Nenia's Updates

Nenia is 30% done with Just a Highland Fling

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 02:09:01 -0700

Nenia Campbell is 30% done with Just a Highland Fling.
Nenia wrote: One thing I love about this book is how it highlights the loneliness of being a child-free, single adult, and how difficult it is to make friends when you don't have those sorts of built-in social groups that come from spouses or children. This is something that doesn't get talked about a lot and it is so validating to see it brought up here.

Adam, Mine.

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 19:09:30 -0700

4 stars
Shelves: black-author, queer, m-m, horror, gothic, ya, les-arcs-de-triomphes, historical-fiction
If you watched Guillermo del Toro's take on Frankenstein and asked yourself, "What's next?" pick up this book. K. Ancrum's take on Mary Shelley's Frankstein is a clever play on the classic story, steeped in dark alchemy and slow-paced moody gothic atmosphere.

Elias's story is utterly tragic and Victor is the classic case of pride going before a fall. Watching Elias hunt Victor down all over Europe is only surpassed by the chilling allegory of Victor being ousted from the society whose approval he craves most because of his greedy, unethical ambition. ADAM, MINE is such a brilliant, amazing example of what YA books can offer, especially at the older end of the demographic.

I will say that there is some animal cruelty and very graphic gore, which was at times almost too much for me, but it's tastefully done and is an integral part of the characters' respective mythologies. And oh my god, the writing? Absolutely masterful and inspiring. I definitely need to check out more of her other books.

Thanks to the publisher for the review copy!

4 stars

Release

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 21:31:27 -0700

5 stars
Shelves: thriller-mystery
I had to get RELEASE on interlibrary loan because it doesn't appear to have been released (ha!) in ebook in the US and the paperback appears to be out of print. I recently reread STOLEN in anticipation of this sequel (published over ten years later) and one of my takeaways from STOLEN was that it didn't *feel* like the romance so many people were calling it if you read between the lines. I mean, apart from the fact that it doesn't have a happy ending, Gemma was a sixteen-year-old girl and this man who's nine years older than her has been watching her since she was a child, only to drug her, kidnap her, and hold her captive in the Outback to be his. Not only that but it's revealed that he lied about at least one thing to win her over to his side. Why not all of them? I asked myself. A manipulator is a manipulator.

After reading this sequel, I'm even more convinced that Christopher didn't intend STOLEN to be read the way it was and she wrote this second book out of spite. Because RELEASE is so much darker, and even more morally complex than the first book. Gemma, who has changed her name to Kate, is now a fucked-up woman in her mid-twenties who works at a travel agency and dates unsatisfying men, while thinking constantly about the event that happened in year teen years and changed her irrevocably-- internally and to the public.

RELEASE is a chilling dissection of victimhood. Kate herself doesn't feel like a victim but she talks about how people sexualized her crime, and how being kidnapped because a crazed maniac saw something in her caused her to be an almost fetishistic object of fascination for men and women alike. She role-plays CNC and primal to have control over that danger that once threatened her as an innocent child, and she chooses men who remind her of her kidnapper so she can reject them and have full control. Except she doesn't have control. She doesn't have the closure of knowing that she left her mark on the man who indelibly left his mark on her. And when she finds out he's getting released from prison, she has a mental break and decides to kidnap him and take him back to the Outback where everything first started.

While reading this, I wondered several times if Christopher is friends or critique partners with another Australian author, Emily Maguire, because so many beats in this reminded me of TAMING THE BEAST, another book about a teenage girl who ends up on a self-destructive path in an attempt to reclaim the effects of her trauma and how it's shaped her life. Both books were fucked up, difficult, and depressing to read, but brilliant master classes in characterization. I saw so many readers calling this book trash, who were mad that it ruined the first book, but to me it felt like a natural extension of how part of surviving abuse can be softening it, or even romanticizing it, kind of like how fairytales are sometimes used as allegories for abuse when it comes to processing horrible things in a much more removed way (think Angela Carter, Tanith Lee, etc). I actually liked this MORE than the first book and I wish it were more accessible because I honestly think it's brilliant. I hope she writes more sad adult thrillers like this one.

5 stars

Oubliette

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 10:42:12 -0700

4 stars
Shelves: gothic, horror, fantasm, vampires, les-arcs-de-triomphes
I have loved literally everything I've read by L.V. Russell, so when I found out she had a new book coming out-- with THAT cover-- I was absolutely thrilled. OUBLIETTE drips atmosphere from its very beginning where we learn that Rue, our heroine, lives in the gothic castle of Folkehaven with her mother, a vampire who must be sated, who feeds upon people (mostly men) who have wronged others.

But hunger, and not morality, is her ultimate motive, and she would be the first to admit that when she runs out of sinners, the good and the kind would be the next on the chopping block.

This is a story told in mirror, of mother and daughter, that treads upon the needle-fine point of where goodness and evil intermix. Both Rue and her mother are born to a world where neither of them are needed or wanted, and seeing how their two stories intertwine, and bleed into the other, gives the impression of watching someone plod, steadfastly and despairingly, to their own doom.

Thanks to the publisher for the review copy!

