The Only Good Indians is a horror story of bloody revenge and patient inevitable retribution; full of psychological horror for the protagonists, mystery for the reader, and gore for everyone. A viscerally creepy read with fantastic characters.

The narration is great, gradually shifting between POV characters as needed to maximize sorrow and suspense. The backstory is revealed gradually, with each piece coming in just in time to keep me on my toes without feeling misled. I consistently felt unsettled in a good way, only getting stressed enough to pause reading a couple of times. The ending felt perfect, the last section was extremely creepy and dark, and I genuinely wasn't sure which way it was going to go.

I was nervous about reading this book because some types of horror novels freak me out pretty easily and I didn't already know what kind this would be (I have a relatively low threshold for psychological horror in books). For me, this was on the lower end for psychological horror because the reader can know pretty early on what the balance is between supernatural and realistic horror elements in the book, and the full effect works really well. I came away in awe of the storytelling and the characterization, but not worried about whether I'll be able to sleep tonight. Part of that is because my tolerance for body horror and murder in books is pretty high, and a lot of the horror here is related to a slow stalking feeling of waiting to know how/when the next person is going to die, and waiting to find out just how bloody a death it will be. However, there are several different kinds of gory deaths (some with more mutilation than others) so if your thresholds are different this might be a much spookier read, please take care of yourselves.

The Shadowglass delivers on the promises made in The Bone Witch and continued in The Heart Forger, weaving a narrative so tight that it has the feel of a well-executed time-travel story, but with nary a time machine in sight. For most to live, magic must die.

I love how Likh’s story is handled. It feels like a quiet revelation, slowly unfolding alongside Tea’s life, subtle but so powerful. All the secondary characters (that ones made it to book three, for this series is not afraid to kill major characters) get to shine in different ways. The villain reveals are surprising while still fitting the previous books, I now have complicated feelings about people I thought I was supposed to like, supposed to dislike... all the feelings. The first book had a lonely quality to it, with just two people talking in the interstitial and Tea trying to navigate this new place in the main story. By the end of the trilogy there are so many amazingly-written characters to love and hate, and to have that feel balanced in both storylines, using the structure to full advantage... I'm just in awe. 

The way the interstitial narration and the main story come together is fantastic, it makes me want to immediately re-read the whole trilogy so I can understand all the implications from the start. It allowed for some really dramatic moments where someone shows up in one storyline for the first time then shows up in the other, and it makes one of the moments feel like a reveal even though the character or plot element hadn't shown up explicitly before. This was such a smart way to construct a trilogy (also the perfect length, this structure could work for 1-3 books but probably not more). Dramatic reveals can happen from one perspective then be shown to have been laid in for ages in the next. When I read the first book I was hoping it would hold up all the way through and it did, so well. I have no complaints. What I do have is a wonderful mix of happiness at how the story turns out and sadness that it's over. Normally I'd reach for a time-travel story to give me some of the feelings I got here, and seeing it in a fantasy form is so great, I love all of this.

*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book. 

Early Departures balances grief, loss, and celebration to tell a story about the tenuous nature of life and the suddenness of death. The prose has a drifting or wavering quality early on, helping build a sense of fragility which perfectly fits the text. 

Besides the obvious themes of life and death, there's a lot of grappling with discomfort and truth. When is is honesty the best policy? How much does someone really need to know something when it's bad news they can't change? This book doesn’t pretend to have the right answer, it just tells one very moving version of what a small group of people try when they get a second chance to say goodbye. It's often sad but has some very happy moments, telling and showing ways that the characters choose to celebrate life while they can.

Jamal is a fantastic MC, he feels really earnest even when the book thinks he might not be doing the right thing in his personal life, and the whole effect works really well. This feels like the kind of book I’ll come back to when I need it. That doesn’t happen to be right now for me, but it offers a certain kind of catharsis that I appreciate.

The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water explores faith, sacrilege, and reverence in the midst of a silent war. Beginning slowly with a truly fantastic second half that ties everything together, make some room for this novella on your TBR.

The tone is very light and the story feels fun at first, laughing in the face of danger in a dark time. The dynamic of a tightly-knit group hesitantly absorbing a newcomer works really well. It’s short but it packs a lot of story and excellent character work into a small volume. As the reader becomes more comfortable with the characters the tone gets more serious. It's also possible that I missed some of the ways in which it was more serious from the start, and really I was getting more comfortable with the story and gradually realizing what it was doing. It lingered in some uncomfortable moments in a good way, a lot of the tension is due to interpersonal drama that is somewhere between joking and deadly at any moment. The focus gradually narrowed to being about two members of the group finding an equilibrium with one another while still managing the macguffin. 

