Title: Sisters DeRosa

Author: L.J. Dougherty

Release date: August 1st, 2025

*Huge thanks to L.J. for sending me a digital ARC of this one!*

Over the last number of years, Dougherty has worked hard to create himself a horror-niche that I could only describe as European Giallo-esque. With his espionage trilogy, as well as his novel, ‘Daughters of Cruelty,’ L.J. has cemented his styling as that with well detailed, Euro set pieces and engagement, while also utilizing fantastic amounts of 70’s flair. Harkening back to a time where every alley housed a criminal and every woman carried a set of Double D’s with a pistol strapped to their garter belt.

And you know what – it works. It really works.

And I say that as someone who never liked spy or espionage stuff growing up. I wasn’t drawn to the James Bond world or the action adventure thrillers where a heist takes place and the race is on to track down the bad guys.

But somehow, Dougherty has managed to wrap his fingers around me and make me not only read and enjoy these books, but to also love them. The outlier of his bibliography is, of course, ‘Woodhaven,’ which is a phenomenal piece of isolation/dystopian horror, and I highly recommend you give that one a go too.

But with ‘Sisters DeRosa,’ Dougherty took what he built in the finale of his trilogy, in ‘Blood Opus,’ and ramped it up, churning out a demonic-cult horror novel that was equal parts erotica and espionage. This novel really showcases Dougherty’s screenwriting sensibilities as we get a novel ripe for cinematic adaptation.

What I liked: The novel follows Viv, a young woman struggling to find her way in New York. She was going to art college, but had to drop out due to cost and now works as a barista. She was born in Italy, but a moment as a youngster in a church sullied any desire she has of ever returning. But return she must, as her brother is now married and expecting his first child and has invited her over for a visit.

After checking into her hotel, she hears an argument in an alley outside and intervenes, inadvertently stepping into the deep end of something she could never have predicted. It’s here she meets Luna, who has run away from a convent, after discovering it’s not really a place for women to become nuns, but rather a front for a demon worshipping cult. She’s now set on returning and rescuing her younger sister.

Dougherty sets things up well and we see Luna and Viv connect, while also seeing a bunch of moving parts reveal themselves. The cult runs deep, infiltrating every avenue of the world around them and as they get closer to finding Luna’s sister, we begin to slowly learn the truth about what happened in that church all those years ago. A moment that’s forever stained Viv.

The final quarter of the novel is one big explosive finale. Frankly, it was awesome. We see truths revealed, loyalties tested and how Viv and Luna must make huge sacrifices in order to remain together and keep each other safe. I think it’s fair to say that while the first seventy-five percent of this was influenced by 70’s and 80’s religious horror, the final twenty-five percent was a Clive Barker comic book splattered across the written page. It was gloriously insane.

What I didn’t like: As odd as this sounds, I wasn’t overly fond of the epilogue. I’m not sure if it was the location where it takes place – and staying spoiler free means I can’t reveal that – but it felt like there was a marked attempt at ‘elevating’ the way some of the characters spoke and, for me at least, it just didn’t hit home like I think it was supposed to. Saying that, I liked where things went, I just wasn’t a fan of the dialogue adjustment.

Why you should buy this: Much like S.J. Shank has worked his magic on historical/fantasy/horror and Joseph Sale has revamped fantasy/imaginative/horror, Dougherty has really cemented himself as a leader in 70’s influenced Euro/Giallo horror. Between him and David Sodergren, we’re getting some phenomenal entries into a world that seemed to fade away from the written page, while going through a revival on film, but Dougherty has brought it back full force.

This book was dark, delicious, uncomfortable and brutal, all in equally pleasant doses.

I can’t recommend this one enough. It was phenomenally captivating.

Title: The Fovea Experiments

Author: M.J. Mars

Release date: July 4th, 2025

*Huge thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a digital ARC of this!*

I’m a huge fan of what Patrick and Wicked House Publishing have been doing and the books they’ve been releasing have been a ton of fun so far. I’ve had my eye on Mars ‘The Suffering,’ which came out a few years ago, but haven’t managed to get to reading it yet.

