Avery Flynn’s Hexy Beast throws a chaos witch and a grumpy werewolf alpha into a fated-mates bind, and the banter and spice deliver. This paranormal rom-com is the strongest Sherwood Witches book so far, held back only by a middle that loses its way in the woods.
Rachel Harrison’s Kiss Slay Replay traps wedding guest Willa Sullivan in a time loop with a masked killer and her own regrets. Our review of 2026’s standout slasher explores how the Queen of Contemporary Horror turned anxiety itself into the monster.
Luna Gray reviews She’s a Doll by Barbara Truelove, a queer supernatural revenge horror about a young woman murdered by her own manners and reborn inside a haunted porcelain doll. It is a story built on consent, class, and rage as a motor function, published by Ezeekat Press. Brutal, morally unsettled, and unwilling to heal anyone.
Sarah Maria Griffin turns a childhood game into cosmic horror in Strange Is the Light, set on Valentia Island. A five-star Irish gothic about friendship, betrayal, and a turn left unfinished for twenty years.
Vincent Ralph closes the Bleak Haven series with a matched pair that shares only a cursed town. Corpse Creek is a supernatural grief-horror; Fear Farm is a haunted-attraction slasher. We review both YA horror titles side by side, and both earn four stars for opposite reasons.
In Crone, Keith Rosson binds a Pacific Northwest crime noir to a folk horror ghost story, following a grieving ex-detective through a corrupt town toward a witch who has been keeping his missing daughter for thirteen years. It is body-horror addiction, biker-gang rot, and generational violence, held together by prose of frightening control
Gretchen McNeil’s second adult novel drops a former-FBI priest and a stubborn constable on a boat-less Newfoundland island where the locals crave daily Mass. Our five-star review reads We Are For The Dark as religious folk horror that fuses detective fiction, Catholic dread, and a love story into one merciless question.
Hell is a company in Mackenzie Reed’s adult debut, and the joke mostly works. Our four-star review gets into the corporate-underworld satire, the slow-burn romance, the grief thread, and the worldbuilding that strains under its own reveals.
In Still Lost, Sam A. Miller hands the deadpan of Sam O’Nella Academy a nervous system. His eight linked near-future science fiction stories let a superior alien race fix every human threat, then watch us wreck ourselves anyway. A debut short story collection that runs warmer than Black Mirror and closer to George Saunders.
Susan McCauley’s The Raven is a four-star gothic horror novel set in the 1665 plague winter, where a Yorkshire cobbler’s grief, faith and madness braid into folk-horror dread. A patient, disturbing historical horror about the monster who keeps a kind face.
