Tag: Magical Realism

Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

Our Cut of Salt by Deena Helm: A haunting story of home, memory, and inherited trauma

Mandy Webster

Some stories teach us about history by giving us facts. Others make us feel what it means to live through that history. Our Cut of Salt by Deena Helm belongs firmly in the second category. This lyrical, unsettling debut follows three generations of Palestinian women as they confront the history of their family, the loss of their ancestral home in Haifa, and the supernatural consequences of a trauma that has never really been allowed to end.

Get your copy of Our Cut of Salt today!
Listen to this book review on youtube!

It is a heart-wrenching story, but it is also an important one. There are some subjects that fiction can illuminate in ways that straightforward nonfiction cannot, because fiction allows us to inhabit the emotional reality of an experience rather than simply learning about it. Helm uses the conventions of the haunted-house story to explore displacement, cultural erasure, generational trauma, and the complicated meaning of home. The result is a novel in which the supernatural elements are disturbing, but the real-world horrors behind them are even more so.

Continue reading “Our Cut of Salt by Deena Helm: A haunting story of home, memory, and inherited trauma” →
Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

Incarnate by Alma Katsu: A chilling techno-horror take on The Picture of Dorian Gray

Mandy Webster

The most frightening thing about Alma Katsu’s Incarnate isn’t the deepfake technology, the violence, or even the possibility that an artificial person might become more real to the world than the person who created her. It’s the realization that the world social media creates around us may already be an illusion—and that we are remarkably willing to believe it is real.

Get your copy of Incarnate today!
Listen to this book review on youtube!

Incarnate is Katsu’s modern reimagining of The Picture of Dorian Gray, transplanted from the world of decadent Victorian society into the age of influencers, deepfakes, and artificial intelligence. Dorothy Wagner has spent her life wanting to be seen. When she takes a job with a brilliant visual effects artist whose company is developing cutting-edge deepfake technology, she discovers a way to turn that desire for recognition into something much bigger. In secret, she uses her employer’s technology to create Isabella, an impossibly beautiful girl who takes social media by storm.

Continue reading “Incarnate by Alma Katsu: A chilling techno-horror take on The Picture of Dorian Gray” →
Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

Call Off the Dark by Hallie Shepherd: A haunting thriller about grief, isolation, and the things that follow us

Mandy Webster

Sometimes grief makes us do things we would never do if we were thinking clearly. In Hallie Shepherd’s Call Off the Dark, one grieving widow makes a series of increasingly questionable decisions that leave her isolated on a remote farm with a husband she barely knows—and eventually face-to-face with a man who is supposed to be dead.

Get your copy of Call off the Dark today!
Listen to this book review on youtube!

Call Off the Dark is an atmospheric thriller that blends psychological suspense, supernatural uncertainty, and a surprisingly tender story about love and loss. The result is a strange and unsettling novel that kept me engaged precisely because I was never entirely sure what was happening—or who I could trust.

Continue reading “Call Off the Dark by Hallie Shepherd: A haunting thriller about grief, isolation, and the things that follow us” →
Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

American Nightmare by Kelly McWilliams asks where evil really comes from

Mandy Webster

What if the monster haunting you isn’t a supernatural creature at all, but the hatred of ordinary people—and what if the only way to fight it is to become one of them? That question sits at the heart of Kelly McWilliams’s American Nightmare, a haunting historical thriller inspired by the life and work of civil rights activist Walter F. White.

Get your copy of American Nightmare today!
Listen to this book review on youtube!

Releasing September 15, 2026, American Nightmare follows Clark Wendell White, a light-skinned Black man who first encounters what he calls the Nightmare as a child during the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot. As Clark and his father stand guard over their family home, a white boy named Sam Cahill tries to redirect the mob toward them. When Clark and Sam lock eyes, Clark sees something in Sam that frightens him even more than the mob itself. He sees what he believes is an evil presence, something that wasn’t there before. From that moment forward, the Nightmare becomes a presence in Clark’s life, although he is never entirely certain whether it is something supernatural or a manifestation of the trauma he experienced as a child.

Continue reading “American Nightmare by Kelly McWilliams asks where evil really comes from” →
Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

Strange Is the Light by Sarah Maria Griffin: A dark fantasy of friendship, betrayal, and consequences

Mandy Webster

What happens when the games you invented as children turn out to be more real than you ever imagined? In Sarah Maria Griffin’s Strange Is the Light, a childhood game becomes the doorway to something ancient, dangerous, and very much alive—and the friends who created it must finally reckon with the consequences of the last time they played.

Get your copy of Strange is the Light today!

Strange Is the Light follows Daphne, Ronan, Leonie, and Finn, four childhood friends whose lives have been intertwined by a strange and somewhat magical summer friendship. Three of them live year-round on the island of Valentia, while Daphne visits only during the summers. At the center of their friendship is a game they have created together, one that begins as the kind of elaborate play-acting children do and gradually evolves into something closer to the role-playing games we know today. They create a world, invent stories and characters, and take turns building the narrative together.

