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belle-keys · 1 year

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Gothic Fantasy/Folk Horror Books: 10 Recommendations

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

Juniper & Thorn by Ava Reid

The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid

A Far Wilder Magic by Allison Saft

Down Comes the Night by Allison Saft

Not Good For Maidens by Tori Bovalino

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher

The Gathering Dark: An Anthology of Folk Horror by Tori Bovalino and others

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the-final-sentence · 1 month

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‘I’ll take the long way.’

Tori Bovalino, from My Throat an Open Grave

#tori bovalino #my throat an open grave

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bookaddict24-7 · 2 months

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NEW YOUNG ADULT RELEASES! (FEBRUARY 20TH, 2024)

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HAVE I MISSED ANY NEW YOUNG ADULT RELEASES? HAVE YOU ADDED ANY OF THESE BOOKS TO YOUR TBR? LET ME KNOW!

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NEW STANDALONES/FIRST IN A SERIES:

Heartless Hunter by Kristen Ciccarelli

A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal

The Diablo's Curse by Gabe Cole Novoa

The Bad Ones by Melissa Albert

Conditions of A Heart by Bethany Mangle

We Got the Beat by Jenna Miller

The Someday Daughter by Ellen O'Clover

My Throat An Open Grave by Tori Bovalino

NEW SEQUELS:

For the Stolen Fates (In the City of Time #2) by Gwendolyn Clare

Disciples of Chaos (Seven Faceless Saints #2) by M.K. Lobb

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Happy reading!

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unadulteratedfunmusic · 1 year

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First book of 2023 - Not Good For Maidens by Tori Bovalino! This is a dark, creepy retelling of Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market poem, set in one of my favourite cities - York

#not good for maidens #christina rossetti #tori bovalino #ya books #young adult books

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shxpeshifterr · 2 months

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#booklover #booklr #books #booksbooksbooks #books and reading #book lover #current read #my throat an open grave #tori bovalino

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augment-techs · 1 month

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beautifulcoversofbooks · 30 days

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My Throat an Open Grave by Tori Bovalino (Author), Tristan Elwell (Cover Artist)

Labyrinth meets folk horror in this darkly romantic tale of a girl who wishes her baby brother away to the Lord of the Wood Growing up in the small town of Winston, Pennsylvania feels like drowning. Leah goes to church every Sunday, works when she isn’t at school, and takes care of her baby brother, Owen. Like every girl in Winston, she tries to be right and good and holy. If she isn’t the Lord of the Wood will take her, and she’ll disappear like so many other girls before her. But living up to the rigorous standards of the town takes its toll. One night, when Owen won’t stop screaming, Leah wishes him away, and the Lord listens. The screaming stops, and all that’s left in the crib is a small bundle of sticks tied with a ribbon. Filled with shame and the weight of the town’s judgment, Leah is forced to cross the river into the Lord of the Wood’s domain to bring Owen back. But the devilish figure who has haunted Winston for generations isn’t what she expects. He tells her she can have her brother back―for the price of a song. A song that Leah will have one month to write. It’s a bargain that will uncover secrets her hometown has tried to keep buried for decades. And what she unearths will have her questioning everything she’s been taught to fear.

#My Throat an Open Grave #Tori Bovalino #2024 #young adult #horror #fantasy #gothic #retellings #paranormal #romance #thriller #Tristan Elwell #illustrations #covers

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semper-legens · 1 month

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24. Not Good For Maidens, by Tori Bovalino

Owned: No, library Page count: 358 My summary: Laura and May had their whole lives planned out. They were going to be witches, like their mothers and grandmothers before them. Then May was tempted away to the goblin market, and all hell began to break loose. Now, eighteen years later, Laura's daughter has lost her cousin to the market. She knows nothing of her family's heritage...but now, she has to brave the worst parts of it. My rating: 3/5 My commentary:

Witches and goblins and magic, oh my! When I read the blurb for this book, I decided it was most definitely in my wheelhouse. The Goblin Market, though not among my favourite poems, is still one I think of fondly. ('We must not look at goblin men/We must not buy their fruits/Who knows upon what soil they fed/Their hungry thirsty roots?') And this book is very consciously based upon that poem. The problem is that I'm not sure that the narrative bore out its promise. The ideas that were brought up on the blurb didn't go much further, and the characters were largely forgettable. It was a shame, really, because I feel like this is the kind of thing I would have been a lot more charitable towards and even enjoyed as a teenager - but alas, the adult version of me was not too impressed.

