"Blood Cypress" opens with punk, bisexual Lila trauma dumping on a woman she met in a bar. Granted, Lila's young life was punishing to say the least. Her story begins as a vulnerable 18 yr old, attractive and closeted in a Southern town that views the nonconformance as an oddity, and difference as a flaw. After the death of her father, she's forced into the role of caretaker, for her emotionally distant mother, her overprotective twin brother Quentin and sweet, silent Beau. Her authoritative elder brother Davis, obsessed with keeping up appearances, only acknowledges Lila to scold or remind her of her "failures." It's an environment that cannot be sustained, and the cracked facade finally breaks after Beau goes missing.

I definitely would've given this short story a higher rating if everything but the ending wasn't a lesson in uninspired shock value. Lila's relationship with Beau is endearing, and the last act would've been stronger if Lila wasn't gratuitously bombarded from every angle up until that point. So much dialogue is wasted on one-note characters. She lives in a small town, so obviously everyone must be bigoted and judgmental. No friends. The cops? All bullies, perverts and pedophiles. Quentin? Twin fetish.

Quentin confesses his love for his sister and she has to practically scream r*pe to chase him off. This turned me off immediately, and not just because I'm a twin. When a writer has to resort to one twin dying or sexualizing the two, without contributing to the plot in any meaningful way, the writing becomes second-rate.

I did enjoy the ambiguous ending though. Did Beau truly end it all or was it all in Lila's head? Was she finally driven to the breaking point after the loss of Beau? A narrative that was split between Beau and Lila would've made for better pacing, dialogue and more insight into the swampy, Southern gothic setting.

A hauntingly beautiful story of a sister’s journey to find her brother in the dense swamp surrounding their home. Proving her worth, she ignores the cops and takes matters into her own hands.

This novella explores a southern family where everything is seemingly wrong. The father is dead, the mother is lazy, the daugher’s a lesbian, one son has long hair and the youngest son is just plain wrong and doesn’t talk. Or so the chatter in the town goes. Nobody actually cares about the precarious finances of a family raised by a grieving mother and a son that needs constant caring, not when the appearances are just so wrong (after all, a woman who can’t keep her house in order doesn’t really deserve any pity! And one that lets her kids run around like that? Even less so.) And when the youngest son goes missing one day while everybody else is at work and the brother tasked with watching over his little brother takes his eyes off him to do his homework everything begins to unravel and prejudices that were just boiling under the surface for far too long start boiling over.
The story is interrupted with short chapters exploring that Lila, the daughter, has grown up to actually sleep with women and left that small southern town as she tells a woman she spent the night with about what happened during that search for her little brother. It is very interesting and I liked that the listening character could function as an audience stand in, asking a few of the questions I was asking myself. I really enjoyed the descriptions of the swamp in the end and I liked how the stories tied the two separate timelines together in the end.
All in all, if you like gothic horror with queer aspects, a really interesting exploration of swamps and a view at the small town prejudices against poor, autistic and queer people, this was a fun novella and I really enjoyed reading it.

TW: ableism, death, death by fire, homophobia, attempted incestuous assault, talk of sexual assault, sexual harassment

Another excellent selection by Elizabeth Broadbent. I’ve been looking forward to more of her work since Ninety Eight Sabers and Blood Cypress did not disappoint. It’s a shorter novella but still a fleshed out, solid story. Broadbent nails the southern atmosphere. I’m from Georgia (Atlanta, fortunately, so that tiny island in a big sea of mostly hick) and still live down south (TN). I think some people may struggle to believe this type of story could take place in 2016, but just check some of the local news comment sections and your disbelief will be gone.

Blood Cypress follows the Carson family living in Legare County, South Carolina. Lila is our main protagonist and she lives with her mentally checked out mother and siblings. Beau, the youngest Carson, is neurodivergent in some way and while he is deeply loved, he’s just not well cared for. When he goes missing Lila is forced to see reality and confront some of her own inadequacies.

The trauma and mistreatment of women and children in Blood Cypress are both heavy and felt very accurate. The complex relationship between the twins was difficult to read but definitely adds to the burden Lila carries. Broadbent does a great job at writing a novella with clashing family horror and preternatural elements. Definitely recommend. Tough read but solid vibes and horror.

