The Gatsby sequel you never knew you needed—and won’t escape.
Bram Stoker winner Gwendolyn Kiste turns The Great Gatsby inside out in In These Gilded, Ghostly Hearts, a queer horror retelling that finally gives voice to the women Fitzgerald sidelined. When Daisy Buchanan is found dead in 1955, her daughter Mel knows her mother has been gone for years, consumed by alcohol, abuse, and the grasping ghost of Jay Gatsby. This sapphic Gothic novella is no mere sequel; it’s a reckoning with legacy, grief, and the hungry houses that feast on unfulfilled love. Kiste writes with opulent precision, making this essential reading for anyone who ever wondered what happened after the final page.
In These Gilded Ghostly Hearts by Gwendolyn Kiste: Gatsby’s Ghosts Won’t Let Go
In These Gilded, Ghostly Hearts by Gwendolyn Kiste | Book Review | Creature Publishing | 15 Sept. 2026 |
Stoker winner Gwendolyn Kiste holds up a dark, queer mirror to The Great Gatsby in In These Gilded, Ghostly Hearts, a haunting exploration of the obsession and control at the edges of an American classic.
In 1955, Daisy Buchanan is found dead in an abandoned West Egg mansion, but her daughter Mel knows she’s really been gone for years. No one knows whether Daisy was murdered, or if it was a simpler, slower death: her yearslong spiral of alcohol, abuse, and helplessness. But when Mel enters the estate, she finds Daisy’s ghost, somehow frozen at twenty-three, and a charming, bleeding phantom that used to be Jay Gatsby.
To free her mother, Mel must carve a path through family secrets and decaying revelers: deep into Gatsby’s starving house, as it gorges itself on unfulfilled love and grows stronger every night.
‘”Have you seen Jay Gatsby?” “I have.” “How is he?” “Still dead,” I say, “and still dreaming.”
To prepare for reading this book, I went back to watch the Robert Redford ‘Great Gatsby’ movie (with the pink suit) and remembered all over again why the book hadn’t clicked with me when I read it years ago. It’s so ‘male-focused’, like Hemingway at his peak, and it frustrated me that the bright and brilliant women involved were comparatively side-lined when they could’ve been so much more. But that’s not what the original was about.
Years later, Gwendolyn Kiste has addressed this head-on with this beautiful follow-up. As opulent in its writing as any party of Gatsby’s but with far more depth, she is unafraid to dive into the world beyond the surface prose of the original, exploring just what was going on in that house of joy and darkness.
By following Daisy’s daughter Mel, we’re able to see the original tale with fresh eyes – and see just how much of it we were missing. Doomed Daisy, her crash as inevitable as that of Wall Street (and the crash of jealousy she made herself), and Mel left to only dream of those rich, hedonistic days of the Roaring ’20s while working her fingers raw in a laundry.
Pulled back to the scene itself, the battered walls and dusty corridors filled only with ghosts, Mel becomes as addicted to the party as any of Gatsby’s ‘friends’ – and we ask ourselves just how much hold the past has on us in the present.
‘How much do we owe the world for the sins of our parents? How do we make amends for the mistakes we never made?’
I almost cheered to see some of the original faces again, especially gorgeously wild Jordan in all her seductive realism; perhaps the only person to truly ‘win’ the original after all. Because what happens to characters once the final page of a book is closed? Gwendolyn suggests we open the pages again to see what lies beyond that final blankness, as lives go on in the aftermath of what was considered the main action. There’s so much more to tell.
For this is by no means an unnecessary sequel. This is a wonderfully thoughtful book about grief, hope, legacies and curses, and one woman’s journey through it all, as she pushes to survive the still-grasping fingers of Jay Gatsby. These aren’t just characters reflecting morals of the day – they’re brought to life as people, as vividly and memorably as that pink suit (if you know, you know).
This is an extended epilogue, exploring the tangled threads left dangling by Fitzgerald and now picked up in the 21st century by one of the most skilled women writing today. I read it in two days, gulping it down in a way that champagne shouldn’t be but which I just couldn’t resist.
‘This isn’t a happily ever after, but then again, maybe they don’t deserve a happy ending. Maybe what they really need is any kind of ending at all.’
‘In These Gilded Ghostly Hearts’, by Gwendolyn Kiste
Stoker winner Gwendolyn Kiste holds up a dark, queer mirror to The Great Gatsby in In These Gilded, Ghostly Hearts, a haunting exploration of the obsession and control at the edges of an American classic.
In 1955, Daisy Buchanan is found dead in an abandoned West Egg mansion, but her daughter Mel knows she’s really been gone for years. No one knows whether Daisy was murdered, or if it was a simpler, slower death: her yearslong spiral of alcohol, abuse, and helplessness. But when Mel enters the estate, she finds Daisy’s ghost, somehow frozen at twenty-three, and a charming, bleeding phantom that used to be Jay Gatsby.
To free her mother, Mel must carve a path through family secrets and decaying revelers: deep into Gatsby’s starving house as it gorges itself on unfulfilled love and grows stronger every night.
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