Three monster stories
Accidentally back-to-back read two falling in love with a monster girl type books. Then not so accidentally a sort-of third. Which seemed like a fun thing to talk about.
Hungerstone by Kat Dunn is a retelling of Sheridan le Fanu's Carmilla set in Britain's industrial north. Parts of it are very source-canon and parts diverge - precisely the parts you want and expect. It's doing the Gothic House thing but houses never work on me. I loved Carmilla's characterisation. All prickly and continental and not to be found in Debrett's.
Also, I didn't realise this when I started Hungerstone, but I have previously read Kat Dunn's dark fairytale thing, Bitterthorn. Which I was a bit ??? about so it might be a good thing I didn't know.
I read the first two chapters of The Maiden and Her Monster by Maddie Martinez in Reactor Mag then got the whole thing asap, so that marketing worked a treat. There's a lot of thesaurus going on, I will say that. I thought it was a 'deep dark wood' sort of a book then halfway we're in an urban political intrigue sort of a book. Which I'm not against, and probably should have seen coming. It's a nice slow burn, I appreciated that.
If I were in the market for a monster girlfriend I'd pick a tall stoic stone golem over a vampire, every time.
Naturally, then, I read Carmilla by Sheridan le Fanu. I don't know why I haven't read it before? Or in my gothic phase earlier this year? It's free on WikiSource and no doubt available to download from any public domain library and it's only very short. Carmilla is obviously a staple in the wlw canon and I understand that. It's not like we had much to go on in 1872. It's not like we had much to go on by 1972 either.
The first two are pretty up-to-the-minute releases, for me. I've definitely not got my finger on the pulse. So that was fun. No more monsters for a bit though.