• JAPANESE GOTHIC by Kylie Lee Baker. I’ve been going back and forth about whether I should talk about books when I read them as ARCs or wait to discuss them when they release for the public (sorry to sound so fucking bourgeoisie—when the rest of you riff-raff can read) but the reality is, the brainpower we’re working with here is not able to keep tabs on release dates. So, jot this one down for April! Every holiday season for the last few years I’ve had the privilege of reading a very good horror novel, and this year’s travel accompaniment was JAPANESE GOTHIC, which is atmospheric, dreamlike, labyrinthine, and surreal. It’s beautiful work, with elements that will definitely haunt me for a long time, visually speaking. It’s an interesting interpretation of the romanticism inherent in the Gothic—there’s a play on soulmates that isn’t strictly romantic, but implies something bigger than romance, so to speak? Which is to say, it’s a bit of a break in that sense from “traditional” Gothic works, but a worthy experimentation. 

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• MURDERLAND by Caroline Fraser. Sometimes, for me, the difficulty in reading non-fiction is that the opening posits something fascinating, and the subsequent evidence becomes too bleak and/or heavy for me to follow it all the way to the end, where presumably there might live a prescription on how to fix or address it. But MURDERLAND’s hook—that the famous serial killers of the Pacific Northwest, specifically Tacoma, all had lead and arsenic poisoning from the smelting plant in their shared neighborhood—only becomes more interesting as the narrative takes shape. What Fraser ultimately concludes with is not just the evidence of what lead poisoning does to the brain—a “robust finding” from the experiments she cites as evidence—but the fact that “Murderland” extends to the smelting industry itself, plus the engineers and politicians responsible for a faulty bridge that killed more people than Ted Bundy. Her own life is woven throughout, and the conclusion is staggering. I will say, she does not spare any details about the very brutal murders; they’re not sensationalized, but they’re hard to read. Still, this is a book that holds accountable the many people with blood on their hands, and comes down as a powerful indictment of capitalism and industry—an interesting narrative turn beyond the usual true crime. 

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• LISTEN FOR THE LIE by Amy Tintera. Speaking of true crime! I picked this one up from my library on a whim after it was recommended by Veronica Roth, a true person of taste. One thing I share with Veronica Roth is a taste for mess, and oh boy, this heroine bringeth much mess. One book I looooove because it was so juicy and full of atrocious, self-sabotaging decisions was THE VILLAIN EDIT by Laurie Devore—which was also a recommendation from Veronica, go figure—wait, wait, stop. Let me clarify: I enjoy characters who do things not because I would also do them, but rather, because they would be totally problematic and interesting for someone who is not me to do, because it is a fictional situation and I am not harmed by someone else sleeping with someone they shouldn’t. But my point is, this was juicy in the same way THE VILLAIN EDIT was juicy, and I recommend both if you’re looking to relish a messy person’s mess. Though, I will say, I think you might want to talk to someone about the ending of LISTEN FOR THE LIE after reading, and all the better for you if that person happens to be Veronica Roth.

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• THE LOOM TREE by Angela Mi Young Hur. This is what I’m reading right now, which releases later this year and was recently announced, and let me provide some caveats. One, I’m only about thirty percent of the way through, so this may not be an accurate assumption. Two, I know that everything and its mother gets compared to THE SECRET HISTORY and therefore it probably means nothing to you as a comp. But both those things out of the way: it currently reads like THE SECRET HISTORY if the characters were eccentric, mischievous fae instead of malaising Classics majors. Like, there are a lot of academic discussions (also true of THE ATLAS SIX, so I stand by my own comp, which is neither here nor there) but with the added bonus of being magical, rooted in fairy tales, and… I can’t think of a better word than eccentric. There’s some powerful drugs in this, basically.