After taking a break for a bit from Netgalley, recently I’ve been jumping back on and when I saw this one, I hit request super quick. I’m a huge fan of the ‘sleep experiments’ trope of Reddit/Urban Legend/ Creepy Pasta type stories. The Russian Sleep Experiment is probably the one that’s spread the most of the years, and seeing that this one was based on a sleep experiment gone wrong, I was stoked to dive in and see what Mars conjured for us.

What I liked: Set roughly twenty years after a sleep experiment went wrong, teen girl Nala, is trying to find her space in the online webisphere of blogging. She’s created a true crime channel and sneaking a look at her mom’s case files – her mom was a detective but after a traumatic incident is now a private investigator – she gets some content. One such file sticks out – about the sleep experiments gone wrong AND it looks like the prime suspect from all those years ago, just happens to be Nala’s current high school teacher.

Naturally, she makes a video and posts it with no regard to what anyone will think and it goes mega viral. Her teacher, Josh, meanwhile has been dealing with sleep issues ever since he was the lone survivor of that prior experiment gone wrong. Now, he needs confront the literal demons he’s been keeping at bay since all those years ago.

Mars dives in with all the grace of an atomic bomb. It’s one blast after another of revelations and jagged deaths. A new sleep experiment is taking place, and it’s being lead by the daughter of the doctor who did the previous one Josh was in. Things go crazy quick here and we see just what horrors lie in the darkness when the participants close their eyes and the blackness forms into a shape.

The final quarter of the book is a full on occult-demon assault that ramped up the creepiness and the body count. It all lead to the terrifying conclusion, which was spot-on perfect.

What I didn’t like: There was a few things that kind of stuck out to me. For the depth of the story that was within, I just don’t think it was explored enough. It would’ve benefited from being another one hundred or even two hundred pages long. That would’ve given it the time to explore the occult back history, give us more depth of the first experiment and would’ve allowed the second experiment participants to not be characters I never really cared for or connected with.

As well, there’s a major, major death that happens involving a focal point of the book and the lack of any sort of real reaction just didn’t work – for me at least. I would’ve expected a surviving character to be crushed and break down and they weren’t. They just kept kind of plodding along and it didn’t feel like a natural reaction.

Why you should buy this: This slotted nicely into that Creepy Pasta world and was a ton of fun. I think for many of the voracious readers out there, this will be an unsettling, occult, one-sitting read that will keep them awake at night and question every shadow. Mars did a wonderful job of setting up the pins and knocking them down, which made for a very engrossing read.

Title: My Name Isn’t Paul

Author: Drew Huff

Release date: November 18th, 2025

*Huge thanks to Drew for sending me a digital ARC of this one!*

Having previously read and greatly enjoyed Drew’s novel ‘The Divine Flesh,’ when they reached out to me about asking if I’d be down to check out this cosmic horror novella, I was very intrigued. The synopsis is, frankly, an odd one. Mirror people – things that are not human buy kind of cosplaying as humans. Or to quote from the synopsis, “…a hyper-empathetic eldritch abomination.” Interesting. Honestly, when reading this synopsis, about these abomination’s that take the form of people by wearing their skin and then having a breeding season, I didn’t know what to expect at all. Then, Drew throws in the mental breakdown, cross country angle two sentences later and I thought of the hilarious movie, ‘Paul,’ with Seth Rogan. With all that said, I still had no idea what I’d find within these pages, but that never deters me!

What I liked: The story follows Paul, though not Paul. Paul was a guy – a complete dick, as it turns out – who died in a car crash, only to have our main alien character come across his body and slither within. Over the last decade, this alien’s lived nicely within the skinsuit, real Paul’s wife coming to realize it wasn’t him that came back from the road trip. You see, real Paul was a travelling salesman, selling vacuums etc. and so this alien takes up that job and continues to go about their life as though they are actually Paul. But that all changes when one of their alien pals takes their own life and alien Paul gets thrown into heat and needs to breed. Got it? Keeping up?

