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sofipitch · 1 year

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Gothic fiction is when there is an old mansion, that's it

#this is a joke #like i get that it easily symbolizes the themes #lack of control uncertainty decay feeling powerless #what better place than a big rotting house where you kight not be familiar with the rooms/layout #*might #it's also a LOT of the books I can think of #gothic #the death of jane lawrence #mexican gothic #the little stranger #la hacienda #jane eyre #northanger abbey #the haunting of hill house #we have always lived in the castle #the yellow wallpaper #i feel like i'm still probably forgetting some house gothics

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see-starling · 1 year

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cmon, get your books:

The Luminous Dead - f/f, horror, caves, spelunking ( powells | amazon | b&n )

The Death of Jane Lawrence - m/f, horror, magic, surgery ( powells | amazon | b&n )

Yellow Jessamine - short, sapphic, and (you guessed it) horror ( the publisher | amazon )

Last to Leave the Room - f/f, horror, doppelgängers, freaky basement, too many zoom meetings ( the publisher | amazon | b&n )

#the death of jane lawrence #the luminous dead #yellow jessamine #queer books #horror books

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bellasbookclub · 11 months

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Reccer Spotlight: Laura!

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

The Fall of the House of Usher

This is How You Lose the Time War

The Death of Jane Lawrence

Within These Wicked Walls

Laura's recs are saying Gothic (Heroine) RIGHTS. Full text available in their tab of the Bella's Book Club Summer Reading '23 Reclist!

more info on BBC Summer Reading 2023

more Reccer Spotlights

#reccer spotlight #summer reading #summer reading challenge #booklr #book club #book recs #bella's book club #we have always lived in the castle #the fall of the house of usher #this is how you lose the time war #the death of jane lawrence #within these wicked walls

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bookishlyvintage · 4 days

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Quarter One Favorites:

The Fury, Alex Michaelides The Book of Doors, Gareth Brown The Last Lost Girl, Casey L Bond The Death of Jane Lawrence, Cailtin Starling

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roselinbooks-official · 7 months

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youtube

First book review I've posted in a while! And it's a patron request!!

#bookblr #booklr #book review #the death of jane lawrence #books #Youtube

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queen-paladin · 5 days

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My Books and other Media: April 2024 Wrap up!!!

Here is what I thought of these! As well as some video essays I LOVED because I eat those up!

The Time I Got Drunk and Saved A Demon by Lemming:

A hilarious romantasy adventure romp! Our Heroine, Cin, has to team up with a demon to go on an adventure when they find out that their goddess possesses demons to attack people and the only way to stop her is to destroy her sacred items. It's laugh-out-loud funny one minute and sweet, romantic, and very spicy the next. I would highly recommend it! 5/5

The Death of Jane Lawrence by Starling

In a Victorian AU world, Jane doesn't want to be stuck as a spinster figure of pity with her adopted family, so she agrees to be in a marriage of convenience with a surgeon named Augustine Lawrence. Things seem to be going great until on her wedding night, she is dropped off at the manor house he lives in...at the haunted manor house he lives in. Since Crimson Peak is one of my favorite movies and this book was inspired by it, I had to pick it up and I was not disappointed! Very much had the same vibes but is distinctly its own thing! I liked Jane and her practicality and I loved Augustine and how much of a pathetic meow meow and simping malewife he was for her. There is plenty of scary, gruesome imagery and I kept being so nervous, thinking "how is Jane gonna deal with this?" Plus there was a pretty darn good twist in the last third and I was genuinely surprised by the ending, without giving anything away The only thing is that sometimes the prose is so poetic that it becomes vague, especially one section right before the very end. But I loved it! 4/5

Bride

Okay, so in a nutshell, this is an arranged marriage story between the vampire Misery and the werewolf Lowe, since the vampires, werewolves, and humans have been in constant conflict. For what I liked, the book was really funny. I enjoyed Misery's sarcasm, snark, and badassery and the romance felt developed and real. This is infamous for the omegaverse elements in the smut, but it wasn't overwhelming for someone who hasn't read a lot and I heard it's TAME compared to fanfiction. I especially liked Misery's friend Serena and I ADORED her relationship with Lowe's kid sister, Ana, who is so adorable and funny. My only qualms are that the romance felt slow to start, there were a lot of bland, forgettable side characters to keep track of, and the climax felt rushed and unclear. 4/5.

Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries by Fawcett

My favorite book of the month! This tells of socially awkward, incredibly intelligent professor Emily Wilde in the early 1900's. She is a professor of Fairy studies and is off in a tiny Scandinavian village to study the fairies there. Who else should show up but her charming, rakish rival in academia, Wendell Bambleby. They realize how much the fairies have messed up the local villagers and plan to take action. Okay, I LOVE that the fairies and the fae feel so much like the fairy tales and folklore of yore. The author did her homework! These aren't the hot people with wings and six-packs of Sarah J Maas. They are inhuman, immensely powerful, and can bless you or curse you in a minute's notice if you take the wrong step. I adored Emily and she seemed very much coded as neurodivergent with her passion for fairies her fear of offending others by saying the wrong thing and her lack of reading into social cues. And WENDELL BAMBLEBY! My BambleBook Boyfriend. He is a mix of Prince Hal from The Henriad and Howl from Howl's Moving Castle. He is slutty, constantly inviting his Bambleby Booty Calls, and lazy, having his students do all the work, but he begins to genuinely fall for Emily and is as charming and sweet beneath it all as he can be with a subtle element of "touch her, and you die!" It's dryly hilarious and the third act was incredible. The characters were well-developed and flawed, but still compelling, relatable, and likable. I adored this to death and would HIGHLY recommend it! 5/5

Twisted Love by Huang

In a nutshell, this is a brother's friend and grumpy/sunshine romance. What I love about Ana Huang is that she always knows how to pace and develop a romance between two characters AND her spice is top tier. There are a few funny moments, as well as genuinely sweet ones. However, there are all sorts of elements that veneer into the silly to where I don't take it 100 percent seriously. Like, how our main girl just HAPPENS to be friends with a princess of another country at some public university. And that our main guy is 27 yet a billionaire CEO of a whole company...and he just hangs out with college kids! Like?!?!?!!? I say a good 4/5 just because I always like her.

My Throat an Open Grave by Bovalino

What I expected:

What I got:

Ok, so this teenage girl, Leah, is miserable living in her tiny, religious, conservative town. One night, she is sick of babysitting her baby brother and offers him accidentally to the Lord of the Wood and wouldn't you know it! The Lord of the Wood takes him! So the town tells her she has got to go and get him back, though no girl who runs to the forest for that ever returns. So she gets there and...it's this nice, open minded, cottagecore normal ass village. Other than the premise at the beginning, this isn't Labyrinth but a wholesome Midsomar for kids. Though I do like the middle finger to conservative, small town purity culture, it kind of dragged and wasn't that scary and the stakes weren't high. I expected a scary, folk horror journey, but just got kind of "eh, here's a nice cult that doesn't judge you. You know kid, are you sick of your tiny, repressive town? Here's the answer: join a cult!" There is a really good twist, a scene that got kind of spicy and pushed it for a YA book, and I appreciate that the Jareth in this is around her age instead of some grown ass man offering himself to a minor (sorry, but I am in the minority of Labyrinth who thinks Sarah was right. She made the right choice at the end), it felt like it wasn't the heroes journey I expected and got kind of bland. 3/5

Bonus, My Favorite Video Essays:

The Dark Romance Community is Mad at Me: Okay, this girl, A Model Who Reads, posted a TikTok showing her surprise that the publishing company she works for was releasing a book marked as a Serial Killer Sexual Assault Romance, the dark romance community ATTACKED her in the comments. Here, she explains the problems with it why she isnt' sorry, and her issues with dark romance in full. Insightful, and incredible, and she finally addresses the issue concerning this angry, self-righteous, and unempathetic culture that has emerged recently concerning trigger warnings in media.

Mr. Burns: A Post Electric Video Essay My man, Kyle Kallgren, has done it again! Here, he breaks down Anne Washburn's play Mr Burns, a Post Electric Play, a play that portrays a post-apocalyptic story of a group of survivors recalling a Simpsons episode which then said episode transforms to a staged play to an epic sung through morality opera by the group at the end. He discusses post-apocalyptic media, the evolution of humor, and how humanity always triumphs over adversity. It's funny, deeply human, and chilling and incredibly well researched, in the Kyle KAllgren fashion. Highly recommend it, his channel and all his videos!

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gaydelgard · 8 months

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"i can fix him"

whatever else you can say about jane lawrence

i mean

she did fix him

#the death of jane lawrence #alexi talks #personally id never say anything bad about her period #god forbid women do anything

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sharpteethreviews · 12 days

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"The Death of Lawrence" by Caitlin Starling

🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕 (5/5) (Spice Level: Mentioned/Minor Explicit)

“Practical, unassuming Jane Shoringfield has done the calculations, and decided that the most secure path forward is this: a husband, in a marriage of convenience, who will allow her to remain independent and occupied with meaningful work. Her first choice, the dashing but reclusive doctor Augustine Lawrence, agrees to her proposal with only one condition: that she must never visit Lindridge Hall, his crumbling family manor outside of town. Yet on their wedding night, an accident strands her at his door in a pitch-black rainstorm, and she finds him changed. Gone is the bold, courageous surgeon, and in his place is a terrified, paranoid man—one who cannot tell reality from nightmare, and fears Jane is an apparition, come to haunt him.

