09/27/2025 - Danielle's Dark Corners

Happy Saturday! I can't believe it's almost October! 2025 is flying by! Today I have three amazing books that I could never do justice for in a review, but let's break them down one by one and see if I can try!

IT SLEEPS BELOW

By William F. Gray

"The only things that didn’t seem frozen in place were the fleeing light and the strands of my long hair floating around my head like a dark crown."

Welp, IT SLEEPS BELOW, welcome to one of my top 5 overall reads of 2025. This book was absolutely amazing. It had me in a chokehold from the prologue alone. This book sits at over 300 pages, and I binge-read it in two sittings. Gray created a storyline that is beyond unique and nothing like I have ever read. The characters, especially the FMC, were done spectacularly. The development was top tier. The dialogue was perfect. The relationships between the different characters were done so well and were extremely heavy at times.

I often talk about how I don’t read the synopsis of a book before I read it. So you could have knocked me over with a feather when I read something about it being for fans of Riley Sager, because that is exactly which author came to mind when reading this. And I mean that as the highest of compliments. Sager is one of my favorite authors. And with Gray’s writing style, he might now be one of my new favorite authors as well.

If cosmic horror is something you enjoy along with a plot twist and a half, this book will be an easy five stars for you. I really can't imagine anyone not enjoying the hell out of this book.

It releases on October 3^rd but is available for preorder now, which 10/10 I recommend doing asap.

Synopsis:

After thirteen-year-old Samantha Morris almost drowned in her parents' lake, the nightmares that followed paled in comparison to the real-life horrors of watching her mother descend into madness. By the end of the summer, Kate Morris disappeared without a trace. Now an adult, Samantha is faced with another unexpected loss in her partner Ellie as well as the return of the nightmares. Only now, they're bleeding into her waking hours, forcing her to question her own sanity, and they're only getting worse.

As the line between real and imaginary continue to blur, physical manifestations of her dreams beg the question: is she losing her mind like her mother, or is she being targeted by something far more sinister?

Lovecraftian cosmic horror and dark mystery meet to form It Sleeps Below, a novel with grief and loss at its black, beating heart.

This book releases on October 3rd and can be preordered using either of the links below!

Amazon: https://a.co/d/a8qxuXs

Barnes & Noble: It Sleeps Below by William F Gray, Wicked House Publishing, Paperback | Barnes & Noble®

OTHER SIDES

By Simon Strangzas

OTHER SIDES was a totally spooky and ghostly collection of short stories, mostly quiet horror, and it was wonderful. This collection consists of three parts. Parts one and two offer 13 short stories, and then part three, which takes up about 30% of the collection, is a wonderful story called "INTERIOR DESIGNS."

Every story in the collection was well worth reading, but due to length, I want to point out a few by highlighting a quote from the stories I found to be standouts.

THE NINETEENTH STEP:

“It had to be a trick, she reasoned. Like an optical illusion, what she saw with her own eyes could not be trusted. There was something more to the stairwell, something she could not articulate.”

JASON’S IN THE GARDEN:

“I often marveled at how terrible he must have been to be so desperate for attention. But I learned young that everyone was terrible in one way or another. It was just that most hid it better.”

STEMMING THE TIDE:

“The dead walk to tell us what's to come, their broken mouths moving without sound. The only noise they make is the rap of bone on gravel. It only intensifies as they get closer.”

THAT HOUSE:

“But that's how it is with nightmares. They fool you because you don’t see them coming. They start as hopeful dreams, and only later do things shift—maybe imperceptibly, maybe all at once—and what was once bright and reassuring becomes terrifying and confused.”

EVERYTHING IS WHITE:

“My father's ghost watches from the window. Thick smoke curls up from his cigarette and around the deep grooves carved into his spectral face.”

INTERIOR DESIGNS:

“The winds around her were strong. The colored light more intense. Ha-Yoon felt herself growing lighter as everything that tethered her came undone. Dropped away into an endless void. She was unburdened and weightless for the first time in a long time.”

This collection is one I would recommend to all horror readers, especially those looking to get spooked out and need to turn the lights on! This is perfect for the spooky season, too!

Synopsis:

In Other Sides, Shirley Jackson Award-winner Simon Strantzas invites you to explore the eerie fringes of reality, where the familiar twists into the unexplainable. A hungry house that demands a price from its occupants. A boy who may have glimpsed a ghost—or something far worse. A researcher journeys to a remote village in search of the strange herbaceous anomaly called the Witch's Clutch, only to discover folklore leads to terrible truths. With each story, Strantzas weaves an atmosphere of creeping dread and psychological unease, crafting a collection that lingers long after the last page. Other Sides is a masterclass in weird fiction—a world of quiet horrors, uncanny encounters, and folktales that turn slowly, inexorably, toward the ominous.

Perfect for readers who savor horror that unsettles in profound and lingering ways, Other Sides is a journey into spaces beyond our understanding, where something is always waiting.

Godless (eBook): Other Sides by Simon Strantzas – Godless

Amazon (Paperback): https://a.co/d/1FXfq2r

SHEEP'S CLOTHING: THE PACK

By Mike Harris

"Cassandra wasn't like other women. She harbored a dark secret. The wolf lurking just below the surface. Its appetite for flesh and carnal desire was insatiable. She had feared it. Once. Now though, she was a part of it just as much as it was a part of her."

It isn’t often that I find a second book in a series that is just as good, if not better than the first, but this is one of those exceptions. Harris absolutely crushed this book. The FMC, Cassandra, and her story just grew beyond what I could have imagined from the first story. The character development and overall tone were amazing. This is one of the reasons why I love reading an author's debut and then being able to see them grow.

I really enjoyed the first book, but this one brought the heat. It had a lot of overall depth and put me in all my feels. No emotion was left untouched in this one. It’s hard for me to go in and say everything I want to without giving away huge plot spoilers, so I need people to trust me on this one and really take a chance on it. Both the first book and now the second! Harris is definitely an author to keep your eyes on. I see him doing great things around here!

Synopsis:

Six years have passed. Cassandra Everson has given birth. She survived the wilds, raising her son as one of the pack. But when Anthony falls gravely ill, she is forced out of hiding and must return to the world she abandoned to find the one person she knows who can help: her estranged sister Katherine.

As Cassandra rebuilds her fractured family, she meets Luna, an enigmatic woman with scars of her own. Passion ignites and Cassandra fears what Luna might awaken in her. Something primal. Something dangerous. When Cassandra's bloody past and Anthony's wild instincts begin to surface, Cassandra must fight tooth and claw to protect the fragile life she has built and prove that love, even at its wildest and bloodiest, is worth sacrificing for..

Releases on October 2nd. Preorder/links to book one available below.

Godless: Mike Harris – Godless

Amazon: https://a.co/d/6CRZtIR