First of all, the narrative is actually two narratives - the focus is split between Lou's rescue of Neela in the present day, and May's ill-fated journey into the Market eighteen years ago. This more hampers than helps the narrative. May and Laura are pretty clear on what happened to May in the present part of the story, meaning that there isn't a lot of tension, more just learning the details of what happened. But Lou's story isn't all that better. Lou isn't a particularly proactive character - outside of insisting she goes to York with May, she doesn't really do a lot, just allowing herself to be pushed and pulled with the whims of both witches and market. It's only in the last section, where she goes back to help Eitra, that she really takes matters into her own hands. She's static thanks to the greater focus on Laura and May; Laura and May are static because their story is flashback, because it can only lead to the point at which we started. And certain things are made obvious by the framing - obviously the older goblin lady helping Lou is Eitra, there's nobody and nothing else she could be. The narrative doesn't even bother with a big reveal of that to the reader! Eitra just casually tells Lou her name, and so any sense of threat Lou could have from her is instantly negated.

And the worldbuilding here…sort of isn't? It's established that the people of York are fully in on the goblins and magic, but not a lot of time is spent among them exploring that. What is the Market, when it's being enticing? It's built up as a threat so much that, purely under the logic of the book, I struggle to understand why people actually go there. Even when May or Louisa are being drawn in, there's still lurid descriptions of market stalls selling human body parts. Do the genuine revellers…just look past that? If we saw the Market from their perspective, it'd add a lot to our understanding of it, but the narrative doesn't seem that interested in it. Furthermore, the whole 'Laura and May are on the verge of their witch graduation' thing doesn't come up until halfway through the book. Nor does the magic ice that can kill goblins. And what worldbuilding and exposition there is just seems to circle around a few key points, so I was sick of hearing about the Market and the fruits and the Doctrine and this and that over and over and over again.

I feel like I've been too negative on this book, though. The fact is that it did have some good ideas. The Goblin Market in itself is not a bad concept, and some of the manifestations of its creepiness did genuinely work. The bleakness of the lower levels Lou traverses came through quite well, even if the overworld was not shiny enough to contrast it. May was a fairly engaging character, with her struggles with sexuality and obvious attraction to women caught up with the Market and the traumas she underwent there. This book had a lot of promise, that's what I'm trying to get across. it's just that the actual narrative as-writ didn't quite live up to that promise.

Next…sigh. I've put this off long enough. Back to the House of Night.

#Not Good For Maidens #Tori Bovalino #bookblr #book blog #book blogger #3

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starrlikesbooks · 2 years

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HAPPY PRIDE!!!

There are tons of great books coming out this month! Here are just a few of the ones I'm most excited about

As always, check under the cut for more on each~

Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White is one of my favorite books of the year! It also happens to be the only book on this list that I've already read! This is a trans-led queer apocalyptic horror novel that I've been screaming about ever since I had the good fortune to get to read it early. If you love monsters, trans rage, and smashing evangelical hate, read this book ASAP.

Home Field Advantage by Dahlia Adler is a sapphic romance between the cheer captain and the new quarterback, whose gender is apparently already causing an uproar. Remember that photo going around of the cheerleader helping the football player put her hair up in a ponytail? Yeah, this book was inspired by that.

Not Good for Maidens by Tori Bovalino is a retelling of The Goblin Market but made into a queer horror piece. I cannot wait for the dark, lush experience of a place so magical and tempting, or the insane pressure of needing to escape it in 3 days.

Juniper & Thorn by Ava Reid is another retelling, but this one isn't queer and instead of retelling a poem it's retelling a folktale. A gothic take on The Juniper Tree, this one is full of curses, forbidden love, and danger. I've heard SO many good things about this book and this author!

Drunk on All Your Strange New Words by Eddie Robson is a scifi locked door mystery! This book stars a middling (alien language) translator with few credentials or prospects who finds herself in the middle of a mysterious, political death. This is also a post-contact story with the very fun addition that those who can understand the aliens' telepathic language feel literally drunk from it.

Godslayers by Zoe Hana Mikuta is the sequel to the sapphic, Gundam-y Gearbreakers! From the cover alone this book promises even more revolution, action, and gigantic government robots.

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yoongivenn · 8 months

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In These Hallowed Halls - A Dark Academia Anthology

Ever since it was announced both by Titan Books and by some of the authors in it which I follow, I’ve wanted to read this Dark Academia anthology. I am currently writing my master thesis on DA as a literary genre, and so I’m always looking for new books to add to my ever growing list of DA titles. This anthology also features some authors that I love so I wanted to read their stories as well.Now…

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ninja-muse · 1 year

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I saw that you read Not Good for Maidens - it looks interesting but I'm not good with horror. How intense was the horror in it?

