Mia’s Shrine of Scary Stories, #2, 2025

Hi y’all,

I wanted to have shorter intervals in between my recommendations for you, but of course I caught a seasonal cold and my day job has been a bit demanding this last week. But here we are again, and I do hope your Samhain joy is as keen still as mine! One more week till Hallowe’en!

Today I will offer another scary sapphic story up for your tasting, served with ghosts, a wicked nun (not the one from the franchise). As often, I do recommend the audiobook, which has gifted me with an uncontrolled fit of laughter at the very Northern accented (I want to say, sounds like a Loiner?) remark about one of the characters being called ‘a broody mare’ by her brother, which simply had me in stitches. I remind you that I am but a simple woman of simple joys.

Side note: I will, as prophesied, add another post with a hopefully succinct explanation why I think you cannot get much scarier than What The Woods Took, closing the circle with the recommendation in my last post. Probably later today, so keep your eyes peeled (what a great Hallowe’en metaphor).

So! The second seasonal scrumptious scary story I want to tell you about is written by Laura Steven, and it is, very promisingly, called The Society for Soulless Girls.

Once upon a time, there was a college in the North of England for artistically gifted students. Prestigious, mysterious, and with a right whiff of the upcoming elite. Alas, Carvell College of Arts has been plagued by an unsolved gory case of murders (yes, plural) about ten years ago. As they all happened around the North Tower of the college, they are named after it. Now, Lottie is determined to a) ace this prestigious temple of education’s curriculum and b) solve the North Tower murders, as one young woman from her hometown was one of the victims. Not necessarily in that order of priorities...Her parents are less than pleased, but finally give in to her determination to attend yon Scary College of Gruesome Slaying.

College, however, also means sharing a room with goth/Oxbridge hybrid style queen Alice, who is perhaps the single most violent person Lottie will ever meet. Alice knows her own darkness quite, quite intimately, and when the story switches to her perspective, the enormous lid she is trying to keep on her feelings becomes alarmingly apparent.

But Lottie, by nature a solution-focused athlete of a bit of an optimistic world view, with at least one foot firmly on the ground, is clueless about Alice’s murderous fantasies. Though when Alice simply decides to deck a creep on their first night out at the local students’ bar (to which, I mean...why bother with appropriate force of retaliation when you are trying to deal with that kind of guy…) and awakes bloodied after a tragic accident at the North Tower, Lottie’s suspicion is finally raised to a red alert kind of level.

Not that Lottie has nothing to hide, what with being haunted by a strange presence and sleepwalking again and again to the North Tower…

Soon, the roommates are locked in a cycle of mistrust and growing attraction, while both are tortuously sleuthing towards a way to save their fellow students from becoming the next case of serial murder victims. Horrified of herself and unwilling to be autopiloted into perhaps shoving annoying Lottie out of the dorm window one day, Alice decides to direct her own fate and rid herself of her bloodthirsty instincts by way of a mysterious ritual she discovers in an old book in the library.

But she is not the only one to attempt the ritual. And everything gets so much stranger and worse after it.

I absolutely adore this tale of wrath, early adult attraction, ghosts and gore, with its distinct British voice, its placement slightly askance to the time I live in right now, pulling me back to years without mobile phones, a proto-internet era perhaps, where information is still found in libraries, old tomes and phone books. I love that it is such a classic feminist tale about the ridiculing of female anger, depression, rage, without making things more complicated than they are. It has everything: blood rituals and haunting and thwacking male dominance (rather literally) and female solidarity across generations. And it will never, ever, once, beat you over the head with unnecessary meta ‘smash the patriarchy’ blunt force. It is way too well crafted and finely honed for that, and all the better for it. There is nothing deep to interpret, nothing shown, everything told, a wonderful example of application of the golden rule of writing: show, don’t tell. I deeply appreciate that. A good story should be entertaining and compelling, first and foremost. This tale delivers in spades. Additionally, it is wickedly funny, often through the juxtaposition of Lottie’s and Alice’s narration of their take on the same situations, without ever giving off the feeling that this rather common method of telling a story is overused. The adversaries are surprising, layered, and I am warning you right away, you will develop a huge crush on jocky funny Lottie and/or Alice’s glamorous simmering violent languor. (I mean, get to the scene where Lottie nonchalantly points out her superior brawn when she has to drag to safety not only one, but two girls, and then tell me your knees did not get a little weak. Or look me in the eye and tell me you are not fantasising about the moment when Alice knocks down another hockey player for Lottie’s sake. I dare you.)

This is not a romance novel, but a scary child of a murder mystery and a ghost story. In the words of the great Gaga, it is about ‘the agro of my furied heart’. But we do get dark romance as a wonderful bonus on top, so thank you very much, Laura Steven.

As always, and darkly gleeful, Mia