Top Ten Tuesday; Most Anticipated Books Releasing in the Second Half of 2025
It's Tuesday again, which means it's time for another Top Ten Tuesday post courtesy of That Artsy Reader Girl and today's topic is most anticipated books releasing in the second half of 2025, and as I am me, I'll obviously focus on the more spooky releases.
Surf, sand, neon lights, and vampire jokes have been Jenna's life ever since her former best friend, Georgie, spilled her darkest secret to the whole school. A secret that's haunted her since she was little-she was attacked by something inhuman. When she stumbles across blood-drained bodies on the boardwalk and is attacked by a vampire-looking monster, old nightmares come back to haunt her. Now in the crosshairs of an undead serial killer, Jenna's convinced the killer is also Georgie's new boyfriend. Dodging a murderer is easier than talking to her enemy, but when Georgie starts changing in even more monstrous ways, Jenna has to suck it up and work with the person she hates most if she wants any hope of stopping a killer before they both end up dead.
Inspired by The Lost Boys and 90s teen horror novels, Blood on the Boardwalk is a modern day horror comedy perfect for teens (and anyone) looking to dip their toe into the horror genre, and adults looking for the dopamine hit of nostalgic horror easter eggs!
Summer, 1989: ten-year-old Suzanne is drawn like a magnet to her father’s forbidden world of electric guitars and tricked-out cars. When her mother remarries, she jumps at the chance to tag along on the concert tour that just might be Gil and the Kills’ wild ride to glory. But fame has sharper fangs than anybody realized, and as the band blazes up the charts, internal power struggles set Gil and his group on a collision course destined for a bloody reckoning—one shrouded in mystery and lore for decades to come.
The only witness to a desperate act of violence, Suzanne spends the next twenty-nine years trying to disappear. She trades the music and mayhem of her youth for the quiet of the suburbs and the company of her mild-mannered husband Rob. But when her father’s sudden death resurrects the troubled past she tried so hard to bury, she leaves it all behind and hits the road in search of answers. Hitching her fate and Gil’s beloved car to two vagabonds who call an old Airstream trailer home, she finds everything she thought she’d lost desire, adventure, and the woman she once wanted to be. But Rob refuses to let her go. Determined to bring her back where she belongs, he chases her across the country—and drives her to a desperation all her own.
Drenched in knock-down drag-out rock and roll, Hot Wax is a raucous, breakneck ride to hell and back—where getting lost might be the only way to find yourself and save your soul.
In 1765, plague sweeps through Zacatecas. Alba flees with her wealthy merchant parents and fiancé, Carlos, to his family’s isolated mine for refuge. But safety proves fleeting as other dangers soon bare their teeth: Alba begins suffering from strange hallucinations, sleepwalking, and violent convulsions. She senses something cold lurking beneath her skin. Something angry. Something wrong.
Elías, haunted by a troubled past, came to the New World to make his fortune and escape his family’s legacy of greed. Alba, as his cousin’s betrothed, is none of his business. Which is of course why he can’t help but notice her every time she enters a room or the growing tension between them… and why he notices her deteriorate when the demon’s thirst for blood grows stronger.
It's the summer before high school, and Ronny Nguyen finds herself too young for work, too old for cartoons. Her days are spent in a small backyard, dozing off to trashy magazines on a plastic lawn chair. In stark contrast stands her brother Tommy, the pride and joy of their immigrant parents: a popular honor student destined to be the first in the family to attend college. The thought of Tommy leaving for college fills Ronny with dread, as she contemplates the quiet house she will be left alone in with her parents, Me and Ba.
Their parents rarely speak of their past in Vietnam, except through the lens of food. The family's meals are a tapestry of cultural memory: thick spring rolls with slim and salty nem chua, and steaming bowls of pho tái with thin, delicate slices of blood-red beef. In the aftermath of the war, Me and Ba taught Ronny and Tommy that meat was a dangerous luxury, a symbol of survival that should never be taken for granted.
But when tragedy strikes, Ronny's world is upended. Her sense of self and her understanding of her family are shattered. A few nights later, at her first high school party, a boy crosses the line, and Ronny is overtaken by a force larger than herself. This newfound power comes with an insatiable hunger for raw meat, a craving that is both a saving grace and a potential destroyer.
