RedWritingHood

All about forbidden love and lots of spice. My faves are vampires/demons, shifters, pirates, & fairy tales. Also love me a good scary story with elements of hauntings, body horror, &/or feminist rage.

351 points

0% overlap

My Taste

The Red: An Erotic Fantasy (The Godwicks)

Kiss of the Basilisk (Split or Swallow, #1)

Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes

Reading...

A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses #1)

83%

14%

65%

RedWritingHood made progress on...

No Rest for the Wicked

Rachel Louise Adams

14%

RedWritingHood made progress on...

No Rest for the Wicked

Rachel Louise Adams

10%

RedWritingHood commented on a List

Let them read lobster ! 🦞

by Valouz

23 books

With all the lobster talk going on, @Babygotbooks inspired this list, by giving it an awesome title. Lobsters are somewhat important parts of these books, whether being used as a metaphore, character, food or something else 😉. It varies wildly in genre, going from murder mystery, to children book, to essays, to weird smut. (recs always appreciated) I also made a same themed shelf with only french lit if you're interested. Hope you enjoy !

🦞

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🦞

Lobster: And Other Things I’m Learning To Love

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Sourcebooks giveaway

How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women

Zoe Venditozzi & Claire Mitchell

Nothing brings people together like a common enemy, and witches were the greatest enemy of all. Scotland, 1563: Crops failed. People starved. And the Devil's influence was stronger than ever—at least, that's what everyone believed. If you were a woman living in Scotland during this turbulent time, there was a very good chance that you, or someone you knew, would be tried as a witch. During the chaos of the Reformation, violence against women was codified for the first time in the Witchcraft Act—a tool of theocratic control with one chilling to root out witches and rid the land of evil. What followed was a dark and misogynistic chapter in history that fanned the flames of witch hunts across the globe, including in the United States and beyond. In How to Kill a Witch, Zoe Venditozzi and Claire Mitchell, hosts of the popular Witches of Scotland podcast, unravel the grim yet absurdly bureaucratic process of identifying, accusing, trying, and executing women as witches. With sharp wit and keen feminist insight, they reveal the inner workings of a patriarchal system designed to weaponize fear and oppress women. This captivating (and often infuriating) account, which weaves a rich tapestry of trial transcripts, witness accounts, and the documents that set the legal grounds for the witch hunts, exposes how this violent period of history mirrors today's struggles for justice and equality. How to Kill a Witch is a powerful, darkly humorous reminder of the dangers of superstition, bias, and ignorance, and a warning to never forget the past… while raising the question of whether it could ever happen again.

print • 10 copies • US & Canada

RedWritingHood commented on a post

FeralAcademic

Note on the publisher

I finally got interested enough to start since I learned the author was born in 1954 which means he was 49 when this was published and he is 72 now. I noticed the first page listing this as a part of a series of books that can be “read from cover to cover on Euro Star or on a short flight” which surprised me knowing the content warnings. So I of course had to look up these publishers like “what possessed you to say yeah these are perfect train/plane books.”

According to their website,

“Dedalus has invented its own distinctive genre, which we term distorted reality, where the bizarre, the unusual, the grotesque and the surreal meld in a kind of intellectual fiction which is very European.

Dedalus has sold rights in the books it has originated into twenty-three languages and twenty-eight different territories, finding a worldwide audience for its authors.

Our mission is to be unique: an exciting, innovative and distinctive alternative to commercial publishing, to find new talent and put British publishing at the heart of Europe”

And looking at the list of their other published books?? I’d say they succeed. So if any of you enjoy the strange surrealism of this maybe you’ll like some other books from them!

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Queer Horror 👻💀🏳️‍🌈

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From psychedelic fever dreams to things that go bump in the night: all things queer and scary.

RedWritingHood is interested in reading...

We Came to Welcome You

Vincent Tirado

The Other Black Girl meets Midsommar in this spine-chilling, propulsive psychological adult debut from highly acclaimed author Vincent Tirado, in which a married couple moves into a gated “community” that slowly creeps into a pervasive dread akin to the social horror of Jordan Peele and Lovecraft County—We Came to Welcome You cleverly uses the uncanny to illuminate the cultish, shocking nature of systemic racism. Where beauty lies, secrets are held…ugly ones. Sol Reyes has had a rough year. After a series of workplace incidents at her university lab culminates in a plagiarism accusation, Sol is put on probation. Dutiful visits to her homophobic father aren’t helping her mental health, and she finds her nightly glass of wine becoming more of an all-day—and all-bottle—event. Her wife, Alice Song, is far more optimistic. After all, the two finally managed to buy a house in the beautiful, gated community of Maneless Grove. However, the neighbors are a little too friendly in Sol’s opinion. She has no interest in the pushy Homeowners Association, their bizarrely detailed contract, or their never-ending microaggressions. But Alice simply attributes their pursuit to the community “Invest in a neighborly spirit”…which only serves to irritate Sol more. Suddenly, a number of strange occurrences—doors and stairs disappearing, roots growing inside the house—cause Sol to wonder if her social paranoia isn’t built on something more sinister. Yet Sol’s fears are dismissed as Alice embraces their new home and becomes increasingly worried instead about Sol’s drinking and manic behavior. When Sol finds a journal in the property from a resident that went missing a few years ago, she realizes why they were able to buy the house so easily… Through Sol’s razor-sharp tongue and macabre sense of humor, Tirado explores the very real pressures to assimilate with one’s surroundings to “survive,” while also asking the question: Is it survival when you’re no longer your true self? Because in Maneless Grove, either you become a good neighbor—or you die.

RedWritingHood is interested in reading...

