![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reading the tide
Tuesday, 21 October 2025 11:52My tear through Yuletide-nominated fandoms continues. I'm still watching the Blue Prince videos, and last night, I finished reading K.J. Charles's All of Us Murderers, which is a savage, hilarious, and lovely gothic horror pastiche. All of KJC's familiar trademarks are at play.
Often, I highlight lines in my Kobo e-books. Usually, it's blue for lines that I particularly like, and then pink for anything that I think might be foreshadowing. About halfway through the book, I started journaling my thoughts and suspicions, much of it based on my knowledge of gothic horror themes and conventions. I did not suspect all the right people, and some of my guesses were off the mark, but I did pretty well. It's not a classic "fair-play whodunnit", but it definitely felt good to make lists of facts and suppositions, and to try and draw conclusions from them.
Early in the book, I was prepared to hold onto my negative feelings for the second male lead (Gideon), part and parcel of my uncomfortable habit of questioning why characters don't just up and leave the plot. Real winners quit, and all. But the book does a very good job of both explaining why Zeb didn't leave, and of selling me on the romantic plot, so that by the time that unfolds, I had zero reservations.
It also has one specific (hilarious) line that is very clearly there for us writers.
Increasingly, I can no longer claim I'm not a horror reader. More like, I'm a selective and cautious horror reader.
Often, I highlight lines in my Kobo e-books. Usually, it's blue for lines that I particularly like, and then pink for anything that I think might be foreshadowing. About halfway through the book, I started journaling my thoughts and suspicions, much of it based on my knowledge of gothic horror themes and conventions. I did not suspect all the right people, and some of my guesses were off the mark, but I did pretty well. It's not a classic "fair-play whodunnit", but it definitely felt good to make lists of facts and suppositions, and to try and draw conclusions from them.
Early in the book, I was prepared to hold onto my negative feelings for the second male lead (Gideon), part and parcel of my uncomfortable habit of questioning why characters don't just up and leave the plot. Real winners quit, and all. But the book does a very good job of both explaining why Zeb didn't leave, and of selling me on the romantic plot, so that by the time that unfolds, I had zero reservations.
It also has one specific (hilarious) line that is very clearly there for us writers.
Increasingly, I can no longer claim I'm not a horror reader. More like, I'm a selective and cautious horror reader.
