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Booklist: Wedding Horror Stories

A lot of wedding proposals happen on Valentine’s Day. A typical online search for “wedding horror stories” turns up stories of terrible things that happened at actual weddings, so it’s not that outlandish to discover that a number of recent horror novels have revolved around weddings.

 

cover art for When The Reckoning Comes by LaTanya McQueen

 

When The Reckoning Comes by LaTanya McQueen

Harper Perennial, 2021

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0063035041

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD

( Bookshop.org  | Amazon.com )

 

Mira’s high school friend Celine invites Mira to her wedding, which will be held at the recently restored plantation where Mira’s ancestor Marceline was enslaved. The ghosts of the enslaved who were murdered during an unsuccessful rebellion return to haunt the wedding, with brutal, bloody results. McQueen does an amazing job recreating Mira’s memories of her childhood friendship with Celine, who is white, and Jesse, a Black boy arrested for murder who is released after Celine intervenes, and of describing the horrific things that were visited on the enslaved people on the plantation. The racism, brutality, and hopelessness are reminders that horror isn’t limited to the supernatural.

 

cover art for Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw 

Nothing but Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw

Tor Nightfire, 2021

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1250759412

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

 

 

When you are ridiculously wealthy and well-connected, and your fianceé wants her wedding at a Heian-era haunted mansion, with the bones of a bride buried beneath, you make it happen. Wedding guest Cassie, our unreliable narrator, is disconnected and depressed, attending at the request of the groom, who is also her ex. Cassie is one of five people at the wedding: they all have the kind of entangled relationships that emerge from a small group dynamic formed in college, and attempting to summon a spirit in a haunted house the night before the wedding is not going to make it easier to get along. It’s been criticized for purple prose and lack of character development, but it is a wild, and vivid, ride.

 

cover art for The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling

 

The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling

St. Martin’s Press, 2021

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1250272584

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

 

Jane approaches Dr. Augustine Lawrence with a proposal of marriage. She wants security and is willing to work hard. They plan for it to be just a business deal: no questions, no love, and never a night spent in Lindridge Hall, his family manor. The best-laid plans can go awry, though: the two of them fall in love. Set in an alternate version of England that has elements of both the Victorian era and post-World War II, this starts out structured as a rather predictable gothic romance and ventured into the territory of occultism, as Jane, trapped in the house with the increasingly paranoid Augustine, is abruptly awakened into a world of magical ritual by occultist friends of Augustine’s. They then leave her to deal with Augustine and whatever is causing the disturbances in the house, untethered to reality. The narrative, which was relatively straightforward until then, became mazelike and hallucinatory.  There’s significant body horror as well as blood and gore, so be warned. Readers who enjoy the version of occultism in this book might also appreciate Polly Schattel’s The Occultists.

 

Posted on February 15, 2022 by , Reply

Book Review: House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig

cover art for House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig

House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig

Delacorte, 2019

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1984831927

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

 

House of Salt and Sorrows is the strangest version of the fairytale “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” I have come across to date.

 

The Duke of Salten had twelve daughters. His wife died in childbirth with the last, and the girls have, one by one, died terrible deaths, until only eight of them are left: Camille, Annaleigh, Rosalie, Ligeia, Lenore, Honor, Mercy, and Verity (yes, there are some very Edgar Allan Poe-influenced names). I’ve seen some complaints about the lack of character development in the girls, but the original tale doesn’t make most of them more than placeholders.

 

Inheritance in Salten goes to the eldest child, regardless of sex. With the death of her sister Eulalie, whose funeral starts the book, Annaleigh, the narrator, is sixteen and now second in line to inherit, after Camille. Annaleigh’s father has recently remarried a much younger woman, Morella, who is now pregnant with twin boys and decides that after years of mourning, another year set aside to mourn Eulalie is a year too long, and it’s time to put the black away.  She orders them special dancing slippers, and plans a party to invite eligible suitors. Annaleigh isn’t ready to set her grief aside, but she isn’t given a choice.

 

Annaleigh believes Eulalie was murdered, and investigates with Cassius, a young man visiting Salten, who is soon entangled in the family’s intrigues (he is also the required love interest for the main character in a YA novel). She also discovers her sister Verity has been drawing disturbing portraits of their dead sisters, insisting that she is seeing their ghosts. A rumor has spread that the girls are cursed, and though invitations to Morella’s party are accepted, no one wants to speak or dance with them. Frustrated with their situation, the girls look for a magical door, find it, and go through it to discover it is an elegant ball where they can dance all night.

 

Or is that really what’s going on? I can’t say more without spoiling the story except to say that Annaleigh is an unreliable narrator and this book is really dark, disturbing, and disorienting. I’m still unclear on how much of the ending was real. The grief in the book felt authentic and the author’s world building was incredible. Salten is on an island in the ocean, and the People of the Salt have their own customs and religious traditions. “Aesthetic” is a popular concept on social media right now, and the aesthetic for this book is what I’d call island gothic. The ocean and the tall cliffs of the island permeate everything. This is a very dark tale, and while it doesn’t get violent or disgusting often, when it does, the imagery is vivid, so it isn’t for everyone, but it may be a treat for those who like their fantasy drenched in darkness.  Recommended.

 

Contains: Images of and references to suicide, murder, body horror, childbirth, stillborn children,  sexual situations, violence, gore, sexual situations, blood, decay.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

 

 

Posted on June 26, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: Two Truths and a Lie by Sarah Pinsker

Cover art for Two Truths and a Lie by Sarah Pinsker

Two Truths and a Lie by Sarah Pinsker

Tor.com, 2020

ASIN:B089FTG8MS

Available: Kindle edition  ( Amazon.com )

 

When her high school friend Marco’s “weird older brother” Denny dies, Stella offers to help clear out his things. Unbeknownst to her, Denny was a hoarder, and sorting through his things, even in just a few rooms, is a huge challenge, requiring latex gloves to go through his things and a mask to keep out the stench. Starting in the dining room, it is Stella’s job to sort the junk and broken things from the items that might be personal or potentially valuable.

 

Stella is a pathological liar. She doesn’t know why she does it, but she’s good at it. She lies about her job, her family, where she lives, what she’s done with her life… and she doesn’t get caught. While sorting through items in the basement rec room, such as DVDs, VHS tapes, and cassettes, she finds an old television set built into a cabinet and makes up a creepy kids’ television show from their childhood to ask Marco about, The Uncle Bob Show, only to discover that she didn’t make it up; it’s real, and most of the little kids in town appeared on it at some time, including her and Denny. Marco remembers it, Stella’s mother remembers it, and when she checks, there are records in the archives of the local television station. Stella is unnerved: if she can’t remember the show despite the nightmarish stories Uncle Bob told on his show, what other memories could she be missing?

 

This is a very short piece on the dangers and nature of storytelling and memory, but so well done. Pinsker doesn’t waste a word in this unsettling tale. While most of the characters are sketches, Denny and his house are vividly recreated, and the realization of how unreliable Stella’s narrative actually is makes the story even creepier. How much of what and who in the  is real and how much is in her head? Readers will have this crawling around their brains well after the last page is turned.

 

As a final note, it would certainly be interesting to see Pinsker revisit some of the other grown children who appeared on the Uncle Bob Show, in connected novellas. Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

Editor’s note: Two Truths and a Lie is a nominee on the final ballot for this year’s Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in Long Fiction.

Posted on April 5, 2021 by , Reply
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