Spooky Season Reads!

I thought I would give you guys some reviews of spooky books that I’ve read recently, so you can try them out for yourself for Halloween!

First up, we have Eat the Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin. This book is about an orchid that falls in love with a woman. Shell has recently lost everything and is starting over. She’s moved back in with her parents and is looking for a job. She sees a help-wanted sign in the window of a flower shop in the local mall and decides to go in and talk to the florist, Neve.

This was so great. If you’re a fan of Little Shop of Horrors then I think this would be right up you alley. I love the way that the characters interact with each other. The creepy stalker plant is my favorite character by far. Mostly because it’s something that I’ve never seen before. But I also loved the setting. My first three jobs were in a mall so I spent many years there. Being in a mall until 2am with no one else, not even a security guard, is one of the creepiest things I’ve experienced. So pulling from that experience really helped me imagine this mall and just how unsettling a dead mall can really be. And then you add the otherworldly stalker plant and it just ratchets up another notch.

Up next, we have a manga called My Beloved Supper by Kaho Ozaki. This manga centers around Yoru who is a vampire. Even though he needs to drink human blood to survive, he would rather eat human food. But he can only eat human food right after he drinks some human blood. This leads to some interesting situations for Yoru.

I really enjoyed this! It has a vigilante twist where Yoru preys on bad guys like drug dealers and sex traffickers so that he can eat human food. He really likes the food that the woman who runs his boarding house makes so even though he doesn’t seem to really like killing people, he really, really loves her food so he does occasionally, take out some bad guys. I’m excited to see where this story goes so I’ll definitely check out more when there are more volumes out.

After that, we have My Ex, the Antichrist by Craig DiLouie. This is about a band that makes a deal with a devil (sort of) and becomes famous because of it. In 1998 Lily Lawless forms a band with her boyfriend, Drake Morgan. Things happen and Lily decides that she and the band are better off without Drake. After their breakup, Drake;s new band and Lily’s band go head to head at a battle of the bands and all hell breaks lose.

I loved this. It’s a pretty long book at 416 pages but it really flies by. A lot of this is set up as interviews so that format made it seem a lot shorter than its 400+ pages. The characters in this were really what drove this novel. They were all so fleshed out and felt so real. I felt like I could hear their music on the radio if I was on the right channel. I also liked that there were a few places in the book where it almost felt like I was reading a documentary style non-fiction book. If you like rock and roll and the paranormal, I think you should check this one out.

I saved my favorite for last! Athanasia by Daniel Kraus.

This was one of my favorite graphic novels that I’ve read recently. We’ve got superheroes, a spooky cemetery, and a girl who just wants to escape her family’s legacy. In this we follow Forrest, who is a year out of high school and a year sober, who works with her dad as a groundskeeper for the superhero cemetery, Athanasia Cemetery. This cemetery holds all the dead superheroes and their job is to take care of the grounds, the graves, and the monuments. This is what Forrest’s family has done for generations but she’s not sure she wants to follow in their footsteps. One night Forrest discovers that not only do superheroes bleed, they leech their powers into the soil of Athanasia. Forrest is immediately addicted to this mystery liquid and quickly discovers that it gives her odd powers. Forrest decides that she’s going to use her new powers to become a vigilante and stick up for the little guys in Venture City. But can she controls these new unpredictable powers or will she become one of the villains that she claims to hate?

This was one of my FAVORITE graphic novels that I’ve read so far this year. The art style is amazing. There’s a limited color pallet and it really lends itself to the creepiness of the story. But what really drives this is Forrest. You can see her struggle throughout the entire book. She struggles to get away from drugs, then to get away from what she perceives as her stifling family legacy, and then to get away from the monster she’s created within herself. I really hope that the team that made this continues to work together. I would gladly read anything they put out.

That’s it for this post! I hope you guys got some good suggestions to read during spooky month! I had a lot of fun researching and reading for this post. I’ll see you in the next one!