#Erica Waters

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Characters, book, and author names under the cut

Tara Boone/Penny - All That Consumes Us by Erica Waters

August Mulvaney/Lucas Blackwell - Psycho by Onley James

Ariadne O'Neill/Elena Quesada-Cruz/Chikondi Daka/Jack Vo - To Be Taught if Fortunate by Becky Chambers (sorry hit the character limit which cut off the name in the poll)

Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish - The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater

[thereadingchallengechallenge]

JOMP BPC - February 4th - Cover Lust

it must be nice to keep winning the cover lottery the way Erica Waters does 😂

[lgbtqreads]

Fave Five: YA About Ghosts and/or Ghost Hunters, Part I

The Dead and the Dark by Courtney Gould Rules for Vanishing by Kate Alice Marshall Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas Violet Ghosts by Leah Thomas Ghost Wood Song by Erica Waters

[bones-clouds]

books i read in 2024:

"all that consumes us"

erica waters

rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️, 5

genre: horror/thriller, gothic, dark academia, wlw

synopsis:

Ninth House meets The Dead and the Dark in this gothic dark academia novel that delves into the human capacity for great love, great art, and great evil. Magni animi numquam moriuntur. Great minds never die.

The students in Corbin College’s elite academic society, Magni Viri, have it all—free tuition, inspirational professors, and dream jobs once they graduate. When first-gen college student Tara is offered a chance to enroll, she doesn’t hesitate.? Except once she’s settled into the gorgeous Victorian dormitory, something strange starts to happen. She’s finally writing, but her stories are dark and twisted. Her dreams feel as if they could bury her alive. An unseen presence seems to stalk her through the halls. And a chilling secret awaits Tara at the heart of Magni Viri—one that just might turn her nightmares into reality; one that might destroy her before she has a chance to escape.

All That Consumes Us will pull readers into a hypnotizing, dark reverie that blurs the lines of reality and shows that the addictive nature of ambition—and its inevitable price—always claims its due.

[phaedraismyusername]

It's September and we're in a heatwave so instead of choosing violence here's some oppressive summer gothics to match the abysmal autumn vibes

The criteria - they have to be hot and humid, they have to be gothic in nature, dark in content, and they have to at least flirt with the paranormal

Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo

This follows Andrew as he moves to a college across the country to step into his dead best friend Eddie's old life as he desperately tries to prove that he must've been murdered. Haunted, both figuratively and literally, angry and grieving, Andrew sets off on a path that leads him to question everything he ever thought he knew about himself and their history together as he fights to accept who he is, who Eddie was, and maybe tries to learn how to live without him. Fast-paced, dark, and super gay.

Water Shall Refuse Them by Lucie McKnight Hardy

After the death of her little sister, teenager Nif and her family move to rural Wales for the summer in an attempt to escape their grief. Set in the 1970s during a heatwave the isolation and oppressive weather quickly start to take their toll. With an emotionally absent mother, a father with a wandering eye and a needy younger brother, Nif becomes convinced she's stumbled across her own kind of magic, before catching the attention of the strange boy across the street. Think Shirley Jackson, definitely not YA.

Dark and Shallow Lies by Ginny Myers Sain

Now, this is YA. We follow 17 year old Grey as she returns back to her tiny hometown in the Louisiana Bayou for the summer 6 months after her best friends mysterious disappearance. In a town that claims to be the 'psychic capitol of the world', someone must know something, right? Full of secrets, lies, and a boy who steps out of the forest with storm-bright eyes, this was a quick and twisty atmospheric read.

The Hacienda by Isabel Canas

When political upheaval gets her father executed and his family is left in shame and destitution, Beatriz decides she'll do whatever it takes to find security in her life again. When a handsome Don proposes, Beatriz jumps at the chance to accept and move out to his countryside estate with big plans for the future, but it doesn't take long before she's spending her nights terrorised by a mysterious entity inside her new home, forcing her to seek help from the strangest of places. The imagery is creepy, the tone is tense, there's a hot priest, what more do you want?

Cold Moon Over Babylon by Michael McDowell

Probably the darkest book on this list, and definitely the oldest. When a young girl is brutally murdered within sight of her home, it starts a chain of events that will see a family destroyed, secrets and lies exposed, and a vengeful creature that looks almost human to rise from the river as the town that surrounds it starts to crumble. The people are unlikeable, the book is old, the content is Dark - you've been warned.

Ghost Wood Song by Erica Waters

Also YA but this time for the bisexuals. Shady Grove can call ghosts from the grave with her music, just like her daddy could, but everyone knows that only trouble comes from playing for the dead. When her brother is accused of murder, Shady decides to embrace her birthright and use any power she can to clear his name. It's sweet, it's sad, it's lyrical, and there's a little bi love triangle sprinkled in to sweeten the sorrows. It's also a debut!

