Haley Newlin Archives - Cemetery Dance Online

Review: Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito

Cemetery Dance OnlineFebruary 12, 2025February 5, 2025ReviewsHaley Newlin, Reviews, Victorian Psycho, Virginia FeitoLeave a comment

cover of Victorian Psycho

Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito
Liveright (February 2025)
Reviewed by Haley Newlin

Victorian Psycho is soon to be a feature film from the horror fan-favorite A24, starring Margaret Qualley (The Substance). I heard the news before picking up Virginia Feito’s psychological and gothic horror debut, so I enjoyed envisioning Qualley as the bloodthirsty Ensor governess, Winifred Notty. This read was one of those rare instances where every responsibility of life feels like an interruption. I could not get back to it quickly enough. Continue Reading

Review: Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle

Cemetery Dance OnlineJanuary 29, 2025January 26, 2025ReviewsBury Your Gays, Chuck Tingle, Haley Newlin, ReviewsLeave a comment

Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle
Tor Nightfire (July 2024)
Reviewed by Haley Newlin

Bury Your Gays was my first Chuck Tingle read. The cover features Hollywood’s bright colors, palm trees, and a bloodied sledgehammer to break apart the pretense of glamor. The imagery reminds me of Ti West’s characters, Maxine and Pearl, and their fierce fight for fame.Continue Reading

Review: Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix

Cemetery Dance OnlineJanuary 6, 2025January 5, 2025ReviewsGrady Hendrix, Haley Newlin, Reviews, Witchcraft for Wayward GirlsLeave a comment

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
Berkley (January 14, 2025)
Reviewed by Haley Newlin

Great horror reflects the societal fears of its time. In the 1950s, fear of the unknown and the atomic age inspired classics like Richard Matherson’s I Am Legend and Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney. In the 1960s, distrust in the government worsened, and many feared mental illness and occultism, giving birth to Robert Bloch’s Psycho and Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby. In Witchcraft For Wayward Girls, Grady Hendrix speaks to the evolution of these social anxieties and unrest but prioritizes an often suppressed point of view: women’s.Continue Reading

Review: Sleep Tight by J.H. Markert

Cemetery Dance OnlineNovember 25, 2024ReviewsHaley Newlin, J.H. Markert, Reviews, Sleep TightLeave a comment

cover of Sleep Tight Sleep Tight by J.H. Markert
Crooked Lane (September 2024)
Reviewed by Haley Newlin

Sounds of the animals, like a kennel of demented beasts. The Lost Children had begun to gather on the Devil’s Backbone.

In perhaps his most ambitious tale yet, Sleep Tight, J.H. Markert ensnares readers with a serial killer’s execution. Like the most infamous killers, such as Ted Bundy and Dennis Rader (BTK), Markert’s man on death row was especially elusive because of his theatrics and efforts to appear normal.Continue Reading

Review: Kill Your Darling by Clay McLeod Chapman

Cemetery Dance OnlineNovember 20, 2024November 17, 2024ReviewsClay McLeod Chapman, Haley Newlin, Kill Your Darling, ReviewsLeave a comment

Kill Your Darling by Clay McLeod Chapman
Bad Hand Books (September 2024)
Reviewed by Haley Newlin

It took thirty-eight laps around Billy’s skull to empty the roll of duct tape. They drew two lopsided and unblinking black ovals over his eyes.

Twenty years later, Glenn’s dogged mind runs on a constant loop — Billy kissing a girl at the dance, that squeal of peeling tape, his grim imaginings of his son’s final moments, where his soul may lie, and silvery ghosts. How can he and his wife, Carol, move on with every suspect’s fabric of guilt pulled at like a loose thread and then discarded? Without a conviction? A who or why?Continue Reading

Review: Rest Stop by Nat Cassidy

Cemetery Dance OnlineNovember 13, 2024November 11, 2024ReviewsHaley Newlin, Nat Cassidy, Rest Stop, ReviewsLeave a comment

Rest Stop by Nat Cassidy
Shortwave Media (October 2024)
Reviewed by Haley Newlin

I read Nat Cassidy’s novel Mary: An Awakening of Terror last summer and can’t shake how it made me feel more than a year later. Carpeted in historical and generational trauma, Mary was about women, especially “women who are only invisible until somebody needs to be blamed.”