What Hunger is a visceral, emotional journey through the bursts and pitfalls of female rage. Ronny’s Vietnamese lineage and her mother’s emotional memory play a crucial role in this tender ode to generational trauma and mother-daughter bonding.
Ellen, a deeply closeted lesbian spends all her time in solitude, restoring films at a failing archive in New York City.
When a group of German academics present her with a print of an infamous exploitation film believed to have been destroyed during the Holocaust, Ellen finds herself forced to confront her own repressed sexuality. And the more she works on the restoration, the more obsessed she becomes over its depictions of occult practices and queer debauchery.
She’s soon convinced that the acts portrayed in the film are not fiction, but reality. And they’re happening to her…
Perfect for fans of Iain Reid, this slow-burning horror novel will sweep you out, and like a churning ocean, before you realize, it will pull you under its turbulent spell.
A remote deserted island off the coast of Maine holds dark memories and disturbing secrets for the family who once lived on its rocky shores. Though nineteen-year-old Sally de Gama remembers nothing about the accident that took place on Captain’s Island and destroyed her family when she was a little girl, she suffers from intense anxiety, pervasive bouts of dissociation, and gruesome nightmares.
All Sally knows is that her mother hasn’t spoken since the accident that took the life of Sally’s twin sister. Following the tragedy, her family fled and never looked back.
When her mother suddenly dies, Sally and three college friends travel to the island–for her friends it’s an adventure to a strange, abandoned place. For Sally, it’s a desperate bid to recover some of her memories and understand what really happened to her family. But when memories begin to return, Sally is overcome by grief and rage that threaten to plunge her into madness–a madness that is fed by a malevolent presence stalking them on the island.
At a solitary farm out on the plains of Texas, south of Abilene, a posse led by Rollie Hugo inflicts a shocking act of violence on the Haney family. The matriarch of the Haneys -what's left of them- is Alice: she's in her fifties, a first-generation Chinese immigrant. She soon finds that justice is not going to be easy to come by, and so she sets out alone on a bloody path to vengeance.
What she finds in Hugo Creek is a fiefdom cut off from the world. Where deserters have their hearts ripped out, and the eviscerations are attributed to a ghostly figure that walks the mining camp at night. To have any hope of avenging her murdered husband, Alice must break the fearful spell -or shatter the clever illusion- that binds the town. And that means first unraveling the mystery of the Bleeding Woman…
Under the constant surveillance of the staff of Blackthorn House, Evelyn struggles to find answers. Unable to gain any insight from the frightened locals in the nearby village, Evelyn and her trusted servant, Lilly, must seek answers from the dead. They learn that the Black family has long kept a dark and terrible secret. A secret that threatens both of their lives and, now, the life of Evelyn’s unborn baby. A secret involving a bargain paid in blood.
When Jen Monroe hears her father's remains have been found, she returns home to disprove his death, only to find the forests of rural Washington are hiding horrors beyond imagining
Seven years ago, Jen Monroe left behind her hometown of Barrow, Washington after her father, a forest ranger passionate about protecting old trees from the aggressive logging business that runs their small town, vanished seemingly into thin air. She vowed never to return...until she gets a text from her estranged mother. Her father's remains have been found.
It seems impossible to Jen who has always believed her father is still alive, and she returns home, determined to find out what really happened. When her ex-boyfriend proposes a camping trip into the woods in her father's memory, it feels like the opportunity Jen had been hoping for: to find her father. To find the truth.
But what she finds lurking in the ancient, impenetrable forest may be deeper, darker and deadlier than she could have ever imagined. And it has no intention of letting her leave.
Deeply unsettling and thoroughly creepy, this is feminist horror for those who have always known there’s something waiting in the woods.
Scholarship student Mars Chang has finally been accepted into the most prestigious dance academy—and she’ll do anything to stay.
Earning a scholarship to the Allegra Academy summer intensive was supposed to fix everything for Mars Chang. The academy is owned and run by the Bechlers, a big pharma family. And if Mars befriends the right girls, she could unlock the doors to the Ivy League future of her dreams.