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads / storygraph

All That Consumes Us

YA dark academia

about a writer struggling in her first semester at uni when she finds a girl who was in the secretive and prestigious academic society dead in the library, and is offered the newly empty place

she gladly accepts the spot (and free tuition), but is haunted by dreams of the dead girl, and her stories seem to be going strange and dark places

explores the cost of artistic ambition

bi MC, sapphic, lots of queer characters

[bookaddict24-7]

New Young Adult Releases! (October 17th, 2023)

___

Have I missed any new Young Adult releases? Have you added any of these books to your TBR? Let me know!

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New Standalones/First in a Series:

Unholy Terrors by Lyndall Clipstone

All That Consumes Us by Erica Waters

If You'll Have Me by Eunnie

At the End of the World by Nadia Mikail

Flower & Thorn by Rati Mehrotra

Our Divine Mischief by Hanna Howard

Thin Air by Kellie M. Parker

A Bright Heart by Kate Chenli

All These Sunken Souls: A Black Horror Anthology by Various

One Hundred Days by Alice Pung

New Sequels:

Wild Wishes & Windswept Kisses (Singh Sisters #2) by Maya Prasad

___

Happy reading!

[starrlikesbooks]

Are you ready for queer found family in a creepy secret society? 👻📚

This is out October 17th! And available for preorder ✨

[combativewizard]

"I wonder what it would be like to wake up every day like this, in a small, homey life; to have a normal job and hobbies and never think about college again. To forget about greatness. To forget about achievement. To choose smaller dreams"

-Erica Waters

[aurorawest]

Reading update

The Restless Dark by Erica Waters - 4.25/5 stars

Genuinely good YA thriller.

The Stagsblood Prince by Gideon E Wood - 4.25/5 stars

This one ripped my heart out and I am going to be PISSED if there isn't a happy ending in the third book in the trilogy.

You First by JC Lillis - 4.25/5 stars

You'd think a book that is essentially an Incredibles AU would be lighthearted, right? You wouldn't think you'd practically be sobbing by the end? Haha! You thought wrong!

Wranglestone by Darren Charlton - 4.25/5 stars

I initially rated this 4.25 stars but honestly I might bump it up to 4.5. It's a zombie story but it was really well done, and I ordered the second book in the series the minute I finished this one.

The Falcon and the Foe by AJ Truman - 3.75/5 stars

Felix Silver, Teaspoons, & Witches by Harry Cook - DNF

This one was too Middle Grade for me.

Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers - 3.5/5 stars

So I won my local indie bookstore's trivia in March and the first place prize was a bunch of books that I never would have picked up on my own, including this one. I bumped it to the front of my TBR pile because I thought it would make a good comp for the manuscript I'm editing - it's about a woman who meets and drunkenly marries a stranger in Vegas, then falls in love with her afterwards. The book is really not a romance though, and is actually about burnout. I might have rated it higher if it didn't sell itself as a romance.

All the Better Part of Me by Molly Ringle - 4.25/5 stars

The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley - 5/5 stars

"What if France won the Napoleonic Wars because of time travelers" shouldn't have shattered me the way this book did, but of course it's a Natasha Pulley novel so it absolutely did. There isn't a single one of her books that don't live in my mind rent free for apparently the rest of time after I read them, but man. I'm not sure if this one hurt as much as The Lost Future of Pepperharrow, but it's pretty close. Missouri Kite is the most Gay Little Man™. And Joe, poor Joe. The PINING. The YEARNING. When the reveal happens, I had to go back and read prior sections of the book and good god do they hit different. Different and SADDER. AKDJF;AKDJFKDAFJ;D JUST PLEASE READ IT PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.

A Destiny of Dragons by TJ Klune - DNF

Not only did I DNF this, I removed the rest of the series from my TBR pile and will be offloading them at my local indie bookstore's next book buy-back. I think the worst part of this one was that he dedicated it to his eighth grade English teacher, who apparently told him his stories would never amount to anything. And like. What an awful thing for a teacher to tell a kid (sidebar, my eighth grade English teacher is one of the reasons I started to really take writing seriously, she was amazingly supportive - thank you, Mrs. Brzezinski!). But reading this series is like...you know, she might have had a point. I KID I KID WE ALL KNOW KLUNE ACTUALLY CAN WRITE but holy shit again, this series is so bad. The writing was a little better than The Lightning-Struck Heart but the characters are so fucking annoying. The term Mary Sue gets thrown around a lot and I'm generally not a fan of its application (since usually it's used to tear down teenage girls) but Sam of Wilds is such a fucking Mary Sue (or Gary Stu, I guess, but down with the gender binary, let's just have one word). Everyone wants to have sex with him and while it may have been sort of funny at first (it wasn't), by book 2, the joke has worn extremely thin. Also there's a prophecy about him, because of course there is. And he's the most powerful wizard ever. And yeah, I've read a lot of books where there's a prophecy about the MC and they're the Most Powerful Magic Person Ever, but they're usually not this annoying.