For the first third or so of the book I thought it was good, but I wasn't sure yet why a friend of mine had recommended it so highly. Then, just before the halfway mark, something clicked and the story went from pretty good to really amazing (I know exactly what did it, I just can't say because of spoilers). The second half is just so satisfying and this book is great. A quick read and a very good one.

Vicious Spirits doubles down on the series' focus on the messy nature of relationships (family, friends, romance new and long-buried). Full of danger, anguish, and catharsis; with a supernatural core. A worthy sequel to Wicked Fox; may there be many more.

There’s a mortal/immortal romance with a substantial age gap (at least a century). Their dynamic is full of consent and care, and I really like how it’s handled. The story continues the first book’s theme of establishing and holding healthy boundaries, which includes spending some (or quite a lot) of time in the messy space of trying to figure them out. This creates a story which is deeply concerned with consent, history, kinds of love, and how people navigate these things in their lives. It allows space for mistakes without propping up cruelty, and the overall effect is very cathartic to read. The age gap and its implications are discussed within the text and I think this might be my new favorite treatment of this particular trope. There are also several different portrayals of parent/child relationships, some carrying over from Wicked Fox and some which are newly explored here. I said before that this story is concerned with kinds of love, and that care isn’t limited to romance. It is complex and multi-faceted; familial, platonic, romantic, and probably some more I'm missing. It explores how they go wrong, what it takes to make things go right, and the joy of having someone else’s company. 

Quickly running through my normal book two check: I like this as a sequel. It deals with some lingering effects of the first book while still having its own separate storyline, we learn more about people we already knew pretty well while also highlighting some who didn't get much attention in the first book. I don't know if there's going to be more in the series but it feels like there's a lot that could be explored here if the author decides to continue this series (either with these characters or with different ones in the same setting). The story is robust enough to stand on its own, the decision to center characters that were present in Wicked Fox but not POV characters was a smart one, and I think it worked out very well. 

Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day is a love letter to life through talking about death. A ghost working towards her dying day by helping others, a few minutes at a time. Full of care for people and places; calm and haunting.

It's about death and suicide from the perspective of a ghost who's slowly earning her way to passing on after dying too soon. I like this version of ghosts and witches and I appreciate the way it cares about cities and small towns in different ways. It's a pretty short book so avoiding spoilers is tricky, but it builds a really complete world with just a few locations and a minimal cast of characters. It deals heavily with themes of suicide and death, so please take care of yourselves.

*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book. 

Spooky and horrific, Even If We Break uses LARPing and a no-longer-quite-so-close friend group in a fancy cabin in the woods as the basis for a bloody introspection on privilege, jealousy, class, disability, fairness, and terror. 

It uses rotating narrators (divided by chapter) and explores friendship, betrayal, and privilege through LARPing and a “cabin in the woods” style spooky mystery. I love this, I’m here for it, but it’s so full of those elements that if you don’t like them you probably won’t have a good time. All the narrators are differently unreliable in a way that comes together to give a picture of what literally happened without invalidating any of their personal experiences. 

I like the interstitial narration, it makes it feel like there’s a GM for this weekend. It starts out feeling like the one that was planned by one of the characters and then slowly twists into something much more sinister and truly deadly. The way things get bad is a little predictable in spots, but how the characters react makes the story truly gripping. The ending is fantastic, I love all of it, it’s twisted and creepy and completely fits the rest of the book while also being surprising.

I appreciate the way it handles all the little things around class and casual wealth (or lack of money) which can add up to create small tensions and splinter friendships. Not every character focuses on it, and that’s part of the point; some of then don’t have to (they have cabins which are available anytime for a weekend getaway with friends) while others weigh every decision around whether they’ll be able to afford their next meal. There’s also a lot of focus on disability, both physical disabilities and neurodivergencies, especially when in a terrifying situation where the nearest road is a long walk away. Some of the characters are casually ableist but the book clearly portrays this as a bad thing. I can’t speak to whether the disability rep is good because I don’t have the relevant experiences, but it’s nuanced, complex, and seems to be filled with care on the part of the author. 

This was a stressful book to read, and I'm glad I read it in daylight because it created and sustained a creepy mood with a sense of danger and uncertainty. My threshold for spooky books is pretty low, so if you're a horror aficionado I don't know where this would fit. A lot of the horror is more psychological, enhanced by the rotation of narrators which allowed for continuous story without giving things away.