reservoircat
a horror obsessed forensic analyst from the US
922 points
0% overlap
Reading...
My Taste
reservoircat wants to read...
18h
The Butcher's Daughter: The Hitherto Untold Story of Mrs. Lovett
Corinne Leigh Clark
Enclosed the hitherto untold story of Mrs. Lovett, Sweeney Todd’s infamous partner in crime—a bloodcurdling correspondence of profound horror and intrigueFor fans of Sarah Waters, Gregory Maguire, and Graeme Macrae Burnet, and based on the original Victorian penny dreadfulLondon, England, 1887: At the abandoned apartment of a missing young woman, a dossier of evidence is collected, ordered chronologically, and sent to the Chief Inspector of the London Police for review. It contains a curious correspondence between an inquisitive journalist, Miss Emily Gibson, and the woman Gibson thinks may be the infamous Mrs. Lovett—Sweeney Todd’s accomplice, who baked men into pies and sold them in her pie shop on Fleet Street. A "wicked woman"—the talk of London Town.Rumors have swirled about Mrs. Lovett since the disappearance of hundreds of unwitting men decades prior—but is it actually Lovett, even if the suspected woman swears against it? As the woman relays the harrowing account of her life—from her upbringing on Butcher's Row, in the unruly and perilous streets of Victorian London, to her daring escape from a mad doctor—the correspondence unlocks an intricate mystery that brings Miss Gibson closer to the truth, even as that truth may cost her dearly.The Butcher’s Daughter is a breathtaking epistolary journey, an inventive horror novel that sets the stage for the terrors of the modern era—and, at long last, unravels the true story behind Mrs. Lovett and her unspeakable crimes.
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reservoircat wants to read...
18h
Freakslaw
Jane Flett
It’s the summer of ’97 and the repressed Scottish town of Pitlaw is itching for change. Enter the Freakslaw – a travelling funfair populated by deviant queers, a contortionist witch, the most powerful fortune teller, and other architects of mayhem. It doesn’t take long for the Freakslaw folk to infiltrate Pitlaw’s grey world, where the town’s teenagers – none more so than Ruth and Derek – are seduced by neon charms and the possibility of escape. But beneath it all, these newcomers are harbouring a darker revenge. And as tensions reach fever pitch between the stoic locals and the dazzling intruders, a violence that’s been simmering for centuries is about to be unleashed…
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reservoircat wants to read...
18h
rekt
Alex Gonzalez
A disturbing examination of toxic masculinity and the darkest pits of the Internet, Alex Gonzalez’s rekt traces a young man’s algorithmic descent into depravity in a future that’s nearly here.> be me, 26> about to end it all> feels good, man Once, Sammy Dominguez thought he knew how the world worked. The ugly things in his head—his uncle’s pathetic death, his parents’ mistrust, the twisted horrors he writes for the Internet—didn’t matter, because he and his girl, Ellery, were on track for the good life in this messed-up world. Then a car accident changed everything. Spiraling with grief and guilt, Sammy scrambles for distraction. He finds it in shock-value videos of gore and violence that terrified him as a child. When someone messages him a dark web link to footage of Ellery dying, he watches—first the car crash that killed her, then hundreds of other deaths, even for people still alive. Accidents. Diseases. Suicides. Murders. The host site, chinsky, is sadistic, vicious, impossible. It even seems to read his mind, manipulate his searches. But is chinsky even real? And who is Haruspx, the web handle who led him into this virtual nightmare? As Sammy watches compulsively, the darkness in his mind blooms, driving him down a twisted path to find the roots of chinsky, even if he must become a nightmare himself . . . Not for the faint of heart, rekt combines the cautionary warnings of Black Mirror with the seedy rawness of Chuck Palahniuk in its unrelentless examination of the emotional holes we fill with content.
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reservoircat wants to read...
18h
Victorian Psycho
Virginia Feito
From the devious author of Mrs. March comes a gruesome and gleeful new novel that probes the psyche of a bloodthirsty governess.
Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect Victorian governess—she’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But the longer Winifred spends within the estate’s dreary confines, and the more she learns of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family, the more trouble she has sticking to her plan. Whether creeping across the moonlit lawns in her undergarments or gently tormenting the house staff, Winifred struggles at every turn to stifle the horrid compulsions of her past. When her chillingly dark imagination breaches the feeble boundary of reality on Christmas morning, Winifred is finally ready to deliver on her generous gifts. Wielding her signature sardonic wit and a penchant for the gorgeously macabre, Virginia Feito returns with a vengeance in Victorian Psycho.
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reservoircat wants to read...
18h
Our Winter Monster
Dennis A Mahoney
Chilling holiday horror about an unhappy couple running from their problems and straight into the maw of a terrifying beast, perfect for fans of Paul Tremblay and Sara Gran
For the last year, Holly and Brian have been out of sync. Neither can forget what happened that one winter evening; neither can forgive what’s happened since. Tonight, Holly and Brian race toward Pinebuck, New York, trying to outrun a blizzard on their way to the ski village getaway they hope will save their relationship. But soon they lose control of the car—and then of themselves.
Now Sheriff Kendra Book is getting calls about a couple in trouble—along with reports of a brutal and mysterious creature rampaging through town, leaving a trail of crushed cars, wrecked buildings, and mangled bodies in the snow.
To Kendra, who lost another couple to the snow just seven weeks ago, the danger feels personal. But not as personal as it feels to Holly and Brian, who are starting to see the past, the present, and themselves in a monstrous new light . . .
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reservoircat finished reading and wrote a review...
2d
4.5
Enjoyment: 4.0Quality: 4.0Characters: 4.5Plot: 4.5
🎡
🪰
⛈️
Absolutely loved this book both plot and style wise.
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reservoircat wants to read...
5d
Room to Dream
David Lynch
The extraordinary, highly anticipated memoir from visionary filmmaker David Lynch
In this memoir, David Lynch, co-creator of Twin Peaks and writer and director of groundbreaking films like Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, opens up about a lifetime of extraordinary creativity, the friendships he has made along the way and the struggles he has faced--sometimes successful, sometimes not--to bring his projects to fruition.
Part-memoir, part-biography, Room to Dream interweaves Lynch's own reflections on his life with the story of those times, as told by Kristine McKenna, drawing from extensive and explosive interviews with ninety of Lynch's friends, family members, actors, agents, musicians, and collaborators. Lynch responds to each recollection and reveals the inner story of the life behind the art.
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reservoircat wants to read...
1w
Orbiting Jupiter
Gary D. Schmidt
When Jack meets his new foster brother, he already knows three things about him:
Joseph almost killed a teacher.
He was incarcerated at a place called Stone Mountain.
He has a daughter. Her name is Jupiter. And he has never seen her.
What Jack doesn’t know, at first, is how desperate Joseph is to find his baby girl.
Or how urgently he, Jack, will want to help.
But the past can’t be shaken off. Even as new bonds form, old wounds reopen. The search for Jupiter demands more from Jack than he can imagine.
This tender, heartbreaking novel is Gary D. Schmidt at his best.
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Post from the book forum
1w
Reading Update from 9%
Why is this so relatable so far ;-; But this is already highly political, which I anticipated (and anyone who reads the back should be able to glean) so I suppose don't read it if that's not your thing! Pulling no punches so far.
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reservoircat wants to read...
1w
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls
Grady Hendrix
There’s power in a book…
They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood Home in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.
Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who knows she’s going to go home and marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.
Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid…and it’s usually paid in blood.
In Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, the author of How to Sell a Haunted House and The Final Girl Support Group delivers another searing, completely original novel and further cements his status as a “horror master” (NPR).
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reservoircat finished reading and wrote a review...
1w
DNF
2.5
Enjoyment: 2.0Quality: 2.5Characters: 2.5Plot: 3.5
This was way too psychological horror Barbie movie understanding of feminism for me to truly enjoy. Not leaving a full review as I didn't finish it, but I don't think this one was for me.