Chainbreaker by Tara Sim - 5/5 stars

This is book 2 of a really interesting and original fantasy/steampunk series. I really enjoyed the first one but this one was even better. It takes place in a world where time running correctly is controlled by clock towers. The main character is a clock mechanic (obviously an important job) who falls in love with the clock spirit of the town of Enfield (delightful, since my wife is from Enfield and it's not a place you often see mentioned in fiction). This book raises the stakes of the first one and takes place largely in India. Highly recommend.

Stormhaven by Jordan L Hawk - 4.25/5 stars

Game Changer by Rachel Reid - 4/5 stars

Is this the OG m/m hockey book? There was something very quaint about it haha.

The Best Man's Problem by Sera Taíno - DNF

I'm beginning to realize that I don't really like books where the family is given equal importance to the romance.

Arctic Wild by Annabeth Albert - 4/5 stars

Hummingbird Heartbreak by Max Walker - 2.75/5 stars

I found Dusty's reaction to the reveal of Brandon's past to be over-the-top and unreasonable (like, unreasonable within the context of the story - obviously characters can react unreasonably to things, but it still needs to make sense for them!). I probably would have rated this 3 stars if not for that, because it's a sweet enough love story.

The World We Make by NJ Jemisin - 2.5/5 stars

NK Jemisin, please do not read this. Jemisin has been open about how difficult this book was to write, and about the fact that she couldn't handle the trilogy she'd planned and took it down to a duology, and…unfortunately, it shows. I loved the first book but this one was a disappointing finale. The pacing was uneven and the character development stalled. Plot threads were introduced and either vanished (Bronca's new girlfriend) or were resolved in a way that felt unearned (the mayoral race, Manny's true identity, honestly the whole big conflict). Aislyn was an interesting character who ultimately felt underutilized. I actually, physically cringed at a couple points during this book—the coda was really just one long cringe, and the other moment was when Brooklyn calls...Beyonce. Who is an old friend. But then Beyonce is never brought up again and I couldn't tell you what the purpose of her inclusion in the book was. I'm sure some people love that kind of stuff but I can't stand it.

I did really love the other cities though! If Jemisin ever returned to this universe, I'd read a book about Faiyum in a heartbeat. His snark and his gay little crocodile earring were chef's kiss.

Jemisin is a fabulous writer and all my issues with this book feel like the result of an author forcing herself to write something she wasn't feeling and just wanted to be done with. Disappointing all the same since I had really been looking forward to this one.

The Sugared Game by KJ Charles - 5/5 stars

It is not possible to go wrong with an AJ Charles book and this one is no exception. I love Kim and Will so much, and I really really hope the third book builds on the trust they established in this one.

Sixteen Souls by Rose Talbot - 3.75/5 stars

I liked this book but I did find myself, at the climax, wondering why on earth living people would sacrifice themselves to save ghosts from...being more dead? Like. They're...already dead.

[bookcoversonly]

Title: The River Has Teeth | Author: Erica Waters | Publisher: HarperTeen (2021)

[bookishlyvintage]

"I'm alive and Kincaid isn't.

And now I'm going to find his bones to prove it."

The Restless Dark, Erica Waters

☆☆☆☆☆ | full review

[illustration-alcove]

Chervelle Fryer's book cover for Erica Waters's The River Has Teeth.

[lgbtqreads]

Fave Five: Queer Dark Academia

For even more recs for dark academia fans, check out this post of Queer YA for Dark Academia Lovers. (Shopping links are affiliate; using them earns a small percentage of income for the site.) Society for Soulless Girls by Laura Steven (Bks) All That Consumes Us by Erica Waters (Bks) Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo (Bks) The World Cannot Give by Tara Isabella Burton (Bks) These Violent Delights by…

[bones-clouds]

books i read in 2024:

"the restless dark"

erica waters

rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️, 5

genre: horror/thriller, mystery, wlw

synopsis:

Enter Cloudkiss Canyon at your own risk.

The Cloudkiss Killer is dead. Now a true-crime podcast is hosting a contest to find his bones.

Lucy was almost the serial killer’s final victim. Carolina is a true-crime fan who fears her own rage. Maggie is a psychology student with a little too much to hide.

All of them are looking for answers, for a new identity, for a place to bury their secrets.

But there are more than bones hiding in the shadows…sometimes the darkness inside is more frightening than anything the dead leave behind.

Perfect for fans of Sadie and Wilder Girls, this newest novel from Erica Waters follows three girls at a true-crime contest to find the bones of a lost killer—even as a mysterious force pulls at the contestants’ darkest desires.

[the-final-sentence]

I have a book of my own to write.

Erica Waters, from All That Consumes Us