4 stars

Every Exquisite Thing

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 22:26:36 -0700

5 stars
Shelves: ya, gothic, dark-academia, queer, fantasm, sapphic, horror
Listen, I'm a sucker for dark academia and EVERY EXQUISITE THING sounded absolutely incredible-- and it IS. Loosely inspired by The Portrait of Dorian Grey, this is the story of Penny and Davina, two rivals at Dorian drama school. As the daughter of a celebrity model, Penny thinks her looks have her role of Mrs. Macbeth in the bag, but then Davina walks on the stage, late, and moves the audience to tears. Desperate for the role, and the validation it will bring, Penny blackmails their teacher with a big secret about Davina. Which gets her the role but also so much more than she bargained for.

Because as it turns out, Dorian might just be... cursed.

I'm going to be totally honest, this book was MUCH darker than I thought it would be. Chapter ten, especially, was a lot with major triggers for gore/body horror and animal deaths. Eating disorders are also a central theme in this book. All of these things are handled well, but you should know going into this book that it's a YA title for a much older audience, think 16 to college-bound freshmen. That said, I fucking loved it. I wish this book had been around when I was in college, because I remember hungering for stories like these, about the grind of the university experience.

Penny and Davina are difficult, even unlikable, characters. But I think this is where their power is. There is a whole arc in this book about how society sets up women to fail, boiling them down to their most superficial parts, only to objectify them even further by putting their appearance over their talent. The detail and care that Steven put into the whole cast, but especially the women, was incredibly done, and I even more appreciated that the two main characters were queer. I think there's a demand for perfection when it comes to marginalized characters, and while I understand why, I think it's important that authors get to write their queer characters as morally gray or even morally black, because every reader deserves to see representations of themselves in the stories they read... and some queer people like reading dark shit.

Anyway, the ending of this book rocked my socks and I think I'm going to have to hunt down everything this author wrote. What a haunting ending. What a glorious, tear-jerking note of hope. I loved it.

4.5 stars

Little Kin

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 22:06:22 -0700

5 stars
Shelves: horror, les-arcs-de-triomphes, gothic, fantasm
I picked up LITTLE KIN on a whim because I was intrigued by the summary and powered through it in less than 24 hours. It took me a little while to get used to the author's writing style, and the slow burn of the plot, but she had such a beautiful way of describing the elements and the heroine's loneliness, that I still wanted to find out more. And oh my god, is this story ever worth the wait.

Set on an island in the Arctic Circle called Rothagisht, the heroine, Cassi, goes there as a sort of linguistic field agent to take notes on the peculiar language and culture. She also has roots there; even though she's adopted, her biological parents are from Rothagisht, which gives her the feeling that she's returning home as soon as she lands on those foggy, bitterly cold shores.

But it's immediately clear that this isn't your typical isolated community. They need to take a vote to see if she is "allowed" to stay, and she gets a weird feeling from the rocks that are stacked up on the shores. She also gets the feeling that people are coming in and out of her house when she's not around, moving things, burning things, and then there's the strange door in her basement that doesn't seem to serve a purpose.

I've seen a few people comparing this author to T. Kingfisher but this book is actually a lot darker than Kingfisher's book, and I don't think that's the best comparison for finding this book's target audience. I'd say that this felt more like THE HAAR by David Sodergren with how it combined an ultimately wholesome message with a lot of tragedy and blood lust, and BONETIDE by Karina Halle with the arctic (in her case, maybe sub-arctic) monster setting and a girl with a doomed inheritance.

Before I was even halfway through this book I bought almost all of the author's other books, so that should tell you how good this is. Absolute cinema.

Thanks to the publisher for the review copy!

4.5 stars

The Lost Duchess of Greyden Castle

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 22:52:37 -0700

3 stars
Shelves: historical-romance, gothic, romance
THE LOST DUCHESS OF GREYDEN CASTLE is a pretty crazy little book. Basically, Vanessa is the younger sister to a beautiful blonde woman named Caroline. She sort of falls in love with this duke named Richard when he comes to their house to take Caroline away. Five years later, her sister dies, and Richard comes back and is like, "Hey, your sister's dead and I need a mother for my child, marry me." And Vanessa is like HE'S IN LOVE WITH ME! I DO!

Right away, it's clear that things at Greyden castle aren't right. Richard has an identical twin named Roland and they seem to hate each other. Richard's sister, Rosamund, has gone mad because she thinks their father paid someone to kill her impoverished fiance. Pregnant out of wedlock, she also has a sinister emo boy son named Penrose who idolizes Lord Byron (as one does). And Caroline and Richard have a child as well, a little girl named Sarah, who will do anything to make Vanessa love her. Oh, and let's not forget the creepy old disapproving dowager, whose sole purpose in life now seems to be to stir the pot.

I'm sure you thinking, THIS FAMILY IS CRAY-CRAY. And you would not be wrong. And of course, it isn't long before the death attempts start. Screams in the night, beaches full of quicksand, and old mementoes of her sister's popping up like a bad dream. It's a recipe for disaster, and Vanessa, being rather not-so-smart in this equation, hurdles towards doom with the eagerness of a kid being told he can pick out "two toys" from the store.

So I thought this book was fun. Vanessa is very much Not Like Other Girls and even though her sister really did sound evil, it was kind of gross that she kept being slut-shamed. Especially when Vanessa did some questionable things herself (frenching her new brother-in-law on the first day, for example, and then spending hours obsessing over it-- or being surprised that her marriage with Richard is a marriage of convenience-- GIRL, you didn't even KNOW him). I found myself skimming and rolling my eyes a little, but there were enough creepy shenanigans that I wanted to know what happened next and I'm a sucker for retro campy gothic pulp.

3 stars