Grey Dog

Elliott Gish

A subversive literary horror novel that disrupts the tropes of women’s historical fiction with delusions, wild beasts, and the uncontainable power of female rage. The year is 1901, and Ada Byrd ― spinster, schoolmarm, amateur naturalist ― accepts a teaching post in isolated Lowry Bridge, grateful for the chance to re-establish herself where no one knows her secrets. She develops friendships with her neighbors, explores the woods with her students, and begins to see a future in this tiny farming community. Her past ― riddled with grief and shame ― has never seemed so far away. But then, Ada begins to witness strange and grisly a swarm of dying crickets, a self-mutilating rabbit, a malformed faun. She soon believes that something ancient and beastly ― which she calls the grey dog ― is behind these visceral offerings, which both beckon and repel her. As her confusion deepens, her grip on what is real, what is delusion, and what is traumatic memory begins to fail. Ada takes on the wildness of the woods, and begins to wonder which is more dangerous: the grey dog, or herself.

RedWritingHood is interested in reading...

Earthlings

Sayaka Murata

Natsuki isn't like the other girls. She has a wand and a transformation mirror. She might be a witch, or an alien from another planet. Together with her cousin Yuu, Natsuki spends her summers in the wild mountains of Nagano, dreaming of other worlds. When a terrible sequence of events threatens to part the two children forever, they make a promise: survive, no matter what. Now Natsuki is grown. She lives a quiet life with her asexual husband, surviving as best she can by pretending to be normal. But the demands of Natsuki's family are increasing, her friends wonder why she's still not pregnant, and dark shadows from Natsuki's childhood are pursuing her. Fleeing the suburbs for the mountains of her childhood, Natsuki prepares herself with a reunion with Yuu. Will he still remember their promise? And will he help her keep it?

RedWritingHood is interested in reading...

Hazelthorn

C.G. Drews

CG Drews, acclaimed author of Don't Let the Forest In, returns with another deeply unsettling and yet hauntingly beautiful tale of murder and botanical body horror, perfect for fans of Andrew Joseph White and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Evander has lived like a ghost in the forgotten corners of the Hazelthorn estate ever since he was taken in by his reclusive billionaire guardian, Byron Lennox-Hall, when he was a child. For his safety, Evander has been given three ironclad rules to follow: He can never leave the estate. He can never go into the gardens. And most importantly, he can never again be left alone with Byron's charming, underachieving grandson, Laurie. That last rule has been in place ever since Laurie tried to kill Evander seven years ago, and yet somehow Evander is still obsessed with him. But when Byron suddenly dies, Evander inherits Hazelthorn’s immense gothic mansion and acres of sprawling grounds, along with the entirety of the Lennox-Hall family's vast wealth. There’s just one caveat: He must choose a new guardian from amongst Laurie's scheming, backstabbing relatives to help manage the estate until he turns eighteen. Except Evander's sure his guardian was murdered, and Laurie may be the only one who can help him find the killer before they come for Evander next. Perhaps even more concerning is how the overgrown garden is refusing to stay behind its walls, slipping its vines and spores deeper into the house with each passing day. As the family’s dark secrets unravel alongside the growing horror of their terribly alive, bloodthirsty garden, Evander needs to find out what he’s really inheriting before the garden demands to be fed once more.

RedWritingHood TBR'd a book

The Unworthy

Agustina Bazterrica

The long-awaited new novel from the author of global sensation Tender Is the Flesh: a thrilling work of literary horror about a woman cloistered in a secretive, violent religious order, while outside the world has fallen into chaos. From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever she can find—discarded ink, dirt, and even her own blood. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed an unworthy, she dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened at the center of the convent and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe—cities are submerged underwater, electricity and the internet are nonexistent, and bands of survivors fight and forage in a cruel, barren landscape. Inside, the narrator is controlled, punished, but safe. But when a stranger makes her way past the convent walls, joining the ranks of the unworthy, she forces the narrator to consider her long-buried past—and what she may be overlooking about the Enlightened. As the two women grow closer, the narrator is increasingly haunted by questions about her own past, the environmental future, and her present life inside the convent. How did she get to the Sacred Sisterhood? Why can’t she remember her life before? And what really happens when a woman is chosen as one of the Enlightened? A searing, dystopian tale about climate crisis, ideological extremism, and the tidal pull of our most violent, exploitative instincts, this is another unforgettable novel from a master of feminist horror.

RedWritingHood commented on a post

18h

austenattachment

Thoughts from 59% (page 187)

i don’t think i’ve been this giddy about a down bad, utterly obsessed, absolutely unhinged man since lights out, i am feral

RedWritingHood commented on a post

18h

cchelsea

Thoughts from 40% (page 184)

spoilers

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Universe Quest: Maasverse 👑🌌❤️‍🔥

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Listed in the recommended reading order for people who like to read full series.

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Romantasy Starter Pack Vol I ❤️‍🔥⚔️✨

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An introduction to the Romantasy genre, these books are part of the cultural zeitgeist or the 'canon' that many would recognize. Look for more niche titles in later Starter Pack volumes.

RedWritingHood commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

theuncomfypotato

Edited

The Weird Audiobooks

What are some audiobooks that you DNF'd because something about it was strange or weird that pulled you out of the story?

I was thinking of this last night because I was listening to Brimstone by Callie Hart and noticed that the male narrator was significantly louder than the female narrator. It was extremely jarring and difficult to listen to in my opinion.

Another one Role Model by Rachel Reid, I didn't DNF this one but every time the narrator did a female voice I couldn't not hear Mrs Doubtfire and it really was difficult to push through. I've also heard the Game Changer audiobook Kip sounds like a 60 year old mob boss so that's a weird choice hahaha

And maybe Fourth Wing where they had to re-record it and republish because it was quite clear the narrator had a cold during recording and everybody was too grossed out to listen to it 😂

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