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They Drink Our Blood by Lucy Leitner

cover art for They Drink Our Blood by Lucy Leitner

They Drink Our Blood by Lucy Leitner
Blood Bound Books, 2025
ISBN: 9781940250700
Available: Paperback, Kindle edition
Buy: Amazon.com | Bookshop.org

 

They Drink Our Blood is another engrossing tale from this author, and it demonstrates yet another facet of her writing style.  Leitner has already proven adept at dystopian satire with Outrage Level 10 and Bad Vibrations, as well as detective stories featuring the lovable, bumbling private investigator Thor Cole in The Girl With The Lollipop Eyes.  However, They Drink Our Blood is a darker, grimmer tale of vampires, and a possibly confused reality.  After the reader is done, they likely still won’t be sure if the overarching narrative was as it was portrayed, or simply the protagonists twisting the evidence to fit their own version of reality.

 

Taking place entirely in a small, somewhat run-down section of Pittsburgh, it seems that vampires have been living in the USA for years, and are now starting to come out of the shadows, as a few grisly murders around the country seem to attest.  Lisa is a thirty-something, struggling artist living in Pittsburgh, and the murders inspire her to try to do something to protect the people of her neighborhood.  She’s a fascinating character, as we watch her transition from painter to crusader, which alters her whole perspective on her own life.  Before the vampires, she never really had any doubt about what she was doing, and her paintings were her entire reason for being. Once she perceives a threat to her town, her outlook alters substantially, as she finds she may have found her actual purpose.  That means confronting the possibility that all the paintings she did were pointless, despite her telling herself for years that people simply didn’t “get it” when it came to her work. There are a few very good monologues from Lisa throughout the book that help illustrate the character’s uncertainty home in terms of her career choice, and it gives the reader something to ponder over as well, when concerning the overall purpose of art.

 

Lisa’s few friends and bar buddies in her section of town eventually buy into the idea that the vampires are real and a threat, and decide they need to do something to fight back.  That’s the point where the real skill in the narration comes in, as the evidence for bloodsuckers is rather ambiguous.  Lisa has an Uber passenger and she can’t see his face in the mirror?  Good evidence, but it was dark and he was wearing a hoodie.  Murders with a torn throat, and maybe some bite marks?  Sure, but this is the USA, and there are some real weirdos out there, as we all know.  Besides, the bodies weren’t drained, were they?  Or maybe the cops didn’t reveal that part?  Garlic and silver, classic undead repellents, are suddenly hard to find in the neighborhood, but the author wisely does NOT say if the rest of the country is the same way.  She keeps the focus on one little area, which keeps the level of uncertainty for the reader at a high level, as well as making the story theme much more believable.

 

Eventually, the story does build to a messy climax, but true to form, it doesn’t resolve the big question: were vampires present and making their move for domination, or were Lisa and her friends part of some sort of mass psychosis, where they saw what they wanted to see?  Was it real, or all in their minds?  Did they just need a scapegoat for their own humdrum, unfulfilled lives?  That’s for the reader to decide, as Leitner plays her cards close right through the end, and never gives it away.  Another well-done tale from an author who is proving to be a chameleon when it comes to writing.  Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson.

Posted on April 2, 2026 by , Reply

The Curse of Hester Gardens by Tamika Thompson

The Curse of Hester Gardens by Tamika Thompson
Erewhon Books, 2026
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1645663195
Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook
Buy:  Amazon.com  |  Bookshop.org

 

Hester Gardens is a housing project cursed by a history of violence, especially gun violence, and the residents are haunted by its victims.

 

Nona believed she was living a law-abiding life, until ten years ago, when she stumbled on her husband pistol-whipping a drug-addicted teenager to death in an alleyway and helped him cover it up. Now her husband is in prison for drug-dealing, and her oldest son is dead, a victim of a gang shooting. Her youngest son, Lance, is just starting to join in the activities of the local gang.

 

If only there were a way to escape Hester Gardens. It is possible– Nona’s nephew Harlan, an investigative journalist, made it out, and nursing student Kiandra is only held there by her younger brother.

