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.
grief horror
Crone by Keith Rosson: Folk Horror Noir That Bites Back
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
Vincent Ralph on Bleak Haven, Corpse Creek and the Uses of Grief
Vincent Ralph talks us through Corpse Creek, the grief horror centrepiece of his Bleak Haven series, and the drowned brother who will not stay under. He explains how four YA horror novels rework R.L. Stine’s Fear Street into something darker, and why Fear Farm had to end the whole thing in blood.