Are you excited for the warm weather and sunshine as the summer approaches? Or are you counting down the days ’til the leaves turn and Halloween arrives? If the latter sounds more like you, have I got the anti-beach read for you this summer. This one is a huge shout-out to all the horror fans who keep the dark months in their hearts every season and who love to get weird. You all are going to eat this one up.

The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling Caitlin Starling is an author who seemingly refuses to be boxed into any one genre. Her first novel, The Luminous Dead, is a sapphic sci-fi thriller. 2021’s The Death of Jane Lawrence? Gothic romance. And Starling’s latest, The Starving Saints, invites readers into Aymar, a medieval castle under siege. Its inhabitants are starving and desperate for any kind of sign that everything’s going to be okay. Then it comes to them as the divine figure of the Constant Lady and her three saints. No one allowed these figures into the castle walls, and the doors remained locked. But the Constant Lady brings with her a bounty of food and the promise of more tomorrows. So why would anyone question it? The only people who seem wary of these strange new visitors are our three protagonists.

First, there’s Phosyne. Phosyne was once a nun, but since she could devise a potion that purified the castle’s water, she’s become the castle’s madwoman. The king insists that Phosyne must keep experimenting until she can come up with a way to create enough food for everyone. When the Constant Lady and her saints appear out of nowhere, Phosyne thinks she must have summoned them, but something seems terribly wrong.

Then there’s the knight Ser Voyne. Ser Voyne was once a war hero, but now she’s been forced to watch over Phosyne while she does all of her strange (and useless, in Ser Voyne’s opinion) experiments. At first, when the Constant Lady arrives, Ser Voyne pledges her allegiance to their saviors. But Ser Voyne soon discovers just how powerful the divine figures are–and not in a good way.

Finally, we get Treila, who is probably my personal favorite character. While Treila might seem like a servant girl, she was once a woman of high nobility. Before the Constant Lady shows up, Treila struggles to escape from Aymar Castle while also looking for a way to exact her revenge on Ser Voyne, the knight responsible for Treila’s fall from grace.

As the castle descends into madness, our three protagonists fight to find their way out while also slipping in and out of states of delusion themselves. Who are the saints and the Constant Lady really? What do they want with the castle?

As the tension increases, you, dear reader, might also feel like you’re spiraling deeper into a sinister fever dream of your own. And, truly, what more could you ask for from 2025’s best anti-beach read?

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Happy weekend reading, bibliophiles! Feel free to follow me on Instagram @emandhercat, and check out my other newsletters, The Fright Stuff and Book Radar!