Grey Dog's Ada struggles with 1901s conventions around sexuality, gender, emotional expression, and spinster-dom. When we first meet Ada, she is modest and shy, eager to meet expectations and fade into the background. We learn early on that Ada has disgraced her family in some way at her previous post as a school teacher, and her sister has suffered a tragedy. Both of these events are revealed slowly throughout the book with other stories of childhood physical abuse and neglect peppered in. These events ultimately are why Ada takes post in a new district, which her father reminds her is a blessing and warns against behaving
"sinfully". Ultimately, the reader is definitely led to believe not a lot of good things are going on in Ada's life, and an escape into the wilderness among the natural world is probably what she desires most of all.

Sisterhood and companionship are of high importance to Ada. She takes a liking to her host's wife Holly, the preacher's wife Agatha, and a widower Norah. Each of these women have very different dispositions, motives, and levels of "respectability" which is referenced frequently throughout the book. Her alliances to each of these women change as she begins to hear and see disturbing things others cannot, something she eventually refers to as the "grey dog". As she further decompensates, Ada is almost unrecognizable in thought, behavior, appearance, and even smell. She repels just about everyone in town before she's led down a path that seems pre-ordained.

I really loved that the book was written in diary format and explored Ada's worst thoughts, though her repression then overindulgence was at times difficult for me to connect with personally. The verbiage the author used was also a fun aspect of this historical fiction x horror novel. This is a perfect read for fans of The VVitch. I won't call this outright scary, but it was tast-paced, felt slightly mythical, and had that eerie feeling of something lurking just in the distance.

This is a masterpiece. An unexpected journey of fear, revelation, and rage, Grey Dog was expertly written with an eerie and unsettling air that had my skin crawling deep into the night. Ada is relatable despite the difference in time periods with her feelings of inadequacy and lack of power over her own life. The reader is kept wondering if she is falling apart or finally becoming whole.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

My Selling Pitch:
The Scarlet Letter x Dracula but make it lesbian horror. And then don't make it scary and direct all your feminine rage at other women instead of the patriarchy.

Pre-reading:
Like cat dog but worse! I love this cover.

Thick of it:
Does this count as epistolary? (Google says yes.)

It’s reminding me of Dracula and Emily Wilde.

I better not be needing to know who these children are because their names have immediately left my brain. (You do not.)

Moue

This is slow. And Scarlet Lettery

Are she and Agatha gonna be lesbians?

26% I have two predictions for this book. She’s gonna have a mild lesbian affair with the pastor’s wife. The pastor is going to be pissed and kill the wife, so girlypop is gonna snap and team up with the widow witch and start cursing the town to get revenge for her sister and her lover. OR girlypop is going to hang out with the widow and have an affair with her because she can’t have the pastor’s wife. And the calling to her psychological horror bit is going to be her gay panic. (Like basically, but also tell me how either of those would’ve been better books than the one we got.)

What is it with calling lady parts mossy clefts? Yuck.

I feel like every time this book uses the word queer it’s trying to do a cheeky double entendre to the modern meaning.

I'm assuming girlypop was raped or had an affair with her last host? Maybe had a baby and gave it up? (Nailed it.)

Is Muriel her dad’s new wife because would not be surprised, and also ew. (Nailed it again.)

Emily Wilde but make it horror lol

And title drop

This book is slow and boring. Like I get it. Life sucks for women. The end. (That’s it. That’s the book.)

That moment when a book lists obscure vocab, and you’re insane and track the new vocab you find in books.

Abstemious
Aeromancy
Ambuscade
Drawncansir
Dysphagia
Hebdomadal
Minikin

See, I would never survive in these horror books because I’m like oh, the demon wants to come in? Yeah, let him in. We’re gonna fall in love.

Ha ha see, I recognized it as a violent love story.

The demon says I can fix her.

Here’s the thing, I’m all for female rage, but blowing your life up over your daddy issues to prove him right is pretty goddamn stupid.

“I am no garden, father.”
Baller line.
Following it up with I’m tree roots and an owl, not cool. Just cringe.

Girlypop don’t fuck bugs.

The end of the book is the most interesting part of it, and I’m still so checked out.

Lame.