Continue reading “Strange Is the Light by Sarah Maria Griffin: A dark fantasy of friendship, betrayal, and consequences” →
Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

The Sleeping Sisters by Jennifer Givhan: A haunting literary horror novel about motherhood, myth, and generational trauma

Mandy Webster

Some books arrive with impossible expectations, and somehow, they still manage to exceed them. Jennifer Givhan’s The Sleeping Sisters is one of those rare novels that not only lived up to my hopes but cemented her place as one of my favorite voices in literary horror.

Get your copy of The Sleeping Sisters today!
Listen to this book review on youtube!

When I saw that this ARC had finally reached the top of my NetGalley reading queue, I couldn’t have been more excited. Because I read mostly advance reader copies, my reading schedule is dictated almost entirely by publication dates. Givhan’s Salt Bones was my favorite book of 2025, and I absolutely loved River Woman, River Demon, so this latest novel was an automatic must-read. I was thrilled when my request for an advance copy was approved, and it quickly reminded me why I keep recommending her work every chance I get.

Continue reading “The Sleeping Sisters by Jennifer Givhan: A haunting literary horror novel about motherhood, myth, and generational trauma” →
Writers on Writing

It Had to Happen: Time, grief, and the illusion of control

Mandy Webster

It Had to Happen begins with a devastating, almost clean fracture in a man’s life: Jack Utley loses his daughter just as his business is finally about to take off. In that moment, success and loss become entangled in a way that feels almost transactional—like one has been traded for the other. Jack is left doing what many grieving parents do in fiction and in life: trying to assign meaning to something that refuses to make sense. Then the story shifts into something far less predictable.

On the eve of his daughter Callie’s funeral, Jack encounters a mysterious woman. After that meeting, he wakes to find that time has somehow rewound itself to the morning of the accident. Suddenly, he is given what grief never allows in reality: a second chance. He saves his daughter’s life. But the novel is not interested in treating that as a simple gift.

Continue reading “It Had to Happen: Time, grief, and the illusion of control” →
Writers on Writing

Occult satire, unreliable men, and a very bad cat: A deep view inside the novel, One Bad Cat

Mandy Webster

One Bad Cat is a novel that grew out of a simple premise and ended up somewhere far stranger, funnier, and more psychologically tangled than it first appeared. At its core, it’s an occult satire built around two intersecting storylines: a psychology professor who is turned into a cat by members of his coven, and a man trying to keep his life from falling apart after he lets a persistent stray cat into his apartment.

Dr. Stephen Scott begins the story in a position of intellectual authority. He’s a psychology professor with an interest in the occult, someone who believes he understands systems and people well enough to stay a step ahead. That control collapses when a group of female coven members cast a spell that transforms him into a cat. From there, his storyline tightens into something immediate and claustrophobic: a mind trapped in a body that no longer obeys it, focused on revenge, survival, and the recovery of a charm bag that contains the source of his power.

Continue reading “Occult satire, unreliable men, and a very bad cat: A deep view inside the novel, One Bad Cat” →
Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

The Summer of the Serpent by Cecilia Eudave review: A haunting novel that needed more room to breathe

Mandy Webster

Some novels leave you wanting more because they are so immersive you never want them to end. Others leave you wanting more because they feel unfinished. Unfortunately, The Summer of the Serpent by Cecilia Eudave falls somewhere between those two experiences.

Get your copy of The Summer of the Serpent today!

Set in Guadalajara during the sweltering summer of 1977, The Summer of the Serpent unfolds through a series of interconnected vignettes narrated by children, adults, ghosts, and even a snake. The result is a fragmented portrait of a neighborhood haunted by disappointments, strange encounters, and the lingering weight of memory. Drawing heavily from myth, folklore, and surrealism, Eudave crafts a work that feels less like a traditional novel and more like a collection of stories circling a common emotional center.

Continue reading “The Summer of the Serpent by Cecilia Eudave review: A haunting novel that needed more room to breathe” →
Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

The Jellyfish Problem by Tessa Yang is a haunting debut about grief, isolation, and the strange pull of belonging

Mandy Webster

Some novels hook readers with plot. Others cast a quieter spell, slowly wrapping themselves around your imagination until you realize you’ve been completely pulled under. The Jellyfish Problem blends magical realism, sea monster folklore, grief narrative, and literary mystery into an ambitious debut that will strongly appeal to readers who enjoy atmospheric, character-driven speculative fiction.

Get your copy of The Jellyfish Problem today!

Dr. Jo Ness is a marine biologist who has spent the last seven months barely existing after the death of her closest friend and collaborator, Aldo. Hidden away at a struggling aquarium, she immerses herself in jellyfish research and the unfinished field guide the two of them had been writing together. Aldo still exists in the margins of those pages through handwritten notes and observations, and Jo clings to them because she doesn’t know how to move forward without him. When Nadia—a woman Jo once loved during college—contacts her with stories about a giant glowing jellyfish off the coast of Maine, Jo seizes on the opportunity. Officially, she goes because of the creature. Emotionally, she goes because Nadia gives her a reason to leave her grief-stricken isolation behind, even if only temporarily.

Continue reading “The Jellyfish Problem by Tessa Yang is a haunting debut about grief, isolation, and the strange pull of belonging” →