Paranormal

Book Review: PORTRAIT OF A WITCH UNDONE by K. S. Shay

| Jessica Crawford

Portrait of a Witch Undone by K.S. Shay is a 368 page debut novel being published by Erewhon Books, an imprint of Kensington Publishing Corp., on August 25, 2026.

Genre/Subgenres

Fantasy, Horror, Paranormal

Description

For fans of Starling House and A Discovery of Witches with a Thomas Crown Affair twist: a contemporary New England coven hides the mysteries that lurk in the marshes north of Boston—and how they are connected to the largest unsolved art heist in modern history.

Once, Maeve Ryan was the strongest witch of her generation. But Maeve messed up a spell to contact the Lady of the Fens, an eerie Revenant who lures the unwary to their deaths in the brackish marshlands of the North Shore. Maeve destroyed her reputation, hurt her best friend Ash, and tainted herself with unbound, wild magic that transforms witches into insane Revenants.

With unbound power eating away at Maeve’s mind, all she wants is to get rid of her magic. Forever. But Ash’s research into how the spell went awry leads in an unexpected direction: the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and a link between the Lady and a decades-old art theft worth $500 million. When Ash disappears through a stolen painting’s empty frame, Maeve has to follow.

Inside is the Other Marsh, a haunting, deadly realm where only the Lady’s rules apply. Within this half-world lie secrets about North Shore’s history, Maeve’s failure, and the fate of the masterpieces that disappeared over three decades ago. But as Maeve fights toward the truth, she risks her friendship, her coven, and her life against enemies hiding in plain sight

Opening Line

Birds call from dying limbs, a harvest moon rises, and I take the commuter rail home to rob my grandmother.

My Thoughts

❧ A coven of witches
❧ A competent, obstinate, scrappy MC
❧ A spell that turns paintings into a prison
❧ A horrifying Revenant with a tragic backstory…plotting her escape
❧ The importance of positive relationships!

Let me begin with the latter portion of this book, which was really something else! I would actually call this a horror novel with an urban fantasy setting. The creepy veiled Lady of the marsh following our characters from painting to painting, plenty of violence via physical fights against enemies (both human and not), flocks of birds following the characters wherever they go—all very menacing! Some of the characters begin the story as friends, some as strangers, and some as rivals, but in a satisfying plot arc they are forced to accept one another as allies and fight the evil that plagues the North Shore coven of Massachusetts together. And then there is the joy of seeing characters who have struggled stubbornly finally take hold of their own power, on their own terms. Witches be GOATed!

They want to reduce me to a legend? Let them. I will be the worst fable they have ever written.

But I will say that at the start of this book, there were a few things I noted that seemed like they might be debut novel issues. Stylistically it initially read like a YA book even though its characters and themes are not, every character was first introduced by their race (bonus points for the inclusion of a nonbinary character, though), the pacing seemed a bit uneven, the rules about the magic system and the paintings involved in the spellwork were hard to follow, and a great part of the tension in the narrative relied on lack of communication between characters–a pet peeve of mine, although admittedly having a reason to withhold certain information is much preferable to the miscommunication trope.

Even if the execution wasn’t 100% a homerun for this reader, by the end I was “all in” anyway. Full of magic tied to the land, mystery, coven intrigue, desperation, the uncertainty of shifting of alliances, a tangential romance subplot, and monsters created though tragedy, this was an action-packed tale with a touching and very gratifying narrative arc—a powerful story!

“I mean, on a scale of one to an unbound, undead Puritan witch, how bad could family be?”

My thanks to Kensington Publishing and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

Book Review: WAYWARD SOULS (HARKER & MORIARTY #2) by Susan J. Morris

| Jessica Crawford

Wayward Souls by Susan J. Morris is the second book in the Harker & Moriarty series, with a publish date by Inky Phoenix Press of Bindery Books of March 17, 2026.

Genre:

Historical Fantasy, Paranormal Mystery

Blurb:

The delightfully dark sequel to the gothic supernatural mystery Strange Beasts.

Six days before Samhain—the night when the veil between worlds is thinnest—Samantha Harker, daughter of Dracula’s killer, and Dr. Helena Moriarty, daughter of the famed criminal mastermind, are thrown into their next the mysterious disappearance of two Society field agents in Ireland. Only this time, the Royal Society is sending Jakob Van Helsing to keep an eye on them.

Sam and Hel may have solved the Paris case, but that doesn’t mean the Society trusts them. Sam has the power to slip into the minds of monsters, and Van Helsing has sworn to kill her at the first sign of corruption. And if Hel can’t prove her father’s existence, she’ll soon go down for his crimes.