It’s bad taste that this whole book is women are subjected to men’s endless desire for them and suffer because of it, and then it ends with girlypop also just assaulting and killing a woman because she can’t fuck her. Ew, brother ew.

It’s like the book’s message is like oh she doesn’t have to be a proper young lady, but she’s still just an asshole? You’re not entitled to someone just because you want them?

I just don’t fuck with the idea of feminine rage being incel behavior. Yes, ladies are equally entitled to be assholes, but frame it that way? Don’t pretend this bitch is a hero. Oh, she stuck it to society! She killed someone, Susan. Get a grip.

Post-reading:
This was lame.

Don’t tell me you’re a horror novel if you’re not gonna scare me. And if you’re like but Samantha, the book had lots of gore! I saw more blood on my period this week. Don’t amateur hour me with this shit. Make me wince. I want another Ninth House, goddamnit. And that book’s not even sold as horror.

I don’t know what it is with these historical horrors lately that are just like life sucks for women, and then they die, and no one fucks the demon. The end.

I think objectively the voice in this book is well written. It definitely feels like a play on Dracula and the Scarlet Letter. But I don’t really fuck with those books either. I think they’re way too slow. This book is no different. You’ve gotta get halfway through before anything happens, and even then, it all feels very expected. I felt nothing for these characters. It felt like we were ticking off boxes for women’s trauma without any nuance to it. And I don’t know if there was wiggle room to add nuance to it. Because it is just kind of a miserable relay of facts that like yeah, it was olden times so women’s lives sucked. It’s 2024 and we’ve still got fuckers trying to get us to be homemakers.

So clearly, I’m down for some feminine rage. Doesn’t even have to be the musical. I don’t know if this book qualifies as that, or if it does, it doesn’t scratch the itch. It reads less like feminine rage and more like a self-harm temper tantrum. Which like cool. I am all for feminism granting us the equal opportunity to be shitty human beings, but don’t sell her to me as a hero then? The book reads like you’re supposed to root for our main character, but she straight-up sucks.

She’s got some serious femcel behavior. It just doesn’t leave a good taste in my mouth when you make your character think she’s so cool because she’s not like other girls, and then have her kill a bitch just because she won’t fuck her. What is that?

This book had so many opportunities to be sexy, and it’s never sexy. That feels like a failing. I want my demons sexy, or at least threatening. He’s never scary. The demon’s a pussycat leaving presents on the back step. It’s lame!

It’s slow burn and vibey. There’s just no substance to it, and I don’t like the messaging. I think you can pick up better, but fuck, what a cover.

Who should read this:
Historical slow-burn girlies
I blindly support women’s wrongs because #feminism

Do I want to reread this:
Nope

Similar books:
* The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne-woman punished by society for not conforming to the patriarchy
* Night Bitch by Rebecca Yoder-mommy horror, magical realism
* Rouge by Mona Awad-femme horror, fairytale retelling
* Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk-lesbian vampires, historical
* Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield-femme psychological horror, lesbians
* Bunny by Mona Awad-femme psychological horror, lesbians
* Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt-queer psychological horror, body horror, sexual violence
* The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo-historical, my boyfriend’s a demon
* Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett- epistolary, academic writing, mild horror elements, romantic subplot
* Lone Women by Victor LaValle-historical, magical realism, the real horror is how small towns treat nonconforming women
* The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab-historical, magical realism romance, make a deal with a demon, but don’t fuck him

Where do I begin! I read this in one sitting and was hooked throughout! Grey dog was a horror novel I won’t be forgetting this year! Female rage, wild beats, and subverting typical expectations of women in historical fiction was brilliant to read. The eeriness was present throughout, leaving me constantly thinking about the story between chapters, and it’s one that stuck with me since. Greg dog delivered what I was expecting and more, subtle chills and some natural senses of fear; it was almost psychologically jarring as I found myself matching the protagonists unease and feelings of being unsettled and disjointed. Overall I loved this, and thank you for giving me the chance to read it!

Could not get into this at all. It was falling short to me. I didn’t know if it was a metaphor I was missing or what but a no for me.

Well, ultimately, I’m unsure how to process this one. The central narrative as I took it was – being a woman is enough to drive a woman mad. This was a beautiful story with inflections of the time period. I love some historical horror, but this took me over a week to finish and I can usually finish a book in a couple of days. I'm unsure if that is a me problem or what but I found myself sighing when I needed to pick it back up, perhaps if it hadn’t been an arc, I would have DNF’d it.

