Tag: Southern Gothic

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The Sisters of Crimson House by Melissa Anderson Sweazy: A Southern Gothic about family secrets and inherited expectations

Mandy Webster

Melissa Anderson Sweazy’s The Sisters of Crimson House is a Southern Gothic horror novel about a family of psychics, a haunted Memphis mansion, and the secrets that can shape a person’s entire understanding of who they are. I have to admit that I approached this book with some skepticism. Lately, just about every book I’ve read that has been compared to Practical Magic has turned out to be a dud for me, so when I opened the description of The Sisters of Crimson House and saw that comparison, I groaned. Out loud. But I had already received the ARC, so I figured I might as well give it a chance.

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Fortunately, The Sisters of Crimson House turned out to be better than the recent Practical Magic comps that have disappointed me. It isn’t a book I would put in the same category as one of my favorites, but there was enough going on to keep me reading, and that’s something. At least I didn’t DNF this one.

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In the Woods They Wait: An eerie Southern Gothic that saves its scariest tricks for too late

Mandy Webster

There’s something in the woods, and it has been waiting for someone to notice. Carrie Lee South’s In the Woods They Wait is an atmospheric Southern Gothic horror novel about grief, guilt, missing children, and an ancient presence lurking in the woods. The slow-burn mystery kept me reading, but the rushed final act and underwhelming reveal kept the novel from reaching its full potential.

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In Carrie Lee South’s In the Woods They Wait, the woods surrounding Devil’s Den State Park are more than a backdrop. They are a presence—ancient, watchful, and seemingly hungry. Fifteen years after Audrey Figg’s younger brother, Benny, disappeared from the park, she has made a life for herself among the very trees that swallowed him. As a park ranger with expertise in wilderness search and rescue, Audrey has turned her grief into a vocation, spending her days protecting hikers and searching the backcountry for the person she has never stopped hoping to find. When a young girl named Ivy disappears from the same woods, Audrey sees too many similarities to Benny’s disappearance to believe it is a coincidence.

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We Already Dug the Grave by Emma C. Wells: A kitschy Southern gothic thriller

Mandy Webster

I wanted to love We Already Dug the Grave. After all, I absolutely adored Emma C. Wells’ debut novel, This Girl’s a Killer, so when I saw that Wells had another book coming out, it was an automatic must-read for me. Unfortunately, while We Already Dug the Grave has plenty of the ingredients I loved in her debut, it never quite captures the same sharp wit or confidence.

The cover of the novel We Already Dug the Grave by Emma C. Wells
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We Already Dug the Grave follows estranged sisters Milly and Francis, who have spent years apart after something terrible happened in a Tennessee meadow. Milly has always been the odd one, with an ability to divine the future through tea leaves. But lately, the tea leaves have gone silent, which might seem like a blessing considering how bleak Milly’s life has become.

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Our Sister’s Keeper by Jasmine Holmes is a haunting Southern Gothic that demands to be felt

Mandy Webster

Some horror novels rely on monsters lurking in the shadows. Others understand that the most terrifying things are the systems people willingly protect. Our Sister’s Keeper by Jasmine Holmes, releasing June 9, 2026, is a Southern Gothic horror novel that understands this completely. Beneath its ghostly atmosphere and supernatural elements lies a brutal examination of generational trauma, misogyny, power, and the impossible expectations placed upon women to absorb suffering quietly so that everyone else can remain comfortable.

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Recently, I’ve seen discussions online asking readers to name books they’ve loved that were written by authors of color. Inevitably, there are always people who respond with things like, “I don’t pay attention to the race of the authors I read,” as though being “colorblind” is somehow the ideal approach to literature. But stories like Our Sister’s Keeper are exactly why intentionally seeking out voices different from our own matters. This is a novel that forces readers to confront lived experiences they may never have otherwise considered. It explores generational trauma, gendered expectations, institutional abuse, and the long shadow of racism in ways that feel both deeply personal and horrifyingly systemic. It’s impossible to walk away from this novel unchanged if you are willing to truly engage with what it is saying.

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The Wind Witch Murders by Casey Dunn — A haunting coming-of-age in southern gothic

Mandy Webster

The whole town was just waiting for the death of the Wind Witch before moving forward, and it held Raven back all along. In The Wind Witch Murders by Casey Dunn, that tension becomes the engine of a story about inheritance, fear, and the struggle to claim your own life when everyone around you believes they have a right to it.

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Raven has grown up under the heavy hand of her devout Christian grandmother, the woman who took her in after her mother, Deanne, was convicted of the ritualistic murders of two boys. Deanne never confessed, never explained, and never stopped haunting the edges of Raven’s identity. Now that she’s dead, the town seems to exhale—almost as if it had been waiting for permission to move on. But Raven doesn’t get that luxury. Not when a stranger places a single feather on her mother’s casket, a quiet signal that whatever Deanne was mixed up in is still alive.

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Haunted, cursed, and divided: exploring race and privilege in Del Sandeen’s This Cursed House

Mandy Webster

When Jemma Barker leaves 1960s Chicago for a new life in New Orleans, she doesn’t expect to uncover centuries-old curses, deadly family secrets, and the brutal realities of colorism and privilege. In This Cursed House, Del Sandeen takes readers into the dark, secret-laden corridors of a New Orleans family through the eyes of Jemma Barker, a young Black woman fleeing her life in Chicago. Desperate for a fresh start and haunted by the spirits she’s always been able to see, Jemma accepts a job with the enigmatic Duchon family—only to discover that their charm hides centuries-old curses and shocking prejudices.

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Sandeen’s debut is steeped in Southern gothic flair, with a plot that twists around supernatural secrets, family betrayal, and the fraught complexities of race. The novel does an especially striking job of exploring how white-passing Black characters navigate privilege and fear, often at the expense of their darker-skinned relatives. It’s a sharp and unsettling examination of racism, colorism, and the extremes some will go to protect a tenuous hold on societal acceptance.

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What secrets lie beneath the surface of The Bog Wife?

Mandy Webster

What happens when the land that sustained your family for generations suddenly stops keeping its end of the bargain? In The Bog Wife, Kay Chronister drops us into the eerie isolation of rural West Virginia, where five estranged siblings are forced to confront not just each other but the decaying legacy of their ancestral covenant. The Haddesleys have always served the cranberry bog, and in return, the bog has given them what they need—until now.

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This novel is southern gothic by way of eco-horror, rich with decaying settings, creeping dread, and characters who make you want to shout at the page. And I mean that literally: there are moments when you’ll be begging Wenna, the middle child trying to break free, to just Google something already. But that’s part of the tension. These characters have been so deeply insulated from the outside world that the obvious often eludes them. Their sense of what is normal, what is allowed, what is true, has been shaped entirely by what they’ve been taught to believe—and by what they’ve been carefully kept from knowing.

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