Elizabeth Broadbent doesn’t just waltz up to trauma—she stomps in with a lit cigarette dangling from her lip, a box of gasoline-soaked matches in one hand, and a middle finger raised in the other. By the time she’s done with Blood Cypress, the seventh gut-punch in the Selected Papers from the Consortium for the Study of Anomalous Phenomena series, you’re either sobbing into your beer, reeling like you’ve been slapped by a wet gator, or sniffing your bathroom tiles wondering if that mildew’s hiding your grandma’s pissed-off ghost. This Southern Gothic novella is a swampy, vicious bastard—blending emotional wreckage, family fuckery, and a stench of terror so thick you’ll want to gargle bourbon just to clear your sinuses.

If that’s your bag, strap in, you sick freak. If not, run like hell before the cypress knees snag your dumb ass and drag you under.

Broadbent’s a goddamn Southern Gothic witch with an MFA from the University of South Carolina and a résumé that screams “I’ve seen some shit, and I’m here to ruin your day.” Her debut Ink Vine already had us hooked like catfish on a line, and Blood Cypress proves she’s not about to lighten up on our fragile little souls. Whether she’s dredging haunted swamps or reality-TV-soaked plantations, she cracks the South open like a rotting pecan and lets the maggots wriggle out with style. She’s funny as shit online, dabbles in speculative weirdness, and seems to have a PhD in how royally fucked families can get. In short: she’s a terror, we’re obsessed, and we’re begging her to keep the pain coming.

Blood Cypress pretends it’s about Beau, a missing ten-year-old who’s nonverbal, developmentally delayed, and a total inconvenience to his trainwreck of a Southern clan. But let’s be real—it’s not just about where the kid wandered off to; it’s about why nobody gives a flying fuck he’s gone. When he vanishes into the swamp behind their Lower Congaree, South Carolina shithole, his twin sister Lila’s the only one who doesn’t shrug and crack a beer. The sheriff’s too busy ogling her tits, her mom’s a catatonic mess, and her older brother’s a sexist prick who’d fit right in Faulkner’s dumpster. So Lila grabs her imaginary machete and charges into the swamp’s slimy green guts. What she finds isn’t just creepy—it’s rot, the kind that’s been festering in her family’s bones since Jesus was a toddler.

There’s also some barroom chick listening to Lila spill her guts, which ties into the Consortium’s archival, oral-history bullshit. It’s a weird little frame that makes you wonder if the spooky stuff’s real or just swamp gas screwing with your head. Either way, Blood Cypress is a Southern Gothic wet dream: crumbling houses, queer vibes stuffed in the closet, Bible-thumping hypocrisy, and a town so cruel it’d make a snake blush. Broadbent doesn’t just play the hits—she stabs ‘em in the throat with a rusty spoon and carves out something bloody and raw.

The swamp? Land and water blur together like love and guilt, care and control, truth and bullshit. It’s where the masks come off and the ugly steps up to say howdy, feathers and all.

Beau’s “otherness”—call it autism, brain damage, or just “fucked by small-town standards”—is served up raw and uncomfortable. The town screws him over. His family screws him over. You’re left sitting there, squirming like you’ve got swamp mud in your shorts. Broadbent wants you to feel that failure, and if you don’t, you’re probably dead inside.

Lila’s a closeted bi girl in a hellhole where folks still think Jesus hates dancing and dicks in equal measure. Her queerness is her armor and her Achilles’ heel, and it’s damn real.

Broadbent writes like Flannery O’Connor’s ghost possessed her and brought a grudge. Her prose is lush, nasty, and sticks to you like swamp slime. You can feel the gnats buzzing your neck and smell the mildew on Lila’s curtains—it’s poetic without being some pretentious ass-kiss, gritty without wallowing in cheap grimdark. Take this gem:

“Stand on the edge of that swamp, right where water and land become uncertain brothers, and that soupy air turns scum-sweet.”

That’s not just writing—that’s a sucker punch to the senses. You’ll want to scrub your soul with bleach and maybe cry into your whiskey. But she doesn’t overdo it. The horror’s not cheap scares or guts—it’s a slow, soul-fucking creep, folk horror with a magnolia-scented shank.

Blood Cypress drowns you in its vibe. It’s immersive like waking up in a coffin full of mud. You’re not just reading about a swamp—you’re knee-deep in it, slogging through a busted family, a busted town, and a busted girl trying to hold it together. Lila’s a badass protagonist: fucked-up but not weak, pissed-off but not stupid, tough without turning into some gritty trope. Her voice hauls this novella like a cypress limb about to snap.

