I don’t remember the last time I felt as validated by a book as I did when The War confirmed all the queerness I had been suspecting. I’m tempted to say that each Blackwater book is better than the last, but I suspect that has more to do with getting to know the characters than with any variation in quality from volume to volume. That said, some of my favorite moments in the series so far occur in this installment of the saga, and I love how the characters and their relationships have changed.

I've read many books about and by trans people in the 13 or so years since I first read A Game of You, but I'm always going to think it was good for Neil Gaiman to write a sympathetic trans woman character in a comic in the early '90s, and I value this book personally as an early introduction to transmisogyny and what to do when people trot out talking points about chromosomes and menstrual blood (tell them to cram it). Over the years I've seen plenty of online discourse about this arc, but I think it's pretty obvious that Wanda knows who she is, and that Neil does, too. (And that whatever copywriter at DC came up with that back-cover blurb was wrong.)

I'm interested to see if the Netflix Sandman makes it this far into the source material, and the kinds of changes they will make to Wanda's story. As powerful an image as the lipstick-corrected tombstone is, I'd love to see a version where that tombstone doesn't exist.

It's impossible--or at least, ill-advised--to treat these volumes as separate books, because they really function as parts of one novel, with events picking up right where they left off. As part of the grander narrative, The Fortune gets the five stars I've given all the previous installments, but if I acted as though it were its own, independent story, it would rate lower. Still, it's a feat that McDowell kept me interested in listening to five audiobook hours of rich people getting richer. What can I say? I put up with the grotesque wealth because I like the lesbians and the fish women so much.

This is a hard book for me to rate. I really liked the concept and the setting; I thought the writing was beautiful; I loved that it’s a new book that doesn’t lend itself to marketing via BookTok tropes. However, I did find myself wishing that it were more tightly plotted, especially toward the end, when the final confrontation needed more speed and tension than the introspective prose could muster.

And now, a little under a month since I set out, I've come to the end of the Blackwater saga and the story of the Caskey family. This series sweeps you up like a dark tide, deposits you on high ground for awhile, then comes back and washes away everything and everyone you got to know while you were there. It's a beautiful, sharp, unforgettable story that I'm going to spend so much time fruitlessly trying to convince people to read. Because a Southern Gothic epic about an amphibious fish woman marrying into a rich family might be a hard sell, but it's one of the best stories I've ever read.

Just as delightful as the first, with even more supernatural weirdness, more backstory, and new characters to meet. I loved seeing Chloë and Angela working to stay together, and I hope that their story isn’t over.

I would eagerly read an entire book about Halloween from Jenny Lawson. This essay really nails the weirdnesses of Halloweens past, recounting the homemade costumes and X-rayed candy with witty nostalgia. Kind of like A Christmas Story for creepy people.

This comic is breathtakingly gorgeous, gory, and very sexy, and the fact that it doesn’t make a lot of literal sense didn’t detract from my enjoyment.

I've been thinking of finishing this series for years, and the convergence of spooky season and getting a new Kindle for my birthday seemed like the perfect opportunity to do so. It's been about five years since I read the first one, so I was due for a reread, having forgotten pretty much everything about the plot aside from the premise. I enjoyed it a little bit more this time around, possibly because I've read more cozies in the intervening years and have developed more of an appreciation for them. The first time I read A Skeleton in the Family, I was reading it more or less as a joke, but I don't approach books with as much irony as I did in the past.

If you want a lighthearted paranormal mystery with a unique premise, enjoy nerdy protagonists and academic settings, and can put up with a questionable amount of bone puns, this is your book.

Last October I read Harrison's second book, Cackle, and although my relationship with it was torrid and something of a love-hate affair, it ended up being probably the most fun book that I read all year. So I knew that my October 2022 reading must include more Rachel Harrison. So while I was waiting for her third book to be ready for me at the library, I went ahead and checked out her first.

My only problem with The Return is that I could have read the entire thing in one day if life and work hadn't interfered. It's chick lit horror, page-turning and cinematic in an "I already feel like I'm watching this on Netflix" kind of way. If I went to the beach, this is the book I would bring with me to read there.

I think what gets me with Harrison's books, at least the two that I've read so far, is that although they are on the surface very heterosexual (lesbian side character in The Return notwithstanding), full of women reeling in the aftermath of straight breakups, women in unsatisfying marriages to men, women having affairs with their married boyfriends, these are the most lesbian straight books I've ever read. They lend themselves to queer readings so easily that I can already hear people jumping down my throat about this, pointing out that intense friendships between women are a thing and not everything has to be gay, Britt! But like... these books feel pretty gay to me. The subtext feels buried by only the thinnest layer of dirt. I might be digging just a little, but I'm not even breaking a sweat while doing so.

That digging might best be done elsewhere than a little Goodreads review, though, so I'll just close by saying that if you like spooky hotels, looming shadows and building dread, slow-burn horror, friend drama, and gross stuff, The Return is for you.