Every reviewer lies about the horror books they didn’t finish. This is my DNF confessional, five abandoned novels, the page I quit on, and the daft personal reasons I never made it to the end. Folk horror, slashers, and one book that made me put the telly on.
Stephanie Campisi kills off her mentor figure on page eighteen and rehires her as a ghost. In this interview the author of The Unfinished Business talks through her middle grade ghost story: grief played for laughs, a factory fire turned labour satire, and the one death the book refuses to console. Required reading for anyone tracking where cosy horror for kids goes next.
Carlyn Greenwald’s What Happened to Those Girls drops three teenagers into a witch-haunted ghost town and lets only the bodies come back. My review digs into why this queer YA horror thriller, all grief and betrayal and small-town folk horror, hands its murder investigation to the one girl everyone wants to blame.
Rebecca Barrow’s Doe is a YA horror novel in verse that uses sharp, incantatory lines to build a dual-narrative story of jealousy, an ancient deer-like entity, and a deal that costs everything. Full review.
Rebecca Barrow’s Doe is a YA horror novel in verse about a cheer captain, a centuries-tired deer creature, and the dangerous pull between girls. In our interview, Barrow digs into feminist horror, female rage, and why she wrote the squad as a single hive-mind “we.” A must-read for fans of Bad Things Happen Here and dual-timeline horror.
Hope Madden’s Roost is a literary folk horror novella that follows twin sisters Joy and Hope across four Easter birthdays in a slowly dying Ohio town. With Catholic dread, small-town American gothic atmosphere, and a winged shadow that keeps coming home, this 2026 Lacandon Jungle Press reissue proves Madden’s gift for restraint. Here is why this coming-of-age horror sits with you long after the final page.
Graeme Reynolds’ By Dawn’s Early Light pulls private investigator Jack Carlton back into the dark, trading AA meetings for the hunt for a serial killer called The Witchfinder. This splatterpunk sequel to Night Bleeds Into Dawn blends occult detective horror, real human characters and unflinching gore — and a finale that truly rips.
India-Rose Bower’s debut We Call Them Witches is a folk horror that braids eldritch creatures, pagan ritual and a sapphic romance through a post-apocalyptic Britain. Our review digs into how Bower builds dread, writes family, and lands right on the front edge of where horror is heading.
Mark Morris’s Bad Things Happen Here is slow-burn British supernatural horror at its most character-driven and most unsettling. Five former university friends are pulled back together after twenty years when the past trauma they never actually dealt with starts bleeding into their children’s lives. Published by Flame Tree Press on 30 June 2026, this is ensemble horror fiction with the psychological precision and atmospheric dread that defines Morris at his best.
E. L. Chen’s Slasher Summer drops seven friends back at the cabin where their favourite 1980s slasher was filmed, then lets the masked killer arrive on schedule. My horror book review digs into the Final Girl twist, the meta-slasher structure, and why this throwback belongs beside books like The Final Girl Support Group.