The good shit:
- Pacing’s tight as a gator’s jaw—tense, not rushed.
- Horror’s a slow simmer that’ll wreck you.
- Emotional punches land like a tail-whip to the tits.

The not-so-good shit:
- That barroom frame? Kinda feels like literary garnish that didn’t cook right. Not a dealbreaker, but it’s like finding a fly in your gumbo—meh.
- Tropes? If you’ve binged Southern Gothic, you might roll your eyes. Rotting houses? Check. Queer repression? Check. Creepy family vibes? Oh hell yes. Broadbent nails ‘em, but they’re not exactly fresh off the vine.

Blood Cypress is a fever dream where the sweat’s dripping from the swamp, not you. It’s about being unwanted, invisible, and ignored, and one girl saying “fuck that” anyway. It’s brutal, tight, and toxic as hell—in the best damn way. It’s near-perfect, and it’ll make you feel something ugly and true. That’s horror done right, motherfucker.

This book pulls you in and doesn’t let go. The events are generally surprising and unexpected but not in a way that loses the reader. The story never slows down and keeps you interested all the way through.

I am going to be haunted by this book.

BLOOD CYPRESS by Elizabeth Broadbent

This was just so moving
The plot is about finding your lost brother but the story is about being alone in a house full of people. It’s hard to read because it is such a raw feeling. It is subtly powerful, it is vulnerability exposed.
The main story takes place in 2016 but if you told me it was 1916 I would believe you. Ignorance is only bliss to the ignorant.
The heartbreaking knowledge that the world will just pretend to be there for you because it has to can leave a person feeling powerless. It will go through the motions so it can’t be blamed for not helping. You are less than insignificant, but you are something that will pass the time until something else comes up. You are a person damnit, and being different makes you more worthy, not less.
Lila does not put up with the treatment she gets and instead she takes the bull by the horns and goes looking for her brother on her own.
The swamp. I was so tense in that swamp. To this northerner, the swamp was otherworldly and I do not want to think about it again. Let’s see how that works out for me because, like I said, I am going to be haunted by this book.

“Stand on the edge of that swamp, right where water and land become uncertain brothers, and that soupy air turns scum-sweet.”

Blood Cypress is a beautifully written southern gothic novella. Broadbent writes with such a strong sense of time and place, that the reader gets completely enraptured by the Carson family and their struggles in the backward, bitter, back-stabbing town of Lower Congaree.

Broadbent gracefully and heartbreakingly addresses mental illness, grief, homophobia, misogyny, family dysfunction and small-town hatred of otherness, while telling Lila’s story of her little brother disappearing one night.

Engrossing and tense, perfectly paced, both voluptuously gothic yet subtle in its terror, this is an excellent read.

This was a much darker novella than I went in expecting, which was a pleasant surprise. I was surprised by how attached I grew to Lila in a short amount of time. I am furious, heartbroken, and somehow also satisfied with the way her story (and Beau's) wrapped up. I also really enjoyed the frame narrative -- it reinforced Lila's outsider perspective while also only providing a brief and ambiguous glance into the (possibly) supernatural elements of the story.

What an intriguing novella! I was biting my nails throughout it and thoroughly enjoyed the events that unfolded. I really wish it was longer though but the fact that it is interconnected makes me want to devour the entire series. The best way to enjoy this novella is by going into without knowing too much about it. (Rating 4.75 our of 5 stars).

This short southern gothic leaves quite an impression. It’s a story within a story, a woman telling about events that happened to her when she had just turned 18. It is a quick read so I don’t want to get into too many details, but in a very short page count, Broadbent is able to create a full family tragedy, with many moments that will stick with me for a long time. Dealing with misogyny and homophobia, Lila is a strong willed and smart woman dealing with a really bad lot in life, caring for her probably autistic but undiagnosed younger brother, and dealing with a mother that is mostly absent, her father has already passed away and an older brother who wants Lila to just be quiet and fit the role he believes a woman should. Her only friend is her twin brother, but that relationship is also fraught with difficulties as they get older. One day, her younger brother goes missing and everything unravels and explodes in a shocking and heartbreaking way. I definitely recommend this one!

Content Warnings: Homophobia, Sexism, Sexual Commentary on a Minor, Ableism, Incest, Poverty, Fire/Burns

Note: This is the 7th entry in the series Selected Papers from the Consortium for the Study of Anomalous Phenomena. However, each novella in the series acts as a stand alone work.