Above the novel’s intricate weavings of religious fanaticism and Cassidy’s protagonist’s unsettling behavior, Mary is about power and the tendency to mythologize those who claim it like some god. Given the political climate, it’s a haunting reminder that this narrative has long existed in the real world and feels all the more suffocating.

Rest Stop, Cassidy’s latest release, a horror novella about a troubled musician, Abe, traveling to visit a dying relative who tormented him through childhood with spats of disapproval and disappointment, dissects the ghosts of historical trauma.Continue Reading

Review: Through The Midnight Door by Katrina Monroe

Cemetery Dance OnlineAugust 19, 2024August 18, 2024ReviewsHaley Newlin, Katrina Monroe, Reviews, Through the Midnight DoorLeave a comment

cover of Through the Midnight Door Through The Midnight Door by Katrina Monroe
Poisoned Pen Press (August 2024)
Reviewed by Haley Newlin

Who doesn’t love a good jump scare? While some dismiss jump cares as a cheap element in horror, others know that those quick, intense scares can set the stage for complete emotional collapse when done well.

Remember the car scene from Mike Flanagan’s Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House? It was shocking, memorable, and effective. This scene opened the floodgates of the family’s shared trauma and revealed what the lack of communication has since conjured.

Katrina Monroe’s latest release, Through The Midnight Door, accomplishes this several times.Continue Reading

Review: Drencrom by Hamelin Bird

Cemetery Dance OnlineAugust 12, 2024August 12, 2024ReviewsDrencrom, Haley Newlin, Hamelin Bird, ReviewsLeave a comment

cover of Drencrom Drencrom by Hamelin Bird
Piper House (May 2023)
144 pages; $12.95 paperback; $5.99 ebook
Reviewed by Haley Newlin

Hamelin Bird’s Drencrom is a graphic and poetic love letter to Lynchian horror and A Clockwork Orange.

Since getting kicked out of her home, Coda has indulged in a hippie-soul existence without much direction. All of that changes when she scours the dark web for an allegedly “mythical” drug called Drencrom, a crimson-colored liquid with unimaginable power. Continue Reading

Review: Diavola by Jennifer Thorne

Cemetery Dance OnlineJuly 29, 2024July 28, 2024ReviewsDiavola, Haley Newlin, Jennifer Thorne, ReviewsLeave a comment

cover of Diavola Diavola by Jennifer Thorne
Tor Nightfire (March 2024)
Reviewed by Haley Newlin

In 2022, I reviewed Jennifer Thorne’s debut novel, Lute, a folk horror story compared to Ari Aster’s Midsommar, where the town’s adults were impressively desensitized to occult traditions. (Are you thinking of the murderous ritual for the elderly? I can still see Florence Pugh’s face.) The execution of this element lends itself well to an unnerving mystery and a sense of outrage in Lute that made readers devour the pages and does so, once again, in Thorne’s latest release, Diavola.Continue Reading

Review: Cranberry Cove by Hailey Piper

Cemetery Dance OnlineJuly 1, 2024July 2, 2024ReviewsCranberry Cove, Hailey Piper, Haley Newlin, ReviewsLeave a comment

cover of Cranberry Cove Cranberry Cove by Hailey Piper
Bad Hand Books, LLC (April 2024)
Reviewed by Haley Newlin

Hailey Piper creates a haunting atmosphere and writes with stunning prose in her Bram Stoker Award-winning novella Cranberry Cove.

In the desolate halls of the Cranberry Cove Hotel, there’s an evil once called upon but abandoned. Even rodents didn’t dare enter. No one did until Emberly’s boss, Ricard, sent she and her partner, Conner, on a mission after his son was s*xually assaulted. What stands out here is: one, the victim is male, and two, there’s a lot of nuanced information. He didn’t see his attacker. There don’t appear to be secret passages to allow someone to sneak in and out unseen. Still, Richard’s son is instantly believed, a privilege both cisgender and transgender women fight tooth and nail for. Continue Reading

Review: Scribe by Michael R. Goodwin

Cemetery Dance OnlineJune 24, 2024June 19, 2024ReviewsHaley Newlin, Michael R. Goodwin, Reviews, ScribeLeave a comment

cover of Scribe Scribe by Michael R. Goodwin
Dark Pine Publishing (September 2023)
Reviewed by Haley Newlin

In Michael R. Goodwin’s Scribe (the Smolder prequel), an ancient force prowls and feeds in the woods, hungry for women, children, hunters, and whoever should be misfortunate enough to enter the shadows. The Penobscot natives lost several to the evil of the woods, with nothing left of the bodies, only scorched patches of earth.