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reservoircat DNF'd a book
1w
The Eyes Are the Best Part
Monika Kim
“Violent, smart, gruesome and wildly original, this novel pulls readers into a horrific world of murder and cannibalism while also critiquing misogyny, exploring Asian fetishization and stereotypes, sharing what it’s like to navigate two cultures and telling a touching story of a family in turmoil.” —New York Times Book Review
Crying in H-Mart meets My Sister, the Serial Killer in this feminist psychological horror about the making of a female serial killer from a Korean-American perspective.
Ji-won’s life tumbles into disarray in the wake of her appa’s extramarital affair and subsequent departure. Her mother, distraught. Her younger sister, hurt and confused. Her college freshman grades, failing. Her dreams, horrifying… yet enticing.
In them, Ji-won walks through bloody rooms full of eyes. Succulent blue eyes. Salivatingly blue eyes. Eyes the same shape and shade as George’s, who is Umma’s obnoxious new boyfriend. George has already overstayed his welcome in her family’s claustrophobic apartment. He brags about his puffed-up consulting job, ogles Asian waitresses while dining out, and acts condescending toward Ji-won and her sister as if he deserves all of Umma’s fawning adoration. No, George doesn’t deserve anything from her family. Ji-won will make sure of that.
For no matter how many victims accumulate around her campus or how many people she must deceive and manipulate, Ji-won’s hunger and her rage deserve to be sated.
A brilliantly inventive, subversive novel about a young woman unraveling, Monika Kim’s The Eyes Are the Best Part is a story of a family falling apart and trying to find their way back to each other, marking a bold new voice in horror that will leave readers mesmerized and craving more.
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reservoircat finished reading and wrote a review...
1w
4.0
Enjoyment: 4.0Quality: 4.0Characters: 4.0Plot: 4.0
I feel like the writers set out to do something completely Not the Expanse. Whereas in The Exapnse it was more about the humans exploring a dead past civilization with the protomolecule, this is about the human reaction to being utterly consumed by a force that is beyond our understanding. It's more akin to the Three Body Problem than The Expanse. The antagonists are not evil. They just are. They have a phrase "what is, is" and that describes them perfectly. Readers might make mistakes with this. Don't look at the antagonists like humans. And that's where I enjoyed this so much, because it took sci-fi from the perspective of not trying to explain something that is completely alien and then dumb it down to human morality. It's about humans trying to understand the incomprehensible. I'm looking forward to the next book, as long as it succeeds in getting published, cause I know the reviews on thsi were mixed.
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reservoircat started reading...
1w
Wake Up and Open Your Eyes
Clay McLeod Chapman
From Vulture's "master of horror" Clay McLeod Chapman, a relentless and emotionally charged social horror novel about a family on the run from a demonic possession epidemic that spreads through media, for fans of The Last of Us and When Evil LurksNoah Fairchild has been losing his formerly polite Southern parents to far-right cable news for years, so when his mother leaves him a voicemail warning him that the “Great Reawakening” is here, he assumes it’s related to one of the many conspiracy theories she believes in. But when his own phone calls go unanswered, Noah makes the long drive from Brooklyn to Richmond, Virginia. There, he discovers his childhood home in shambles, a fridge full of spoiled food, and his parents locked in a terrifying trance-like state in front of the TV. Panicked, Noah attempts to snap them out of it and get medical help.Then Noah’s mother brutally attacks him.But Noah isn’t the only person to be attacked by a loved one. Families across the country are tearing each other apart-–literally-–as people succumb to a form of possession that gets worse the more time they spend watching particular channels, using certain apps, or visiting certain websites. In Noah’s Richmond-based family, only he and his young nephew Marcus are unaffected. Together, they must race back to the safe haven of Brooklyn–-but can they make it before they fall prey to the violent hordes?This ambitious, searing novel from "one of horror's modern masters" holds a mirror to our divided nation, and will shake readers to the core.
