Welcome to Litsy!

I listened to this one while down with a particular bad cold. The cold happened to go perfectly with this fever dream of a novel where lived trauma becomes literal horror. Thanks #netgalley for access to this audiobook.

Nightmares are real. Secrets, violence, parental neglect & sibling rivalry unspool in a black family. Racism makes the terrible more terrifying. And dark humor keeps the reader laughing at unexpected times. 4.5 stars for this scary, funny horror novel & sibling drama. #horror #familydrama

(2025) Here's one of the better horror stories I've read in a while, about a sister and two brothers in a difficult family situation. When one brother gets into trouble with the law, they escape to a cabin in the woods where family history, present reality, and the sister's nightmares blur together. It's a suspenseful, surreal, and very smart story about family trust and family trauma, and resonates with experiences of my own extended family

Best. Opening. Paragraph. Ever. I love it! 😹

“Calla was wearing the wrong bra. This sort of confrontation called for her sports bra, the one with the six non-nonsense hooks anchoring her down and all the sex appeal of old goulash. Instead, she was in her limpest bra, the one with the missing underwire, making her right breast pop over the cup like a gopher.”

My library literally just barely put the contact paper on when I checked this out!🫶🏼

If this is her debut, it‘s clear we can expect great things from Neena Viel. It is unlike anything else I can remember reading. It‘s dark, creepy, horrific, and filled with raw emotion. The supernatural element is wild, but makes complete sense. The writing is compelling, vivid, and hard to put down. It‘s violent and gross, at times, but underpinning the whole thing is the fragile but unbreakable bond between siblings. Out tomorrow.