THE FICTIONFOX

Genre: Magical Realism, horror Published: Saga Press (Simon & Schuster), March 2024 My Rating: 4/5 stars "In here it never feels like I belong among the living. But it doesn’t feel like I belong among the dead either." The Haunting of Velkwood is one of those interesting books that sort of grew on my over time. Upon initially finishing it for the first time in 2024, I liked it, but didn’t love straight away. Yet the story, its images and themes kept haunting me, to the point

Genre: Horror Published: Malarkey Books, October 2025 My Rating: 1.5/5 stars On the one hand, I have a lot of thoughts about this book and could’ve gone on a full rant here. On the other hand, I’m not here to kick down at indie-published books, so I’m trying to reign myself in. Consider this my brief outlet for disappointment and frustration over something that could’ve been a lot better than it was. It took me almost a month to finish this 350 page book (probably 3x longer t

Genre: Literary Fiction Published: Mariner Books, October 2026 My Rating: 4.5/5 stars "Isn’t it wisdom, not weakness that allows a person to bend reality in order to survive?" The Story When Ada is left to raise her 3-year-old son by herself, she retreats to her aunt’s crumbling lakeside home to seek stability for Lenny and herself. Lately she’s been haunted by vivid dreams of being pulled away from the Earth, fearing them to be a premonition of her own impending death. Inspi

Genre: Fantasy Published: Blackstone Publishing, September 2026 My Rating: 2.5/5 stars “She was of the island, and the island was of her.” The Story: Cass was adopted as an infant and knows little about her birth-family. When she is informed that a family member has left her a crumbling house on Rothagisht -a remote island near the Arctic Circle- in their will, she seizes the opportunity for a new start. But the island of Rothagisht is nothing like she imagined. Ancient rites

Genre: Blending Literary Fiction, Memoir/autobiographical fiction & magical realism Published: Figtree (Penguin UK), September 2026 My Rating: 5/5 stars "One sees things in the days and weeks after a death. We both thought that we might actually be going mad the first time we saw The Image of the mimmoth in my mother’s garden where she had collapsed collecting water for her orchids." The Strangers, not unlike the fictional animal species at its center, somewhat defies taxonom

Genre: (folk) horror Published: Erewhon Press, October 2026 My Rating: 1/5 stars Full disclosure: I couldn’t finish this book, but I’ve read plenty to be able to confidently say that I hated every second of it. If you’re wondering if you should read this book: ask yourself the following: are you in the mood for a supernatural woodsy-folk horror about a group of friends being picked-off one-by-one by an unseen creature/entity? are you okay with a cast that exists solely of EXT

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