Romancing the Gothic Five-Star Reads

This was our first read of the year, proving that recency bias doesn’t dominate the end-of-year list! A classic of twentieth-century Australian Gothic, this is a sun-soaked haunting tale of disappearing school girls. It’s rich with queer Gothic echoes and leaves its endings open to interpretation. There are also two great adaptations if you’re looking to experience the book in other media.

This is another book from January (whose theme was ‘horror in the sun’) which has stuck with us all year. An example of the twentieth-century Caribbean Gothic, it’s set in Guyana. A young man is drawn into a haunting of an old family which manifests (at first at least) as the music of a flute… A really great example of the audial Gothic!

This is a short by Romancing the Gothic fave CM Rosens (you’ll be seeing her later in the list again!). The story focuses on a small village in winter in the early 20th century. Strange snow figures appear on a farm, followed by a rash of returned children, and things go as creepily as you might expect from that beginning. An exploration of grief which is as moving as it is occasionally horrific. That ending though…

A short story published in Uncanny, ‘Stitched to Skin like Family Is’ explores an unusual form of (welcome) haunting. The story starts with a sister looking for a brother and ends with her dancing with her family in the moonlight. What happens in the middle… you’ll have to find out yourselves!

Ok, did I think this was a four-part series when I put it on the end-of-year big read? Yes. Was I wrong and have I left everyone in book group with a cliffhanger for the next year… yes. Worth it though! We reads all the Widdershins books a while ago (a queer twist on Lovecraftian fiction which I HIGHLY recommend) and, of course, our favourite characters were the fighting librarians. This is a series all about those librarians. Expect tentacles, fights against dark forces, and, of course, a little romance!

CM Rosens is back! This is a riff on Beauty and the Beast with aromantic protagonists, incredible fantasy world-building, intricate curses, creeping doom and, most importantly, a heroine who is really into beasts. You will not guess where this novel goes from my introduction and I don’t know if I can quite explain what to expect… but you won’t be disappointed.

We are KJ Charles fans here but this particular book seemed half made for us! A Gothic romance set in an old house with secrets round every corner and a cast of truly unlikeable people (expect for our heroes, of course) – sign us up! Murders aplenty, lots of lovely references to and riffs on classic Gothics, and some good ADHD rep.

This took first place with room to spare! It’s our first non-fiction read at the book club so I clearly need to be adding more non-fiction to our reading list! A mix of travel writing, history, autobiography and folk tales, this is a fascinating book. It is well-written and engaging, exploring histories which are still often (rendered) invisible.