Their investigation takes them from the crumbling ruins of Ireland’s untamed wilds to the occult societies of the rich and powerful. The connection between the Sam and Hel is electric, but as they fall deeper into each other’s orbit, their secrets only multiply. For Hel, it’s the sins she committed when she was her father’s pawn. For Sam, it’s a plague of death omens, mysterious black feathers, and a siren song no one else can hear. And then comes a chilling revelation that is poised to shatter The agents who disappeared were each haunted by a ghost. And so, it seems, is Sam.

With characters drawn from the worlds of Dracula and Sherlock Holmes, Wayward Souls is a twisty puzzle box of a historical fantasy—perfect for fans of Genevieve Cogman, Theodora Goss, Freya Marske, T. Kingfisher, and Gail Carriger.

Opening Line:

Samantha Harker folded her hands on the scarred mahogany table, grateful her emerald-green riding habit would disguise any hint of sweat.

My Thoughts:

Sam and Hel (the daughters of Jonathan and Mina Harker from Dracula and Professor Moriarty, the nemesis of Sherlock Holmes, respectively) are off on another adventure in this sequel to Strange Beasts. This time London’s Royal Society for the Study of Abnormal Phenomena have sent them to Ireland with Jakob Van Helsing accompanying to keep an eye on things, as they don’t quite trust Hel’s loyalties or Sam’s abilities.

Like its predecessor, the vibes in this book are perfectly on point! Steeped in the darker aspects of Celtic mythology and folklore, this story was perfect for my spooky season reading (but with the Irish setting being such a large part of the story, St. Patty’s Day would be a fine time to pick it up as well!) People in Ireland are disappearing in ways that smack of the supernatural and it’s up to our team of field agents to figure out who or what is behind it all, preferably before the night of Samhain, when the veil between worlds is thinnest and dangers from the Otherworld are at their peak.

A theme of this installment is that no one is only one thing – all good or all bad. Characters who were midlevel villains of the last book have the opportunity here to show that they have another side. Our heroines have to learn to allow themselves as much grace as they do the monsters they confront in their line of work, who are sometimes made the way they are by monstrous acts committed against them.

I hadn’t recalled from the first book that the story is all told with third person POV through Sam’s perspective, so readers can only really get an idea of Hel and Van Helsing’s thoughts and feelings through their interactions with her. I do think a reread of that one would have been beneficial, as I couldn’t recall much about the situation with Sam’s grandfather, which comes into play as a fairly major plot thread here.

One complaint I have with this book is the same one I had for the first in the series – I couldn’t always follow the characters’ reasoning when they came to conclusions about things in their investigation. The answers and explanations here were a bit convoluted, with a lot going on. I kind of had to just enjoy the ride and accept the characters’ determinations without fully appreciating how they arrived at them.

Still, this was overall a fun story and perfect fit for my October reading, and I am grateful to NetGalley, Bindery Books, and Inky Phoenix Press for the eARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

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Book Review: THE FOX AND THE DEVIL by Kiersten White

| Jessica Crawford
Image created using Canva’s generative AI

The Fox and the Devil by Kiersten White is a 368 page standalone novel from Del Rey with a publish date of March 10, 2026.

Genre/Subgenres:

Horror, Paranormal, Historical Fiction, Fantasy, Gothic

Blurb:

An obsession with a beautiful serial killer entangles a vampire hunter’s daughter in an immortal sapphic romance in this enthralling gothic fantasy from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Lucy Undying.

Anneke has a complicated relationship with her father, Abraham Van Helsing—doctor, scientist, and madman devoted to studying vampires—up until the night she comes home to find him murdered, with a surreally beautiful woman looming over his body. A woman who leaves no trace behind, other than the dreams and nightmares that plague Anneke every night.

Spurred by her desire for vengeance and armed with the latest in forensic and investigatory techniques, Anneke puts together a team of detectives to catch her mysterious serial killer. Because her father isn’t the only inexplicably dead body. There’s a trail of victims across Europe and Anneke is certain they’re all connected.

But during the years spent relentlessly hunting the killer, Anneke keeps some crucial evidence to infuriatingly coy letters, addressed only to Anneke, occasionally soaked in blood, and always signed Diavola. Devil. The obsession is mutual, and all the more dangerous for it.

The closer Anneke gets to her devil, though, the less sense the world makes. Maybe her father wasn’t a madman, after all. Diavola might be something much worse than a serial killer . . . and much harder to destroy. Because as Anneke unearths more of Diavola’s tragic past, she suspects there’s still a heart somewhere in that undead body.

A heart that beats for Anneke alone.

Opening Line:

As the crowd screams, all Henri thinks is that he’s going to be in so much trouble when his parents find out.

My Thoughts:

☠ Nineteenth century Europe
☠ Van Helsing’s daughter
☠ Murder investigations
☠ Found family
☠ Sapphic yearning
☠ Vampires!

