It’s The Craft meets Mean Girls—except more heartwarming and queer. That’s the best way I can describe The Scapegracers, the start of a new YA fantasy trilogy by debut novelist Hannah Abigail Clarke. If you love a good found family trope, but also want to see some teen witches funnel their angst into reckless magic, then The Scapegracers is the book for you! It comes out tomorrow, September 15. Continue reading Review of The Scapegracers—Queer Witches and Reckless Magic
Category: Genre
Review of Cemetery Boys—Ghosts and Gendered Magic
It’s one thing to bring a boy home in Yadriel’s traditional Latinx family—but it’s quite another thing to bring home a ghost boy… It’s finally here! The book I’ve been most excited for this year. Cemetery Boys is a YA fantasy novel by debut author Aiden Thomas that combines queer romance, gender transition, coming-of-age, latinx culture-inspired magic, and a murder mystery. It was originally scheduled to come out in June, but thanks to coronavirus reschedulings, we’ve had to wait three more agonizing months. Thankfully, the book will finally be out tomorrow, September 1. Continue reading Review of Cemetery Boys—Ghosts and Gendered Magic
Review of The Living Dead—A Posthumous Zombie Novel
Death is not the end. George Romero, famed father of the zombie flick never quite got to lay out his full vision of the zombie apocalypse in film. Instead, he turned to writing and spent decades drafting and making notes for a grand zombie epic that wouldn’t be held back by budgets, producers, and the whims of Hollywood. Unfortunately, this magnum opus was left unfinished at the time of Romero’s death in 2017. That’s where Daniel Kraus came in. A life-long Romero fan and celebrated author (he recently co-wrote the novelization of The Shape of Water with Guillermo del Toro), Kraus sifted through all of Romero’s writings and notes, did an impressive amount of research, and worked to put together a finished novel that stayed true to Romero’s spirit. The result is The Living Dead by George Romero and Daniel Kraus, which came out from Tor on August 4. Continue reading Review of The Living Dead—A Posthumous Zombie Novel
Review of The Lawrence Browne Affair
A mad scientist locks himself in his tower in the Cornish countryside, until a rakish thief comes to steal his heart. The Lawrence Browne Affair by Cat Sebastian, which came out back in 2017, is a sweet and powerful queer romance set in the Regency era. I’m pretty new to the world of m/m historical romance, but the Romancing the Gothic book club seems to have fallen into this niche lately, and all of our picks have been quite good! This was definitely the kind of heartwarming read I needed as we head into another month of quarantine. Continue reading Review of The Lawrence Browne Affair
Review of Circe—A Tale of Monsters and Witches
Circe the Enchantress, Witch of Aiaia, Daughter of the sun god Helios. Most of us probably know her from her dealings with Odysseus, as recounted in Homer’s Odyssey—how she was a powerful witch who turned Odysseus’s men into swine, until Odysseus’s charms won her over and he convinced her to restore them. But she was not always a powerful witch who held the fates of heroes in her hands. Madeline Miller explores the origin story of this unusual nymph and examines familiar Greek myths from a new perspective in her novel Circe, which came out in 2018. Continue reading Review of Circe—A Tale of Monsters and Witches
Review of Spectred Isle—A Romance of Green Men
Many of my friends have been singing the praises of British romance author K. J. Charles for some time now, but I’ve only just hopped on that bandwagon. K. J. Charles currently has over two dozen books to her name, ranging from straight up historical romance to series more tinged with horror and fantasy, most with queer love stories. I decided (or rather, the Romancing the Gothic book club decided) to start with one of her more fantastical works: Spectred Isle, Book One in the Green Men series, which came out in 2017. Continue reading Review of Spectred Isle—A Romance of Green Men
A Summoning of Souls Review
Leanna Renee Hieber is back with a new book in her Spectral City series! In case you missed it last week, Leanna wrote a lovely guest post for us on the many possibilities of ghost stories in her works and in her life. In her Spectral City books, ghost stories help the psychic ladies of NYPD’s Ghost Precinct to solve mysteries and save lives! A Summoning of Souls is the third book in this trilogy, and it comes out tomorrow, July 21. WORD Bookstores will be hosting a virtual release party on their Instagram page tomorrow at 7:30pm EDT. Continue reading A Summoning of Souls Review
Review of Widdershins—Gay Romance and Cosmic Horror
Don’t you just hate it when all you want is to study dead languages alone in your office, but you’ve just discovered a dangerous cult that is trying to resurrect the dead and take over the world, and it’s up to you and a handsome detective to stop them? Percival Endicott Whyborne is a particularly reluctant hero in Widdershins by Jordan L. Hawk, which came out back in 2012. This first book in Hawk’s lengthy Whyborne & Griffin series is a subversive take on Lovecraft’s cosmic horror mythos that centers a love story between two men. I adore it when writers take the world that H. P. Lovecraft created and use it to create stories that would leave the notoriously bigoted author turning in his grave. Continue reading Review of Widdershins—Gay Romance and Cosmic Horror
Review of The Quiet Gentleman—Regency Romance with a Gothic Flair
When the black sheep of the family inherits the title and estate, you know some Gothic inheritance drama is about to go down. Gervase Frant has succeeded his father as Earl, only to find himself fending off attacks on his life while living amongst the family that always hated him in Georgette Heyer’s The Quiet Gentleman (1951). The Romancing the Gothic book club I’ve been participating in this summer recently introduced me to Heyer—the prolific twentieth-century British author who essentially established historical romance as a genre, specializing in the Regency romance. The Quiet Gentleman is a prime example of her work and also shows the clear influence that the Gothic often had on the budding romance genre. Continue reading Review of The Quiet Gentleman—Regency Romance with a Gothic Flair
Review of The Last Memoria
If you lose your memories, how do you know who you are? Can you be guilty of a crime you don’t remember? What if there are parts of yourself that are better off forgotten? Rachel Emma Shaw explores these themes of memory and identity in her debut fantasy novel The Last Memoria. The book came out just last month and is the first in a duology. The audiobook is currently available for free, for a limited time—read to the end for details. Continue reading Review of The Last Memoria