Samhain is coming closer, nights are getting longer, things are lurking in the shadows. And a time of embracing darkness seems the perfect moment to share a trio of books about monsters that I read and loved this year.

“Now, when LGBT rights are under attack and the future is anything but certain, there has emerged among some queer people a renewed interest in drawing strength not from institutions, which have largely failed us, but from our countercultural roots, our historic defiance of norms… Queer people, finally fed up with being called villains, decide to reclaim cryptids as their own. It’s a delicious subversion of the rhetoric that has historically been used against us: a reclamation, a reappropriation, a hijacking” — How Did a Bunch of Mythical Monsters Become Queer Icons?

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Katzenjammer – Francesca Zappia

Cat lives in her high school. She never leaves, and for a long time her school has provided her with everything she needs. But now things are changing. The hallways contract and expand along with the school’s breathing, and the showers in the bathroom run a bloody red. Cat’s best friend is slowly turning into cardboard, and instead of a face, Cat has a cat mask made of her own hardened flesh.
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I read this while on holiday in Ibiza back in August, and the contrast between the blazing sunshine and this creepy experimental book about transforming teenagers violently murdering each other in shapeshifting school corridors was a trippy combination that made my experience reading this even more disturbing than it might have been otherwise. It’s an incredibly inventive and original piece of storytelling, by turns heart-breaking, gory, suspense-driven and strange, shifting back and forth between past and present as the protagonist Cat pieces together memories of past events and fights for her survival. Its balances a breakneck pace in the action scenes with some powerful reflections on teenagers’ capacity for cruelty to each other, cumulating in an extremely polarising ending. It creeped me right out and made me want to read more by the author, and I’ll consider that combo a win.
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Patricia Wants to Cuddle – Samantha Allen

The contestants of a reality television dating show compete for love – and their lives. When the final four women in the competition arrive on a mysterious island in the Pacific Northwest, they prepare themselves for another week of extreme sleep deprivation, invasive interviews and salacious drama. But when the cast and crew make Patricia’s acquaintance atop the island’s tallest and most desolate peak, they soon realize that if they’re to have any hope of making it to the next Elimination Event, they’ll first have to survive the night.
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One plot thread which is a scathing, funny and unflinching look at the world of reality TV – ultimately descending into an absolute bloodbath – and another plot thread about star-crossed lesbians living in the mountains on a bleak island mountain. Both of which I’m very much here for. I went back and forth on the way they were weaved together, but on the whole this award-winning fiction debut was one I really enjoyed. Like this entire trio of recommendations, it’s a weird book with unconventional pacing and out-there ideas, but the idea of a queer sasquatch who just wants to cuddle is one I can’t help but love.

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Hide – Kiersten White

The challenge: spend a week hiding in an abandoned amusement park and don’t get caught. The prize: enough money to change everything. Even though everyone is desperate to win, Mack feels sure that she can beat her competitors. All she has to do is hide, and she’s an expert at that. But as the people around her begin disappearing one by one, Mack realizes this competition is more sinister than even she imagined.
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My hands-down favourite of the three. Think And Then There Were None set in a labyrinthine theme park with some Greek mythology, political allegory and queer love all weaved in. This one also had epically conflicting reviews, with some of those critiques validly acknowledging that fourteen competitors is a lot of characters to keep track of, meaning the novel’s earlier chapters can be confusing. But as the characters start meeting mysterious ends, the tension escalates, and that’s when White’s skill at storytelling, atmosphere and action really come into their own. A gloriously dark and gory thriller that I know I’ll be returning to.

I sent this out to my newsletter in October 2022, with ‘I’m in love, I’m in love with a monster’ as the subject line. And there was nothing more affirming than the number of people who replied telling me they recognised it as a reference to this. Rachel Stamp were an incredibly formative and important part of my teenage years, and it’s apparently impossible for me to write anything about monsters without somehow name-checking their 2000 banger, Monsters of the New Wave. So if this is your first intro to it, you’re welcome.

Want more? I enjoyed this piece via The Wrangler on the importance of monstrosity in queer storytelling.