monzza
35 | she/her | 🩷💛🩵 | 🇺🇸 (I'm so sorry) Returning to my roots as a heavy reader, started again in Feb '26.. currently in the 'testing everything' phase to see what my 'grownup taste' is.
2190 points
4.30 average · 107 reviews
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This book completely re-defined my literary soul. We Have Always Lived in the Castle was a turning point for me, it was the moment I realized how much I absolutely love a Gothic atmosphere and a truly unreliable narrator when it's done right, and Shirley Jackson absolutely killed it.
The vibe is so eerie and isolated, and Merricat is such a fascinatingly strange guide through it all. Her dissociation from reality and her strange, ritualistic ways really pulled me in.
I find myself chasing this vibe now! It's dark, weird, and perfect. This book is absolutely masterclass in how to build a world that feels both suffocatingly small and endlessly vast, dripping with a sense of dread that is somehow still beautiful.
Bunny
Mona Awad
"Temples pressed against temples in a way that made me think of the labial rubbing of the bonobo or the telepathy of beautiful, murderous children in horror films."
Bonobo labial rubbing reference less than 5 mins in is wild and I wasn't ready.
...But does anyone else remember the female bonobos who brutally attacked that male bonobo because it hurt one of their babies last year? They bit his testes and performed labial rubbing while attacking him... Mona wrote this well before that event but it feels like it's going to be oddly appropriate for this book. 😅
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monzza commented...
I found this one to be absolutely devastating but in the most beautiful ways. I hope you love it!