Not too bad, at least for me? Goblins eat humans, which means that the market is full of stalls selling body parts. Sometimes you'll see people eating them, the way we'd eat, like, chips, and there's a room where they're … prepared, as it were. That one's pretty gory. There's also body horror via goblin enchantment, and human slaves seen in passing. None of this is described particularly viscerally, except maybe for one moment with a decapitated head, and none of it affects the MCs directly, even if people threaten it. I'd say it's much more in line with "dark urban fantasy" than it is "horror".

#not good for maidens #tori bovalino #young adult #urban fantasy #horror #content warnings #read in 2022

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the-final-sentence · 2 years

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The way I wish someone saved her like she saved us.

Tori Bovalino, from “Loved By All, Save One”

#“Loved By All Save One #Tori Bovalino

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daphneblakess · 2 years

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books i read in 2022: not good for maidens by tori bovalino

“Are you coming to Scarborough Fair?” the voice whisper-sang in a rusty alto. A chill ran down her spine. Then, lower, almost inaudible, “We’re waiting for you, Louisa Wickett.”

#not good for maidens #the goblin market #tori bovalino #storyseekers #booksociety #my edits #2022books

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just-a-bookish-reader · 9 months

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In These Hallowed Halls - Full Review

disclaimer: I did not post the full review on my instagram, only the ending overview

⭐⭐⭐

1000 Ships by Kate Weinberg ⭐⭐⭐

While finely and well told, I don't believe that this story was the right choice for the first story post the foreword by the editors. Early on I had certain expectations for the story to come full circle in a specific way, and when it didn't, I was left extremely disappointed. Mind you, I didn't need a specific ending, there were a couple different ways that the story could have been brought full circle but I won't list those here as there would be no way to avoid spoilers.

There's also the fact that this short story - as stated in the author's note at the end - acts as a prequel to The Truants by the same author. There are ways that one can write a short story that takes place within the same story or even with the same characters as a series - or as this one is, a prequel, without relying on the reader to know anything about the main story, but this short story does not do that well enough. I felt as though I was missing something so when I came across the author's note it made sense, but sadly didn't clear anything up about the story itself.

Pythia by Olivie Blake ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Out of all twelve of these stories, Blake's ranked among my absolute favorites. With a unique and honestly terrifying take on our future - whether near or far off - in regards to artificial intelligence and super computers, I enjoyed the easy back and forth snippets of unconventional dialogue and the main character's own recollection of events revolving around the sudden death of a girl, one suspiciously close to the disappearance of another.

So many wonderful yet unnerving ideas filled the 30+ pages - from cults around technology, a type of magic that links both technology and magic together, making technology mimic humans. A few lines of binary, a few softly muttered spells would then complete such tasks. But the most horrifying element of Olivie Blake's story is the idea of being able to - in a way - resurrect a person's soul, and insert it into AI, much less more than one someone's soul. Blake's writing style oddly reminds me of Veronica Roth's in the Chosen Ones, which only made this more enjoyable to read. To wrap it all up, there was an unsettling undertone throughout and I felt uneasy the rest of the work day.

Sabbatical by James Tate Hill ⭐

Sadly, this story was incredibly boring (I kept stating so to my coworkers while reading even), that I found myself trying to hurry through the story and honestly I don't think I retained much of anything from my reading of this story.

The Hare and The Hound by Kelly Andrews ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I was pleasantly surprised by the execution of this story, and how the writing kept my attention and hoping that the stories to come would be just as good if not even somehow better for the rest of the anthology. While most of my thoughts contain many spoilers and I try to not spoil ARCs, I will say that I was so happy that my own theories that I began to have quite quickly after Arlen was introduced weren't just revealed as correct, but merely implied, suggested that I had been right through my reading and analysis of the story.

I would love to see more to this story from Andrews in the future, maybe even in Arlen's point of view, and then picking up after the short story ended or even before. This story left me with so many questions and so many thoughts - and in the best way possible.

X House by JT Ellison ⭐⭐

This one was alright. I did find the idea of hazing so extreme that both a student and teacher ended up dead to be interesting though. I do wish that there had been more to this story than what almost felt like a "don't do drugs" PSA but for hazing.

The Ravages by Layne Fargo ⭐

So I genuinely remember nothing about this story.

Four Funerals by David Bell ⭐⭐

While the writing was fine, the topic didn't feel particularly dark academia. This is just something that can happen at any time, any school, for any reason, in any class. It happens frequently. If school shootings were more rare in the US then maybe I could consider the topic more dark academia. Otherwise it feels like it's just a dark real life topic. I also wasn't really a fan of the point of view it took, and there were too many things left unanswered and I really disliked our POV character.

