Joy Reads Books

Tag: horror

  • Gauzy dust-filled horror: Review of The Atropine Tree

    Gauzy dust-filled horror: Review of The Atropine Tree

    Aldane Manor is an ancient home of low-beamed ceilings, crumbling walls, poison gardens, and deadly secrets.

    Front cover of The Atropine by Sarah Read. Sepia toned background with a hand drawing of a two stems of a plant with red berries and green leaves like a fern, in a blue bottle.

    The Atropine Tree by Bram Stoker award-winning writer Sarah Read is a delightful romp into the absurdity of gothic horror. A medium sister, one who talks to ghosts – not size medium, poison herb gardens, centuries of ghosts and strangely uneven floors, and herb-laden fires stoked too high all lend themselves to creating a heady, gauzy feeling that immerses the reader. Gothic horror is meant to be over the top, absorbing in its terror and in Read’s very capable hands, The Atropine Tree is incredibly engrossing. I lost an entire afternoon to the world of Aldane House.

    It is overwrought in the very best ways, richly detailed as I could easily picture Nelda’s dramatically stained lips and teeth and feel the deep luxury of the carpets in her room. I don’t think I breathed when her room became crowded and overstuffed and heated, much like Alrick.

    Fiction like The Atropine Treeis the very best of escapist reading, and even though no one could possibly take that many herbal pastilles and antidotes, it’s immensely entertaining and Read’s writing is so richly detailed and engrossing, it is like having a movie play in your mind while reading.

    The story is like something out of the other side of the Dickens looking glass, with its usurper heir and street urchins languishing in the workhouse. 

    Highly recommend to anyone looking to escape into an absorbing, dust-filled horror, lovers of truly beautiful prose and anyone who simply likes to read because Read is a very talented wordsmith. The genre of horror shouldn’t dissuade any readers from picking up a copy of The Atropine Tree, it was so enjoyable to read.

    Many thanks to Bad Hand Books for sending a copy my way! Check out their website to order your own copy and check out some of their other titles. Check out my review of Bad Hand’s short story collection, Long Division.

    Did you know I also write short fiction over at Substack? Check out Under the Poplar Tree if you like my writing and want to read more of it.

  • Things That Go Bump: A Review of Horror Short Story Collection “Long Division”

    Things That Go Bump: A Review of Horror Short Story Collection “Long Division”

    Cover art for the horror short story collection, "Long Division: Stories of Social Decay, Societal Collapse and Bad Manners". Image is of two skeletons standing in front of a tomb with the title of the book on it.

    The short story collection, “Long Division: Stories of Social Decay, Societal Collapse and Bad Manners” is an incredible collection from independent publisher, Bad Hand Books. A shivering delight from start to finish, each story plays on the different fears and unsettling creep of societal breakdown. This anthology pulls you into the darkness, quickly and fiercely. I was a massive horror reader for the longest time, I don’t think there was a Stephen King or (going back now) R.L. Stine book I didn’t read. I don’t typically gravitate towards horror now, even though I love it and my own short fiction writing is quite dark. I’m really happy “Long Division” landed in my inbox, because it was such a fun, heart pounding, sometimes disturbing read. 

    Featuring tales from familiar voices like Chuck Palahniuk, there were new to me voices like Anna Taborska with “Third-Time Lucy” and Lora Senf with “Blight.  Palahniuk’s “Celeste” is raunchy, absurd and everything I think you can expect from a Palahniuk romp.

    Anna Taborska has created a bleak and dim world where classism has gone completely awry, she builds incredible tension and confusion. She explores the impact of dehumanization and how notions of class and worth are still upheld as the infrastructure of our known world collapses.

    “Blight” is a story of a mother’s sacrifice and the ways men will destroy everything around them and ultimately the world with their own hubris. The little girl with the fortune telling skin is fascinating with lyrical prose that pulls the reader into this mysterious world.

    Cynthia Pelayo’s Mrs. Darling  in “Fire of Roses” is delightfully ominous, I think this was my favourite short story in the collection because of the way it builds and plays with the reader. Horror doesn’t always have to be gory bloodshed, in fact it’s more effective when the horror comes from how people behave.

    I really enjoyed Andy Davidsons “The End of the World, After All” for the fluidity in the writing style, it has a feel of Stephen King’s “The End of the Whole Mess”. Deeply flawed people greeting the end of the world in some of the only, typically damaged and damaging, ways they know how.

    Recommend to horror and short fiction lovers!


    Thanks to Bad Hand Books for providing an early copy for me to review! As of publication (6 November), you can pre-order “Long Division” via their site, it’ll be available to order 12 November.