What We're Reading #20

The Ladies of Horror Fiction are here to help you add a few more books to your tbr piles!

Chocking Back The Devil Poems by Donna Lynch

Choking Back the Devil by Donna Lynch is an invocation, an ancient invitation that summons the darkness within and channels those lonely spirits looking for a host. It’s a collection that lives in the realm of ghosts and family curses, witchcraft and urban legends, and if you’re brave enough to peek behind the veil, the hauntings that permeate these pages will break seals and open doorways, cut throats and shatter mirrors.

You see, these poems are small drownings, all those subtle suffocations that live in that place between our ribs that swells with panic, incubates fear. Lynch shows her readers that sometimes our shadow selves–our secrets–are our sharpest weapons, the knives that rip through flesh, suture pacts with demons, cut deals with entities looking for more than a homecoming, something better, more intimate than family.

It’s about the masks we wear and the reflections we choose not to look at, and what’s most terrifying about the spells is these incantations show that we are the possessed, that we are our greatest monster, and if we look out of the corner of our eyes, sometimes–if we’ve damned ourselves enough–we can catch a glimpse of our own burnings, what monstrosities and mockeries we’re to become.

So cross yourselves and say your prayers. Because in this world, you are the witch and the hunter, the girl and the wolf.

Goodreads | Amazon | Better World Books

Emily’s Teaser Review

Choking Back the Devil is the second collection I’ve read from Donna Lynch, and I loved it so much! These poems were gorgeous and haunting, and I really enjoyed my time reading them. I found this collection to be honest and easy to connect with.

Click here to see Emily’s full review Goodreads.

Jen’s Teaser Review

This was my first time to read Donna Lynch, and it definitely won’t be my last. I loved the poems in this collection, and I highly recommend Choking Back the Devil as a collection to try.

Click here to see Jen’s full review at Book Den.

My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

“Femi makes three, you know. Three and they label you a serial killer.”

Korede is bitter. How could she not be? Her sister, Ayoola, is many things: the favorite child, the beautiful one, possibly sociopathic. And now Ayoola’s third boyfriend in a row is dead.

Korede’s practicality is the sisters’ saving grace. She knows the best solutions for cleaning blood, the trunk of her car is big enough for a body, and she keeps Ayoola from posting pictures of her dinner to Instagram when she should be mourning her “missing” boyfriend. Not that she gets any credit.

Korede has long been in love with a kind, handsome doctor at the hospital where she works. She dreams of the day when he will realize that she’s exactly what he needs. But when he asks Korede for Ayoola’s phone number, she must reckon with what her sister has become and how far she’s willing to go to protect her.

Sharp as nails and full of deadpan wit, Oyinkan Braithwaite’s deliciously deadly debut is as fun as it is frightening.

Goodreads | Amazon | Better World Books

Toni’s Teaser Review

This is one of those books that’s written so well you want to keep reading it. The pacing of the story is perfect. It really lets you chew on the story as it goes along. The characters in the story are so well written you really feel like the MC is talking to you throughout the story. The premise of the story is really unique and fresh. Braithwaite is a very talented. 

Click here to see Toni’s full review at The Misadventures of a Reader.

The Toll by Cherie Priest

From Cherie Priest, the author of The Family Plot and Maplecroft, comes The Toll, a tense, dark, and scary treat for modern fans of the traditionally strange and macabre.

State Road 177 runs along the Suwannee River, between Fargo, Georgia, and the Okefenokee Swamp. Drive that route from east to west, and you’ll cross six bridges. Take it from west to east, and you might find seven.

But you’d better hope not.

Titus and Davina Bell leave their hotel in Fargo for a second honeymoon canoeing the Okefenokee Swamp. But shortly before they reach their destination, they draw up to a halt at the edge of a rickety bridge with old stone pilings, with room for only one car . . .

When, much later, a tow-truck arrives, the driver finds Titus lying in the middle of the road, but Davina is nowhere to be found.

Goodreads | Amazon | Better World Books

Audra’s Teaser Review

I’m describing this book to people as Southern Gothic with a deadly modern edge. Priest really has an eye for pitting new and contemporary ideas against old-school stylings and feel, and what comes out is a hell of a good time.

Click here to see Audra’s full review at Goodreads.

Thanks for joining us today and we hope you found something to add to your tbr list! Please share your recent reads with us in the comments below.