Amber > Recent Status Updates

I AM SO STRESSED OUT

"Perfect anapests that make her breath hitch, that seem worse than actual trespassing, somehow."

I live in this book now. This is my home. The nightjar is in the nest it belongs.

the pacing is incredible and the dread is palpable and the prose is alive and also haunted and I am forcing myself to slow down so I can enjoy this one for more than a day.

I have gotten to the hedge maze portion of this delicious haunted house novel and have cancelled all my meeting for the day because I want to find out what's in the haunted house hedge maze.

i think i love Darcy Coates.

A nightmare *and* an Ars Poetica. I am so locked in.

Thought I was gonna die in a reading slump but Golden has yanked me out of it with this witchy romp featuring a cast of blessedly well-fleshed out characters

I have come too far to DNF, but I dearly wish I could.

I was not expecting Autopsy of Jane Doe vibes, but I am here for it.

On page 40 and Felker-Martin just out-Barkered Clive Barker’s Barkeriest queer and blood-slick nightmare. I didn’t think such things were possible. This one has such sights to show me.

I am only 7% through this book and there are already far too many adjectives.

It has taken 94 pages but I finally find our narrator/protagonist compelling.

I wish I could pause here at 71% and so always, in a way, be reading Bazterrica's ruinous and staggering "The Unworthy," but I borrowed it from the library.

The most propulsive prose I’ve read in a long time, maybe ever.

It is rare to find a book so delicious & despairing as this one. I am equal parts repulsed and transfixed.

There is such a delicious, nightmarish dread building I don’t know whether I want to chew my fingernails off and throw my kindle at the wall or forsake my job to finish this novel in one sitting.

So far, bloodless.

Less than ten pages in, but I had to rush over here and proclaim myself utterly devoted to this book. I’ve not been so deeply moved by a haunted house since Helen Oyeyemi’s “White is for Witching,” a book I’ve ardently loved with an unmatched fervor (until now) for over a decade.

Kafka’s propensity for both despair and dramatically unbridled sass has a chokehold on me. Kafka is brat.

If Kiste uses the word “gauzy” one more time I’m quitting this one, I swear.

“The Troop” showed us that Cutter mastered the art of the preteen/teenage boy’s inner monologue, but “The Queen” already feels like “teen girl protagonist” might be beyond him.

Lo! A horror novel with a central mystery and a dead wife who feels fully fleshed out instead of a sexy prop? I’m locked in.

Never have I ever felt so compelled to DNF a novel as I have for the past three pages.

Hurtling through this slim and savage novel, but had to pause to mention that at exactly 44% of the way though, the juxtaposition of brutality and innocence is exactly that of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan at its deep, dark, violent heart.

If this is just a retelling/rehash of the Dyatlov Pass incident set stateside I’m going to be so bummed.

If everyone read the first two pages of this book, not only would white women stop planning plantation weddings, but all the big houses would be burned to the ground. Holy sh*t.

Things are getting dull…

Changed my mind. I'm swept up in it now!