When Mars is unexpectedly assigned to room with Alex Bechler, she knows impressing Alex will make or break all her plans. Alex is annoyingly attractive, the best dancer at the academy, and her great-aunt runs the program. So when the headmistress pulls Mars aside and asks her to swap Alex’s supplements with a new Bechler product, APL, in exchange for year-round admittance, Mars can’t say no.
But as Mars gets to know Alex and how much she dislikes her family and ballet, swapping the pills proves harder than Mars bargained for. Knowing Alex better only makes it clearer how unfair the academy is. So Mars decides to help another scholarship student by letting her try the supplements. At first, the pills give the girl an instant edge in class. But when they also produce terrifying side effects, Mars suspects that APL might not be safe after all.
But how can Mars, the new girl, convince the academy’s best that her life is in danger without jeopardizing her own dreams in the process?
Here's mine ten spine chilling picks.
Blood on the Boardwalk by Donna Taylor
Description from Goodreads
Vampire Slayer wasn't an option on career day...Surf, sand, neon lights, and vampire jokes have been Jenna's life ever since her former best friend, Georgie, spilled her darkest secret to the whole school. A secret that's haunted her since she was little-she was attacked by something inhuman. When she stumbles across blood-drained bodies on the boardwalk and is attacked by a vampire-looking monster, old nightmares come back to haunt her. Now in the crosshairs of an undead serial killer, Jenna's convinced the killer is also Georgie's new boyfriend. Dodging a murderer is easier than talking to her enemy, but when Georgie starts changing in even more monstrous ways, Jenna has to suck it up and work with the person she hates most if she wants any hope of stopping a killer before they both end up dead.
Inspired by The Lost Boys and 90s teen horror novels, Blood on the Boardwalk is a modern day horror comedy perfect for teens (and anyone) looking to dip their toe into the horror genre, and adults looking for the dopamine hit of nostalgic horror easter eggs!
Hot Wax by M. L. Rio
Description from Goodreads
The new novel from the bestselling author of If We Were Villains and Graveyard Shift—a vivid and immersive tale of one woman’s reckless mission to make sense of the events that shattered her childhood, and made her who she isSummer, 1989: ten-year-old Suzanne is drawn like a magnet to her father’s forbidden world of electric guitars and tricked-out cars. When her mother remarries, she jumps at the chance to tag along on the concert tour that just might be Gil and the Kills’ wild ride to glory. But fame has sharper fangs than anybody realized, and as the band blazes up the charts, internal power struggles set Gil and his group on a collision course destined for a bloody reckoning—one shrouded in mystery and lore for decades to come.
The only witness to a desperate act of violence, Suzanne spends the next twenty-nine years trying to disappear. She trades the music and mayhem of her youth for the quiet of the suburbs and the company of her mild-mannered husband Rob. But when her father’s sudden death resurrects the troubled past she tried so hard to bury, she leaves it all behind and hits the road in search of answers. Hitching her fate and Gil’s beloved car to two vagabonds who call an old Airstream trailer home, she finds everything she thought she’d lost desire, adventure, and the woman she once wanted to be. But Rob refuses to let her go. Determined to bring her back where she belongs, he chases her across the country—and drives her to a desperation all her own.
Drenched in knock-down drag-out rock and roll, Hot Wax is a raucous, breakneck ride to hell and back—where getting lost might be the only way to find yourself and save your soul.
The Possession of Alba Díaz by Isabel Cañas
Description from Goodreads
When a demonic presence awakens deep in a Mexican silver mine, the young woman it seizes must turn to the one man she shouldn’t trust… from bestselling author Isabel Cañas.In 1765, plague sweeps through Zacatecas. Alba flees with her wealthy merchant parents and fiancé, Carlos, to his family’s isolated mine for refuge. But safety proves fleeting as other dangers soon bare their teeth: Alba begins suffering from strange hallucinations, sleepwalking, and violent convulsions. She senses something cold lurking beneath her skin. Something angry. Something wrong.
Elías, haunted by a troubled past, came to the New World to make his fortune and escape his family’s legacy of greed. Alba, as his cousin’s betrothed, is none of his business. Which is of course why he can’t help but notice her every time she enters a room or the growing tension between them… and why he notices her deteriorate when the demon’s thirst for blood grows stronger.
