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armandyke · 28 days ago

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January 2025 Reading Wrap Up

Read some absolute bangers this month lads (plus one book that resulted in me sending several voicenotes to my friends because I had to rant about it)

1) A Darker Shade Curated by Joyce Carol Oates (4⭐)

A collection of body horror short stories written by women, do I even need to say more? Overall the quality of stories in this collection was higher than most short story collections I’ve read. I don’t think there were any I could describe as bad or even mid. They were all good.

I will say that although this is described as a collection of body horror stories, I would say a lot of them were what I would class as gore rather than body horror, but that didn’t stop them from being enjoyable nonetheless.

My personal favourites in this collection:

Gross Anatomy by Aimee LaBrie: At what point does it become acceptable to say that I’m a huge fan of necrophilia in stories. Well, it’s out there now. This is one of those stories where you absolutely know what’s going on, but you still cringe and go oh no when it is inevitably revealed.

Muzzle by Cassandra Khaw: I love Cassandra Khaw's writing so much. This is a very short story but managed to cram so much beautifully written gorey body horror inside. Loved it.

The Seventh Bride by Elisabeth Hand: This was one of the stories that I wouldn’t really class as body horror, but was still great nonetheless. About a woman who enacts delightful revenge on her rapist. Hell yeah.

2) The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (5⭐)

I don’t have a lot to say about this one because it’s a classic and most people are familiar with the story. I’ve been wanting to read this for a while and I’m so glad I finally did because it was great, and I actually enjoyed it even more than I expected. There’s a lot of humour in the writing style that I didn’t expect, but it still succeeded in feeling tense and creepy despite me knowing the story already. Definitely worth the read.

3) The Nesting by C.J Cooper (5⭐)

This is my third C.J Cooper book so I was already expecting good things, but this was easily my favourite of the three I’ve read so far. Trigger warning right of the bat for very heavy discussions of suicide in this book right from page one, but as I think I’ve said before, Cooper has a real talent for handling these heavy and upsetting topics in her books without it ever feeling gratuitous. The main character attempts suicide at the beginning of the book and that’s something that is very present for the entire story, but it adds to the plot rather than overwhelming it.

After her suicide attempt, the main character Lexi, through several serendipitous events, finds herself taking on a job as a nanny and caring for two little girls who recently lost their mother to suicide. It’s a completely fresh start for her, being flown out to Norway where the girls’ architect father is determined to build their new family home. Once she’s there, however, she begins to suspect that the death of the girls’ mother might not have been quite what it seemed.

As with the other C.J Cooper books I’ve read, we go back and forth in time throughout the story, switching between Lexi’s pov in the present, and the pov’s of Aurelie, the girls’ mother, in the time leading up to her death. It’s a fun combination of murder mystery combined with supernatural elements. It made me cry several times, surprised me with the twists, and was overall just a really great read.

4) Shiver by Junji Ito (3.5⭐)

I’ve been wanting to get into manga, especially Junji Ito’s work for a while, and this was the one I ended up picking. It’s a collection of shorter stories and gets my standard rating, with an extra half star because I really enjoyed the art style and body horror.

The stories in here weren’t quite what I was expecting. But once I’d read a couple and gotten an idea of what the writing would be, I was able to enjoy them a lot more. Very creepy, really unique. These stories are basically just the author saying “hey, if this thing happened, would that be fucked up or what?” and you know what? It would be fucked up. It absolutely would. My favourite of the stories was Long Dream because I love the concept of eternity in horror. It reminded me a lot of Stephen King’s short story The Jaunt, which was equally existentially horrifying.

5) Comfort Me With Apples by Catherynne M. Valente (5⭐)

This is a difficult book to describe without getting into spoiler territory so I’m gonna keep it as simple as I can. It’s about a woman living in a beautiful, utopian community who begins to notice certain things around her house that don’t belong.

If you’ve read Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, this has similar vibes to that. It’s weird and at first you won’t really understand anything that’s happening, but the beautiful writing draws you in and slowly things start to fall into place. It’s really cleverly written, and once you start to realise what’s going on, you will want to read the whole thing again to appreciate it even more (I read it twice and loved it both times).

6) Thirsty Animals by Rachelle Atalla (2⭐)

This was… a very strange book. My rating changed several times throughout reading it, going from 3 stars to 1 star to 4 stars and then finally settling here on 2. I may post an additional spoilery review for this one because a lot of my issues were with the attempted plot twists near the end of the book, but for now let’s stick to the spoiler free stuff.

The book is set in Scotland, during a global drought that has led to major water shortages. Our main character Aida has moved back home to the family farm with her mother, uncle, and his partner. They are managing okay until a family, a mother, her adult son, and pregnant daughter, arrive on the farm asking for help. The book then follows this group throughout three seasons on the farm as the water restrictions increase.