 

Nona’s second son, recent high school graduate Marcus, has a ticket out, with a full scholarship to Brown University in the fall… if he can only make it through the summer. But Marcus, always the “good kid”, has a lot of anger and grief over Kendall’s murder, and he can’t quite keep it under the surface anymore. Thompson creates a disorienting atmosphere in Nona’s apartment, which already has an unstable feeling to it ,due to the disturbing changes in Marcus. It is just haunted enough to make her and her sons uneasy… until it suddenly escalates into a life-and-death situation.

 

Thompson’s talent is not just in creating an uncanny atmosphere, but in bringing the neighborhood and characters to life. There are ghosts… maybe… in the alleyways, and a smart person keeps a sharp eye out. While mainly told from Nona’s point of view, we also occasionally get the point of view of other characters: Harlan, Nona’s nephew; Lance, her youngest son and Marcus’ brother; Gretchen, Marcus’ girlfriend and gang leader Peter’s baby mama; Donnell, a gang member; Kiandra; and police officer Sgt. Victoria Prager, who was in charge of Kendall’s case and is involved in the ending of the terrible, shocking, night where six young people were silently executed with a rifle.

 

Readers will grow to care about, cheer for, and fear for characters who could easily have been cardboard cutouts. Gretchen, for instance, as a point of view character, is shaped by the trauma of having her twin murdered in a drive-by shooting right next to her and the stress of raising a child in an unpredictable environment. She’s much more fleshed out than she would be if we were limited to only Nona’s judgmental mindset. We get to see Donnell’s regrets and terror because he did not stop the execution of a boy about to escape Hester Gardens for college, and now can’t escape his ghost.  In a “closed community” like Hester Gardens, lives are entangled because everyone knows everyone: the same kids who were friends with your own kids, could grow up to be the killers of someone you loved, and Thompson does a great job of revealing that complexity. Thompson convincingly creates a claustrophobic and terrifying atmosphere: to escape Hester Gardens, its history of violence, and tangled relationships, isn’t easy. It’s a place that doesn’t want its residents to leave alive.

 

There’s a lot packed into these pages, and I found myself going back to this more than once. Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on March 31, 2026 by , Reply

Book Review: Shiny Happy People by Clay McLeod Chapman

 

Shiny Happy People by Clay McLeod Chapman

Delacorte Press, 2025

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593904084

Available: Hardcover, ebook edition, audiobook

Buy:  Bookshop.org

 

 

I find Clay McLeod Chapman’s work uniquely disturbing. While Shiny Happy People, his foray into YA horror, isn’t as gruesome as some of his previous projects it is a natural fit with his other work, especially Wake Up and Open Your Eyes. 

 

Kyra was abandoned by her addict mother at a young age and is now the adopted daughter of a loving family. Her father works long hours at a large pharmaceutical company, BoTanic, which employs most of the town. She has terrible anxiety and panic attacks, and a supportive “black sheep” best friend, Halley.

 

Kyra’s need for control and family history of addiction mean she’s completely straight-edge even in the face of peer pressure, so when a new party drug starts making the rounds at school, she’s one of the few who hasn’t taken it and can observe the effects it is having on the people around her. Kids who have taken the drug go into violent convulsions, followed by becoming artificially happy and calm, causing an uncanny valley effect that Kyra feels but can’t explain to the adults around her, who are also acting very strange. With the people around her all gaslighting her, Kyra starts doubting her grip on reality. The only person who seems to be on her wavelength is new boy Logan, who is clearly hiding something.

 

Flashbacks to Kyra’s abandonment in a dark room infested with bugs, mold and fungus are truly claustrophobic and creepy, On a personal level, as someone who lives with epilepsy, the descriptions of violent convulsions created a visceral response. Kyra’s description of her anxiety as “ivy threaded through my ribcage” is vivid, and when it gets entangled with already-creepy fungal horror, becomes terrifying, with its network spreading wider and wider. This horror is not limited to one school or even one town.

 

There is so much going on in this book: it comments on addiction, Big Pharma, hive mentality, peer pressure, corruption, mental health, and more, but messaging doesn’t take over the story. Chapman follows Kyra’s narrative thread all the way through at a fast pace. It’s an uncomfortable, disorienting ride, and one that’s well worth taking.

 

Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on March 12, 2026 by , Reply
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