What Hunger by Catherine Dang
Description from Goodreads
A haunting coming-of-age tale following the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, Ronny Nyugen, as she grapples with the weight of generational trauma while navigating the violent power of teenage girlhood, for fans of Jennifer’s Body and Little Fires Everywhere.It's the summer before high school, and Ronny Nguyen finds herself too young for work, too old for cartoons. Her days are spent in a small backyard, dozing off to trashy magazines on a plastic lawn chair. In stark contrast stands her brother Tommy, the pride and joy of their immigrant parents: a popular honor student destined to be the first in the family to attend college. The thought of Tommy leaving for college fills Ronny with dread, as she contemplates the quiet house she will be left alone in with her parents, Me and Ba.
Their parents rarely speak of their past in Vietnam, except through the lens of food. The family's meals are a tapestry of cultural memory: thick spring rolls with slim and salty nem chua, and steaming bowls of pho tái with thin, delicate slices of blood-red beef. In the aftermath of the war, Me and Ba taught Ronny and Tommy that meat was a dangerous luxury, a symbol of survival that should never be taken for granted.
But when tragedy strikes, Ronny's world is upended. Her sense of self and her understanding of her family are shattered. A few nights later, at her first high school party, a boy crosses the line, and Ronny is overtaken by a force larger than herself. This newfound power comes with an insatiable hunger for raw meat, a craving that is both a saving grace and a potential destroyer.
What Hunger is a visceral, emotional journey through the bursts and pitfalls of female rage. Ronny’s Vietnamese lineage and her mother’s emotional memory play a crucial role in this tender ode to generational trauma and mother-daughter bonding.
Black Flame by Gretchen Felker-Martin
Description from Goodreads
Manhunt author Gretchen Felker-Martin is back with Black Flame, a historical horror about one woman's deadly obsession with a haunted film, perfect for fans of Midsommar and Night Film.Ellen, a deeply closeted lesbian spends all her time in solitude, restoring films at a failing archive in New York City.
When a group of German academics present her with a print of an infamous exploitation film believed to have been destroyed during the Holocaust, Ellen finds herself forced to confront her own repressed sexuality. And the more she works on the restoration, the more obsessed she becomes over its depictions of occult practices and queer debauchery.
She’s soon convinced that the acts portrayed in the film are not fiction, but reality. And they’re happening to her…
When We Talk To The Dead by Ian Chorão
Description from Netgalley
The island was abandoned years ago–but something dark was left behind, and it’s waiting for those bold enough to return.Perfect for fans of Iain Reid, this slow-burning horror novel will sweep you out, and like a churning ocean, before you realize, it will pull you under its turbulent spell.
A remote deserted island off the coast of Maine holds dark memories and disturbing secrets for the family who once lived on its rocky shores. Though nineteen-year-old Sally de Gama remembers nothing about the accident that took place on Captain’s Island and destroyed her family when she was a little girl, she suffers from intense anxiety, pervasive bouts of dissociation, and gruesome nightmares.
All Sally knows is that her mother hasn’t spoken since the accident that took the life of Sally’s twin sister. Following the tragedy, her family fled and never looked back.
When her mother suddenly dies, Sally and three college friends travel to the island–for her friends it’s an adventure to a strange, abandoned place. For Sally, it’s a desperate bid to recover some of her memories and understand what really happened to her family. But when memories begin to return, Sally is overcome by grief and rage that threaten to plunge her into madness–a madness that is fed by a malevolent presence stalking them on the island.
There's Something Wrong With Hugo Creek by Lumen Reese
Description from Netgalley
"The Hugos have run Hugo Creek for thirty years, and that boy's been rotten to the core for almost as long."At a solitary farm out on the plains of Texas, south of Abilene, a posse led by Rollie Hugo inflicts a shocking act of violence on the Haney family. The matriarch of the Haneys -what's left of them- is Alice: she's in her fifties, a first-generation Chinese immigrant. She soon finds that justice is not going to be easy to come by, and so she sets out alone on a bloody path to vengeance.
