Is it just me or has it been an absolutely bumper year for horror already? From the big guns to the hot newcomers, from the standout slashers to the perfect paranormals to the exciting experiments, we have had our pick of great books across the genre in just the first six months of the year.
For my part, I’ve been making the most of this embarrassment of horrifying riches — I’ve already read 24 horror and horror-adjacent novels published in 2025 (plus two ARCs I read in 2024 that weren’t published until this year). And across the board, they’ve been pretty solid. There were one or two duds, sure, but more importantly there were several that I think will enter the canon of all-time horror greats.
Now, with so many good options, you might be wondering where to start. Obviously, I’ve got you covered; here are my favorite horror novels of 2025 (SO FAR!):
Read more: Best Horror Books of January-June 2025
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
My above comment about books that will come to be regarded as all-timers was specifically about this one. The novel is a double frame story: in the present day a researcher reads the diary of her Lutheran pastor ancestor; the pastor’s journal details his encounters with a Blackfeet man (although we quickly learn that “man” is not a fitting term for him anymore) named Good Stab, and much of Good Stab’s testimony is told in first-person confessional.
At first, I wasn’t quite sure why the first of these perspectives was included in the story; the researcher’s POV didn’t seem to add much to the conversation between Beaucarne and Good Stab. But of course, I should have known better, and everything is brought together by the end. The interplay of past and present, history and contemporary, is essential to the story, and the way SGJ melds time and place and the horror of both fiction and reality is masterful.
Stephen Graham Jones’ novels are not easy to read, not only because of their content (name an unsettling topic or horrific detail and this book probably has it) but because he is not an author who will hold your hand through his stories. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is no exception; the Pikuni words that Good Stab uses go unannotated, and the historical events referenced are in the context of the conversation between Beaucarne and Good Stab, as in both men are aware of their details whereas the reader may not be.
These writing choices make SGJ’s novels divisive to some horror readers; however, even if you have struggled with some of his previous work or if you’re not normally a fan, I urge you to give The Buffalo Hunter Hunter a try. It’s truly a masterpiece that is well worth the effort, and if I read a better horror novel this year, I’ll be surprised.
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
Honestly, if I had gone in to this novel blind and you’d asked me when I’d finished it was written by a woman, a man, or none of the above, a dude would not have been my first guess. To not only write female characters so well, but in particular these female characters — pregnant teenagers sent to a home for unwed mothers in 1970s Florida who take up witchcraft in an attempt to exert some control over their manipulated lives — is an impressive feat, particularly so for a middle-aged guy who doesn’t have children.
To be clear, Grady Hendrix is well aware of this. He mentions it both in the acknowledgements and in all of the number of podcast interviews I’ve listened to about this book. He talks about how he was first inspired by the stories of two family members that only shared as adults that they had those personal experiences, and it’s clear that he wanted to put in the care and research necessary to do justice to this book in their honors.
And what a result. Yes, it’s a book about witchcraft, and yes, it’s a horror-genre cliché to say “humans were the real monsters” but it’s true that the real horror of this book is in the way the girls at its center are used and manipulated and neglected and traumatized by their conditions and their situations and everyone who surrounds them. By the witches, to an extent, but by everyone else far more so. A deal with the devil feels tame in comparison to what they’re going through at the home.
Every girl in this book felt so real, so alive. Their hopes, their desires, their pains, they were so vivid I could almost feel them myself. At first Fern felt like a blank page to me, a go-along-to-get-along type, but as she grew into herself I grew to love her as well. Zinnia and Rose, well, I loved them from the moment they arrived. Holly, sweet angel. Hagar and her quiet power. Cunning Miss Parcae. All of the characters in this novel felt fantastically realized, even down to the very minor ones.
Some of the negative reviews of this book have complained that the witchcraft element is secondary to the historical fiction side of the story, and I didn’t find that at all. In a fantasy setting — a magical school novel or a different world tale — then sure, okay, maybe you want everyone waving wands and brewing potions on every page. But in real life the mundane is as crucial as the magical, and to me this book felt like a fitting and genuine balance that still pulled in magical tradition and energy in ways both powerful and chilling.