The Unknowable Pleasures by Susie Yang ⭐⭐

The writing was actually really good here but the story felt pointless. It didn't even feel specifically dark academia - though I suppose a mystery and an academic setting is really all that's needed for something to be considered. I think the only thing that really made this an interesting story was the main character's mental health and I wish there was actually more discussion about that, instead of the story ending the way it did.

Weekend at Berties by ML Rio ⭐

This is so distantly related to academia - with the murdered person being related to the characters academically, this was boring and odd.

The Professor of Ontography by Helen Grant ⭐⭐⭐

Not really sure what to rate this one, as it did a particularly good job of scaring the living shit out of me and leaving me uneasy for the rest of the night - but in a different way than Pythia did. Though I'm not sure that is particularly a very strong compliment as I'm very easily scared and given nightmares, plus I still had Pythia's unease running through my veins at the time of reading. I will say the writing was excellent, but I also wish that the pacing had been different, not exactly faster or slower, just… different.

Phobos by Tori Bovalino ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

One of my other favorites in this anthology, I found Phobos to be excellently written and felt like a true dark academic story! I really liked the discussions of class and privilege had in this story as it related to the main character, and felt that they were only "quick" due to the nature of it being a short story and I would absolutely love to see a full length novel, or even just a novella diving into the whole story before and during and after.

I also really loved how she ended up committing her murder of a lower ranking student in the end, and god I could go on and on, and while I know most of these aren't linked to a bigger work I would just die for a full length novel or novella of this one, and I will repeat that until the day I die. (I also think this should have been swapped with Playing in order to close out the anthology)

Playing by Phoebe Wynne ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The plot twist of this one was great! And to be honest the plot twist is why I'm giving this story four stars. I really liked how the main character started to think about the funerals she played at, and even had moments that made it seem like she didn't know what she was doing (ha me trying super hard not to spoil), but in the end fully knew what she was doing, and someone else at the funerals seeming to catch on as well. A delightful story, though I feel like this should not have been the closer.

Overall

With an interesting premise, and many big name authors in the genre, In These Hallowed Halls promises much, but sadly doesn't deliver on about half of it. I found only about three stories that were five stars, with the majority of the stories being three or less, mostly less and less frequently three.

I really wish that they had been able to get the five star stories first, and then take them and go "we want the rest of the collection to match these vibes" even if it meant replacing some of the three and four star stories, because if I could get stories like Pythia, The Hare and The Hound, and Phobos for the entire anthology, I can sacrifice Playing and The Professor of Ontography. I will say that while this anthology was largely disappointing (I had extremely and possibly way too high of expectations for this collection) - I would love to see more anthologies in a similar vein.

Anthologies about other trends in literature right now, maybe light academia, cottagecore, fairycore, etc. Basically I would love lighter stories but I could also accept a second volume of dark academia inspired stories, if we got more authors.

While I loved that not a lot of these authors were well known, I would also love a second volume with other authors such as Leigh Bardugo (Ninth House), Mona Awad (Bunny), Dona Tartt (The Secret History, The Goldfinch), Antonia Angress (Sirens & Muses), even Daisy Alpert Florin (yes I did just write a review for her book My Last Innocent Year).

Generally, the concept and premise was spectacular, the execution - not as much, but also not as badly as it could have gone.

#book review #advanced reader copy #dark academia #a dark academia anthology #in these hallowed halls #olivie blake #kelly andrews #tori bovalino

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books-to-add-to-your-tbr · 1 year

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Title: Not Good for Maidens

Author: Tori Bovalino

Series or standalone: standalone

Publication year: 2022

Genres: fiction, fantasy, horror, retelling, LGBT+

Blurb: Lou never believed in superstitions or magic...until her teenage aunt Neela was kidnapped in the goblin market. The market is a place Lou has only read about - twisted streets, offerings of sweet fruits and incredible jewels. Everything - from the food and wares to the goblins themselves - is a haunting temptation for any human who manages to find their way in. Determined to save Neela, Lou learns songs and spells and tricks that will help her navigate this dangerous world and slip past a goblin’s defences...but she only has three days to find Neela before the market disappears and her aunt becomes one of them forever. If she isn’t careful, the market might just end up claiming her too.

#not good for maidens #tori bovalino #standalone #2022 #fiction #fantasy #horror #retelling #lgbt

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starvingnov · 2 years

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if you’ve read not good for maidens

that little bit when may & eitra are in the diner was like the literal last scene i added, and upon review, it is totally definitely accidentally the twilight lunch scene but like sapphic rip

i’m sorry

#not good for maidens #tori bovalino #goblin market #book rambles #ngfm #author notes

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