A.J. Malachite’s debut You See It Too turns the choose-your-own-adventure format into a body-horror trap, sending three queer students into a bayou preserve after a will-o’-the-wisp that turns out to have larvae. It is folk horror, eco-horror and Southern Gothic at once, with old money farming the swamp for generations. Four stars for a gamebook that refuses to let you save everyone.
Horror Book Reviews
Ginger Nuts of Horror has been reviewing horror books for 18 years. Here you will find reviews of new horror novels, novellas and short story collections, from small indie presses to the big imprints, across folk horror, gothic, cosmic, psychological horror and everything in between. Every review is free, independent and honest.
An Immaculate Deception by Isabela Livino: A Gothic Debut That Traps You in the House
Isabela Livino’s debut An Immaculate Deception traps a pregnant, devout woman in an isolated 1870s Brazilian estate where a family’s bargain with the devil has gone wrong. A Latin American Gothic of vanishing mirrors and disbelieved women, sitting alongside Mexican Gothic and Rosemary’s Baby, held back only by a slow middle third.
All Her Beautiful Deaths by A. Rushby: A Gothic Built on Victorian Death Photography
A. Rushby follows Slashed Beauties with All Her Beautiful Deaths, a dual-timeline gothic that turns Victorian death photography into a mystery about grief, art and ownership. It is atmospheric, queer and quietly hopeful, held back only by a present-day strand that crowds out its richer 1865 half.
Mazywood by Tananarive Due: The Wish That Grew Teeth
Tananarive Due’s Mazywood turns a child’s wish in 1926 Old Hollywood into a monster that waits fifty years for the family to come home. This creature feature and historical saga is her first novel since the multi-award-winning The Reformatory, and it confirms Gracetown as one of horror’s great haunted maps. A big, ambitious, occasionally overstuffed four-star return.
She’s a Doll by Barbara Truelove: Killed by Politeness
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.
