Reviews

by Catalina Bonati 2/5 stars ★★☆☆☆ Hedgehog by Maggie Koons (to be published March 2027) is a horror novel that revolves around two young women: Riley Kilkenny and Irina Lebedev. Riley is a well-off writer of daily news briefs for influencers, and who is struggling to come to terms with the breakup of her girlfriend Markie, which happened almost a year ago. She finds a new coping method consisting of the killing and torture of animals, which she begins to upload to the intern

by Catalina Bonati 1.75/ 5 stars ★★☆☆☆ To the East of the East by Ping Lu and translated by Jeremy Tiang (to be published October 2026) is a translated literary fiction novel about Min-Hui, a Taiwanese writer who after the disappearance of her husband, Chien-I, a Taiwanese businessman, must stay in Beijing to help authorities figure out his whereabouts. She meets a strange man named Shangjun who begins to accompany her in conversation in her hotel room every day, which makes

by Catalina Bonati 3.25/5 stars ★★★☆☆ Dead Teenagers by Jude Ellison S. Doyle and Caitlyn Yarsky (published March 2026) is the first comic in a five-comic installment. It centers on a group of four friends who go to prom in 1997, and are horrifically killed that night. This night resets at its end into a continuous loop of horrors in which the killings change every night and become increasingly gory. The friend group tries to figure out what is keeping them caged in this time

by Catalina Bonati 3.5/5 stars ★★★⯪☆ The Familiar Dark by Amy Engel (2020) is a small-town winter thriller based in the Ozarks, which follows Eve Taggert as she sets on a quest to discover who murdered her twelve-year-old daughter Junie and her friend Izzy. Along the way, she makes friends, rediscovers old relationships, and begins to understand her estranged mother. This is a story about unconventional, socially unacceptable grief, especially in the limelight. At first, Ev

by Catalina Bonati 3.5/5 stars ★★★⯪☆ Tatratea by Alex Woodroe (to be published October 2026) is a short ecohorror post-apocalyptic novella about Errata, a woman who has been trained by The Mothers to find the source of the mental insanity plague that has taken over the world and decimated the population. She arrives at an old wellness center named Tatratea and is quickly confronted by animate plants who wish to enlist her help in defeating an evil, blurring the boundaries b

by Catalina Bonati 2/5 stars ★★☆☆☆ The Man in the Watch Still Visits Me at Night by Joshua Chaplinsky (to be published September 2026) is a multiple timeline horror story about Jenna and her boyfriend Brian who visit an abandoned house called the Vogel house and become trapped in the games of the ghosts of its past and are unable to leave. It follows multiple characters in what appear to be different timelines. The plot is non-linear and is a bit disjointed and confusing. In