Hellena

A really excellent and often genuinely horrifying Gothic novel with great queer characters. Starling uses the claustrophobia of a medieval castle under siege to ratchet up the tension - it also provides an atmospheric backdrop for the story's increasingly disturbing fantastical elements. The three very different women at the center of the story are connected in ways that become clear as the novel progresses, and Starling does a fabulous job of bringing the reader along for their psychological fraying in a way that feels very fresh.