the southern

Genre: Mystery/Horror Published: Grove Press, May 2026 (UK) / October 2026 (US) My Rating: 4.5/5 stars "Oh yes, we are the lunatics, and yes we dwell in hell. The flames are hot but hey guess what? There’s torture here as well! Yet there’s a niggling conundrum, and that riddle go-eth thus: Are we dreaming this place, or is this place dreaming us?" I went back and forth on whether I could justify rounding up my rating to a full 5-stars.. On the one hand; objectively, this wasn

Genre: horror novella Published: Nictitating Books, March 1st 2026 My Rating: 4/5 stars “Humans are meat that dreams. Impulses of flesh within flesh, sinew and gristle, movement and longing, electric and chemical signals that create an experience called human.” There are a few tropes that I’d consider my “buzz-kill-words” in books. They are basically the opposite of buzz-words, meaning that if I hear your book contains one of these tropes, I will almost instantly lose interes

Genre: Sci-fi Novella Published: Tor Books & Pan MacMillan International, May 2026 My Rating: 3/5 stars “You have a choice. You get to choose who you love. No matter what happens next, no one can take that away from you.” After a yearslong streak of feel-good queer novels, T.J. Klune is switching things up with his latest release; an apocalyptic novella in which we follow an elderly queer couple on a roadtrip across America, in the final days before the earth will be swallowe

Genre: Sci-fi Mystery Published: Soho Press, May 2026 My Rating: 3.5/5 stars Equal parts police procedural, sci-fi mystery and societal dystopia; there were plenty of colors in the palette that Andrew Dana Hugh could’ve chosen to paint the story of Absence with. Instead of choosing however, he blends these genres together in a way that worked surprisingly well for me. The mix is a little reminiscent of Jeff Vandermeer or Blake Crouch, but less bleak and alien than the former,

Genre: magical realism Published: W. W. Norton & Company (print) & RB Media (audio) My Rating: 4.5/5 stars "This state of pregnancy is not so different from what we’re doing here. We’re gestating a city, Yosoye. Soon we will birth greatness. Isn’t it all creation? Isn’t it all holy work?" There’s an interesting microtrend of “women walking into bodies of water” going on among spring 2026 releases. In March, we had Westward Women by Alice Martin, in which women were drawn towa

Genre: horror Published: University of Massachusetts Press, March 2026 My rating: 5/5 stars "No matter what it’s meant to grow, a lab works on principles of limitation and elimination, defined by what it excludes. Like the barn where I kept Solo. Like the house where I was kept. Isolation is a tool of analysis. It is not a state to maintain indefinitely." It’s been almost two months and a partial reread, and I still cannot find the words to do justice to the way I admired and

Translator : Daisy Gibbons (Ukrainian -> English) Genre: Speculative Fiction, Dystopian Published: Seven Stories Press, April 2026 My Rating: 4/5 stars "The weathering away of every person is a weathering away inside everyone left behind. Any man’s death diminishes me." With echoes of The Road and Roadside Picnic , and clear resonance to recent history, The Weathering is a Ukrainian-set dystopian novel that feels timely and timeless at the same time. The Story: A young U

Genre: Contemporary Fiction Published: Soho Press, March 2025 My Rating: 1/5 stars "You look at him, puppy-eyed. At this man who looks like Leo, but isn’t Leo and want to say “my husband always kept pens in his pocket too. I miss you already.” I thought long and hard on how to rate this novel. What I eventually ended up with was the longest review I've ever written, and a rating of a single star. Although it has a bunch of redeeming qualities, which I will address below, I u

Genre: Science Fiction Published: William Morrow, January 2025 My Rating: 3/5 conflicted stars “We cannot escape our creators. I keep saying this. You can't erase that which made you. Even when they are gone, their spirit remains.” I’m not sure if I remember a the last time was that I felt thís conflicted about a book… my reading-journey was a rollercoaster that swerved from hate to love, and ultimately landed in a very mixed area. It took me a little while to detangle my

Genre: horror, haunted-house Published: Tin House Publishing, March 2026 My Rating: 5/5 stars "What would Lele say? What would Lele do? She asked herself these questions all the time, her answers feeble and uncertain, never knowing if she was right. She’d made this ghost. It couldn’t tell her anything new." The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts is an incredibly effective ghost-story with themes of grief, trauma and social isolation. It drew me in with its atmosphere, but truly snuc

Genre: Science Fiction Published: Erewhon Books, February 2026 My Rating: 5/5 stars “First there was the fear of being. Fear of being became fear of not-being. Those are the two original fears.” Consider this a PSA to all sci-fi-fans: mark February 28th on your calendars to go out and pick up this novel upon release. You won’t regret it! A.D. Sui blends a beautiful, meditative and philosophical science-fiction story with a closed-room-murder-mystery in space, and although tha