From there, we get a mix of introspective examinations and external carnage. It works on a purely shock level of ripping and shredding, but also metaphorically over big life changes. I found with the way the alien beings were described, that this would work very well as a trans person’s look at what society expects and believes and what they want for themselves. We get a constant badgering of ‘when are you going to have kids?’ and ‘why wouldn’t you want to be what your were born?’ alongside the Paul alien discussing what makes them happy and what they want to achieve in their life. I might be off on it, but that sentiment seemed to really ring out, and though I say a trans person’s outlook, I could see it applying to immigrants and LGTBQ folks as well.

The final quarter sees the storylines merging together and we learn what kind of ticked Paul off into this crazy trip he went on and we see where things will go from there. It’s a solid wrap up, even with real Paul’s wife and how the Mirror People are more tuned in with the wider world than it at first seems.

What I didn’t like: I do often struggle with significant perspective changes and that’s really what Part 2 was. Part 1 and 3 are based on Paul and part 2 is based on the other alien bug things. It made for a jarring shift, so if you struggle with that, be warned, but it worked well to give us some back story and some fill in on what was happening while Paul brokedown.

Why you should buy this: While it’s listed as a cosmic horror novella, this one is hard to peg down into any one genre. It’s got elements of sci-fi, bizarro, splatterpunk and erotica. Its kind of a melting pot of ideas that merge together to form this batshit crazy story that was a lot of fun to read.

Go into this one with a grin on your face, because when you finish, that grin will be a massive smile plastered across the entirety of your face. What a ride.

Title: The Knave of Graves

Author: S.J. Shank

Release date: July 24th, 2025

*Huge thanks to S.J. for sending me a digital ARC of this one!*

It was only last August of 2024 that I read Shank’s debut novel, ‘Mountain Fast,’ a historical fiction horror novel about a group of soldiers heading to a fortress where nobody wants to go.

It was really well done, very densely layered and the atmosphere Shank created was top notch. Amazingly, I got to meet up with Shank at DreadCon later in the year and we chatted like old friends.

Fast forward to early this year and I saw Shank announce his next novel, ‘The Knave of Graves.’ The cover looked great and the synopsis was intriguing and when he reached out to see if I’d give it a go, I was very excited. He warned me that it wasn’t horror, but I love to read pretty much anything, so that wasn’t a concern.

And, while ‘Knave…’ isn’t horror per se, it walks the line very closely, especially with the supernatural elements.

What I liked: The novel follows Jeppo, caretaker of the graves within the town, as well as the sacred bones that lie within. He left the town when he was younger to train at the Academy, but has returned without completely his teachings after his father has died and he needs to take over for him. The town has paid his way to go to the Academy, so he has a debt owed to pay off. That doesn’t mean he isn’t without some magical powers, and these powers help him within his job. On top of that, he’s developed a tentative working pact with the witch who lives near, trading things when needed and overall he’s built himself a solid and stable life, though one that he finds lonely.

It all changes when an outsider visits from a large city and wants to hire Jeppo to manufacture him knock off Academy jewelry that has charms infused within. Jeppo can see a better life for himself by doing so, but he suspects something is off with the man and soon enough we learn his instincts are right.

Shank does a wonderful job of fully forming Jeppo, creating a character you connect with, want to see better himself, while still knowing that there are secrets within the man that will only be revealed over time.

Those secrets are slyly teased out when this stranger reveals what he really is and wants to collect the skull of the Saint buried within the graveyard. This is a problem, for Jeppo has already promised the skull to two others, including the witch, and this is when the battle of good versus evil begins and we see Jeppo try to work all of his tangled mess together into some way to save the town and those within it.

Along the way, Shank infuses this with a lot of wry humor, including a hilarious angle of a flock of geese accidentally falling in love with Jeppo.

Throughout, I really connected with what Shank was trying to do and how the character of Jeppo was a study in an individual fighting internal desires with external realities.

What I didn’t like: I will say, because of the historical nature of this one, and the thoroughness that Shank writes with, some of the dialogue did feel stilted and a bit dry. It made sense as to ‘why’ they spoke like that and said things how they did, but for this reader, some of it was didn’t have the impact it should’ve.