The main crime of this book is that for the most part I found it pretty boring. I think the intention was to build tension, but this mostly just amounted to not a lot happening for the majority of the book. It wasn’t until around 60% of the way through the book that we caught up to the synopsis written on the back, which is a huge pet peeve of mine. There were some twists, and they were good, but ultimately they fell flat. It sort of felt like the author came up with these really shocking twists, but then wasn’t really sure what to do with them. They were revealed, and then events just continued to move forward, ultimately unaffected. Overall I think the concept was good, but the execution could have been a lot better.

7) Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero (5⭐)

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you took Scooby Doo, made it dark as hell, and added a butch lesbian for good measure? This book has the answer.

This book follows the eventful reunion of the now adult Blyton Summer Detective Club, consisting of Andy, a butch on the run, Kerri, biologist and former kid genius, Nate, horror nerd who mostly resides in mental health institutions, and Tim, descendent of the teams faithful canine companion. Sadly the fifth member, the stoic jock leader Peter, killed himself several years prior, but that doesn’t stop Nate from hallucinating him from time to time. The team are back together to reopen their final case, because despite unmasking the supposed culprit at the time, they can’t help but feel like this mystery was a little bigger than just a man in a mask.

I cannot emphasise enough how much fun this book was. The writing style is very unique and might not be for everyone, switching between regular prose and script-style writing complete with stage and camera directions. It really added to the entire experience of this story. It feels like reading a book and watching a movie at the same time.

The characters are so well written, especially the banter between them (especially the banter between Nate and ghost-Peter). The chemistry between Andy and Kerri had me giggling and kicking my feet, and the development of that throughout the story was really well done. Everything felt real and natural. It’s funny, but also sad and heartfelt in places, and incredibly dark and gruesome in others. The twists were so good I had to put the book down and pace around the room a few times. Five stars, no notes.

8) My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna Van Veen (5⭐)

Two things about me: 1) I love gothic horror, 2) I love sapphic horror, and when I get gothic, sapphic horror, I go a little bit crazy. This was one of those books that I knew from the first few sentences was going to be at least a four star read for me. It literally opened with a quote from Turn of the Screw, I mean, come on.

The main character Roos is a young woman raised by an abusive mother, who has the ability to see spirits. In particular, her spirit companion Ruth, who has been bonded to her since childhood and will do anything to stay with her and keep her safe. During one of the regular seances held by her mother, Roos is introduced to Agnes Knoop, the widow of a wealthy man who senses something unique in Roos and ultimately decides to take her away from her mother and bring her home to live as her companion.

The story goes back and forth in time, switching between Roos’ telling of the events as they happen, and interviews between her and a psychiatrist attempting to unravel the tragic events that ultimately took place in Agnes’ home. It’s an approach to storytelling that I always enjoy (see my reviews of C.J Cooper’s books) and this was no exception. I think it takes a lot of skill to be able to reveal some of the main climax in your story early on, and still keep readers engaged as you work your way towards it, and this author absolutely succeeded.

The absolute highlight of this book is the relationship between Roos and Ruth. Their love for one another, Ruth’s fierce protectiveness, and Roos’ codependency and reliance on the spirit who was her only friend and confidant in all the years she spent living with her mother is so heartbreaking and beautiful. And the way Ruth is presented, both in the prose and in the way she speaks to Roos is so haunting. I adored this.

9) Sister, Maiden, Monster by Lucy A. Snyder (3.5⭐)

Another one of those books that’s kinda hard to explain (common for me because I just like weird books). This is a sort of cosmic, Lovecraftian horror with lesbian sex, body horror, and biblically accurate angels, sort of. Let me try and sum it up.

The gist of the story is that a brand new spicy pandemic has been sweeping the globe, killing people or permanently altering them. Those who have been infected begin to crave human blood or brains, and as the story progresses, become less and less recognisable as human.

The book is split into three parts, told from the perspectives of three different women. Erin, who becomes infected and develops a taste for brains, Savannah, a BDSM sex worker who begins receiving kill hits from the Gods, and Mareva, who after suffering chronic benign tumors all her life suddenly finds herself at the center of this cosmic horror show. I think I enjoyed this book, but it was a lot. I guess it felt similar to reading Lovecraft in that afterwards you’re kind of left not really knowing what the fuck you just read, but knowing you had something of a good time throughout? I think my main hangup with the story was that the way Savannah was written, particularly her dialogue, felt really campy and goofy and kept taking me out of the story completely. If the author had just cut her out of the book completely I think I would have enjoyed it more, because now that I think about it, she really didn’t add much of anything to the story as a whole. Overall though, sapphics + horror (especially body horror) will always go down well with me.

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