Ada Byrd is a thirty-year-old teacher in 1901. She has sought employment in the small town and almost imediately she can feel the presence of something strange, something strange about the women, about herself. She has boarding with the minister and his wife and makes friends with a couple of the women but soon finds something unknown calling her from the woods. It calls her by name, its sweet lilt pulling her toward the woods on the wrong side of the bridge.

There is a bit of emotional disconnect for me. I felt the writing was hauntingly beautiful, but I just failed to connect with it and the FMC. So much doesn’t happen for the longest time and then when it did, I felt like the reader had a carrot on a stick floating just out of their grasp.

Ada Byrd arrives in the small town of Lowry Bridge to become the new teacher. She's unmarried, loves nature, and knows that this posting will allow her to reestablish her reputation where no one knows her.

She elicits curiosity and friendship from the town, starts the school year off well engaging the students, taking then for small explorations in the woods, and begins to hope for a future in this place.

Ada keeps a journal, and we discover that she is still grieving the violent death of her sister Florrie who was married to an abusive man. Both she and Florrie are no strangers to abuse, as their father spent years emotionally and physically abusing them.

As Ada begins to feel comfortable in the town, small things begin happening: she sees strange, disturbing things that no one else can, and begins to believe the Grey Dog, the presence she feels in the woods, is leaving her animal corpses and visions. Ada becomes increasingly unsure what is real and what isn't, and between her slowly unravelling mental state and her befriending an unconventional, wealthy widow who keeps herself separate from the town residents, Ada's reputation begins to deteriorate to the point that she can barely tell what is real and what is caused by the Grey dog.

This book plays with one’s perceptions, and the reliability of the main character’s narration: was she suffering from overwhelming grief and years of physical abuse to the extent that she began seeing things that were not there? Or was there actually a wild presence in the woods outside the town that only some people could see, particularly oppressed and/or abused girls and women? Or is Ada's behaviour just a manifestation of female rage that can no longer be contained after all the restrictions, hatred and abuse?

Author Elliott Gish walks a fine line between the daily horror inflicted by patriarchy and misogyny, and the possibly supernatural, elemental force that some women of the town give themselves to.

The author, though including some gory scenes, creates more of a suspenseful story with menace and violence creating a horror-filled atmosphere. Ada is desperate to flee society's and her father's expectations and constraints. She doesn't really understand her feelings as there has been no one to show her or support her in expressing these emotions and desires, including that of her burgeoning sexuality. It's no surprise that Ada hears the call of the otherworldly entity or elemental force, giving in increasingly to a desire to not conform, to not be respectable, as that has never made her happy.

This was a beautifully written story that pulled me in immediately. Ada's journal entries give you a fantastic understanding of her changing, possibly deteriorating, mental state, including her resentments, her worries, and her increasing fascination with whatever is in the woods.

This is a book that lingered in my mind long after I finished it. I felt uncomfortable and deeply sympathetic for Ada, and loved the way the novel closed.

Thank you to Netgalley and to ECW Press for this ARC in exchange for my review.

Didn't finish this, was not at all what I expected from the synopsis. Certainly not bad, but don't feel that we need this in our collection.

One of the best horror novels of the year. An eerie slow burn set in a small Canadian town in 1901 about a schoolteacher escaping her past. I enjoyed this very much but it's almost hard to review because I just want to push it into people's hands and tell them to read it.

While it takes a little time for the horror-y bits to pick up, I didn't find the book itself a dull read. Instead from the beginning we know Ada has a complicated history and that she is struggling to figure out who she is and what she wants. It's no help that she has basically no options as an unmarried woman nearing 30, and cannot tolerate her restrictive father's home. I liked spending time with Ada, and as the book is in diary form it was always nice to have her sit down to tell me about her day.

