Upcoming Monsters
Despite barely having touched the list of 40 books I made at the beginning of this year that I definitely wanted to read, and instead reading 100+ entirely different books, I'm starting to look ahead to 2025 to decide which books to put on the list I make in January and inevitably start to ignore by February. While I was thinking about this Goodreads happened to show me a list of new and upcoming monster books, and I decided to go through it and see if any jumped out at me.
Some are, unsurprisingly, already on my TBR. They are:
- My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna van Veen
- The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden
- Island Witch by Amanda Jayatissa
They all still appeal to me, so I may try and prioritise them before the end of the year rather than letting them roll over to next year and fall into "I'm never actually going to read this" territory. The other books on the list that look pretty good to me are:
- A Haunting In The Arctic by C.J. Cooke. Aquatic frozen horror on a ship very much appeals to me.
- Sacrificial Animals by Kailee Pedersen. Weird monsters and generational trauma? Yes please.
- A Sweet Sting of Salt by Rose Sutherland. This appealed to me based on the title and cover alone, but I also don't think selkies are used enough in horror and this sounds like an interesting take on it.
- The Woods All Black by Lee Mandelo. Described as "an Appalachian period piece that explores reproductive justice and bodily autonomy, the terrors of small-town religiosity, and the necessity of fighting tooth and claw to live as who you truly are," this just sounds really cool.
- To You Shall All Flesh Come by Lumen Reese. I keep trying to find urban fantasy that I actually like, and I keep failing. But for some reason I keep coming back to the well and hoping that things will be different this time. This sounds cool, and I hope it's good.
- The Gathering by C.J. Tudor. I think it's pretty clear by now that I really like crime fiction, and I really like books that blend genres. This looks like a crime thriller blended with vampire horror and I'm very into the idea of it.
Will any of these be good? I hope so. Will I actually get around to reading any of them? We'll see. Either way they've gone onto my spreadsheet ready for building my reading list in January, so at least I won't forget about them when it comes time for that.