Bark At The Ghouls

This is a great horror/romance/dark fantasy blend. My 2 Cents for Free! Untethering Dark by Desirée M. Niccoli Released February 2026 Source: Netgalley See more @  Goodreads This was a lovely monster romance that was genuinely horrific, but also slightly cozy and even a little sweet without ever feeling cheesy. That’s the combo I’m always looking for in a horrormance/monster romance but it’s a hard balancing act and this author managed to do it. The plot is also well plotted. I know, I have a way with words, haha. A lot of these types of stories tend to lack a substantial plot in lieu of the characters getting together and then it’s usually dropped once the romance gets going but that doesn’t happen here. It reads like a dark fairytale with some splashes of horror, and it might not be for everyone because it does get gory, the characters are morally gray and there is some animal brutality. Fortunately, the animal deaths are not tossed in for shock value and make a lot of sense in t...

This is a dark and beautiful tale of body horror. The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw Released May 2023 Source: Received for Review Consideration Goodreads   | Amazon From USA Today bestselling author Cassandra Khaw comes The Salt Grows Heavy, a razor-sharp and bewitching fairytale of discovering the darkness in the world, and the darkness within oneself. You may think you know how the fairytale goes: a mermaid comes to shore and weds the prince. But what the fables forget is that mermaids have teeth. And now, her daughters have devoured the kingdom and burned it to ashes. On the run, the mermaid is joined by a mysterious plague doctor with a darkness of their own. Deep in the eerie, snow-crusted forest, the pair stumble upon a village of ageless children who thirst for blood, and the three 'saints' who control them. The mermaid and her doctor must embrace the cruellest parts of their true nature if they hope to survive. My 2 Cents for Free! Khaw’s previous release, Nothing ...

Phew, this one has some rough content! Juniper & Thorn by Ava Reid Released June 2022 Source: Library Borrow Goodreads   | Amazon From highly acclaimed bestselling author Ava Reid comes a gothic horror retelling of The Juniper Tree, set in another time and place within the world of The Wolf and the Woodsman, where a young witch seeks to discover her identity and escape the domination of her wizard father, perfect for fans of Shirley Jackson and Catherynne M. Valente. A gruesome curse. A city in upheaval. A monster with unquenchable appetites. Marlinchen and her two sisters live with their wizard father in a city shifting from magic to industry. As Oblya’s last true witches, she and her sisters are little more than a tourist trap as they treat their clients with archaic remedies and beguile them with nostalgic charm. Marlinchen spends her days divining secrets in exchange for rubles and trying to placate her tyrannical, xenophobic father, who keeps his daughters sequestered from...

This here is an author to watch! Lovelorn by April-Jane Rowan Released August 2021 Dark Fiction   |   Goodreads   |   Amazon    In Victorian England, within the sprawling countryside, a small village borders Lovelorn, a crystal kingdom inhabited by the Fair Folk that masquerades as a dense wood. Two unsuspecting mortals stray into the depths of this hidden world. Harry, a disgraced jockey, stumbles upon a Kelpie and seeks to bind him, intending to use him to regain his former glory at horse racing. He is dancing a dangerous waltz however as Kelpies are a sly and deadly folk, his actions bringing him steadily closer to a grave at the bottom of a lake. Mabel, a grieving wife abandoned by her husband, searches for her young son, Peter, who was stolen by the Fair Folk, simply wanting to bring her family together again. She makes a bargain with a knight from Lovelorn, entrusting her quest to him, all the while fearful that his word cannot be t...

Go get yourself this book! It's out today. Flowers for the Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn Published October 19, 2021 Dark Fiction   |   Goodreads   |   Amazon   |  Bookshop Flowers for the Sea is a dark, dazzling debut novella that reads like Rosemary's Baby by way of Octavia E. Butler. We are a people who do not forget. Survivors from a flooded kingdom struggle alone on an ark. Resources are scant, and ravenous beasts circle. Their fangs are sharp. Among the refugees is Iraxi: ostracized, despised, and a commoner who refused a prince, she’s pregnant with a child that might be more than human. Her fate may be darker and more powerful than she can imagine. Zin E. Rocklyn’s extraordinary debut is a lush, gothic fantasy about the prices we pay and the vengeance we seek. My 2 Cents For Free! If you follow the bookish people on social media, I bet you’ve seen people praising this book here, there, and everywhere. There’s a reason fo...

