This January, I’m counting down my favourite 24 books of 2024 – in groups of eight.

Today, I present my Top 8 Novels of 2024:

8. So Thirsty by Rachel Harrison (Berkley)

The Gist: Burned out from one too many heartbreaks, Sloane turns a blind eye to her husband’s infidelities rather than unsettle her stable, semi-satisfying marriage. She gets a chance for a fresh start when a girls’ trip gets crashed by a pack of vampires.

Review: So Thirsty has blood and gore galore (and an explosion, too), but it thrives as an ensemble comedy, with Sloane playing the straight man to her free-spirited best friend and a gaggle of sex-crazed, hard-partying creatures of the night.

Harrison’s specialty is using high concept supernatural plotlines as vehicles for self-empowerment, with a writing style that’s alternately pithy and poignant. She’s not the first to use vampirism as a metaphor for personal transformation, but it works: Harrison does a great job fleshing out Sloane’s ennui and inhibitions, positioning her as a candidate for drastic change, and creating a strangely endearing gang of undead vagabonds. Throw in a sultry nocturnal love interest, you have the perfect mix of girl power and gothic romance.

7. The Haunting of Velkwood by Gwendolyn Kiste (S&S/Saga Press)

The gist: A paranormal researcher approaches two childhood friends to visit America’s strangest haunted location: their hometown, which vanished twenty years ago, along with everyone who lived there. Talitha longs to rescue her family from their suburban purgatory – but behind the veil is a past she’d rather not revisit.

Review: A master of lyrical, gutting ghost stories, Gwendolyn Kiste fuses traditional themes of oppressive grief and buried secrets with modern paranormal tropes, wrapped around a startlingly original premise: the idea that a whole neighbourhood can become a ghost.

The Haunting of Velkwood reads as a rebuttal to today’s wave of nostalgia-focused fiction, painting a suburban childhood that was far from idyllic, youthful friendships that were imperfect, and a quaint little community that was just as suspicious and alienating as any brutalist city block. It’s the literary equivalent to visiting your old school and realizing how small and drab it now feels. Its triumphant climax is a celebration of growing up, asserting your independence, and breaking cycles.

6. The Psychographist by Carson Winter (Apocalypse Party)

The gist: A suburban teenager suffers a debilitating – and costly – injury, months after his parents blow their life savings on a crypto scam. Right on time, a diabolical researcher recruits the family into a depraved focus group, promising lifechanging riches if they’ll submit themselves to the will of his Product.

Review: Perhaps the feel-bad novel of the year, The Psychographist is a disturbing and angry horror-satire that rages against the commodification of the human heart. Like his titular villain, Winter masterfully manipulates his readers’ emotional responses, creating alternating waves of pity and contempt for his characters.

The test subjects are motivated by genuine desperation as well as simple greed; simultaneously victims of an uncaring system, and authors of their own misfortune. (Early on, the family breadwinner quits his job in a fit of pique, despite knowing his son needs expensive surgery). Their worst selves are revealed under the mind-warping influence of the Product, as they gleefully commit acts of cruelty and perversion. Just when you think they’re irredeemable, they lapse into horrified lucidity. These strategically rationed moments of compassion make the family’s corruption all the more devastating.

5. The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno Garcia (Del Rey)

The gist: Unexpectantly cast as Salome in a Biblical epic, Mexican actress Vera finds herself immersed in a different kind of Hollywood drama – complete with racism, sexual harassment, and tabloid smear jobs. Things get worse when the soft-spoken Vera unknowingly enters into a love triangle with the volatile extra who she beat out for the role.

The book’s perspective alternates between Vera, struggling to live honestly in a city built on lies; mercurial extra Nancy, scheming in the shadows; and the film’s fictionalized Salome, doomed to play a pivotal role in a story she’d rather rewrite.

Review: Moreno-Garcia’s Hollywood is glitzy and noirish, the dirty deeds done in seedy hotels no more tawdry than what goes on inside opulent nightclubs and alongside glittering pools. A well-researched piece of historical fiction, The Seventh Veil of Salome is honest about the hypocrisies of Hollywood, but avoids turning its citizens into shallow caricatures. Vera’s actor friends (many of whom are performers of colour like herself, struggling to build careers on the few paths open to them) are generous and insightful; the cast and crew of her movie show genuine passion for their craft. (The book is, in a way, a tribute to screenwriters, the Salome segments framed as a writer’s unfilmable dreams come alive).

Moreno-Garcia’s nuanced character development complements the book’s exploration of the gaps between perception and reality. Depicted as a quarrelsome dilettante by racist tabloids, the real Vera is thoughtful, artistic, and quietly dignified; but her conservative demeanour is also a sort of façade, concealing the ambition and rebellious heart she was raised to suppress. Vera’s self-appointed rival, Nancy, feels like she could saunter off the page and into Hollywood history (as a footnote, that is). Jaded but childish, vicious and hopeless, she’s a compelling foil to the naïve but self-possessed Vera. We see echoes of both women in Salome. By eschewing the All About Eve formula (Vera and Nancy meet only once), Moreno-Garcia builds a sense of inevitability and destinies intertwined.

4. Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman (Del Rey)

The Gist: Distressed by her parents’ frequent arguments and heavy drinking, Bela cozies up to an imaginary friend who’s just as lonely as she is – but demands more than the little girl can give. When her anger gets too explosive to hide, Bela’s parents realize that this “Other Mommy” isn’t imaginary, and is far from a friend.

Review: This take on the sinister invisible friend/monster in the closet tropes is equal parts terrifying and heartbreaking. The book’s villain is capable of emotional manipulation as well as brute force, promising both physical and spiritual danger; Malerman’s portrait of a loving family disintegrating is no less nightmarish, told from the naïve perspective of a young child.

This first-person limited narration, which could have been gimmicky in less sure hands, allows Malerman to strategically restrict the information he provides, immersing the reader in Bela’s powerlessness and fear. The monster is described in bits and pieces (we glean that it’s misshapen, shapeshifting, and sometimes very, very large), letting our imaginations fill in the blanks. We learn about Bela’s dysfunctional family through troubling overheard conversations; some of the book’s most harrowing scenes involve Bela’s drunk parents, believing her to be asleep, telling her secrets no child should hear.

3. The Angel of Indian Lake by Stephen Graham Jones (S&S/Saga Press)

The gist: The town of Proofrock has been living out the plot of a slasher movie (several dozen slasher movies, actually) since its inception. After narrowly surviving the last two killing sprees, Jade Daniels – former troubled teen, ex-convict, and current high school history teacher – is looking forward to playing a different role this time around; however, the slasher cycle isn’t over, and Jade’s still Proofrock’s final girl.

Review: The conclusion to his celebrated trilogy of postmodern slasher novels, The Angel of Indian Lake is a bittersweet survival story pairing hypertextual horror homages with reflections on colonial violence, intergenerational trauma, and healing.

Protagonist (and now narrator) Jade Daniels is rightly beloved among horror readers. She’s a folk hero and a final girl, tragic and triumphant; more than that, she’s a psychologically complex character who has evolved in a believable way over the course of the series. In My Heart is a Chainsaw, she was an abused girl who used horror movies as a maladaptive coping mechanism; Don’t Fear the Reaper saw a matured Jade overcorrect before rediscovering her identity. By The Angel of Indian Lake she’s come into her own, accepting the support of her friends and trying to find a place in her community.

Jones lets us feel the weight of the years between each book, and doesn’t sugarcoat the extent of Jade’s trauma: child abuse, incarceration, and tragedy have rendered her addicted to prescription pills, occasionally self-destructive, and struggling to get through the day. But she’s also clever, heroic, and unflinchingly loyal; someone who would die for her friends and then claw her way up from that grave.

2. The Eyes Are the Best Part by Monika Kim (Erewhon Books)

The gist: Ji-Won’s life is already falling apart when her mother (who’s been in a funk of despair since her husband walked out) starts dating a philandering creep named George. Coaxed into trying fish eyes, Ji-Won develops compulsive fantasies of consuming human eyeballs – George’s specifically, but in the meantime, anyone else’s will do.

Review: The Eyes Are the Best Part serves up themes of cultural dissonance, family breakdown, fate, and fetishization, with a grisly garnish of ocular mutilation and cannibalism. The meat of the book, however, is a disturbing character study. In Ji-Won, Kim paints a picture of a caring young woman whose life has spiraled out of control, before outing her as a manipulator. George is skin-crawlingly smarmy – but it’s Ji-Won who makes sure her mother stays with him, even hiding evidence of his infidelities because she wants to keep him around to torment. Nor is this Machiavellianism new – we learn that Ji-Won once had a tight-knit group of friends, which she destroyed through jealous sabotage.

The protagonist’s self-delusion renders The Eyes Are the Best Part more interesting than a straightforward revenge fantasy. Ji-Won has the power to change her life, but clings to a delusion of powerlessness to justify her destructive actions. Kim powerfully conveys how trapped Ji-Won feels, but makes sure we see how many exits she refuses to take. She floats the idea there may be a physiological explanation of Ji-Won’s sociopathy, but coldly refutes such cop-out answers.

1. I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones (S&S/Saga Press)

The gist: After surviving anaphylactic shock and a rampage by an undead killer (all in the same night), daredevil teen Tolly Driver finds himself infected with a slasher virus. Cursed with super-strength, supernatural stalking skills, and a shiny new grudge, Tolly must battle the irresistible urge to butcher every band geek who ever looked at him funny.

Review: This is a werewolf story in a slasher’s bloodstained clothing. Jones plays cleverly with slasher tropes to place Tolly into a cosmic cycle beyond his control: car engines won’t start in his presence (though ancient chainsaws flare to life in his hands) and the people around him also change to fit their preordained roles in Tolly’s involuntary revenge arc.

Our finest crafter of literary slashers, Jones doesn’t skimp on brutal kills and suspenseful chase sequences; more than anything, though, I Was A Teenage Slasher is a funny and tragic coming-of-age tale, brimming with nostalgia and regret. It’s also one of Jones’ most accessible books, eschewing the misdirection of inscrutability of his other slasher stories in favour of a warm, intimate narrative voice. It has the wistful tone of an old friend reminiscing, sharing vivid memories of a past that has faded into myth, but still feels like just yesterday.

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So there you have it – feel free to argue with me in the comments. And be sure to check back for my Top 8 Short Story Collections and Top 8 Novellas.