Your archive of Growls & Grimm book content, from in-depth reviews to seasonal lists, all in one moody, bookish corner of the site.
Fantasy Books Where Old Traditions Demand a Price Old traditions have a way of outliving the people who created them. Sometimes everyone remembers exactly why they began. Other times, people simply keep paying a price without asking who benefits from…
Books About Inheritance, Secrets & What Families Leave Behind Inheritance isn’t always something we ask for. Sometimes it’s a gift or a source of power. Other times it’s a secret, an obligation, an old story, or something buried long before…
Fantasy Books Where Home Is Complicated Home can mean very different things depending on how we feel when we’re there. It can be the place where we belong, the place we’re desperate to escape, a community we’re willing to protect,…
Review of The Woodsmoke Women’s Book of Spells by Rachel Greenlaw Fantasy | Magical Realism | Romance | Witches There is a promising foundation here, but I felt the story spent considerably more time exploring everyone’s feelings than developing the…
Books About the People We Choose to Keep Some stories take the word family and turn it into something different, sometimes something more palatable than what the word traditionally means. Family can be found. It can be built from the…
Review of The Vampire’s Curse at Blackthorn Manor by Jade Christy Paranormal Romance |Fantasy | Vampires | Witches | Magic I should have loved The Vampire’s Curse at Blackthorn Manor more than I did. A New York prosecutor discovers that…
Review of Coraline by Neil Gaiman Dark Fantasy | Horror | Fiction | Young Adult “The names are the first things to go, after the breath has gone, and the beating of the heart. We keep our memories longer than…
Dark Books Where Surviving Was Only the Beginning There are so many stories where survival is the goal. No matter what waits for the characters or what they have to do to get through it, the objective is simple: survive.…
Dark Books Where Tradition Has Teeth Traditions are built around the things we are taught to believe. The rules we inherit. The people we’re taught to trust, fear, or follow. Some happen quietly behind closed doors, where the people affected…
Dark Books Where Something Is Wrong With the House There are times when a house is just a house. Walls, windows, doors, and floors. But then there are houses that are much more. They hold memories. They keep secrets. They…