We slowly build the horror, it's never a straight up scare, but there is a fair amount of gore on the page. (Near the end there is some actual violence, though before that it is mostly the corpses of woodland creatures.) But this is one of my favorite kinds of horror novels that is actually About Something. While modern feminist horror is often quite muddled, once you go back in time over 100 years it's a clearer story. Ada is a feminist character, a woman who wants freedom, a woman who feels the pain of the limitations put on her life. She is also someone who is so used to those limits that she doesn't fully realize what she wants and how she feels. Following her own journey of self-discovery as she comes closer and closer to a supernatural force, becoming more animal is the very kind of thing that starts to appeal to Ada and her love of the natural world. It works quite seamlessly, considering feminism, sexuality, freedom, patriarchy without making you feel like you are being hit over the head with the themes.

A confident debut and I hope we see much more from Gish.

This book seemed like it was going to be a very atmospheric and creepy story, but it kind of fell short. While there are definitely creepy and sometimes scary scenes, it was heavily overshadowed by the day to day mundanity of being a devout religious woman. It felt like at times I was reading someone’s recounting of every church event interspersed with a weird shadow they saw out of the corner of their eye.

I do admire the author and their writing. For this to be their first novel and it to be so well written, that is very commendable. But the book is so slow and I was severely bored while reading it. It was also a bit confusing, and it felt like it didn’t know where the story was going until the last 10% of the book.

Overall, this wasn’t my favorite slow burn creepy ‘horror’, but the author’s writing has me really intrigued so I might see what they produce in future works.

How to describe this book? It seems like an historical novel set in 1901/2, Ada Byrd goes to teach in a small village after a scandal at her last post. There’s a slow burn of creepiness and strange events around Ada, there’s a mystery about the previous teacher, there’s the awful domestic violence story of Ada’s beloved sister, Florrie and also their relationship with their overbearing and violent father. And then there’s Norah Kinsley, a beautiful widow, mysterious and witchy. And what’s with the forest, and the strange child, Muriel? There’s so much here and it was a slow burn to begin with and then I couldn’t look away, the final sections completely compelling. Women’s wants and needs, the control society has over them, their appearance, behaviour, desires etc. So many thoughts! A brilliant read.

3.25 stars

A queer, foreboding tale of female rage and an oppressed spinster’s decent into madness

Ada Byrd is an unmarried woman in the early 1900’s, banished to a teaching post in a small town by her father after running into trouble at her last. Ada start to notice odd goings on about the town, which slowly unravels her character; she begins behaving erratically and not at all like the “good woman” she is expected to be

The beginning was slow, but the final 40-30% really tickled me. I felt a sense of dread and horror on every page which really got under my skin. The rest, unfortunately, bored me. I think it would’ve worked better for me had it picked up in pace quicker and been shorter

"Grey Dog" by Elliott Gish delivers a hauntingly visceral twist on historical fiction. In 1901's isolated Lowry Bridge, Ada Byrd encounters grotesque phenomena, from dying crickets to malformed fauna, as her grasp on reality unravels. Gish deftly explores the interplay of nature, trauma, and female rage, crafting a chilling narrative that captivates and disturbs. A thrilling, darkly poetic journey into the wildness of both woods and mind.

This was a really great historical horror novel set in a Canadian town 1901 following a schoolteacher escaping her past.

This book delivers exactly what was promised and delivered it well! The atmospheric setting, the creepy, ominous tone, the slow build-up! Everything was absolutely excellent and so well done, I can hardly believe this was a debut!

This one is for you if you enjoy; women breaking the norm, creepy forest setting, creepy children, religious horror and sapphic desires,

Brilliant! Read it!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read a free copy of this novel in exchange for my honest review. I could not put this book down, from the very beginning it draws you in and doesn't let you go. I enjoy anything that is LGBTQIA+ focused, PLUS the fact that it's Historical Horror made me fall in love with the characters and story. It's a long read, but so so worth it!

Grey Dog by Elliott Gish

Page Count: 400 pages

Publisher: ECW Press

Other Books I Enjoyed by This Author: Debut

Affiliate Link: https://bookshop.org/a/7576/9781770417328

Release Date: April 9th, 2024

General Genre: Historical, Feminist, Gothic, Literary

Sub-Genre/Themes: Sapphic desire, small town, one-room schoolhouse, teaching, creepy woods, “something in the woods”, death, grief, feminism, patriarchal society, religious communities, “madness/hysteria/delusions”, gossip, widows/spinsters, naturalists

Writing Style: Literary, Journal entries

What You Need to Know: Prepare to settle in for the long haul. This book unravels itself slowly. For this particular novel, the pleasure is in the journey–the full expanse of 400 pages working together to establish a strong aesthetic, develop a rich sense of place and atmosphere, and dive deep into the character of Ada Byrd.

