August was a huge month for me on the personal side of things. I moved from Arizona, got settled in my new home of Chicago, and then took a trip to Japan. Along the way, I needed some easy-going comfort books to take my mind off of packing and the stress of a cross-country move.
This month there’s the usual horror, with a dash of romance, and – gasp! -young adult fantasy?? Check out notes on all of my August reads below!
Notes on august reads
Happy Hour / Marlowe Granados
I accidentally forgot to include this one in my June + July wrap up, which was a wrong that needed to be righted. I kicked off my summer reading with this plotless masterpiece, and I fell in love with it. This book captures the feeling of an endless, aimless summer when you are 21, hopping from bar to bar and bed to bed, filled with quick, hilarious dialogue that feels straight out of a screwball comedy. In this book, nothing and everything happens.
Horror Noire / Robin R. Means Coleman
Robin R. Means Coleman is the foremost expert on Black American horror, and I finally got around to reading Horror Noire in its second edition this year. While this book is intended for an academic audience, it’s still a fascinating look at representation for Black characters in American genre films. Highly recommended for any horror fan!
Goddess of Filth / V. Castro
V. Castro has been one of the big stars in indie horror in recent years, and I absolutely loved her possession-horror novella Goddess of Filth. Castro successfully weaves together threads of Indigenous gods with oppressive colonial Catholicism to create a wholly unique spin on the possession narrative. It’s The Craft mixed with Catholic trauma, two of my favorite things!
Shiver / Junji Ito
While I was making my way across the country during my move, I brought along Junji Ito’s collection of selected short stories, Shiver. Junji Ito is a Japanese creator of horror manga, and his stories and illustrations are pure nightmare fuel. If you’re intrigued, this is a great place to start! Pick it up, page through it, and it you aren’t turned off by the visuals then you’re in for a lot of fun.
The Haunting of Alejandra / V. Castro
Back to V. Castro for a little bit with her debut in the traditional publishing scene, this year’s The Haunting of Alejandra. It’s a modern spin on the La Llorona myth that had a lot of promise, but unfortunately fell pretty flat for me. I longed for the bite that Castro showed in her earlier works, and instead found myself a little bored with the book’s A-Plot, a monotonous domestic drama. I loved the cover though!
The Devil Takes You Home / Gabino Iglesias
The Devil Takes You Home won this year’s Bram Stoker award for the best horror novel of the past year, and it’s been a long time since I’ve read something this intense. This hitman-takes-one-final-job story is relentlessly bleak, like Cormac McCarthy-levels of bleakness, but it’s pretty damn affecting. Iglesias writes the hell out of his Southwest and Mexican settings, and is clearly a keen student of both the horror and noir genres. The moments where the supernatural elements broke through were breathtaking.
Divine Rivals / Rebecca Ross
The book of the moment on TikTok is a young adult fantasy-romance and I’m hear to say that it… is good! I read this book during my final week in Arizona amidst the stress of packing and had a lot of fun with it. Amazing literature? No, but it’s the best YA fantasy I’ve read in a long time.
The Rachel Incident / Caroline O’Donoghue
Sally Rooney on SSRIs, The Rachel Incident is a tale of young Irish adults traversing love and life during times of economic strife. It’s easy to compare this to Normal People, and while they are both Irish novels about being young, the similarities stop there. The melodrama of the plot can be laid on a little thick in the novel’s second half, but it’s still a compelling character study. I enjoyed it far more than I anticipated by the end!
Looking Glass Sound / Catriona Ward
Cartiona Ward, what do I do with you? Ward is fast becoming a star in the horror/thriller space with legions of devoted fans and months of hype leading up to her new releases. For some reason, though, I can’t get her novels to work for me. This worked so well for so long, but my goodness the last third just fell apart. Ward was holding a lot of different plot threads here (not to mention a “book within a book within a book” structure AND multiple names for each character) but she made the fatal mistake of having the least interesting storyline be the book’s anchor and ending section. Things just didn’t come together in a satisfying way for me.
That being said, there’s a lot to admire here. Ward’s writing is pretty great, and she does a good job of bringing the locales to life with vivid imagery. Ultimately, I think someone needs to tell her that it’s okay to write a book that doesn’t include some kind of bizarre structural twist.
Mister Magic / Kiersten White
Kiersten White launched her career in the young adult space, and her recent foray into adult horror has been fun to see. I picked up her latest novel on the premise alone (seemingly inspired by one of my favorite Creepypastas): a children’s television program that everyone can remember but no one can find any trace of it ever existing. Unfortunately, the story itself is kind of all over the place, and the whole thing didn’t come together for me until I read the author’s note at the end of the novel. It made me appreciate what White was doing here, but it didn’t rescue the novel fully.
Bunny / Mona Awad
Jesus Christ, this was weird. Like WEIRD weird.
Plain Bad Heroines / Emily M. Danforth
Finally, Plain Bad Heroines. I admire ambitious books, and this dense, dual-timeline, 600+ page sapphic romance/true crime pastiche/gothic horror/Hollywood satire/dark academia/historical fiction is… about as ambitious as you can get! A month later and I still don’t know how I feel about this book, but I look forward to an eventual reread!
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