When looking up books with "ghost stories" in the title in my work's library catalog, I stumbled on this book called
Too Bright to See by Kyle Lukoff, which I had remembered one of my Bookstagram friends having read and mentioned on Instagram. It's a middle grade book that won or was nominated for a whole bunch of book awards, such as the Newbery and Stonewall Book Award, so I knew it would be good. The story is about a kid named Bug who lives in a haunted house (not the attraction; their house is literally haunted) and is struggling with trying to fit in with their girly-girl friends, the looming specter of middle school (it's the summer before they start; also, pun intended), and, most of all, the loss of their beloved uncle, who may or may not be haunting them... Poor Bug goes through so much in this book, but there's a happy ending, thankfully. I was genuinely freaked out by all the ghost stuff (I'm a wuss when it comes to horror) and was rooting for them the whole way. I highly recommend this book, as long as the reader can handle a little scary stuff. You don't have to be questioning your gender to enjoy this book or get anything out of it; Bug's feelings about not being a girl the right way and struggling to fit in with the boy-crazy girls in their friend group reminded me of my similar experiences at that age (ah, neurodivergence). ★★★★
I also decided to reread
Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (last read and reviewed
here) during yesterday's evening ref desk shift.
Carmilla predates
Dracula, believe it or not. JSLF does a good job of setting the tone and building atmosphere in this Gothic story. [
Spoilers for a book from 1872 I guess] I had forgotten a lot of the details (all the young women in a like 30 mile radius kept dying off-screen, obviously because Carmilla was killing them) but remembered the gist (like how gay it was). What Carmilla does to get victims is basically a scam that she runs over and over again: her "mother" (possibly also a vampire, since she's described as pale and good-looking) gets some nobleman with a young adult/late teens daughter to agree to take her invalid daughter (Carmilla, under an anagram of her name such as Mircalla or Millarca) into their home while she, the mother, has to run off on an important/emergency trip that she can't bring her daughter on or tell them about. The nobleman and his daughter agree (him, because of chivalry and gentlemen being bound to assist ladies who ask for their help, and her, because she's lonely and wants a friend), and Carmilla/Mircalla/Millarca befriends/seduces the daughter and slowly drains her of life, while finishing off all the other young women in the surrounding area. She's gone by the time the daughter dies and people realize what has happened. Carmilla and her mother run this scam for Laura (the protagonist/narrator/victim) and her father by actually staging a carriage crash right in front of them! That's commitment, I guess, although vampires can only be killed in a specific way, so. Carmilla is killed in this book because the previous victim's father is a friend of Laura's father and goes and tells him about it, and they find Carmilla's grave and kill her before she can kill Laura. Too bad Carmilla can't lez out without killing the object of her affections, although probably for her the two pleasures are bound up together or something. The way the bloodthirsty vampire only preys on women when there's just as many men around (and let's be real, they're easier targets) suggests she gets pleasure from drinking blood and therefore only wants to experience that from/with women. My library's
copy had a few scholarly essays about the book that I skimmed; they were about the usual "fear of the other" stuff that academics like to discuss about vampire books, but with an Irish focus as I guess the book was put together for Irish studies (I was confused about this until I realized that). I think the author of
Carmilla was Irish. ★★★.5, not really spicy enough to earn a chili pepper
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