Two of these are actually backlogs (one actually very backlogged) (I am unusually behind on reviews right now); nonetheless spooky season has begun! My autumn TBR is gorgeous.
Also bless these first two forth both going the ominous footnotes route. It's my new favorite gimmick. Also it makes me want to reread Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, which I remember for exceptional footnotes but haven't read in so long that I can't remember how, precisely, they inform the atmosphere.
Title: Other Words for Smoke
Author: Sarah Maria Griffin
Published: Greenwillow Books, 2019
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 335
Total Page Count: 400,600
Text Number: 1511
Read Because: reviewed by Rosamund, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Over the course of two summers, twins visit their aunt's magical house where something in the walls yearns to feast. I'm not convinced this up to all its potential: it builds a delightful sense of mystery and dread (I love the footnotes) but the reveals are a little defanged. Nonetheless I adored this. It's a slim, strange novel about mystery, about magic as dangerous as it may be empowering, about a viscerally haunted house (bookended by evocative papercraft dioramas), about unrequited and queer longing. I love a haunted house, but they can often be meditative or bleak; this delights in an equal sense of wonder. I'm earmarking this for future rereads.
Title: Plain Bad Heroines
Author: emily m. danforth
Illustrator: Sara Lautman
Published: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2020
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 640
Total Page Count: 404,095
Text Number: 1521
Read Because: found on this list of queer dark academia novels, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: In the modern day, a movie is set to adapt a book that chronicles the deadly events at a girls' school back at the turn of the century. The narrative skips between the centuries, the film and the school. Thus it's inevitable that one timeline will appeal more than the other, and I prefer the historic setting—there's a plot contrivance in the modern day that I find a little strained. I also doubt that any backstory could explain the haunting in a satisfying way, but I would've preferred none to the one tacked on.
But maybe the real horror is the hatred we internalize along the way: this is a delightfully meta-textual book, peppered with footnotes from a self-aware narrator (a gimmick I adore—it's such a fun way to build tension in a horror novel!); it's super queer, with a cast of diverse and oft-plain/bad women vibrantly evoked; the atmosphere and haunting, the boarding school and orchard (and Hollywood too, I suppose), the rot and apples and wasps, is distinctive and delightfully gothic. This is imperfect but it still got me good; I really enjoyed it.
Title: Rawblood (aka The Girl from Rawblood)
Author: Catriona Ward
Published: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2020
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 350
Total Page Count: 404,445
Text Number: 1522
Read Because: reviewed by![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tamaranth, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: In the British countryside stands a manor whose family are compelled to stay there by inevitably find themselves haunted by an uncanny resident. This is a ridiculously gothic puzzle-piece of a novel about a family's history and their occasional confidants; I adore the atmosphere and the more distinctive of the many narrators, but I'm not sure that the plot twists work for me—particularly, the ending reveal is belabored. I'm glad I tried Ward again, having bounced off of The Last House on Needless Street—it was content, not style, that turned me off; the psychological-thriller-horror-mystery hybrid is fun with a different focus, albeit not especially memorable.
Also bless these first two forth both going the ominous footnotes route. It's my new favorite gimmick. Also it makes me want to reread Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, which I remember for exceptional footnotes but haven't read in so long that I can't remember how, precisely, they inform the atmosphere.
Title: Other Words for Smoke
Author: Sarah Maria Griffin
Published: Greenwillow Books, 2019
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 335
Total Page Count: 400,600
Text Number: 1511
Read Because: reviewed by Rosamund, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Over the course of two summers, twins visit their aunt's magical house where something in the walls yearns to feast. I'm not convinced this up to all its potential: it builds a delightful sense of mystery and dread (I love the footnotes) but the reveals are a little defanged. Nonetheless I adored this. It's a slim, strange novel about mystery, about magic as dangerous as it may be empowering, about a viscerally haunted house (bookended by evocative papercraft dioramas), about unrequited and queer longing. I love a haunted house, but they can often be meditative or bleak; this delights in an equal sense of wonder. I'm earmarking this for future rereads.
Title: Plain Bad Heroines
Author: emily m. danforth
Illustrator: Sara Lautman
Published: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2020
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 640
Total Page Count: 404,095
Text Number: 1521
Read Because: found on this list of queer dark academia novels, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: In the modern day, a movie is set to adapt a book that chronicles the deadly events at a girls' school back at the turn of the century. The narrative skips between the centuries, the film and the school. Thus it's inevitable that one timeline will appeal more than the other, and I prefer the historic setting—there's a plot contrivance in the modern day that I find a little strained. I also doubt that any backstory could explain the haunting in a satisfying way, but I would've preferred none to the one tacked on.
But maybe the real horror is the hatred we internalize along the way: this is a delightfully meta-textual book, peppered with footnotes from a self-aware narrator (a gimmick I adore—it's such a fun way to build tension in a horror novel!); it's super queer, with a cast of diverse and oft-plain/bad women vibrantly evoked; the atmosphere and haunting, the boarding school and orchard (and Hollywood too, I suppose), the rot and apples and wasps, is distinctive and delightfully gothic. This is imperfect but it still got me good; I really enjoyed it.
Title: Rawblood (aka The Girl from Rawblood)
Author: Catriona Ward
Published: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2020
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 350
Total Page Count: 404,445
Text Number: 1522
Read Because: reviewed by
tamaranth, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County LibraryReview: In the British countryside stands a manor whose family are compelled to stay there by inevitably find themselves haunted by an uncanny resident. This is a ridiculously gothic puzzle-piece of a novel about a family's history and their occasional confidants; I adore the atmosphere and the more distinctive of the many narrators, but I'm not sure that the plot twists work for me—particularly, the ending reveal is belabored. I'm glad I tried Ward again, having bounced off of The Last House on Needless Street—it was content, not style, that turned me off; the psychological-thriller-horror-mystery hybrid is fun with a different focus, albeit not especially memorable.