And if you do feel like you’re lacking the true “scariness” that you expect from a horror novel, well, then you must have skipped over the birth scenes.
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab
Using the “classic” monsters and tropes of horror – the vampires, the haunted houses, the possessions, the ghosts – is always a delicate balance between new and old. As readers we don’t want a stale rehash (and I assume authors equally aren’t endeavouring to write one), but at the same time we do still relish those nostalgic beats. While it’s possible to do something wholly different and still be successful, most of the time we want at least some semblance of the original. A werewolf who is unaffected by the full moon isn’t much of a werewolf.
V.E. Schwab’s latest novel, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, is a perfect example of how this melding of traditional elements and new ideas can successfully be achieved. The title may be a mouthful, but every word of this exquisite story is something to relish. The story follows three vampiric women across centuries as they live and die and feed and as their fates entwine.
Schwab in turns stays faithful to the classic elements – the thirst, the exile, the decadence and decay that permeate in equal measure – and then lays bare the themes that often simmer under the surface in vampire novels but traditionally were only subtext – the queerness, the feminine rage and desire – to create a modern classic of the genre.
It’s a character-driven book, with each of the three women’s voices distinct even as their desires converge, but there is still plenty of action across the course of the stories and timelines. Everyone is morally grey, in shades ranging from silvery pale to the darkness before a storm. Schwab’s prose is excellent as always, poetic and atmospheric and incredibly fitting for the novel.
Old Soul by Susan Barker
I was shook at the end of Old Soul. Unsettling from the jump, this novel begins with two people, Jake and Mariko, meeting by chance after both missing their flight. Thrown together by circumstance, they decide to have dinner although they think that they have nothing in common. That is, until they realize that they both have one chilling connection in that they both lost a loved one in an unusual and tragic way involving a strange and charismatic women.
There’s an old myth that someone taking your photo can steal your soul, and a similar horrifying concept serves as the conceit of this story: the mysterious woman photographs her intended victims, and shortly after they lose their minds and their lives. To what end: immortality? Or something even more sinister?
Jake decides to investigate further, and his journey takes him to Germany, New Mexico, and more to learn about and search for the woman and the entity she serves. Shifting across time and place, the novel includes a series of testimonies of other loved ones of the woman’s victims, interspersed with a narrative in which the woman pursues her next victim.
With horror both intimate and cosmic, and writing that is as elegant as it is disturbing, Old Soul is a new favorite and one I’m already looking forward to rereading.
Hungerstone by Kat Dunn
I only read J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla a few years ago, and I can’t believe I hadn’t done so sooner. The 1870s vampire novella pre-dates Bram Stoker’s Dracula by several decades and is beloved for its enigmatic, seductive title character and her relationship to the young woman upon whose hospitality — and more — the vampire woman preys. Although Carmilla is not explicitly queer, understandable given its era, there is an undeniable sexual tension simmering just beneath the surface of her friendship with Laura, and therefore it is no surprise that Kat Dunn’s Hungerstone is not the first overtly sapphic retelling of or novel inspired by the vampire classic. But, in my opinion, it belongs at the top of the list.
In Hungerstone, Laura is named Lenore, and she is not an innocent teenager living a solitary existence with her widower father, but the mistress of an estate purchased with her handsome businessman husband Henry. Something is rotten in the state of Nethershaw, however; Lenore is tasked with revitalizing the crumbling manor even as her marriage falls into a state of disrepair.
Theirs was a marriage of convenience, Lenore bringing to it a prestigious lineage but no wealth, Henry offering money but relying on his wife to build his reputation; of course, a heir is essential to solidify Henry’s new standing in society, and by a decade into their marriage it is clear that there will be no child added to their family. Resentful of and resented by her husband, and yet believing that she must endure her unfulfilled existence in order to exist at all, Lenore might have continued on in this unhappy marriage were it not for the arrival — via a startling carriage accident — of Carmilla Kernstein.
Beautiful, mysterious, uninhibited — Carmilla immediately shakes up life at Nethershaw. As Carmilla draws her under her spell, Lenore is forced to confront her secrets, her fears, and, most importantly, her desires. In some ways, Carmilla acts as the embodiment of Lenore’s inner self, saying the rude yet true things that Lenore will not dare to say, criticizing that which should be criticized, and goading Lenore into indulging in her cravings. This is the story of an awakening in more ways than one, not only of Lenore’s sexuality but also of her independence.