By morning, Augustine is himself again, but Jane knows something is deeply wrong at Lindridge Hall, and with the man she has so hastily bound her safety to. Set in a dark-mirror version of post-war England, Starling crafts a new kind of gothic horror from the bones of the beloved canon. This Crimson Peak-inspired story assembles, then upends, every expectation set in place by Shirley Jackson and Rebecca, and will leave readers shaken, desperate to begin again as soon as they are finished.”

This book is where my bias is going to come out in full force- but that’s alright, because this is my blog and I write these for me. Nothing I say is law, and my opinions aren’t your opinions. But I have a deep and feral rage that this book has less than 4 stars on goodreads. I digress.

Now, in full transparency I am normally fairly sketchy when it comes to romance in horror. Few books in my opinion manage to balance the two. When I read horror I'm looking for something that elicits sensations of dread and that’s difficult to do when characters are trying to make out at the same time… or worse, it turns out like “Baby Teeth” by Zoje Stage and you characters having sex in front of a literal child.

That being said, I feel like “The Death of Jane Lawrence” handles the balance beautifully. The characters work with and against each other, dancing with the horror that refuses to be relegated to the background. Romance is built carefully on the steps of the haunting psychological horror that Starling builds within Lindridge Hall. Jane, ever pragmatic, approaches her feelings with practiced practicality; Augustine meanwhile, is a tightlipped whirlwind who oscillates between practicality and his emotional turmoil. The two push and pull in tune with the ghosts that haunt each of them, and they build a romance in spite of, and because of, the things that happen to and around them. They’re dynamic is genuinely delightful to see play out in every scene, with Jane’s blunt practicality putting a direct pressure on Augustine’s skittish nature, and Augustin being so afraid and yet so enamored.

And Jane! This is pure speculation, and perhaps even projection, but Jane reads as a mature, autistic woman. She struggles with the social dance and manners expected of her, preferring the rigidity of scrip and numbers. Her marriage proposal to Augustine is made after compiling a list of eligible bachelors in the town with careful consideration of age, financial standing, and most importantly- who would be the most likely to accept a marriage of convenience. Where there is no expectation of sex, love, or children. Something she has no desire to pursue. Her proposal is accompanied with an offer even, that in exchange for the marriage she’ll act as accountant.

Because Jane copes with the world through numbers. Numbers are practical, the math is repetitive and familiar when the rest of her world view is being challenged. Numbers are soothing for her. She originally self-soothes by doing the accounting for her adoptive family, and then in doing the accounting for Augustine’s medical practice upon their agreement. When things at Lindridge Hall begin to spiral, Jane soothes herself with numbers on paper. When numbers aren’t as accessible, Jane soothes with stimming, repetitive motions that help her to regain some focus and control.

Her logic and rigid thinking are challenged continuously by the horror of this book. Ghosts, logistically, don’t make sense to her. Neither does religion, truthfully- when you die, you are dead. So the ghosts and magic haunting Lindridge Hall and her lover challenge this rigidity- and she resists, logicking the events even if it means accepting a lapse in her own sanity. She’d prefer to be labeled clinically insane instead of rewriting her worldview, even as she’s confronted with the evidence over, and over.

The writing in “The Death of Jane Lawrence” flows beautifully. Starling is able to elegantly craft sensations of dread and give voice to characters’ fears and anxieties. The pacing is set through Jane’s eyes, through Augustin’s dread and reluctance as their world shifts and warps around them. The story rides waves of false crescendos- leading the reader to believe that this is the big moment, and then letting the tension dissipate to apprehension. Some may not like this, but I think it lends itself beautifully to the actual sforzando of a climax. The true final conflict is sudden, gripping. And then it slinks away into the dark to leave you to grasp at what happens. The happy ending is jarring.

My love of this book makes it difficult to criticize, but I will admit that there are some scenes- sex scenes in particular, that left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. Not for how they’re written, but their actual story impact. But I tend to be more averse to that, so take salt with this opinion with all the others.

Anyway, I loved this book and I can only hope that Caitlin Starling’s other books are even half as captivating.

Cheers, friends!

#book blog #book review #books #sharpteethreview #bibliophile #literature #horror books #horror #the death of jane lawrence #review

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dorianatlas · 11 months

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I just finished The Death of Jane Lawrence and I feel like I’m like the only person who isn’t a reviewer who actually really liked the ending???

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Okay so yeah the ending was a little confusing BUT I think it’s really brilliant in that it’s representative of their relationship. She meets Augustine, he’s super hot, she’s super in love yadda yadda. But THEN she discovers there are parts of him she doesn’t like, like the fact that he was super in love with his dead wife she didn’t know about, and he’s incredibly cowardly and self martyring with the deaths of his patients. And then things reach a head, they get in a really bad fight (when she seals him in the crypt) and then she works to make things right again, and they come out of it as new people (kind of literally).