What she finds in Hugo Creek is a fiefdom cut off from the world. Where deserters have their hearts ripped out, and the eviscerations are attributed to a ghostly figure that walks the mining camp at night. To have any hope of avenging her murdered husband, Alice must break the fearful spell -or shatter the clever illusion- that binds the town. And that means first unraveling the mystery of the Bleeding Woman…
The Secrets of Blackthorn House by Marie McWilliams
Description from Netgalley
After a whirlwind romance, Evelyn is excited to start her new life with her husband, Peter. But when the sudden passing of Peter’s uncle gives him the title Lord Black, along with the family’s remote manor, Blackthorn House, she finds herself in the middle of the wild Yorkshire Moors, separated from the only life she has ever known. She quickly realizes something is wrong with Blackthorn House: children’s laughter can be heard throughout the halls, the constant fog is full of wailing specters, and her dreams are haunted by an entity wearing her mother’s corpse like a suit. Furthermore, her new husband has become a stranger to her, treating her with barely veiled disdain. Under the constant surveillance of the staff of Blackthorn House, Evelyn struggles to find answers. Unable to gain any insight from the frightened locals in the nearby village, Evelyn and her trusted servant, Lilly, must seek answers from the dead. They learn that the Black family has long kept a dark and terrible secret. A secret that threatens both of their lives and, now, the life of Evelyn’s unborn baby. A secret involving a bargain paid in blood.
They Fear Not Men In The Woods by Gretchen McNeil
Description from Netgalley
For fans of Midsommar, Catriona Ward, and Sarah Gailey, this addictively readable modern horror novel unfolds like a movie with a climax you’ll never see comingWhen Jen Monroe hears her father's remains have been found, she returns home to disprove his death, only to find the forests of rural Washington are hiding horrors beyond imagining
Seven years ago, Jen Monroe left behind her hometown of Barrow, Washington after her father, a forest ranger passionate about protecting old trees from the aggressive logging business that runs their small town, vanished seemingly into thin air. She vowed never to return...until she gets a text from her estranged mother. Her father's remains have been found.
It seems impossible to Jen who has always believed her father is still alive, and she returns home, determined to find out what really happened. When her ex-boyfriend proposes a camping trip into the woods in her father's memory, it feels like the opportunity Jen had been hoping for: to find her father. To find the truth.
But what she finds lurking in the ancient, impenetrable forest may be deeper, darker and deadlier than she could have ever imagined. And it has no intention of letting her leave.
Deeply unsettling and thoroughly creepy, this is feminist horror for those who have always known there’s something waiting in the woods.
The Devil's In The Dancers by Catherine Yu
Description from Netgalley
Suspiria meets Gorgeous Gruesome Faces in this sapphic horror about fighting the system set at an elite ballet academyScholarship student Mars Chang has finally been accepted into the most prestigious dance academy—and she’ll do anything to stay.
Earning a scholarship to the Allegra Academy summer intensive was supposed to fix everything for Mars Chang. The academy is owned and run by the Bechlers, a big pharma family. And if Mars befriends the right girls, she could unlock the doors to the Ivy League future of her dreams.
When Mars is unexpectedly assigned to room with Alex Bechler, she knows impressing Alex will make or break all her plans. Alex is annoyingly attractive, the best dancer at the academy, and her great-aunt runs the program. So when the headmistress pulls Mars aside and asks her to swap Alex’s supplements with a new Bechler product, APL, in exchange for year-round admittance, Mars can’t say no.
But as Mars gets to know Alex and how much she dislikes her family and ballet, swapping the pills proves harder than Mars bargained for. Knowing Alex better only makes it clearer how unfair the academy is. So Mars decides to help another scholarship student by letting her try the supplements. At first, the pills give the girl an instant edge in class. But when they also produce terrifying side effects, Mars suspects that APL might not be safe after all.
But how can Mars, the new girl, convince the academy’s best that her life is in danger without jeopardizing her own dreams in the process?
I want to read The Possession of Alba Diaz, too!
ReplyDeleteThese all look super creepy. I hope you enjoy them!
ReplyDeleteHappy TTT (on a Wednesday)!