It’s so easy to think yourself hunter only to discover you’ve always been prey.

In late nineteenth century Amsterdam, a young Anneke Van Helsing spies a creature of unnatural beauty standing over the prone and bleeding form of her father. The rest of the world believes Abraham Van Helsing took his own life, but Anneke knows better. She devotes the next several years of her life to training in forensic detective work. When a spree of bizarre deaths begin cropping up all over Europe, she alone makes the connection with her own father’s end. Finally she has caught scent of the mysterious woman, and the hunt she has long fixated on begins in earnest.

Have you been hunting me all this time? That makes me sad. He doesn’t deserve your devotion.

Our main character teams up with a lovely crew who together investigate the trail of bodies, becoming like family to one another as they devote themselves to Anneke’s search for her Diavola and vengeance for her father. Anneke spends just as much time pining for the beautiful woman she is pursuing across the continent as she does fantasizing about killing her. When Diavola begins sending her taunting letters, one wonders who is tracking whom? And as she learns more about her quarry, the question arises: have they been hunting the wrong monster all along?

“I thought I was doing the right thing,” he whispered. “Men always do.”

The setting in this book is quite fetching–canal houses in Amsterdam, cafes in Budapest, an abandoned village of the Greek islands, and finally to the Paris world’s fair, l’Exposition Universelle, for ultimate added flavor. Cinematographs, magnetic audio recorders, and the advent of the use of fingerprints in crime scene analysis further cement the reader in Anneke’s world.

The characters are easy to root for. Anneke is a competent (albeit obsessed) woman in a male-dominated field, and her companions, though we don’t dive too deep beneath the surface with them (the story is told almost entirely from Anneke’s first person POV), are quite likable. There is romance, but mostly consisting of yearning and with no explicit spicy scenes. On the other hand, LOTS of horrifying murder and corpse examination scenes (the deaths mostly relayed after the fact during the investigation phase rather than on the page).

There was a little while in the middle of this book when I wondered if it really needed to be as long as it is, but that isn’t to say the plot dragged for me at any point. In the end, I was most definitely satisfied with the story that had unfolded. Each of Kiersten White’s books that I read I enjoy even more than the one before, but I’m not sure how long that trend can continue as her work at this point is pretty fantastic! I am intrigued to see where she’ll go from here.

Thanks so much to NetGalley and Del Rey for the eARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

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Book Review: WHEN THE WOLF COMES HOME by Nat Cassidy

| Jessica Crawford

When the Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy is a 304 page novel published in 2025 by Tor Nightfire.

Genre:

Horror, Paranormal

Blurb:

One night, Jess, a struggling actress, finds a five-year-old runaway hiding in the bushes outside her apartment. After a violent, bloody encounter with the boy’s father, she and the boy find themselves running for their lives.

As they attempt to evade the boy’s increasingly desperate father, horrifying incidents of butchery follow them. At first, Jess thinks she understands what they’re up against, but she’s about to learn there’s more to these surreal and grisly events than she could’ve ever imagined.

And that when the wolf finally comes home, none will be spared.

Opening Line:

Daddy is roaring.

My Thoughts:

What a wild ride!

Nat Cassidy’s horror pulls no punches, so make sure to read the content warnings at the beginning of the book, but honestly I thought they made it sound way worse than it actually was. His writing is as entertaining and humorous as it is gory (…well, maybe not quite – it’s pretty gory!) This time around, it’s also really touching.

Jess finds herself in charge of a terrified young boy on the run from his father, and neither might be quite what they seem (if you prefer stories rooted firmly in reality without any speculative/fantastical elements, look elsewhere). This is a road trip adventure that will keep readers on the edge of their seats while also pulling on their heart strings. A theme of this book is the old FDR quote about the only thing to fear being fear itself. I was riveted, amused, and loving the journey…

BUT THEN.

This was a 5 star read for me right up until a resolution I was deeply unhappy with. I suppose it was an ending that made a good deal of sense, but certainly it could have gone another way.

Despite how upset I was with how the author chose to conclude this book, it’s still true that I loved the experience of reading it overall, and so 5 stars it is–but just know I am currently not speaking to Nat Cassidy (but will continue reading anything he writes)!

P.S. As an 80s kid myself, I can confirm Who Framed Roger Rabbit was terrifying

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Book Review: A NEW LEASE ON DEATH by Olivia Blacke

| Jessica Crawford

A New Lease on Death by Olivia Blacke is a 336 page novel, the first in a planned series called Supernatural Mysteries.

Genre:

Mystery, Paranormal, Cozy

Opening Line:

I didn’t know how long I sat cross-legged in the snow, waiting for the dead man crumples on the ground in front of my building to wake up.