This is one of my favorite reads so far this year. Beneath A Bethel by April-Jane Rowan Released August 2020 Dark Fiction   |   Goodreads   |   Amazon   |  Bookshop Every youth of Elbridge remembers their Floris, the holy ceremony where their teeth are pulled out with pliers. It marks their ascension into adulthood and their right to have new porcelain teeth, ones that are embedded with magic, that grant the ability to make wishes. Angora's Floris will be upon the banks of the Eldwen river, the communal ceremony befitting his station. However he longs to remember his ceremony for the splendour of the Bethel, wreathed in candle light, drooping flowers and holy hymns. Seeking to fulfil his dream leaves him the victim of violence and an outcast from society, living on its fringes until a chance meeting brings him to the heart of the Masters Guild, the place teeth are made. Learning secrets he never thought he’d be privy too, he eventually d...

This book is so perfectly warped! Super Ghost by Scott Cole Published November 2019 Dark Fiction   |   Goodreads   |   Amazon   Source: Received for Review Consideration Mad Science, Phantom Limbs, Giant Monsters, and Ice Cream! Darren Legend is a former construction worker who's lost his right arm. Michelle Mayfair is a former Olympic runner who no longer has her legs. And Dr. Griffin Rains wants to talk with both of them. He's a "phantom limb therapist"... who may also be a megalomaniacal mad scientist. When Dr. Rains assembles a giant ghost-monster from the phantom limbs he's stolen from hundreds of amputees, the city is in for the most bizarre nightmare it's ever seen. And it's up to Darren and Michelle, with the help of a few friends, to stop Rains and the strange terror of the SuperGhost! This newly-revised edition of Scott Cole's bizarro/sci-fi/horror novella also features a brand-new prequel short story, "The Science F...

This read was emotionally draining. All of my emotions are now gone, lol. Second Lives by P.D. Cacek Released April 2019 Dark Fiction   |   Goodreads   |   Amazon   Source: Received for Review Consideration When four patients unexpectedly wake after being declared dead, their families are ecstatic and the word “miracle” begins to be whispered throughout the hospital. But the jubilation is short lived when the patients don’t respond to their names and insist they are different people. It is suggested all four are suffering from fugue states until one of the doctors recognizes a name and verifies that he not only knew the girl but was there when she died in 1992. It soon becomes obvious that the bodies of the four patients are now inhabited by the souls of people long dead. My 2 Cents For Free! Second Lives has an amazingly creepy cover and an intriguing blurb and when I sat down with it I knew it was goin...

This book won the Goodreads Choice Award . I was expecting to love it. Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo Released October 2019 Dark Fiction   |   Goodreads   |   Amazon   Source: Library Borrow Galaxy "Alex" Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale's freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she's thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world's most elite universities on a full ride. What's the catch, and why her? Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale's secret societies. These eight windowless "tombs" are well-know...

I've been such a lazy blogger. Sorry about that :(  Here's a book recommendation to make up for it. Mind Wreck: Shadow Games by J.Z. Foster Dark Urban Fiction   Released March 2018, 373 pages Amazon  ♦  Goodreads Has anyone ever told you how special you are? How great you could be at anything if you just put your mind to it?  They were lying.  There are people, Shadows, who really can do anything. They walk like gods among us, speaking with the dead and tearing their enemies apart with a simple thought. Some live unchained by death, and others live without the shroud covering what tomorrow brings.  They’ve had the Mind Wreck.  It’s when the chemical stew inside your brain begins to boil. All those soft spots start to turn red and bleed as a host of human potential claws its way into you, dragging you into the deep end of the world.  Matthew Reed is drowning in the deep end.  He’s been thrust into the games, The Sha...

Whoops,this one fell through the cracks. I read it back in November. Thankfully my slump is over now! Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory Audiobook , Dark Fiction Released June 2017 Amazon  ♦  Goodreads A generations-spanning family of psychics--both blessed and burdened by their abilities--must use their powers to save themselves from the CIA, the local mafia, and a skeptic hell-bent on discrediting them in this hilarious, tender, magical novel about the invisible forces that bind us. The Telemachus family is known for performing inexplicable feats on talk shows and late-night television. Teddy, a master conman, heads up a clan who possess gifts he only fakes: there's Maureen, who can astral project; Irene, the human lie detector; Frankie, gifted with telekinesis; and Buddy, the clairvoyant. But when, one night, the magic fails to materialize, the family withdraws to Chicago where they live in shame for years. Until: As they find themselves facing a troika of threats (...