Why you should buy this: This read closer to a ten-episode HBO series than a novel. Shank does a wonderful job of creating this world and the characters within and from start to finish you feel fully immersed in the land you find yourself in.

Shank has easily carved himself a slot in the historical fiction world and readers who love those settings will find themselves very happy with this one.

Title: If You Knew Me

Author: S.P Miskowski

Release date: September 23, 2025

*Huge thank you to S.P. for sending me an advanced digital copy of this one!*

Fandom.

Six letters that when put together in that way form a work that seems to hold so much more weight than it should. I should know. As – perhaps – the world’s most prominent fan of Canadian author Andrew Pyper, I’ve seen the stereotypical idea of how people view fandom with almost every single Pyper post I make. And I get it. Stephen King’s Misery set the table for what horrible rabid fandom can look like and with the rise in stalking and obsession that has seemingly ramped up over the last decade (which I presume is directly related to the proliferation of social media), I understand why people post Annie Wilkes memes/gifs or send them via DM’s when I post stuff.

And that perfectly highlights the double-edged sword of fandom. There’s an expectation now that people go too far, that people grow obsessed and with unchecked mental health issues often associated with extreme fandom, not only does it become an expectation, but it also becomes an ‘I told you so’ mentality after the fact.

Case in point is ‘If You Knew Me.’ This book is a powerful examination of what unchecked mental health issues multiplied by obsessive fandom looks like. It reminded me a lot of the movie ‘The Fan,’ which starred Robert de Niro and Wesley Snipes. If you’ve not seen it, I highly recommend you do.

In that movie, it’s a fan obsessed with a sports star. In this book, it’s a fan obsessed with a former TV star. And with the way this one unfolds, Miskowski does a phenomenal job of unsettling us readers.

What I liked: The book follows Parker, a recently unemployed woman who longs to be a writer, but hasn’t found that story yet. While housesitting at her aunt’s place, who formerly owned a large online magazine company, she finds a story pitch that was sent in and unopened. Inside, she finds Ann Mason’s story, detailing something she did as a teen, something awful, but she only told one other person – the former lead in a short-lived detective show that she loves.

From there, Parker travels to Ann’s place in Arizona in the hopes of interviewing her. Once there, Ann’s left and Parker begins to find cracks in Ann’s story.

Miskowski deftly interweaves Ann’s dictated storyline with Parker’s interviewing of those around Ann – a neighbour, a former employer – and it works far more efficiently than a lot of mixed media/epistolary style books have for me. It allows the reader to effectively see the chaos inside Ann’s head, while also connecting with Parker.

The first half of the book smoothly rolls along. But the second half. The second half is a full sprint towards an ending that seems foretold but unexpected. I kind of knew what would be coming, but all the while Miskowski kept things so schizophrenic on Ann’s side, that I just didn’t know for sure, wasn’t 100% in what I thought I knew and that amplified the tension.

The ending/epilogue was also a really great use of mixed media but also a snarky look at online commenting and internet trolls.

What I didn’t like: There were two things of note for me. The first was that it took me a minute to get into the epistolary aspect of the novel. I often struggle with storytelling in this style and it took a bit for my brain to get on board.

The second was that there’s a bit later on about Parker’s grandma that is necessary to the story and Parker’s narrative, but for me at least, it seemed to take some steam off the train that was thundering down the track.

Why you should buy this: I for one can’t wait to see this book all over Tik Tok. I can’t imagine this won’t be in every second video about what psychological thrillers had the poster up all night finishing it. This is a book that could be categorized very easily as ‘propulsive.’ It never lets up, never allows you to take a breather to figure out all the chess pieces that are moving in the background and the fact that Miskowski describes a half dozen episodes so fully of a fake TV show shows the depth and detail that go into everyone of her novels.

This one is a taut, nerve-wracking thriller that absolutely blew me away and reinforces why Miskowski is a living legend. Get on this one, you’ll not be disappointed.