“What is a monster but a creature of agency?” Lenore muses, as she begins to take her life into her own hands to secure her future. As the novel hurtles toward its horrifying, violent climax, the events going on at Nethershaw get more bizarre, more uncanny, Lenore begins to liberate herself from the expectations placed upon her and embrace the strangeness of the happenings, and the beguiling, dangerous woman who brought them there.
The writing in this novel is excellent, perfectly suited to its premise and setting. Sex, violence, and hunger form a triumvirate of themes, with so much overlap between how they are described, and that melding of fears and desires is so fantastically and unsettlingly on display here. From the eerie way Carmilla haunts Lenore in both thought and body, to the gory, brutal scenes of carnage, the novel is full of vivid imagery and visceral feelings.
I love that Hungerstone feels like both a fresh take on a classic story and genre, and like a suitable tribute to the same. Equal parts revulsion and seduction, this is a novel I won’t soon be able to cast out of my mind, much as Lenore couldn’t banish Carmilla from hers.
Blood on Her Tongue by Johanna van Veen
Where does one end and another begin? This is the question this novel asks repeatedly. Where does Lucy end and her twin sister Sarah begin? Where does Sarah end and the thing she has become begin? And where does love end, where does family end, where does duty and morality and desire and… where does the horror begin?
I went in expecting a Vampire story thanks to the Dracula epigraphs, the protagonist’s name, etc. and Blood on Her Tongue does certainly have vampiric elements. But it’s also much more, an intriguing blend of horror elements from the natural horror of death and decay to something decidedly supernatural. I loved the super evocative imagery, gruesome often to the point of grossness (the pen! the eyes!), and as someone who lives in rural Ireland I found it easy to call to mind the smell of the peat and the sucking thickness of the bogs, but I think even if you’re not familiar I think you would be able to imagine it based on van Veen’s writing.
Lucy is a fascinating protagonist. She’s not a nice person; she’s obsessive and greedy and haughty and her relationship with her sister is nothing short of toxic, and yet she’s so compelling. Sarah, too, is equally riveting. Even though so much of the action in the first half of the novel takes place around her, her presence is key and her perspective, as told through her letters and journal entries, rounds out the setting and the wonderfully creepy gothic atmosphere so well. And when she (or someone) starts to really take the stage, well. It takes talent to do a good exposition scene, and there’s one around halfway through this novel that’s particularly good, managing to build the tension while delivering a lot of information about the nature of the being that has gotten its grips into Sarah.
There are some great layers to the plot that also help to build the overall world of this 19th Century Dutch manor and its inhabitants. Early on, the men in the novel are quick to dismiss the sisters’ fears as mistakes or madness, and although the women’s violent actions in the latter half of the book certainly aren’t out of any sort of feminist intentions, Arthur’s and Michael’s paternalistic mindsets do bring an interesting element to the story, although as characters they are far less developed than Lucy, Sarah, or even some of the other minor characters such as Magda the serving woman.
Toxic codependence will always be a favourite horror trope of mine, especially when it leads to devastating consequences, and it’s so well executed here along with an exquisitely-crafted story that grows the creeping, unsettling tension to a truly disturbing climax. Van Veen has quickly been added to my list of the authors whose work I will eagerly devour (ha) as soon as I see it.
Eat the Ones You Love by Sarah Marie Griffin
I closed out the first half of the year in horror (and, appropriately, Pride month), by reading Eat The Ones You Love, the latest novel by Irish author Sarah Marie Griffin. Shell (Michelle) is adrift after a breakup and a redundancy occur in quick succession. Reminders of her “old life” eat at her in the form of whatsapp notifications and a feeling of stagnation. By chance, in an increasingly derelict suburban Dublin shopping centre, Shell stumbles upon a flower shop with an attractive owner, Neve, and a “Help Needed” sign in the window.