My Reading Experience: This book is a whole mood and the temptation for you will be to hear all the buzz and jump into it with the wrong expectations. Readers are not finishing this book and raving about the heart-pounding scares (although there are moments) and the pages aren’t flying by like the latest “whodunit” thriller (although the journal entries do keep those pages turning). The reason readers love this book, in my humble opinion, is because Elliott Gish has told a feminist Gothic Horror story set in a small town with a creepy, mysterious wooded area, an intriguing widow who lives through those creepy woods and just over the bridge and main character we intimately draw close to through her journal entries. She has taken a position as the teacher in a one-room schoolhouse and she’s getting a room and board at a local family’s house that also housed the last teacher (who mysteriously disappeared). At first, everything is “church on Sunday, the smell of apples, and tea & cake” until Ada starts feeling watched–which wouldn’t be so unsettling if it wasn’t for the fact that the townspeople are religious and hung up on women behaving properly…you’ll see. This gets interesting quickly. My advice is to prepare for this one. Maybe save it for your Autumn TBR and make sure you read it with your afternoon tea and a cozy blanket–you’ll want to stay in Lowry Bridge for a while and allow Gish to woo you with this secretly seductive debut!

Final Recommendation: I saw somewhere that someone recommended this book as “Anne of Green Gables but Feminist Gothic Horror” and it could not be more accurate. If you read the entire Anne of Green Gables series and watched the PBS series, even watched Anne of Avonlea with Sarah Polley, this book is going to take you right back to it but infuse those delicious vibes with sapphic desires, feminist gothic themes, and a “get up out of your seat and clap” kind of ending.

Comps: The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry and The Death of Jane Lawrence

I am in awe. I haven’t been this affected or unsettled by a book in over five years. It’s like this was specifically tailored for me. An Anne of Green Gables fanatic who grew up to love spooky. My God. Gorgeous. Strange. Disquieting. I cannot recommend it enough. It should be on every award list. WOW.

Lush prose. Compelling characters. Moments that are so genuinely frightening it takes the breath away.

I will read anything Elliott Gish writes. I am a new lifelong fan.

Another conflicting ARC for me this month. While I really enjoyed the premise, themes and ending of the novel - it took a really long time to get there. So long in fact, that the book really lost my interest in the later first third of the novel. For a debut author, I was very impressed by the writing of this book overall. It was incredibly lyrical, atmospheric and creepy towards the end. And, as mentioned, I really loved the themes of female rage and female treatment which they weave throughout the novel. Given the historical context, the theme fits in perfectly well paired with the more horrific aspects of the forest/small town setting. But it was not enough to keep me fully engaged and drifting off that I ended up having to reread chapters because I felt like I was suddenly missing something. However, the last third of the book was creepy and captivating - I wish Gish had introduced this a bit earlier so that I could have felt a bit more engaged when our main characters mental decline finally happened.

In 1901, spinster school teacher Ada Bird accepts a teaching job in the small community of Lowry Bridge. It’s isolated, so she has the opportunity to re-establish herself somewhere where no one knows her secrets. As she gets settled and gets to know her students and neighbors, her past seems far away. That is, until she starts seeing grisly visions that she believes come from some supernatural force she calls Grey Dog. Her life begins to make her question what’s real and what’s not, and ultimately, what’s real horror.

I thoroughly enjoyed this slow burn, understated horror. I love the exploration of being a woman, what that means, and what it costs through the lens of horror. It builds slowly, constructing an errie mood and vibe to take us all to places we don’t expect.

This was a bizarre book, quiet in its intensity. As the reader you are never quite sure if our narrator is reliable or not. In a lot of ways this book felt like The VVitch to me. I imagined it in a muted color pallet and stark black contrasts during the night. Following our main heroine in a Puritanical society, and her longing to be free; and the beast who promises her that freedom. This is not a book for people who need all their questions answered, for it's far too artsy for that. But if you let yourself get swept up in the story you might start to hear the Grey Dog too.