howlinglibraries's Reviews (1.85k)

This was really precious and spooky and fun! I loved the queer rep, loved the demon (I'm such a sucker for demons being primary characters with actual personalities beyond just "evil, grrr"), and the twist was really fun. The art is super pretty and I loved each of the main characters SO much! I'll definitely be grabbing a finished copy of this one for my collection. ♥

✨ Representation: Noa and Astrid are queer/sapphic; Gus uses they/them pronouns

✨ Content warnings for:

Spoiler

demonic possession, murder, cults, interactions with a deceased child's ghost (no details on the child's death)

Thank you so much to the publisher for providing me with this review copy in exchange for an honest review!

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Even though
I wasn't born
I can hear it
I can feel it
I can meet
my own
stony gaze
and see it.

I Love You, Call Me Back is perhaps the singular most depressing collection of poems I've ever read, and I think a part of me regrets reading it, honestly.

I more or less liked Sabrina Benaim's last poetry collection a while back, and I thought her writing had a lot of potential, so I decided to give it another try. I do think her writing itself improved since then, and these poems are well-written, but something about them didn't click with me. I'm not sure if it's because the subject matter was so miserable, and I wasn't in the right head-space for it, or what, but I actually originally DNFed this book at the halfway point a month ago before finally caving and deciding to finish it.

Topics covered in this collection include obvious things like grief, loss of a relationship, coping with life in the COVID-19 pandemic, and fear of her mother's health problems, but it also delves into eating disorders, self-harm, and emotional abuse.

One last note: let me be very clear and say that I'm no fan of toxic positivity and my less-than-stellar review has nothing to do with the topics, just with the writing itself. I'll probably call it quits here for my relationship with Sabrina Benaim's writing as I just don't think it's for me, but this collection will hold a lot of value for the right reader.

✨ Content warnings for:

Spoiler

grief, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, self-harm, emotional abuse from a parent, a family member (mother) with severe life-threatening medical problems, loss of a relationship, COVID-19, lockdown, loneliness

Thank you so much to the publisher for providing me with this review copy in exchange for an honest review!

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Another A+ creepy read from Gemma Amor, nobody is surprised here.

Unsurprisingly, Gemma Amor has done it again and has completely amazed me with how much terror and emotion she can fit into such short, tidy little stories! I first was introduced to Gemma's work through The NoSleep Podcast, and thoroughly enjoyed an earlier collection of hers (Cruel Works of Nature), so I went into Till the Score is Paid with high hopes and was not let down in the slightest.

With many short story collections all from the same author, I whittle my review down only to my favorites, but that's tough to do when you have 11 stories and you've given each and every one of them either 4.5 or 5 stars! Instead, I'm going to indulge myself a bit and talk about each one (without spoilers, of course):

→ Have You Seen My Dog?
An unsuspecting doctor is caught in a nightmare when a sick and violent man becomes convinced she has something to do with his dog's disappearance. I wasn't quite sure where this one was going, but it was equal parts tragic and disturbing, and kept me on the edge of my seat from start to finish.

→ Pure Water
A hike goes downhill after a taste of the local freshwater sources. I like to take review notes when I read, especially for short story collections so I can keep up with my immediate reactions, and my note for this story is literally just, in all caps, "SO FUCKING GROSS!" I think that covers it pretty well.

My story's the one where the girl dances with the devil, and he takes her with him on a long road to hell.

I grew up on Batman — the films and the animated show — and Harley was one of my first favorite fictional characters ever, but somewhere along the way, I lost a little of my grip on what made me adore Gotham and its monsters so strongly. This graphic novel reminded me why I loved Harley so much to begin with. This was the most beautiful, perfect origin story I could've asked for. Wow. It also features some of my favorite artwork I have ever seen in a graphic novel. I want these pages framed on my wall immediately.

