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Book Review: Why I Love Horror: Essays on Horror Literature edited by Becky Siegel Spratford

Cover art for Why I Love Horror edited by Becky Siegel Spratford

Why I Love Horror: Essays on Horror Literature edited by Becky Siegel Spratford

Saga Press, 2025

ISBN-13: 9781668205099

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD

Buy: Bookshop.org |  Amazon.com

 

 

Librarian Becky Siegel Spratford presents eighteen essays by current horror authors on why they love horror. The collection begins with a welcome to the reader by Sadie Hartman, followed by Spratford’s own essay, “Why Ask Why,” where she tells her story about how she found herself working with horror and curating this book full of talented horror writers. Before each essay, Spratford includes an introduction to the authors, a book recommendation to start with from their works, and a recommendation of an author in a similar vein.

 

My experience reading this was like opening a door to different times in my life where horror made significant appearances, despite having never really left me. Childhood memories and horror are foundational for some in this community. In “Brian Keene’s Giant-Size Man-Thing,” the author discusses his introduction to horror through comics and how horror helped him cope with dread and fear. John Langan writes of his childhood fascination with cryptids in “In the Bermuda Triangle with Sasquatch, Flesh Smoldering.” Jennifer McMahon’s “Monster Girl: How Horror Gave Me a Place to Belong” hit particularly close to home in terms of feeling out of place, being the weird girl who liked horror, and experiencing struggles at home. “My Mother Was Margaret White” by Cynthia Pelayo discusses abuse she experienced at home and at school, never feeling safe anywhere. Horror saved us both. “Permission to Scream” by Rachel Harrison and and “Tales From My Crypt” by Mary SanGiovanni specifically focus on girlhood and horror, both also speaking to similar experiences for me.

 

Horror providing comfort or a safe space is another thread that ties these essays together. Hailey Piper describes, in “The Giant Footprint of Horror”, how Godzilla introduced her to horror, and that there is joy in this dreadful genre. “My Long Road to Horror”, by Tananarive Due, describes horror as feeling. She writes a short but powerful history of her family and their personal horrors of racism and struggle.

 

Authors remind the reader that horror is more than a genre, it is an entire community. Alma Katsu’s “What You Can Learn from Horror: Don’t Run from Darkness; It’s Trying to Teach You a Lesson”, presents an essay questioning why people shy away from horror. A true crime writer I had a conversation with during my undergrad found it fascinating that there is a line in the sand between what his audience will and will not read: that line is fictional horror. Katsu states “I’m here to argue against running away from darkness,” (52) and provides personal information regarding past employment with government agencies as an intelligence analyst. Gabino Iglesias, in “Horror is Life: A Blood-soaked Love Letter,” discusses his life in Puerto Rico and discovering horror, which turns into a moving statement on how horror changed his life. In “A Day in My Psychedelic World,” Nuzo Onoh, dubbed the Queen of African Horror, reminds us there is horror for everybody.

 

There are so many great essays in this book. Other authors who contribute are Josh Malerman, Paul Tremblay, whose piece is accompanied by his daughter Emma, Grady Hendrix, Clay McLeod Chapman, Victor LaValle, David Demchuk, and Stephen Graham Jones. This would make a great addition to a general library collection, as well as essential reading for a course on horror. Highly recommended.

 

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on June 3, 2026 by , Reply

Book Review: Crime Scene: Poetry by Cynthia Pelayo

Cover art for Crime Scene: Poetry by Cynthia Pelayo

Crime Scene: Poetry by Cynthia Pelayo

Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2022

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1947879515

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition ( Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com  )

 

This collection follows up Into the Forest and All the Way Through, a collection of poems about missing and murdered women and girls from all 50 states intended to bring the victims of cold cases to light without exploiting them.

 

Crime Scene is a more straightforward story. It’s a narrative in verse of the discovery and investigation of a cold case leading to the capture of a serial killer, using a format of numbered “reports”. It explodes on impact and immediately crashes into the parents’ grief on notification, then backtracks to the discovery of the crime scene and body by a brother and sister. Then we meet our protagonist, Agent K, whose investigation is complicated by her history as a witness to the disappearance of a friend when she was a girl, leading to guilt, insomnia, and a drive to solve the case. Much of the story explores both her actions and mental state.

 

Pelayo also addresses issues with reporting on true crime. Report 0011 comments on exploitation, and Report 0054, the medical examiner’s report, interestingly is nonspecific in describing the age, race, and ethnicity of the victim, avoiding the trap of “white girl” syndrome.

 

Crime Scene is a lyrical, powerful, surreal exploration of the justice system, its failures, and the human consequences. Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

Posted on February 20, 2023 by , Reply

Women in Horror Month: Book Review: Children of Chicago by Cynthia Pelayo

cover art for Children of Chicago by Cynthia Pelayo

( Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com )

Children of Chicago by Cynthia Pelayo

Agora Books, 2021

ISBN: ISBN-10 : 1951709209

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition (pre-order: release date March 9, 2021)

 

 

The daughter of a Chicago policeman, Detective Lauren Medina has known the terrible trauma and tragedy of her city ever since the unsolved murder of her sister when they were both children. She is also a true believer in the power of the darkest fairytales to infiltrate ordinary lives. When someone begins tagging multiple spots in the city with the name “Pied Piper”, Lauren immediately realizes that the number of dead children is about to increase dramatically. Her evidence is a very old copy of Grimm’s fairytales she read as a child, a missing page from that book, and a magic rhyme that can call the Piper to get rid of any chosen victim.

 

Cynthia Pelayo is a master of her craft. In Children of Chicago, she creates a strong sense of place with brief descriptions of the city’s landmarks and its violent history. The familiarity of this location in the popular imagination heightens the supernatural effect of the fairytales on past and present sins that are destroying any hope of a better future through or for the community’s children. Within this cityscape, the mysterious Pied Piper, wearing a black suit and hat, appears frequently to a group of children who owe him for the horrible deeds they have requested him to perform. When he wants to, he transforms into a terrifying, bloody monster, hungry to collect his fees in human flesh. Pelayo moves expertly between human events and nightmarish fantasy suggesting that the two are not separate and that their intersection is a demonic one.

 

Part mystery, part fairytale, part psychological crime thriller, Children of Chicago will make you want to re-read fairytales as you wonder about their origins (based on true stories?) and try to figure out what Detective Medina really knows and how.  Best of all, by the climax of the book, like the Piper’s future victims, you’ll be looking into the shadows with a shiver hoping this scary tale is simply very good horror fiction.

Highly Recommended

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

Posted on February 13, 2021 by , Reply
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