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reservoircat wants to read...
1w
The Philosophy of Cheese (British Library Philosophy of series)
Patrick McGuigan
From the first cheese, dating to 5000 BC, food journalist Patrick McGuigan travels through Feta’s relation to ancient faiths, the influence of monks on Munster, the rise of Roquefort and the global trade of Gouda. Discover how the household staple of Cheddar stands as a symbol for industrialization, and what Rogue River Blue can tell us about the artisan cheese renaissance happening in the US today. If you’ve ever looked at a cheese rind and wondered "Can I eat this?," The Philosophy of Cheese will set you right. Alongside surprising and little-known stories of much-loved cheeses, this book will teach you how to effectively store your cheese, how to pair it with alcohol for an exquisite tasting and how to create the cheeseboard of your dreams.
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reservoircat finished reading and wrote a review...
1w
DNF
2.5
Enjoyment: 2.5Quality: 3.0Characters: 3.0Plot: 1.5
🏚️
💀
👻
Oh boy this book has so much potential and it's clear the author has a love for the genre but it is NOT working, and I feel that's far more a fault of the professional editor than of the first time author here. Some lines and concepts and beats absolutely should have been discarded in a prior draft before this went to publication. An absolute shame because I wanted to love this one!!! It's Southern Gothic ffs!!! But oh my god it's got some serious flaws to it that a debut author wouldn't catch but an editor should have. I can't wait to see something from Del Sandeen once a good editor is on board cause there's potential that wasn't supported here by the publishing house.
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reservoircat DNF'd a book
1w
This Cursed House
Del Sandeen
In this Southern gothic horror debut, a young Black woman abandons her life in 1960s Chicago for a position with a mysterious family in New Orleans, only to discover the dark truth. They’re under a curse, and they think she can break it.
In the fall of 1962, twenty-seven-year-old Jemma Barker is desperate to escape her life in Chicago—and the spirits she has always been able to see. When she receives an unexpected job offer from the Duchon family in New Orleans, she accepts, thinking it is her chance to start over.
But Jemma discovers that the Duchon family isn’t what it seems. Light enough to pass as white, the Black family members look down on brown-skinned Jemma. Their tenuous hold on reality extends to all the members of their eccentric clan, from haughty grandmother Honorine to beautiful yet inscrutable cousin Fosette. And soon the shocking truth comes The Duchons are under a curse. And they think Jemma has the power to break it.
As Jemma wrestles with the gift she’s run from all her life, she unravels deeper and more disturbing secrets about the mysterious Duchons. Secrets that stretch back over a century. Secrets that bind her to their fate if she fails.
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reservoircat finished reading and wrote a review...
1w
4.0
Enjoyment: 4.0Quality: 3.5Characters: 3.5Plot: 4.0
Overall entertaining and compelling collection from one of the most interesting styles of prose in horror.
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reservoircat started reading...
1w
This Cursed House
Del Sandeen
In this Southern gothic horror debut, a young Black woman abandons her life in 1960s Chicago for a position with a mysterious family in New Orleans, only to discover the dark truth. They’re under a curse, and they think she can break it.
In the fall of 1962, twenty-seven-year-old Jemma Barker is desperate to escape her life in Chicago—and the spirits she has always been able to see. When she receives an unexpected job offer from the Duchon family in New Orleans, she accepts, thinking it is her chance to start over.
But Jemma discovers that the Duchon family isn’t what it seems. Light enough to pass as white, the Black family members look down on brown-skinned Jemma. Their tenuous hold on reality extends to all the members of their eccentric clan, from haughty grandmother Honorine to beautiful yet inscrutable cousin Fosette. And soon the shocking truth comes The Duchons are under a curse. And they think Jemma has the power to break it.
As Jemma wrestles with the gift she’s run from all her life, she unravels deeper and more disturbing secrets about the mysterious Duchons. Secrets that stretch back over a century. Secrets that bind her to their fate if she fails.
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