I love gothic mysteries and gothic romance. When I was a teen I found a whole shelf of Victoria Holt and Phyllis Whitney in our basement and devoured them. When I’d finished them, my mom gave me historical romances to read. Gothics were my gateway drug. The Darkling Bride is a gothic mystery set in Ireland with the requisite crumbling castles, ghosts, and family secrets. It also features a side romance. I found the mystery … Continue reading The Darkling Bride by Laura Andersen →
Before I ever read a romance novel, I devoured Gothics by Phyllis Whitney and Victoria Holt. When I was probably around twelve I found them on a bookshelf in our basement, and I think over the course of one summer I read everything both authors had written. Gothic romances were and are the perfect blend of the creepy and the sexy. Usually set on a crumbling estate, the innocent heroine shows up (sometimes as a … Continue reading His Dark Kiss by Eve Silver →
Welcome to the latest edition of I Read This Shit So You Don’t Have To. Trigger warnings for discussion of rape and assault. When I picked up Scandal Becomes Her I was super excited for the gothic elements it offered. Instead I got a pile of WTFery and a hero who is solidly on Team Don’t Fuck That Guy. I’m pretty much spoiling the shit out of everything in this review, so if you actually want to … Continue reading Scandal Becomes Her by Shirlee Busbee →
This summer we are graced with a movie version of My Cousin Rachel, which delights me no end. The question is, what version of the story will we see? It would be completely possible to make multiple different versions of this story, all faithful to the original book, and yet all very different, because this is a story about how the stories we tell ourselves and the characters we create take over our heads and … Continue reading My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier →
This guest review comes from Suzanne! In addition to raising two valkyries and tending a growing menagerie, Suzanne reads and reviews romance and comics in Southern New Hampshire. She’s just launched a site devoted to romance comics and looks forward to sharing it with you all! … Here’s the thing about pain in fiction: the more realistic the writing, the more it hurts to read. Tiffany Reisz is a master of realistic dialogue and her … Continue reading Guest Review: The Night Mark by Tiffany Reisz →
I’m going to pay Lady Audley’s Secret the highest compliment I can pay a sensation novel: I kept finding great passages to bookmark but I didn’t bookmark them because I didn’t want to stop reading long enough to do so. That made for a great reading experience but it will make for a superficial review considering all the meaty stuff in this book that we could happily analyze for days if I had just slowed … Continue reading Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon →
The Kettering Incident is an eight episode mini-series full of gothic creepiness and X-Files-y appeal available for binge watching on Amazon (it’s free with Prime!). It’s the perfect show to watch while basking in late-summer early-fall AC and knitting a bunch of Conversationalist hats by Plucky Knitter. Not that I did that (I totally did that). This mini series originally premiered in Australia on Foxtel. It’s set in Tasmania, in the beautiful, dark, primeval Kettering Forest. … Continue reading Stuff You Should Be Watching: The Kettering Incident →
Back when I was a little baby Elyse, still too embarrassed to check out romances from the library lest the librarian judge me, I raided my aunt’s Johanna Lindsey stash. I had just finished reading everything Kathleen Woodiwiss had ever written (which wasn’t much) and was hungering for more. My aunt was an avid romance reader and had all of Lindsey’s paperbacks lining several shelves in her basement. It was a feast of bronze-chested Fabios, … Continue reading Make Me Love You by Johanna Lindsey →
The Lake House by Kate Morton is part historical fiction, part gothic mystery and part family saga–which means it’s 100% Elyse-bait. The mystery that binds this book together involves the disappearance of an eleven-month-old baby, Theo Edevane, in 1933. The Edevanes were a prominent family in England, and they were hosting their annual Midsummer’s Night party at their summer home in Cornwall the night he vanished from his nursery. The book centers around three women: Alice … Continue reading The Lake House by Kate Morton →
We are a shameful couple. Dreadful people. The worst parents of all. We lost one daughter to a fall and somehow we are losing the other. We deserve all of this. Are you intrigued yet? The Ice Twins by SK Tremayne is superbly fucking creepy. This is a book that either you’ll really love or you’ll hate passionately, and it all depends on your ability to withstand the spooky-level. We’re not talking about guts and … Continue reading The Ice Twins by SK Tremayne →
