Well hello there, welcome to my bimestrial musing about the books I’ve been reading this year. You can have a look at Part One and Part Two if you’re curious or looking for more recommendations.

As in the previous parts, anything bolded is a particularly strong recommendation, but generally, if I mention something here, it’s something that I’ve enjoyed enough to finish reading. Further to that, anything with an *asterisk next to it is something from my local library.

Feel free to follow along with me on StoryGraph if you’re keen to keep up with me in real time.

Another addition to my DNF this time around, unfortunately.

*Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird by Agustina Bazterrica.

Another example of “it’s not you, it’s me” here though, its a short story collection and I noticed that as I went through I was less and less excited to pick it up, so I put it away. Bazterrica is easily one of my favourite authors, and this one is a me problem to be sure.

May:

Strange Buildings (2023) by Uketsu
*The Salt Grows Heavy (2023) by Cassandra Khaw
*A House at the Bottom of the Lake (2016) by Josh Malerman
*The Laws of the Skies (2016) by Gregoire Courtois
*Ring Shout (2020) by P. Djeli Clark

Thoughts:

A month of short books for me, this was. With the exception of Strange Buildings, this was all sub-200 page books, and I have to say - sometimes the shorter the book the bigger the bunch because hot-damn are there some rip-roaring books in that list. The clearly indicated standouts are The Laws of the Skies and Ring Shout, both of which are brutal and cutting pieces of fiction. I think, in particular, Skies is going to be the one that I think about for the longest. A grade-school trip ends in brutal fashion, in such unflinching detail that is often reserved for the brutal deaths of adults. It’s a really interesting - at least in my reading - comment on the ways that we can compartmentalize violence when its adults, but when children are meeting gruesome ends it becomes harder to stomach. Strange Buildings is also just wonderful, an engaging mystery that fans of Uketsu’s style of writing will immediately enjoy.

June:

*The Last Days of Jack Sparks (2016) by Jason Arnopp
*You Weren’t Meant to be Human (2025) by Andrew Joseph White
*Tampa (2013) by Alissa Nutting
*Into the Drowning Deep (2017) by Mira Grant
*Bad Cree (2023) by Jessica Johns
*The Deep (2015) by Nick Cutter

Thoughts:

Hot damn, June was a hell of a month for me in terms of high-quality reads. Even my least favourite of the month, You Weren’t Meant to be Human was a great one, but just didn’t quite hit the way I hoped it would. What’s, perhaps, mots interesting, is the fact that one non-horror book was probably the scariest book I’ve ever read. Alissa Nutting’s Tampa is equal parts beautifully written and bone-chillingly terrifying, telling the story of a predatory teacher and the harm she takes sexual pleasure in doing. It’s a truly excellent piece of work, and I can’t recommend it to anyone. Into The Drowning Deep was such a fucking blast too, and the fact that a sequel is unlikely is so disappointing. Then there’s The Last Days of Jack Sparks, an example of one of my favourite types of ghost stories - the skeptic who is faced with irrefutable proof, it’s also a great example of an unreliable narrator. June also featured a new “top 10 books” of all time in Bad Cree; Jessica John’s novel is absolutely oozing with atmosphere and I kept wanting to come back to it - it’s a joy and you need to do yourself a favour and read it. Capped off with some gnarly body horror from Nick Cutter and it was truly month full of high quality work, and its only reaffirmed how good all this reading has done for me.

So that's May & June my friends, I am writing this from the future a little bit, and can tell you that the book I finished on July 1st may be one of my favourites of all time, so I will look forward to talking about it with you next month.