Short Book Reviews: A Queer Lovecraftian School Mystery

The Afterdark, by E. Latimer (Penguin)

After her twin sister drowns under questionable circumstances, Evie questions whether the darkness she has always known lurks inside her was responsible. In the blink of an eye, she gets shipped off to an elite boarding school where her father is the principal. Northcroft, located on a remote island and surrounded by dense, old-growth forest. Spooky things happen, beginning with a nightly bell and shutters slamming down, to her father refusing to see her, to a masked cult and mysterious warnings. To make matters worse, Evie falls for glamorous film star Holland Morgan, not knowing that Holland was her dead sister’s old flame. Every day, it seems, Evie discovers another layer of creepiness. If the school and the members of the clandestine mask-wearing “honor” society weren’t bad enough, the woods themselves are a thousand times worse. Something is out there, something ancient and utterly inhuman, something that Evie is increasingly unable to resist.

The Afterdark hits so many story tropes: it’s a school story with a spooky cult, a lesbian romance, a tale of a teen struggling to break free from a highly dysfunctional family, a Lovecraftian dark horror story, and a murder mystery, all tied up with one cliffhanger plot twist after another. The story grabbed me right away and kept me turning pages, and although I’m not a typical horror reader, for me the dark fantasy elements enhanced and intensified the story in appropriate and emotionally manageable ways. So don’t pass up this marvelous book because of the genre.

 

Short Book Reviews: An Occult Mexican Horror Film Thriller

 Silver Nitrate, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey)

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is an amazing writer, bringing together sympathetic (if wonderfully weird) characters, pitch-perfect tropes, and Mexican settings. I adore some of her books more than others, but they’re all really good reads. I didn’t connect immediately with Silver Nitrate but when it grabbed me, it didn’t let go until the breathless finish.

Here, Moreno-Garcia throws together an unlikely pair of lifelong friends (ungainly sound editor Montserrat and tarnished but swoon-worthy soap-opera star Tristán), the 1930s Mexican horror movie industry, Nazi white supremacist obsession with the occult, and magic ignited by movies made with highly flammable silver nitrate film stock. And it all works. Brilliantly.

Just about the time Montserrat finds herself on the way out of a job in a 1990s Mexico City film studio, Tristán takes up with his elderly neighbor, reclusive legendary horror cult director, Abel. Abel convinces the two friends to help him finish a movie that was imbued with magic by a Nazi occultist. Intrigued although skeptical of the claims of the cult’s supernatural powers, Montserrat and Tristán agree. This is when things begin, slowly but with gathering speed, to go seriously pear-shaped.

Glimpses into the lower echelons of the film industry, peeks into a subgenre I never knew existed (Mexican horror films), and two compelling characters carried me along as hints and nuances deepened and formed ever more horrific connections. By the time Tristán started seeing the ghost of his dead girlfriend, it was clear we “weren’t in Kansas anymore.” As with her other works, Moreno-Garcia’s prose is strong and vivid, and she handles relationships as well as thriller-paced action with consummate skill.

Short Book Reviews: The Haunted Forest Takes Revenge

 Small Angels, by Lauren Owen (Random House)

The charming English village on the edge of a forest, equally charmingly named Mockbeggar, looks peacefully bucolic on the surface. Even the ghost stories and legends seem quaint when told in the sunshine. And if some of the villagers take such tales seriously, that just adds to the allure. Or so Chloe thinks when she arrives at the place that Sam, her husband-to-be, grew up in, excited to plan her dream wedding in the tiny church called Small Angels. But for Kate, Sam’s sister, the church, Blanch Farm, and especially the woods hold the memories of darkness and terror. Chloe inadvertently awakens the terror that has lain quiet for most of a generation. The woods are no longer safe…and they never were. The Gonne family, who have pacified the phantoms of Mockbeggar, is dispersed and only Lucia—called “the bad child”—remains.

Through multiple narrators and time lines, the story moves forward to its increasingly dark climax while revealing the past events that created the looming disaster. At times, I didn’t like any of them, although I desperately wanted them to find a way through their living ghost story. Then end was both unexpected and deeply satisfying. I love stories where the conflict is resolved through compassion, understanding, and integrity. Small Angels delivered such an ending to perfection.