Wednesday, March 2, 2022

What We've Been Reading #122

Today our team members are sharing three recent and recommended reads. We hope you’ll check out these new stories by Mona Awad, S.H. Cooper and Sara Gran.

Please click either tag above to find more books worth adding to your tbr pile!


All’s Well by Mona Awad

From the critically acclaimed author of Bunny, a darkly funny novel about a theater professor suffering chronic pain, who in the process of staging a troubled production of Shakespeare’s most maligned play, suddenly and miraculously recovers.

Miranda Fitch’s life is a waking nightmare. The accident that ended her burgeoning acting career left her with excruciating, chronic back pain, a failed marriage, and a deepening dependence on painkillers. And now she’s on the verge of losing her job as a college theater director. Determined to put on Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well, the play that promised, and cost, her everything, she faces a mutinous cast hellbent on staging Macbeth instead. Miranda sees her chance at redemption slip through her fingers.

That’s when she meets three strange benefactors who have an eerie knowledge of Miranda’s past and a tantalizing promise for her future: one where the show goes on, her rebellious students get what’s coming to them, and the invisible, doubted pain that’s kept her from the spotlight is made known.

With prose Margaret Atwood has described as “no punches pulled, no hilarities dodged…genius,” Mona Awad has concocted her most potent, subversive novel yet. All’s Well is the story of a woman at her breaking point and a formidable, piercingly funny indictment of our collective refusal to witness and believe female pain.

Goodreads | Amazon | Bookshop

Audra’s Teaser Review

A whirlwind of a ride, I read this book in just two sittings. Awad has this very stylistic and wonderful way of getting the reader inside her character’s heads. It reminds me of the way the movies Heathers or Scream create this realistic and yet stylized world through very specific dialogue that the characters all share. It’s like a meta version of reality that sits just outside of what might actually be, but you still buy into it.

Read Audra’s entire review at Goodreads.


Inheriting Her Ghosts by S.H.Cooper

Inheritance often comes with strings attached, but rarely are they as tangled as those hanging over High Hearth.

When Eudora Fellowes learns she’s the sole heir of her estranged great-aunt’s seaside manor, she believes it will be the peaceful escape she’s longed for. What awaits, however, is a dark legacy shrouded in half a century of secrets, and it doesn’t take long before Eudora realizes she’s not the only one to call High Hearth home.

Goodreads | Amazon | Bookshop

Jen’s Teaser Review

Inheriting Her Ghosts turned out to be such a comfort read for me. When I need a hug from something scary, I will reach for this book again. Recommended!

Read Jen’s entire review at Book Den.


The Book of the Most Precious Substance by Sara Gran

The highly anticipated new thriller from internationally renowned author Sara Gran, author of Come Closer and the Claire DeWitt series.

A mysterious book that promises unlimited power and unrivaled sexual pleasure. A down-on-her-luck book dealer hoping for the sale of a lifetime. And a twist so shocking, no one will come out unscathed.

After a tragedy too painful to bear, former novelist Lily Albrecht has resigned herself to a dull, sexless life as a rare book dealer. Until she gets a lead on a book that just might turn everything around. The Book of the Most Precious Substance is a 17th century manual on sex magic, rumored to be the most powerful occult book ever written—if it really exists at all. And some of the wealthiest people in the world are willing to pay Lily a fortune to find it—if she can. Her search for the book takes her from New York to New Orleans to Munich to Paris, searching the dark corners of power where the world’s wealthiest people use black magic to fulfill their desires. Will Lily fulfill her own desires, and join them? Or will she lose it all searching for a ghost? The Book of the Most Precious Substance is an addictive erotic thriller about the lengths we’ll go to get what we need—and what we want.

Goodreads | Amazon | Bookshop

Cassie’s Teaser Review

This whirlwind of a book feels a little like the Da Vinci Code, except with A LOT more sex, orgies, dominatrix witches, and details any book nerd / collector would love. I loved it. It’s a little horror, a little adventure, a little mystery – I sped through it and found myself thinking back to the story in between when I was away from it, which is always the sign of a great book!

Read Cassie’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.

If you are a LOHF writer and have a book you’d like us to consider for a review please visit our review submission page here.


Laurie is one of our LOHF Admins. Laurie creates our review posts, coordinates review requests, oversees the Ladies of Horror Fiction directory, and manages our LOHF Goodreads group.

You can find Laurie on her blog Bark’s Book Nonsense, on Twitter as @barksbooks, on Instagram as @barksbooks, and on Goodreads.

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