Finally, an elder arranges a deal, trading sacrifice for immunity.Continue Reading

The Cemetery Dance Interview: The Haunting of Gwendolyn Kiste

Cemetery Dance OnlineJune 14, 2024June 13, 2024InterviewsGwendolyn Kiste, Haley Newlin, Interviews, The Haunting of VelkwoodLeave a comment

banner graphic that says Cemetery Dance Interviews

Author Gwendolyn Kiste — Gwendolyn Kiste

Gwendolyn Kiste is a three-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Haunting of Velkwood, The Rust Maidens, Reluctant Mortals, and most recently, a short story called “Your Mother’s Love Is An Apocalypse” in the Mother Knows Best: Tales of Homemade Horror anthology, foreword by Sadie Hartmann, edited by Lindy Ryan. Kiste has also won the Lambda Literary Award and received the This is Horror award for Novel of the Year.

She doesn’t just tell any old ghost stories. Kiste’s books, like The Haunting of Velkwood, orbit themes of self-identity, complacency, and unbreakable bonds. To her, “Everyone’s life is like a haunted house.” Perhaps that’s why her books linger, giving readers a ghostly book hangover.

Kiste spoke to Cemetery Dance about The Haunting of Velkwood, gothic horror, themes of complacency and accountability in her latest novel, and, of course, ghost stories (her specialty).Continue Reading

Review: My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna Van Veen

Cemetery Dance OnlineMay 29, 2024May 19, 2024ReviewsHaley Newlin, Johanna Van Veen, My Darling Dreadful Thing, ReviewsLeave a comment

cover of My Darling Dreadful Thing My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna Van Veen
Poisoned Pen Press (May 2024)
384 pages
Reviewed by Haley Newlin

My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna Van Veen exceptionally invokes gothic tropes such as unearthing buried secrets at a dire cost, and relics of her predecessors to craft a chilling, sapphic love story that is possessive, haunting, and beautiful.Continue Reading

Review: Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay

Cemetery Dance OnlineMay 21, 2024May 16, 2024ReviewsHaley Newlin, Horror Movie, Paul Tremblay, ReviewsLeave a comment

Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay
William Morrow (June 11, 2024)
288 pages
Reviewed by Haley Newlin

In his classic, fatalistic tone, Bram Stoker Award-winner Paul Tremblay cleverly assembles a haunting level of empathy between readers, the narrator, and characters in Horror Movie. At times the story felt all-too real, which will appease fans of Tremblay’s previous work like A Head Full of Ghosts (2015) and The Pallbearers Club (2022). Down the road, maybe even a few weeks from now, the characters’ names from Horror Movie may evade you but you’ll never escape the reality-bending and unsettling “horror void.” Continue Reading

Review: Grasshands by Kyle Winkler

Cemetery Dance OnlineApril 3, 2024March 24, 2024ReviewsGrasshands, Haley Newlin, Kyle Winkler, ReviewsLeave a comment

cover of Grasshands Grasshands by Kyle Winkler
JournalStone Publishing (January 2024)
216 pages; $16.95 paperback; $6.95 e-book
Reviewed by Haley Newlin

In Kyle Winkler’s Grasshands, the line between reality and nightmare trembles, unsteady, before dispersing into scattering spiders.

“Farce lands first. Tragedy knocks later.”

Throughout this read, I often thought of Ray Bradbury, who wrote stories like Fahrenheit 451, emphasizing the power of knowledge and caution against its misuse and exploitation. Winkler revived Bradbury’s calling card of creating characters who grappled with the pursuit of knowledge, whether for the exposure of hidden truths or devotion for discovery and conjured an unputdownable biblio-horror novel. Continue Reading

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