Bark At The Ghouls

Need a slightly spooky read? You might like this one. My 2 Cents for Free! Grave Birds by Dana Elmendorf Released July 2025 Source: Spotify Listen See more @ Goodreads Grave Birds is a decent enough rainy-day summer read but it fell a little flat for me in the end. The southern atmosphere and mysterious start hooked me in pretty good. The heroine sees "grave birds" who tell her stories about people. Dark, tortured stories mostly and she has to piece it all together. Hollis is living in a greenhouse on a property she's been doing her best to buy until a handsome stranger comes to town and swoops in to steal it out from under her. Is he the devil? Is he part of the murky history that keeps coming back to her in flashes? Or is he just a handsome devil who wanted the house? Does it even matter? This book felt more like a light(ish) spooky mystery to me with a thread of under-developed romance. It was a pleasant enough read but I don't think it's going to stick with me...

A slow burn, atmospheric tale of dread and duty. My 2 Cents for Free! The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea Released February 2019 Source: Library Borrow See more @ Goodreads I've been reading a lot of dark and dreary gothic novels lately and realized there have been quite a few that flew under my radar in the past. This is one of them and I'm glad I finally found it! It's never too late to find a book, right? Rosa is in love with her childhood friend but marries an older man with means in order to save the life of her mother who is ailing from sickness and poverty. Set in Iceland 1686 she doesn't have a lot of options. She travels to this stranger's manor with one of his gruff men when he leaves immediately after their marriage to "care for his people". This is clearly going to be mostly marriage in name only. Once she arrives at his abode, she's isolated and told to obey and to spend her days cleaning, cooking, and slaving away while he's out doing wha...

It's always a horror show here, but Tammy is hosting the SUMMER OF HORROR over on her blog and you should check it out for more horror fun. Click the pic to check out her blog. My 2 Cents for Free! Body Count by Codie Crowley Released May 2026,  Source: Netgalley, Check it out @ Goodreads Body Count is a pretty good name for this one for two reasons. The first being it’s a monster/slasher novel and the second being that the teens are all vying to win the “slut cup” on their prom trip. So prepare yourself for some sexy times and some murder. Personally, I think the blurb here gives too much away as the prelude to the story isn’t completely revealed until midway through the story and much of the fun of the book is the discovery. So, if you haven’t already, maybe don’t read that publisher blurb. It's included below for anyone who doesn't mind being a little spoiled. Anyhow, Sundae is our main character and she’s about to go through some stuff. She, her friends and the new lov...

                  New Books This Week! This is where I spotlight the sparkling new releases that are tempting me so you can succumb to temptation too. The focus will be on dark fiction and romance with the occasional thriller tossed in that catches my eye.  Is it just me, or is it extremely hard to focus on sitting down and typing when the weather warms up? I've been reading a bunch but doing anything else book-related seems to be impossible. Anyhow, here are a few books that look super good that have been released since the last time I checked (May 15ish) Mid May-Mid June 2026 The Dorians by Nick Cutter - May 19, 2026 On a remote island in the Canadian wilderness, five elderly volunteers from different walks of life are given a tantalizing offer: to stall their biological clocks or even reverse them, restoring their lost youth. The chance to put death on pause—forever, perhaps. The remarkable secret lies in the high-tech harnessing...

This was great on audio. My 2 Cents for Free! Dark Is When the Devil Comes by Daisy Pearce Released April 2026 Source: Netgalley See more @ Goodreads I listened to Dark Is When the Devil Comes on audio over two days in broad daylight, and surprisingly it really creeped me out. Most books leave me feeling eh when it comes to the creeping dread but this one did get under my skin a few times. The narrator did a fantastic job with the characters too; expressing their fear, anxiety, bitchiness and sometimes confusion about events past and present. A meh narrator can break a book like this but in this case the narration enhances the story perfectly. This is one of those books that is best going into blind. Even the blurb here is vague about events. Too many of them lately compare everything to something else and/or give it all away and I’m so glad this one didn’t so I won’t either. So all I’ll say is this: Hazel returns to her childhood home and attempts to reconnect with her estranged siste...

                 New Books This Week! This is where I spotlight the sparkling new releases that are tempting me so you can succumb to temptation too. The focus will be on dark fiction and romance with the occasional thriller tossed in that catches my eye.  This week has been far too busy but I managed to find a good mix of horror, thriller, romance and fantasy romances. If only there were enough hours in the day to read them all! HORROR,  HORROR-Adjacent & THRILLERS Not Your Final Girl by Mikayla Randolph A feminist slasher novel fueled by female rage and haunted by gruesome murders, in this contemporary reimagining of Tess of the D’Urbervilles there can only be one Final Girl. Darcy and her high school friends haven’t gathered together in seven years. After a tragic murder on prom night, the group graduated and never looked back. But when the lakeside cabin they spent their summers at is put up for sale, they reunite for one la...