Tag: reviews

A chilling Gothic horror novel set at a coed boarding school in Scotland, where a teen girl must not only fight against her monstrous male classmates but the monster growing within her after being cursed.

Every wish granted comes with strings attached. That’s how Catriona Cameron gets a scholarship to Floodbane Academy—an elite boarding school in the Scottish Lowlands she never applied to—where she’ll be one of only six girls to enter the castle’s unwelcoming halls.

She’s not looking for trouble, but after a violent attack, mischievous dark fairies grant cruel wishes made against her. Catriona is blessed with devastatingly good looks and unpredictable new powers, but cursed with an insatiable hunger to devour anyone who preys upon women.

As the carnage mounts, Catriona faces the possibility that she is becoming as monstrous as those she hunts. Ultimately, is vengeance worth the loss of her humanity?

**Releases September 22, 2026 – PreOrder Now!**

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An anguished shriek pierces the air overhead, and I open my eyes to inky blackness. I cannot fathom how my driver Mr. Ross can tell where we’re heading. Yet he urges the horses ever faster through this thick molasses of nothingness.

“What was that noise?” I whisper.

“Nothing,” comes his disinterested reply.

I don’t believe him.

Spiderwebs envelop me—in my hair, on my face, in my mouth—and I’m shrieking, flailing, spitting… only to realize that they’re not spiderwebs after all, but the ghostly mist of early morning.

The darkness hides my embarrassment. Floodbane Academy is a boys’ school. I cannot allow my male classmates’ first impression of a female student to be a display of hysterics. I must stay strong or at least look that way.

No matter how much I may tremble inside.

The horses make a sharp turn, and the carriage drifts precariously to one side. I recall Mr. Ross’s warning that the campus is surrounded by steep cliffs, and deep, freezing rivers, and dark, dangerous forests.

The first hint of light trickles through the thick foliage. Trees part to reveal a wide, packed-dirt road, and up ahead… My breath catches. Time ceases to tick forward.

Floodbane Academy. This is it. My final destination.

Even if the school’s name hadn’t been written in script on the massive wrought iron gates before us, there would be no doubt that I’ve arrived somewhere worth visiting.

No thatched roofs and rotting wooden walls here. The academy is a fortified castle of shimmering pearlescent stone, with four tall turrets stabbing up into the brink of dawn. Mist clings to the towers like smoke from a battlefield. The clouds bloom red, like blood spilling onto cotton. The sun’s white-hot rays pierce my pupils as if I’m unfit to cast my eyes upon a future this bright.

I squint to protect my vision, though nothing could tear my gaze away from my new home. It’s built fine enough for a king, and big enough to house the grandest army. It must hold a ballroom, a gymnasium, a library the size of my old church…

“This is where I’m going to live?” I exclaim in delighted wonder.

Mr. Ross chuckles. “No.”

Rather than go through the majestic gates, he takes a weed-matted trail leading away from the school.

I yelp in alarm. “Where are you going?”

“Female housing.”

The horses duck beneath a copse of drooping branches, to lead us back into darkness. This time, I see how close the wheels are to scraping the trees, and how close a crooked branch comes to taking off the top of my head. This trail isn’t meant for carriages. Not a single weed or thornbush has been cleared aside to make way for the new crop of students.

“You’re certain they know we’re coming?” I ask with hesitation.

“They all know.”

His words should have assured me, but instead, they sound ominous.

“Duck,” Mr. Ross advises as the horses put on a burst of speed.

I dive to the floor to avoid being decapitated by passing tree branches.

Eventually, the carriage rattles to a stop. When I raise my head, I find a different structure. One I shall not confuse with the academy.

It is the house in every fairy tale that one dares not enter. The lair of witches in the woods. The gateway to hell from sweat-soaked nightmares.

A narrow two-story structure of thin, unrelenting gray, mottled with dead vines and great scabs of caked-on dirt. Bones so derelict, the sneeze of a hummingbird could send the place shuddering in a thousand directions, burying its residents beneath two tons of rotted rubble.

“Female housing quarters,” Mr. Ross announces. “The ride is over. Get out.”