Getting Gothic for Women in Horror Month

I have heard SUCH good things about this gloriously Gothic novel from Danielle Trussoni. So many that it’s possible just writing about The Ancestor for this newsletter may have resulted in a copy magically appearing on my kindle. How? Who knows. That’s the magic. It certainly felt like magic worthy of a fairy tale when Alberta “Bert” received a letter addressed to Countess Alberta Montebianco telling her that she inherited not only a title and a fortune, but also a castle in Italy. Talk about a Cinderella-style dream come true! Or not. Because what Bert has really inherited from her mysteriously ancestral line is a house full of history and dark secrets (and and expensive wine cellar so, I mean, worth it?) that threaten all she’s ever believed about herself and her family.

(Also, is anyone getting Castle Freak vibes? Maybe it’s just me. Horror Genre what have you done to me? I vaguely regret watching that movie. It was a LOT. A lot of what, I still don’t really know.)

Chances are, you’ve heard of Catherine House. Elizabeth Thomas’ gothic novel about a Pennsylvania boarding school gone wrong is delicious dark academia in its finest form. In the vein of all good dark academia novels, it is as much about the horrors of toxic competitiveness in education as it is about the desire for knowledge to a dangerous degree. For three years students are given one of the finest educations available for completely free – but the price is three years of their life completely cut off from the world they left behind. No family, no friends, no contact with the outside world. Ines is ready to trade in her old life for a new world of intense study and discipline, but what she finds instead is a gilded prison of luxury and permissiveness. When tragedy strikes, Ines begins to suspect that the truth of Catherine house is not at all what it seems.

The implications of this cover are SO upsetting. I honestly can’t even look at it. Maybe it’s because I have stabbed myself a bazillion times with those little dressmaking pins and can only imagine what a spoonful would do to your insides? I don’t know. Big yikes, though. There have been some fantastic Gothic YA titles in recent years. Really some of the best, most atmospheric on offer, and The Companion is a perfect example. Margot, orphaned when she lost her parents in a terrible accident (classic Gothic orphan trope anyone?), has finally been taken in. The Suttons are a prestigious family with a large estate, and the other orphans in the group home think Margot couldn’t be more lucky to have been chosen to be companion to the Suttons’ daughter Agatha. But life in the isolated manor soon leaves Margot wondering if she’s really all that fortunate after all.

Gothic on a boat? Well technically it’s Gothic on two boats with a whole lot of saltwater-ghost goodness in between. This book was so beautiful. If you’re looking for a tense, fast-paced read, The Deep is not the one you want. It’s excellence lies in it’s slow-building storytelling and creeping, dread-filled tone. What begins on the Titanic with a forbidden attachment and inevitable tragedy, finds its resolution on the equally ill-fated Britannic. Annie, on of the survivors of the Titanic, has brought her demons with her to her stint as a nurse on board the luxury liner turned hospital ship, the Britannic. The past has a way of clinging that even the sea can’t wash away, and when she comes across an unconscious soldier who she recognizes as young man who she believes could not have survived the disaster of the Titanic, Annie is forced to confront her past and question the very memories that haunt her.