A lot of people don’t seem to like the surreal turn it takes when Jane starts practicing magic, with the drug fueled, grueling rituals, but it’s a really interesting dive into her psychology in my opinion. People also don’t seem to like that Jane doesn’t stay independent of Augustine, but that’s kind of the whole point of her character. She attaches herself to other people constantly and ISNT an independent character at all, as she’s still absorbed by her parents deaths. I think it’s pretty badass that she tries to save one of the few people she really loves.

People also say that it doesn’t make sense that she would become so into magic when she’s so logical. But again that’s the POINT. She’s a logical person who is undone by the idea of illogical magic, of belief in things she cannot prove, the opposite of hard things like math. In a way, the book is both a love story and a coming of age story, as love changes her and she also matures past her former self (and she’s described as being young, I believe she’s only 19 or so?).

People who are into historical fiction and gothic tales spend to be less into surreal horror, I’ve found, which is totally fine, whatever floats your boat. Maybe I like it more because pretty much every piece of media that I love has some weird nonsensical press or surrealism to it.

Finally, the ending: my interpretation is that she and Augustine both died in the crypt and Jane succeeds in bringing both of them back as “new people”. As in, she remakes them anew with all of their improved parts. That’s also why Mr. Lowell is suspicious of Jane, since he’s the undertaker. I think it’s a really interesting ending I haven’t really seen before.

The one thing that I’m not big on is the pretty predictable twist that she is elodies ghost all along. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen other media that does similar things, but I saw it coming from a mile away.

Overall, I’m going to be thinking about this book a lot and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

#rambles #the death of jane lawrence #books #thoughts #book review

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village--idiot · 11 months

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#the death of jane lawrence #books #“because you do not own this part of me”

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faejilly · 1 year

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you ever mean to read a book but don't get around to it for awhile (because life the universe & everything)

so finally you manage to read it and you're just

MAD

because it is so exactly your sort of thing and you knew that going in but you still didn't read it and you could have had this story in your head for YEARS (ish? when the fuck was this thing published, time is lie, whatever) but instead you've only got it now

but at least you have it now,

so you're not really mad anymore

(but you're still a little mad, hvdu write this good a book specifically aimed at my id, I'm glaring at you very much in particular author who is on tumblr but I'm not going to tag because idk that seems rude)

#the death of jane lawrence #caitlin starling #body horror for reals tho if you're curious about it #I mean I also like the luminous dead but it's not MY book in the way jane lawrence is a ME book iykwim #I have no idea if these tags are making any sense at this point #must go yell at seri at some point I just realized I never did #jilly reads

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lizziebeanz · 1 year

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10 Books Read in my 26th Year

1. 'A Sloth's Guide to Mindfulness' by Ton Mak

2. '1984' by George Orwell

3. 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde' by Robert Louis Stevenson

4. 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' by L. Frank Baum

5. 'Pride and Prejudice' by Jane Austen

6. 'Catch-22' by Joseph Heller

7. 'Little Women' by Louisa May Alcott

8. 'The Old Man and The Sea' by Ernest Hemingway

9. 'The Death of Jane Lawrence' by Caitlin Starling

10. 'Dune: Messiah' by Frank Herbert

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desdasiwrites · 7 months

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– Caitlin Starling, The Death of Jane Lawrence

#book quote of the day #Caitlin Starling #the death of jane lawrence #Jane Shoringfield Lawrence #Dr. Augustine Lawrence #gothic books #horror #halloween book recs #mystery literature #historical fiction

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bookishlyvintage · 3 months

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Stack Challenge: Scavenger Hunt edition x

Scripty Title: Ever Alice

Face on the Cover: The Forest Grimm

Book by Favorite Author: Warrior of the Wild

Still on the TBR: Death of Jane Lawrence

Flowers on the Cover: Keeper of Lost Things

Letters of my First Name in the Title: Summer of a Thousand Pies

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buniyaad · 1 year

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LOVE that she killed the original augustine and remade him in her image. as she should. after all the shit he put her through, why not kill the bastard and make a better, more improved husband? jane lawrence did nothing wrong. all women with poor husbands should have at least ONE chance to murderize and remake their spouse into a better one with the power of magic. no more gaslighting. no more lyin ass liars. just desserts and good dick for my girl 😌

#i support womens right to do away with trash husbands #jane did nothing wrong #the death of jane lawrence #caitlin starling #real talk #book hoe

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malinaa · 1 year

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the death of jane lawrence is so real it’s like what if we entered into a marriage of convenience and my stranger husband has this crumbling decrepit old manor that i’m not allowed to sleep in but i get stranded there on our wedding night and he’s so sexy that i sleep w him and find out all his secrets and that there are maybe ghosts haunting him <3

#lit #the death of jane lawrence #jane lawrence #augustine lawrence #text #tais toi lys #crazy stuff!!#*

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