Harley and the Joker have such a messed-up, intricate relationship, and this story captures that in the best way, but this isn't a Joker story; it's Harley's. It begins by showing us this brilliant, ambitious young doctor who wanted so desperately to help people that she risked it all to try to save Gotham's worst of the worst, and leads us through her gradual descent into hell and madness, before leaving us in the midst of utter chaos and destruction, wondering what the truth is. Does the Joker love Harley, or he is only using her? My feelings on the matter have always been rather... convoluted, to say the least, but I'll leave it up to you to read this beauty and determine that for yourself.

Thinking about it, it all feels sort of cosmic... the two of us, like two interstellar objects gravitating toward each other on a collision course... Oh, there would be chaos and destruction... but my, what a sight it would make.

And her mouth, of course, from its teeth through to the tunnel of its throat: black.

I've only had the pleasure of reading Cassandra Khaw's short stories before now, and while I loved those too, I now consider myself irrevocably hooked. Whatever Cassandra writes, I don't think I'll need a premise or a blurb; I'm sold on the way their dark and twisted prose has dug deep into my mind and won't leave.

Nothing But Blackened Teeth starts off with a refreshing twist on a favorite trope: a group of slightly estranged friends escaping off to a secluded spot for a reunion (in this case, a wedding). This is one of my favorite horror setups, but Khaw makes it shiny and new (or, should I say, moldy and decaying) by setting it in a legendary, decrepit manor in rural Japan. Our cast of characters are all immensely flawed, some downright unbearable whether due to cruelty or cowardice, but the protagonist had my heart from page one (a fellow chronically depressed bi person, how could I not love Cat?).

The atmosphere is palpable; every moment, I felt as though I could turn around and find myself in one of these rotting rooms. The scares are unique, bizarre, and unsettling in the sense that the spirits' motives feel at times entirely unhinged. There's an element of brutality that had me in awe, and a suspense that kept me on the edge of my seat. Truly, I adored everything about Khaw's storytelling and I know this is a book I'm going to be recommending to anyone who will listen for a long time to come.

✨ Representation: Cat is bisexual and Chinese, Lin is Chinese, Faiz is Chinese/Japanese, Talia is Bengali/Telegu

✨ Content warnings for:

Spoiler

violence, death, suicidal ideation, mentions of self harm, depression, mentions of live burial

All quotes come from an advance copy and may not match the final release. Thank you so much to the publisher for providing me with this review copy in exchange for an honest review!

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I feel like I've been meaning to read Cats Like Cream for ages and I'm so glad I finally did! It's a quick, fun, fucked up little story that left me a little grossed out at times (but in an entertaining sort of way, so it works).

✨ Content warnings for:

Spoiler

stalking, voyeurism, abduction, murder, necrophilia, hair eating

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This was so freaking funny and perfectly suited to me. I literally laughed until I cried over one of the comics!

I love this weird, irreverent, goofy style of humor so much. It gave me big Bob's Burgers vibes and also reminded me a lot of the Buttersafe webcomics, if anyone remembers those. To be fair, I was very sleepy when I read this last night, so I thought when I woke up this morning that it's possible I was being overly generous... but then I remembered Beethoven twerking and "puts the ass in classical" and had a good giggle over it again, so I'm happy to rank this as a new favorite among comic collections.

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Oof, this did not work for me at all. I was immediately put off a bit by the art style and a joke made in the opening of the book, but I stuck it out in hopes it would get better, and it did not. I very rarely accuse anyone of glamourizing true crime stories because I also find myself very drawn to true crime stories and I acknowledge that it's entirely possible to be interested in the topic without romanticizing the killers, but in this case, the author's general approach towards the subject made me a bit uncomfortable.

Aside from the potential motive, though, there's just the fact that the style of this graphic novel is rough. The author cracks a few self-deprecating jokes about how disjointed their storytelling is, but seriously, there were so many pages that I had to re-read because the panels and speech bubbles were so poorly formatted that I couldn't even figure out what order to read them in.

At the end of the day, even if you consider yourself a true crime junkie, I don't recommend this.

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