A little bit of a mystery, a whole lot of a thriller, and definitely a Savannah gothic, this novel is 100 percent guaranteed to creep you out. Holly and Dane are close as brother and sister, but when Dane starts having psychological problems in his final semester of college, Holly pulls back. After all, Dane now has Maura, his girlfriend who he has moved in with and who is taking care of him. But when Dane dies from suicide—he actually tried to disembowel himself—Holly spirals into a guilt-induced depression. “Get it out of me,” reads Dane’s last text to his sister. To understand what happened to Dane, Holly seeks out the mysterious and beautiful Maura, a florist obsessed with carnivorous plants and harnessing the power of botanicals. From stalking Maura to rooming with her to surrendering to her erotic powers, Holly realizes that if she doesn’t solve the mystery of what Maura did to Dane, then she will be forced to reenact it, with the same tragic results. A steamy f/f romance. Gothic vibes. A love story gone terribly wrong. Carnivorous roses. Get this title on Booktok!
Gothic
A double narrative, one in the present day, the other in 1974, both set in Villa Aestas on the outskirts of Orvieto, Italy. Emily, a 30-something writer of cozy mysteries, narrates the present. She’s going through a tough time: a messy divorce, writer’s block, and recovery from an awful, but undiagnosed, illness. So when Chess, her best friend since childhood, invites her to come along to the Italian villa she’s rented for six weeks, it’s a no brainer. Chess has become rich as a bestselling author of wellness/relationship books geared toward women and can easily afford an Italian villa fantasy. Villa Aestas is indeed charming, but it also has a dubious reputation, and Emily can’t help but investigate its past. It turns out that a famous rock star spent a summer there with several friends, a stay that ended in the murder of one of the men in the group. The two women in their midst fared far better; one went on to publish a horror novel that ended up a classic, while the other released a best selling album. Emily begins to recreate the narrative of that summer—through the novel, song lyrics, and documents she discovers in the villa—and becomes so obsessed that she begins a book about the summer of 1974. Chess meanwhile develops her own fascination with the murder, urging Emily to let her coauthor the book. As sinister details from the past emerge, equally disturbing revelations about the present come to light, and the two narratives begin to overlap. For fans of Lucy Foley.
An homage to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None that is both wryly humorous and deadly serious. The setting: a Victorian gothic house, named Seaglass, located on a tiny island off the Cornwall coast, accessible only during low tide. The cast: matriarch Nana, her son and ex-daughter-in-law, three adult nieces, a grandniece, and a family friend. The occasion: Nana’s 80th birthday, predicated to be her last. As the sun goes down, the tide rushes in, dinner is served, and then it’s time for Nana to read her will. Our narrator, and very much the center of the book, is Daisy, Nana’s youngest and favorite niece, who was born, in Daisy’s word, “broken,” with a heart condition she could die from at any moment. Nana—a wonder of a character—is a famous children’s book author, and Seaglass overflows with her designs and eerie, Edward Gorey-esque poems. The novel shifts between the family’s painful past and the nerve-wracking present, and as the night grows longer, and the revelations unfold, the carnage increases. The ending manages to shock, and while some readers may feel cheated by the turn of events, others will enjoy having to rethink the whole book. This book isn’t twisty, it’s demonic.
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