Hey guys, In this article We will discuss (about What are the best horror Novels 2023?) three books that I read recently. Two of them are novellas, one of them is a novel, and they’re written by three great women that you should definitely check out.
So, the first one I’m going to talk about, um, I’ve mentioned this in the previous article, but I didn’t go into much detail on it.
Helena
It’s ‘Helena‘ by claire l smith. So, this is the story of Helena, who is a young mortician. She’s had a difficult life. She inherited this mortician business from her grandparents, who passed away.
Her parents passed away tragically when she was very young, and she’s had some strange goings-on that would be related to her throughout her life.
Her uncle, who she had to go and live with after her parents died, um, died in a mysterious fire and there’s always been some… Some speculation that she may have had something to do with it. Um, but it was never proven.
Um, she also has an uncanny ability to see the ghosts of spirits that have not passed on yet, and this is always a very harrowing and terrifying experience for her. Of course, because of her vocation, she is always near the dead.
But we find her, uh, in a spot in her life where she needs to find a new place to live, and she ends up taking a room in the house of this family.
And there are two twin brothers and a sister who all own this house since their parents have died. Uh, one of the twin brothers, um, is very… He’s fiercely loyal to his father and all of his father’s ideals, and he doesn’t really like her being in the house, but they’ve got to do what they got to do.
While she’s moving in there, there are a series of mysterious deaths happening around the place, strange things going on. They’re not just killed in ordinary ways they’re… They’re killed, and their organs are removed, and horrible things are happening, and a local police officer has his eyes set on Helena.
He seems to think that she has had something to do with this, possibly to drum up business for her mortician business.
So, that’s where the story is. Uh, there are some odd happenings in the cemetery and the graveyard, strange happenings in this house with the siblings, and a killer on the loose.
So, this is quite a short novel, and it’s got a great gothic victorian aesthetic to it. You do really feel for the main character Helena and her friendships with, uh, the characters in the book.
Some of the ghosts were quite… Quite terrifying and her… Her relationship to the ghosts is, uh, quite an anxious and fraught one, it… Knows that she can help them, but it still terrifies her to be close to them.
But it’s… It’s an interesting book, and there are definitely some cool characters in here that I really like to follow and it didn’t end up where I was thinking that it was going.
So, there’s a bit of a twist at the end that you can enjoy, as well. So, you can pick up this, uh, short little gothic one.
It was, uh, published by the clash. So, yeah, have a look at that one.
Next up, uh, for the novellas, we have ‘the worm and his kings’ by Hailey piper. ‘ by claire l smith. So, this is the story of Helena, who is a young mortician. She’s had a difficult life. She inherited this mortician business from her grandparents, who passed away.
Her parents passed away tragically when she was very young, and she’s had some strange goings-on that would be related to her throughout her life.
Her uncle, who she had to go and live with after her parents died, um, died in a mysterious fire and there’s always been Some speculation that she may have had something to do with it. Um, but it was never proven.
Um, she also has an uncanny ability to see the ghosts of spirits that have not passed on yet, and this is always a very harrowing and terrifying experience for her. Of course, because of her vocation, she is always near the dead.
But we find her, uh, in a spot in her life where she needs to find a new place to live, and she ends up taking a room in the house of this family.
And there are two twin brothers and a sister who all own this house since their parents have died. Uh, one of the twin brothers, um, is very… He’s fiercely loyal to his father and all of his father’s ideals, and he doesn’t really like her being in the house, but they’ve got to do what they got to do.
While she’s moving in there, there are a series of mysterious deaths happening around the place, strange things going on. They’re not just killed in ordinary ways they’re… They’re killed, and their organs are removed, and horrible things are happening, and a local police officer has his eyes set on Helena.
He seems to think that she has had something to do with this, possibly to drum up business for her mortician business.
So, that’s where the story is. Uh, there are some odd happenings in the cemetery and the graveyard, strange happenings in this house with the siblings, and a killer on the loose.
So, this is quite a short novel, and it’s got a great gothic victorian aesthetic to it. You do really feel for the main character Helena and her friendships with, uh, the characters in the book.
Some of the ghosts were quite… Quite terrifying and Her relationship to the ghosts is, uh, quite an anxious and fraught one, it Knows that she can help them, but it still terrifies her to be close to them.
But it’s… It’s an exciting book, and there are definitely some cool characters in here that I really like to follow and it didn’t end up where I was thinking that it was going.
So, there’s a bit of a twist at the end that you can enjoy, as well. So, you can pick up this, uh, short little gothic one.
It was, uh, published by the clash. So, yeah, have a look at that one.
Next up, uh, for the novellas, we have ‘the worm and his kings’ by Hailey piper.
The worm and his kings
So, ‘the worm and his kings‘ by Hailey piper, I always forget people’s names. Monique! The off-limits press published this one and, uh, it tells the story of a young woman who is unfortunately homeless.
For some time she was with another woman called Donna who is significantly older than her but they very much tied together, very much loved each other.
And donna has gone missing. Now since donna has gone missing a lot of other women, a lot of other homeless people have gone missing as well, and Monique had originally been staying in front of this tunnel.
Uh, this place… Tunnel of nothing I think they call it… I cannot remember. Everyone avoided it, and she doesn’t like it herself.
There’s just this horrible feeling that she gets from it, but she knows that if she goes back, there will be clues to what happened to donna.