Shell gets to know her colleague as well as the other mall workers, even as more and more storefronts are replaced by vape shops or simply empty spaces, and she is quickly welcomed into their little group. It feels like a stroke of good fortune after a hard time, but when a new, omniscient narrator creeps in alongside Shell, it turns out there’s more to the flower shop than roses and eucalyptus.
Little Shop of Horrors is the obvious comparison here, as we learn that the shop houses a sentient, murderous plant that Neve calls Baby, but the roots (ha) go deeper, more Lovecraftian in the mystery of Baby’s existence and power. I love the way the narrative reflects his presence, sliding in and out of Shell’s POV as smoothly as his vines and creating a dream-like sense of confusion.
I loved the setting, the way the liminality of the fading shopping mall reflects Shell’s loneliness, and the way it leads to the misfit cast of characters finding their little found family. Each character was so memorable, and even though I initially didn’t understand the point of Neve’s ex Jen’s email correspondence with fellow shop worker Bec, I grew to really like her as well and how her role came into the story.
While there are certainly disquieting moments and an unsettling atmosphere, with elements of body and eco horror, I think this would be a good novel for someone just starting to dip their toes into horror as it’s not over-the-top graphic or terrifying. But equally as a horror aficionado I loved it and found it to be a strong addition to what has been a stellar year for the genre so far. I’m seeing the audiobook highly recommended in other reviews so I’m definitely planning to check that out in the near future as well.
The Unworthy by Augustina Bazterrica
Dreamlike (nightmarelike), unsettling. Although we are told that this story takes place in a near-future dystopia in which the ravages of climate change have fundamentally shattered the social contract (similar to Bazterrica’s previous novel, the excellent and horrific Tender is the Flesh), the setting is so isolated and desolate that it feels like a world separate from — and out of — time. Here, the result of climate disaster is a doomsday cult of sorts that takes on the trappings of a religious convent, but one more interested in torture and violence than worship and prayer.
The unnamed protagonist narrates her story, putting her experience on the record with whatever implements she can get her hands on, including writing in her own blood. And that’s the least disturbing thing about her tales.
Bazterrica (translated by Sarah Moses) is fantastic at building tension and creating an atmosphere of horror and unease. While I don’t think this novel will stick with me the way Tender in the Flesh did (and has), I was definitely disquieted as I was reading and even now after finishing.
Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito
There are so many great morally grey characters in the books above. Antiheroes and antiheroines, misunderstood monsters, and so on. But what if you want someone who’s just straight up evil? Winifred Notty is your gal! In this wild send-up of the classic Victorian plot, she arrives to the grand Ensor House to become governess and tutor to the Pounds children. There, she basically wreaks havoc, bringing the entire estate down with her.
You don’t want to be faint of heart (or weak of stomach) to read this one — it’s pretty extreme and very graphic as Winifred delights in mauling, maiming, and murdering pretty much everyone she meets in a variety of gruesome ways. But Feito’s writing is just so much fun you can’t help but enjoy it. A quick read, an unexpected delight, and a ridiculously good time.
The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling
This novel feels like a fever dream in the best way. In a besieged medieval castle, supplies have run dangerously low and the castle’s inhabitants are on the verge of starvation. When a group of Saints arrive, bringing with them a bacchanal of festivities and, more importantly, feasting, the castle seems to have found salvation. But things are not what they seem and the Saints, too, are hungry.
If you’re someone who doesn’t enjoy ambiguity, then this novel absolutely won’t be for you. But for me, I found the way the castle and its occupants seem to exist in its own world – one that is like our world but not quite, and to what extent we are never fully told – to heighten the unease of this unsettling story.
The protagonists are fascinating and the antagonists are chilling. And while the novel does take a while to truly get going, it then careens like a boulder hurtling down a mountain, increasingly terrifying and appealingly unhinged.
There are already a plethora of July-December horror releases I’m eagerly anticipating (and there’s one book from my Jan-June TBR, Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker, that I only just got my hands on, so I reserve the right to include it in my July-Dec roundup if it’s as good as it sounds). If the second half of the year is anything like the first six months this could be one of the best years for horror literature in a long time.
You can follow along with my horror reads and reviews on Goodreads, and please let me know if there are any great books I’ve missed!
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