Broadbent's writing here uses good imagery, but ultimately disappointed me. It felt like a checklist of Southern Gothic tropes: rotting house, scary swamp, sexist and homophobic community, "wrong" child, incest. It didn't really offer me anything new or different enough from other, similar stories. This novella is also set, alternatively, in 2016 and 2019. It doesn't read like it is set in those time periods, though. Aside from some fashion references and super minor technology (e.g., GPS), it reads like it's from the 1950s.

Personally, I found the queer elements kind of superfluous (why is Lila's one-night-stand actually needed to tell this story?), and the treatment of Beau, who may have autism or some other form of neurodivergence and/or brain injury and/or developmental disorder (it's not clear in the novella, so I'm casting a wide net) pretty distasteful, both in the family unit (arguably on purpose) and when he "escapes" to the swamp.

If readers really dig Southern Gothic, then this might be satisfying, but otherwise I can't recommend it.

This was a strong seventh entry in the Selected Papers from the Consortium for the Study of Anomalous Phenomena series. It had that element that I was hoping for and enjoyed the overall feel of this world. It was everything that I was looking for and enjoyed the overall horror element in this book. Elizabeth Broadbent has a strong writing style and was glad I got to read this.

This is the third story I have read from this series, and it does not disappoint. It is a Southern Gothic tale of guilt and superstition.

Short stories are difficult to review simply because they usually leave me wanting more (in a good way more often than not). I felt like this one was done well though. Bloody Cypress is a thoroughly engrossing story from start to finish. The ending was unexpected and quite tragic, but it also felt right.

I would love to read more from this author.

Thanks to Netgalley and RDS for the ARC.

I loved the setting in this little novella. Swamps are interesting and very scary. I would love to read a full length novel from Broadbent in the same genre. Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for a chance to read this eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me this ARC in exchange for a review! To me, "Blood Cypress" is a 3.5/5, definitely an interesting read that I liked.

I found "Blood Cypress" when I was looking for a short read, and it immediately stuck out to me. I'm a sucker for forest/swamp/rot/etc horror, so a story about a boy that goes missing in an ancient swamp had me hooked.

While some novellas feel like they need to be expanded, I think "Blood Cypress" worked really well! In 11 chapters and 100 pages, a compelling story was told, and by the end I was left curious but content.

I found Lila and MacKenzie to both be interesting characters, especially with the role that MacKenzie played in the overall story despite only meeting Lila after. Being a novella, of course, there wasn't much time to get to truly know the characters before the story was over, but I still think they were well done!

I've never heard of The Selected Papers from the Consortium for the Study of Anomalous Phenomena collection of works until now, but after reading "Blood Cypress", I definitely plan on checking out some of the other novellas!

There was noting inherently wrong with this book. It was well written, the characters were interesting, the plot was solid... It's just that there was nothing unique about it. I feel like I've read this story before. That being said- I'll definitely chck out more of the author's work, because (like I said) the writing was really good.

I finished this in one sitting with a face mask on. This was a great and short thriller, although interesting and leaves you wanting more, it's lacking. I related as a queer girl to the family dynamic (not the incest) but I also wanted more. I felt like there was more to be explored overall. Or perhaps that's the charm of it?

The ending made me want more. It left me speechless with absolutely no theories or ideas. I felt like there was more to explore with the swamp. Some theories and endings to latch on to in a way?

Do yourself a favor and read it.

Another great read in the Selected Papers from the Consortium for the Study of Anomalous Phenomena series, this time by Elizabeth Broadbent. These stories seem to always have great characters, great plot, and great pacing, and this will fit right in. Can't wait for the next in the series. #BloodCypress #NetGalley

I loved this SO much. It’s been awhile since I’ve read a really good southern gothic story and didn’t realize how bad I’d been itching for one.

This book grabs you by the throat immediately and doesn’t let up until the very end. The story is fascinating and you can’t turn the pages fast enough to see what happens next. Where it went was not what I was expecting at all and the pay off was worth it.

The writing flowed so flawlessly and I felt like I was sitting with someone while they told me a story.

As a lifelong V.C. Andrew’s fan, this very much gave me that eerie southern vibe like her books but with the authors own voice shining through so brightly. This was such a pleasant surprise and I’m so happy I read it.