Haunted Ever After
By Jean DeLuca
Visitors often wear out their welcome in tourist spots. But in Boneyard Key, the small Florida town in Jen DeLuca’s HAUNTED EVER AFTER (Berkley, 352 pp., paperback, $19), it’s the locals who are lingering. Turns out the “most haunted town” slogan is more than just a marketing shtick, and the place is unusually full of ghosts.
Nick, the proprietor of a haunted cafe, and Cassie, Boneyard Key’s newest homeowner, both feel as though friends and loved ones have moved on without them. Nick has seen his ex and his parents leave the town for greener pastures elsewhere, while Cassie felt isolated as her Orlando friends coupled up and focused on their growing families. Buying a house somewhere new seemed like a way to jumpstart her life. But unfortunately the historic cottage she purchased belongs to Mean Mrs. Hawkins, Boneyard Key’s most notorious ghost, who’s not at all happy to have a roommate.
Cassie takes refuge from eldritch shenanigans in Nick’s cafe and a connection sparks, but she wonders if that’s enough to keep her in town when Mrs. Hawkins is putting so much energy into driving her away.
The tension in this romance is elegantly poised around knowing when to hold on and when to let go — and the Gothic plot in the tropical setting makes this a standout paranormal.
Rules for Ghosting
By Shelly Jay Shore
For a deeper dive into afterlives, I recommend Shelly Jay Shore’s RULES FOR GHOSTING (Dell, 400 pp., paperback, $18), about Ezra, a trans Jewish man who grew up in his family’s funeral parlor and who also happens to see ghosts. Ghosts like the dead husband of his very attractive neighbor Jonathan, whose life becomes increasingly entwined with Ezra’s own.
The richness of this book left me breathless: how carefully Ezra works to square his trans self with the gendered requirements of Jewish rituals, the fragility of love after loss, the burden of feeling like you’re the only one who can hold a group of squabbling people together. It also brims with such delectable drama that I had to pause mid-scene to find the nearest person and dish as though it were real-world gossip.
The City in Glass
By Nghi Vo
For those of us still chasing that “This is How You Lose the Time War” high, Nghi Vo offers us THE CITY IN GLASS (Tordotcom, 224 pp., $24), a fantasy love story between a demon who nurtures a human city and the destroying angel who levels it to the ground.
The demon Vitrine has long made the city of Azril her home, manipulating human families and guilds as the individuals flicker in and out of life like so many fireflies. Then four angels descend and, for reasons we never learn, burn everything and everyone into ash. Wounded and howling with grief, Vitrine manages to curse one of the angels as they depart — chaining him to her city with a piece of her own heart. Now they’re trapped together, inescapably bound, tormented and tormenting by turns.
The one thing Vitrine and the angel have on their side is time — time for a city to be reborn, time for the grief that loomed over the early pages to become more ache than injury. This is an enchantingly mutable world, layered with microstories, where even the most stubborn immortal can change without realizing it.
Long Live Evil
By Sarah Rees Brennan
Lastly, we have a sharp romantasy with a howl of a cliffhanger ending: Sarah Rees Brennan’s LONG LIVE EVIL (Orbit, 464 pp., paperback, $19.99). Rae, 19, is dying of cancer while her sister reads a book aloud at her bedside. When a mysterious stranger offers Rae the chance to escape into the world of her favorite fantasy series and possibly survive, she leaps at it.
She ends up in the body of the villainess, the Beauty Dipped in Blood, stepsister of the heroine and about to be executed — unless she can scheme her way to survival. She persuades some secondary villains to help: a treacherous maidservant, a chillingly murderous but passionately devoted bodyguard.
This story is both a sendup and vindication of fantasy romance in all its glorious mess. Robbed of a future in the real world, Rae has nothing to lose in the fictional realm; given the choice between a dangerous magical kingdom and the anesthetizing indifference of hospital bureaucracy, it’s far more exciting to double-cross a monarch or two. There’s also something darkly vindicating in the way Rae’s cancer experience leaves her unfazed by the fantasy world’s violence and pain.
And like this month’s other books, Brennan’s story saunters right up to death and says: Sure it’s inevitable, but what happens afterward? Which disasters are truly the finale, and which are secretly new beginnings? Do we linger like ghosts with our miserable grudges, or can we let ourselves move forward, even if the ultimate outcome is unknowable?
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