And while she is there one night a strange creature comes out of the tunnels, um, they’re down in like the train tunnels, and this weird creature comes along and snatches a woman in a red coat.
And she knows that this has something to do with where donna is, so she follows this creature through the tunnels and she follows it out onto the streets, and she’s wondering how long this thing’s been around, how people haven’t seen it.
She comes into contact with another woman who knows what she’s looking for and helps her into this place. And where they go is an underground, hidden place that has different levels to it.
And it is owned by this cult, and it’s a cult that worships the worm. And they are trying to find the worm, uh, the… The right bride.
There’s this old legend, this old mythological story, um, that the worm had a bride and he lost them, or they weren’t the correct bride, so they’re trying to find the right one now.
Um, it delves a lot deeper than that, there’s a lot more. There are a lot more layers to it. It is a cosmic horror that deals with different planes of existence, other times with overlapping and interlocking times and whatnot.
But the main crux of the story is Monique’s love for Donna and her trying to rescue donna from this place that she’s sure she’s in.
This is a Hailey piper piece of writing, so the writing is phenomenal. It’s such a short book, it is… This is 114 pages, but it felt like a novel, it had the richness of a story.
It had the depth of a novel. There were so many layers so many characters that just felt complete within the story, and while I absolutely don’t… It did not need to be any longer than it was, um, if, uh, Hailey piper were ever to write a longer novel, I would absolutely dive into that.
But this is just, it’s so well told, it’s so creepy and otherworldly and weird, and again there’s another sort of twist at the end.
Uh, it’s got some queer characters in it, um, so that’s a great representation. It’s definitely something that you have to try and wrap your head around you have to really sort of sit with it and let it digest to get the full extent of the story.
But she’s delightful, and I really found it very entertaining. And it’s given me a bit more of an appetite for cosmic horror, I think as well, so I’ll be checking out some more cosmic horror.
Seth
And last but not least, the longest of the three was ‘Seth‘ by christy Aldridge. So, ‘seth’ is the story of a small town in Alabama, I believe, and it’s the type in the city where nothing really goes on, no one ever moves there on purpose, um, unless they already have family there.
But a young family moves in; a mother, a father, and a young six-year-old boy, I think, called Seth. And they move in beside a teenage boy and his family.
I didn’t realize this until the end of the story, although this was probably just me not paying attention, uh, it’s set in the 60s in this small Alabama town.
And this young boy moves in beside this family, and the young boy and his girlfriend- or the teenage boy and his girlfriend immediately get weird vibes off this child.
He appears out in the back garden with a paper bag over his head, he’s saying oddly adult things, and he’s saying something that they’re… They think that he shouldn’t be able to know.
And they just get a strange vibe off of him immediately. This boy says that he likes the teenage boy and then he probably won’t kill him in the end, which is a weird thing to say, but then again five-year-old kids are funny.
Unfortunately, uh, while this teenage boy is driving, he gets into a car accident, and his younger sister dies. And this causes a lot of turmoil in his family.
He feels, uh, a lot of guilt for what happened even though it seems not to have been his fault because a crow, a large black bird dove straight into the windscreen, harmed his sister.
Everyone says that the birds in town are acting very strangely, and it comes to your head when these birds attack several people.
This teenage boy attends a very fanatical Pentecostal church because his girlfriend’s father is the pastor there, and the young boy attends.
And during one of their sermons, the young boy gets up and starts speaking in tongues and saying that God is speaking to him and the entire town has to repent for their sins.
Many people start to follow him, a lot of people believe that he really is a prophet and they should be doing exactly what he’s telling them to do.
But this teenage boy and his girlfriend… They know that something isn’t right, they know he’s not really a prophet, and he’s not a five-year-old kid either.
There’s something definitely odd going on here, and it is related to the bizarre bird attacks as well. The whole story is told through the eyes of this, uh, this teenage boy and it’s quite some of it quite stereotypical, um, he’s quite… He’s lusting after his very religious girlfriend, and he’s… He’s worried about the usual teenage boy things.
But there are definitely deeper layers to this where he’s trying to deal with his family issues. He loved his little sister, and he is crushed that she passed away and that he possibly had a hand in that.
The teacher who he brings in to try and prove this young boy isn’t who he says he is and gets that teacher in a lot of trouble.
And it just is a series of unlucky and unfortunate things that happen to him and to other people throughout this town. And the young boy has definitely got a Damien type feel to him.
He’s… There’s… There’s something weird about him, even more, mysterious than your ordinary five-year-old kids. This one does seem to have a sort of commentary on religion or at least blind faith and just believing absolutely in things even when you get a sense that they are wrong or… Or believing that God wants you to do wrong things that are wrong and things that hurt other people.
Believing things without evidence as well is sort of a massive thing in the book. It was quite creepy, quite chilling.
It was a bit of a slow mover, but in the end, it really does come to a head, and there are some quite shocking things for within the story.
I definitely wasn’t expecting it to end the way that it did. If you’re looking for another creepy child to have nightmares about, you should definitely check out ‘seth’ by, uh, christy Aldridge.
Love the cover of this one as well, absolutely superb. I love the really bright, neon covers on horror books for some reason these days.
Those are three dark fiction horror novels that I read recently by three fantastic women. Uh, novels and novellas. You should definitely go and check them out if they sound interesting to you.
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