The Burn Line

 

The Burn Line by Jonathan Sims, 384 pages.

Five passengers on the London underground share what seems to be a normal journey on the tube, rendered especially unpleasant by a historic heat wave. But if the trip was normal, why can none of them shake the feeling that something terrible and unnatural happened? The feeling is impossible to shake, and only grows stronger as they feel themselves being stalked, and as strange and not-quite explicable events keep happening around them. The five individuals have nothing in common but their commute, but they will have to come together if they want any chance of survival.

This book had a bit of a slow start. There was a lot of characters telling us they felt uneasy, with very little actually happening on page. However, Jonathan Sims excels at character writing, and I think the split perspective style, cycling through the whole cast, definitely added to the book. Once it hit its stride it was engrossing, and I really enjoyed how it all came together. I don't know if I would call this Sims' strongest work, but I did enjoy it, and would recommend it as a fun bit of summer horror.

This book is scheduled to be released on 8/25/2026. 

Jackal

 Jackal by Erin E. Adams, 352 pages.

Liz Rocher returns to her hometown in Johnstown, Pennsylvania only very reluctantly. But it's her best friend's wedding, and after a traumatic breakup in New York she has to prove to herself she can still trust her own judgement. Then her best friend's daughter (who is also her own beloved stepdaughter) goes missing in the woods the night of the wedding, and the only sign is a bloodstained scrap of her dress. In the desperate search for the little girl Liz learns that she is not the first little black girl to go missing in those woods, and if she ever wants to find her Liz is going to have to get to the bottom of dozens of disappearances and deaths stretching back decades, including an encounter from her own youth that left her scarred.

This book is a really compelling piece of social horror, and an engaging mystery. For the first half of the book or so I wasn't even certain what genre it was going to turn out to be. And there is just so much plausible evil in this book that I wasn't certain who the villain was until the book revealed it. This was a really interesting read, and I would definitely recommend it for fans of the genre.