Synopsis:

In this darkly funny supernatural mystery about an unlikely crime-solving duo that launches a commercial, unique, and genre-blending series, death is only the beginning.

Ruby Young’s new Boston apartment comes with all the usual perks. Windows facing the brick wall of the next-door building. Heat that barely works. A malfunctioning buzzer. Noisy neighbors. A dead body on the sidewalk outside. And of course, a ghost.

Since Cordelia Graves died in her apartment a few months ago, she’s kept up her residency, despite being bored out of her (non-tangible) skull and frustrated by her new roommate. When her across-the-hall neighbor, Jake Macintyre, is shot and killed in an apparent mugging gone wrong outside their building, Cordelia is convinced there’s more to it and is determined to bring his killer to justice.

Unfortunately, Cordelia, being dead herself, can’t solve the mystery alone. She has to enlist the help of the obnoxiously perky, living tenant of her apartment. Ruby is twenty, annoying, and has never met a houseplant she couldn’t kill. But she also can do everything Cordelia can’t, from interviewing suspects to researching Jake on the library computers that go up in a puff of smoke if Cordelia gets too close. The roommates form an unlikely friendship as they get closer to the truth about Jake’s death…and maybe other dangerous secrets as well.

My Thoughts:

This book features a murder mystery investigation by an unlikely duo: the ghost of recently deceased Cordelia Graves, and Ruby, the twenty year old who moved into her apartment after her death.

The writing was decent and there were fun elements to the story, but the pacing was not ideal. After the murder being investigated occurs and the initial evidence collected, there is zero advancement in this regard until very near to the end. What there is instead is learning a lot about Cordelia’s life before she ghosted, which was fine and relevant to the overall arc of the series, but also a whole lot of repeating the same information already provided over and over again. The characters comment on how strange it is that a mugger would not take their victim’s nice phone again and again, and I think the job duties of the front desk position at software startup TrendCelerate were listed for us at least three times. Cordelia’s limitations and bonus abilities as a ghost are also revisited many times, going over the same information. The attempted red herrings were not super successful either.

Overall I was mostly able to enjoy this paranormal story for it’s fun and quirky elements, but as a mystery it didn’t work as well as it might.

That being said, it definitely has its charms, and if the description tickles your fancy at all I do think you could consider giving it a shot yourself.

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press and Minotaur Books for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

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Book Review: A GRIM REAPER’S GUIDE TO CATCHING A KILLER by Maxie Dara

| Jessica Crawford

A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Catching a Killer by Maxie Dara was published by Berkley in 2024, and is the first in the SCYTHE Mystery series, although this story works as a standalone.

Genre:

Mystery

Opening Line:

I tapped the address in my file with the lid of the pen I’d been chewing on.

My Thoughts

I took this delightful mystery in via audio (the narration was fantastic!)

Kathy works for a company called S.C.Y.T.H.E. as a collector–she goes to the scene of a death and transports the person’s soul to the appropriate location for processing into the afterlife. But the soul of 17 year old Conner convinces her he was murdered by someone in her organization. They must investigate what really happened and why it was covered up, all before Conner’s soul becomes fated to be stuck on Earth forever as a ghost. All this while 42 year old Kathy is going through a divorce and pregnant with her first child.

The mystery was all well and good, but it was the relationships that made this one so touching. Conner really felt a lack of love from his parents, and Kathy worries she will be a terrible parent. The two of them wind up helping each other out far beyond working together to save Conner from an eternity as a ghost. This found family aspect was so sweet!

The narrative style of this book is super amusing, and I let out some laughs here and there. The story definitely left me with some questions about details (what exactly does Kathy do at her cubicle in the office all day every day for a job as what amounts to a currier?) But it was sweet and funny enough that these things didn’t bother me overmuch. I really enjoyed this one!

🔥 No steamy content

🔪 No on-page violence or gruesome content

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Book Review: THE BAD ONES by Melissa Albert

| Jessica Crawford

Wow, I couldn’t get enough of this supernatural YA mystery!

Four people go missing during the course of a single night, the only apparent connection among them being that each is either a student or a teacher at Palmetto High School. Nora’s best friend is one of the vanished. But Becca has left clues for Nora, as if she knew she was about to be gone. The clues all lead back to the goddess game, a local childhood tradition based on urban legend. But what if it’s actually more than a game? And what if the thing called goddess is actually something much darker?

I found Nora to be a refreshing main POV character, and in general I appreciate how the author writes teens. I liked the fact that Nora’s friendship with Becca was complicated. I did balk a bit at the style of prose (for example, I recall a line that went something like: “The wind tasted spiky and wild.”) But that didn’t stop me from having great fun reading the story! It’s deliciously spooky, intriguing, mysterious, and emotional, with just a splash of romance. Wonderful!

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