The Ladies of Horror Fiction have been reading up a storm. Hunker down with a book or two, if you can, and stay safe. ♥
The Unsuitable by Molly Pohlig
Molly Pohlig’s The Unsuitable is a fierce blend of Gothic ghost story and Victorian novel of manners that’s also pitch perfect for our current cultural moment.
Iseult Wince is a Victorian woman perilously close to spinsterhood whose distinctly unpleasant father is trying to marry her off. She is awkward, plain, and most pertinently, believes that her mother, who died in childbirth, lives in the scar on her neck.
Iseult’s father parades a host of unsuitable candidates before her, the majority of whom Iseult wastes no time frightening away. When at last her father finds a suitor desperate enough to take Iseult off his hands―a man whose medical treatments have turned his skin silver―a true comedy of errors ensues.
As history’s least conventional courtship progresses into talk of marriage, Iseult’s mother becomes increasingly volatile and uncontrollable, and Iseult is forced to resort to extreme, often violent, measures to keep her in check.
As the day of the wedding nears, Iseult must decide whether (and how) to set the course of her life, with increasing interference from both her mother and father, tipping her ever closer to madness, and to an inevitable, devastating final act.
Audra’s Teaser Review
This is a masterful novel, contemplating themes of mental health and the perceived role of women. Iseult is a wonderfully complex character, and I loved getting inside her dark and unstable mind.
Read Audra’s entire review at Goodreads.
The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James
The secrets lurking in a rundown roadside motel ensnare a young woman, just as they did her aunt thirty-five years before, in this new atmospheric suspense novel from the national bestselling and award-winning author of The Broken Girls.
Upstate NY, 1982. Every small town like Fell, New York, has a place like the Sun Down Motel. Some customers are from out of town, passing through on their way to someplace better. Some are locals, trying to hide their secrets. Viv Delaney works as the night clerk to pay for her move to New York City. But something isn’t right at the Sun Down, and before long she’s determined to uncover all of the secrets hidden…
Emily’s Teaser Review
The Sun Down Motel is the first book I’ve read by Simone St. James, and I loved it! This book grabbed me from the beginning, and held my attention the entire way through. I couldn’t wait to see what was going to happen, and I tore through this book in about a day.
Read Emily’s entire review at Goodreads.
Audra’s Teaser Review
Completely compelling and utterly readable, this is a book that you will almost need to devour in one sitting if possible! I can’t wait to pick up more of St. James’s books.
Read Audra’s entire review at Goodreads.
Whispers In The Dark by Laurel Hightower
Rose McFarland is a trained killer–a Memphis S.W.A.T. sniper with a secret. Her team knows about the burn scars that lurk under her clothes, a legacy of the house fire that killed her father and brother sixteen years before. Her supervisors know that she spent two years in a rehabilitative facility, healing and learning to cope with the emotional trauma of the fire. But no one knows about the visions that drove her there, angry spirits that consumed her childhood, alienated her from her family and made her doubt her own sanity–the Whispers.
When Charlie Akers, a half-brother she never knew, ends up on the wrong side of Rose’s rifle, she unwittingly sets off a chain of events that puts her family in the middle of increasingly dangerous paranormal visitations. Charlie won’t stay dead, and soon ghosts from Rose’s past are creeping back into her life. People she’s killed in the line of duty, family she thought long buried, every one of them under the influence of Rose’s greatest fear, the Whispers themselves.
As the walls between our world and the world of the dead grow thin, Rose will have to face her old nightmares to stop the Whispers from breaking free. If she can’t, it won’t just be Memphis that falls to the dead–there will be no safe place left on earth for the living.
Alex’s Teaser Review
I cannot believe this is a debut novel from Laurel Hightower! The storyline, her knack for getting under your skin, her ability to write believable characters, etc make it seem like she has been doing this for quite some time.
Read Alex’s entire review at Goodreads.
Tracy’s Teaser Review
I loved Rose. She’s a flawed, strong female character. She isn’t a “strong girl” trope nor a damsel in distress. She’s like, well, me, if my life had taken a different path. I imagine a lot of female readers will be able to see themselves in her and that takes considerable skill.
Read Tracy’s entire review at Goodreads.
Thank you for joining us today! We hope you found something to add to your tbr list. Please share your recent reads with us in the comments below.
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