This is where our reviews live. They get along in relative harmony. You can find reviews for brand-new titles, and upcoming titles. There are reviews from our to-be-read piles, the books we simply didn’t get to when they first released. We even have a Throwback Thursday page where you can find reviews of books ten years old or older. So take a look. Stay a while. Find something new to read.
LungfishMeghan Gilliss’s Lungfish is a literary fiction novel by a debut novelist. Our main character is known only as Tuck, and it is from her first-person point of view that the tale unfolds.
Our Wives Under the SeaSome books are hard to categorize. Instead of being immediately recognizable as high fantasy or romance or the sort of literary work beloved by university professors, they meld genres, slipping from one to the other as if donning new clothes. Julia Armfield takes an exploration of grief, a celebration of love and romance, and the unknown horrors that lurk deep within the ocean, melding them together into a book that lingers long after the final page.
The Missing WordOne of the best explorations of grief, possibly ever written, is Concita De Gregorio’s The Missing Word. Originally written in Italian and translated into English by the fantastic Clarissa Botsford, The Missing Word is the true story of a woman whose two young daughters disappear, never to be seen again. It is a story of desperation and grief, told with all the urgency of a psychological thriller. It is a story that will rip your whole soul right out of your chest, laying everything bare for all to see. And it is a story that I cannot recommend enough.
Old CountryBrothers Matt and Harrison Query bring us a horror novel of the haunting variety in Old Country. The novel hovers somewhere between a traditional haunted house novel and something verging into the territory of a mythos, with characters facing forces far beyond their understanding.
Musical TablesBilly Collins, former Poet Laureate of the United States, has brought us a brand new collection of poetry titled Musical Tables.
RoomsGothic horror has seen something of a revival in recent years, with many modern additions to the genre able to stand strong against past generations’ great authors of the genre. Rooms by Lauren Oliver is one such gothic horror. However, it doesn’t always manage to hit its mark, instead being a little too scattered with a few too many ongoing plots that don’t get the focus and attention each deserves. Yet, there is something here that draws in the reader, that makes you want to know more.
Upright Women WantedSarah Gailey’s novella Upright Women Wanted is another slim volume from an award-winning author packed with adventure and set in an interesting alternative-America setting, much like their first two novellas River of Teeth and Taste of Marrow.
Dreaming DarklyGothic horror holds a special place in many people’s hearts. Examples of the genre can be found everywhere, from popular TV shows to classic literature and, of course, young adult fiction. Caitlin Kittredge’s Dreaming Darkly is a great example of young adult gothic horror. All of the staples of the genre are present—an old house that’s both huge and spooky, family secrets, odd happenings that could be either natural or supernatural occurrences, and old mysteries that haunt the present.
Road of BonesAward-winning author Christopher Golden’s newest horror novel depicts a cold, frozen landscape that mimics the January landscape of its release date. Road of Bones follows a two-man filming crew as they traverse the Siberian landscape in order to make a documentary about the most northern place still inhabited by humans. However, the only road there is Kolyma Highway, otherwise known as the Road of Bones, for those who died during the road’s construction were simply laid down and buried in the permafrost beneath it.
LemonLemon is a slow, introspective story about a cold case murder expertly written by author Kwon Yeo-Sun and translated from the original Korean by Janet Hong. Despite being focused on a cold case, this isn’t so much a whodunit, traditional murder mystery, or thriller. Instead, we find a slowly paced, introspective tale featuring a myriad of people left behind after the murder of the nineteen-year-old Kim Hae-on: how they cope and do not cope, how they move on and how time stops in that moment forever.
Welcome to Looking Glass Reads! We review speculative fiction novels as well as manga, light novels, and graphic novels.
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