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Verdict: A genuinely frightening sapphic Bluebeard with a haunted manor that earns every shiver and a clear-eyed portrait of love-bombing and gaslighting between two women, held back by a slow first half and a plot anyone who knows the fairy tale will see coming.
Best for: Horror readers who want atmosphere, dread and body horror more than a love story, and who can sit with a heroine making the wrong choice long after they would have left.
Heat level: ★★☆☆☆ (1.5/5 — not indexed on romance.io; no reviewer describes on-page sex)
Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.9/5 — a 4.27 Goodreads average built mostly on advance readers, with a slow-start complaint that keeps recurring)
Tropes: Fairy-tale retelling, haunted house, whirlwind marriage, forbidden room, toxic relationship, gaslighting, isolated manor, snowed in, loyal best friend, body horror.
A Thousand Monstrous Forms by Saratoga Schaefer is a standalone sapphic gothic horror novel from Crooked Lane Books that retells Bluebeard as a marriage between two women — ceramic artist Poppy Reed, six months into knowing her new wife, and art dealer Celia Marie Fox, who has been married five times before and asks only one thing of Poppy at her isolated manor: stay out of the basement.
It came out on 15 September 2026 and already carries a 4.27 average across 424 Goodreads ratings, the highest number on any of Schaefer’s books by a distance, alongside trade blurbs from Booklist and Library Journal. But most of those ratings came from advance readers, the one full trade review I could read is noticeably cooler than its pull-quote, and the same complaint keeps turning up in the reviews. That gap is worth understanding before you start.
What Is A Thousand Monstrous Forms About?
A Thousand Monstrous Forms is gothic horror first and a sapphic story second, and it is not a romance in the genre sense. It sits in the tradition of the haunted-house novel and the dark fairy tale — Bluebeard, with the manor’s name, Busirane, borrowed from the enchanter’s house in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. That lineage tells you the shape: a new bride, a forbidden room, and a house that is on nobody’s side. It sits at the character-driven end of horror, and Goodreads readers shelve it as Horror, Gothic and Lesbian rather than Romance.
Poppy Reed is defined by what she is short of: stability, money, a home that is hers, and the ability to trust her own perceptions after a previous abusive relationship. Celia assumes the opposite about herself — that her wealth, her taste and her version of events are simply the way things are. The book is narrated from inside Poppy’s head, which is the whole engine. You only know what she lets herself notice, and she is very practised at explaining things away.
What Makes This Sapphic Gothic Horror Work
- The atmosphere: The most consistently praised element by far. Faceless statues in the garden, mirrors that do not behave, rooms full of art and whispers — readers call the manor claustrophobic and say the dread is felt rather than described.
- Abuse between two women, taken seriously: Reviewers repeatedly single out the depiction of love-bombing, isolation and gaslighting in a sapphic marriage as rare and valuable, and several say it made them realise how rarely fiction admits that women abuse women. It shares a lot of DNA with dark romance, without any of the fantasy framing.
- The art: Poppy makes ceramics and Celia sells art, and readers enjoy how the work becomes part of the horror — ownership, possession, the artist as vessel.
- A final act that goes all in: The last hundred or so pages are where readers say it gets weird, gruesome and genuinely scary, with jump scares and body horror.
- Aditi: Poppy’s best friend, the one person who keeps asking the right questions, is the side character readers name most, and at least one would follow her into another book.
Book Synopsis
Poppy Reed knows how her marriage looks from the outside: six months of dating, a wedding, and a cross-country move to live with a woman whose romantic history is practically legend. Her best friend Aditi is worried; Poppy is not. Celia Marie Fox is the first person who has made her feel chosen, and Celia’s world is dazzling — collectors who want Poppy’s ceramics, a studio built especially for her, and Busirane, a vast, art-crammed manor far from anywhere Poppy knows.
The house does not seem pleased to have her. There are noises at night that nobody else hears, statues that do not seem to stay where they were put, and reflections that move a fraction wrong. Celia is loving, attentive and entirely unbothered, and she has an explanation for everything — usually that Poppy is tired, or stressed, or remembering things incorrectly. The only rule she gives her new wife is simple: the basement stays locked, and Poppy stays out of it.
Then Celia leaves on a work trip. A snowstorm closes the roads, Poppy has no car and no way out, and the house has her to itself. The whispers get closer, the questions get harder to swallow, and the locked door starts to feel less like a boundary than an invitation. What is Busirane trying to tell her — and what did the people Celia married before her find when they stopped listening?
My Review
This is a genuinely scary book, and I want to lead with that, because a lot of horror marketed at this readership is more mood than menace. Schaefer builds Busirane piece by piece — the faceless statues, the mirrors, a house that resents its newest occupant — and the reviews are close to unanimous that it works. “Atmospheric” is the recurring word, and readers reach for comparisons to Rebecca and Hill House. StoryGraph readers tag it dark (96%) and tense (90%), and only 1% report not finishing it.
The second strength is the one that makes it more than a haunted-house ride. The real monster here is the marriage, and the book is precise about how control works: the rushed commitment, the move away from everyone Poppy knows, the lavish gestures, the steady insistence that her own perceptions cannot be trusted. Readers say it rings true, and many single out that the abuser is a woman. Keeping us locked inside Poppy’s head is what makes that land — we are gaslit alongside her.
Where it struggles is pace, and this is the complaint that recurs, not a personal gripe. In one 30-review Goodreads sample, close to half mention the slow opening, one puts the turn at around 60%, and more than one admits being tempted to quit. The second theme is Poppy herself, whom readers call naive and frustrating for rationalising red flags most people would act on. Third, predictability. If you know Bluebeard, you know roughly where this is going, and several readers, as well as Publishers Weekly, say so.
One expectation to reset: the publisher’s description promises a “sapphic romance twist,” and this is not a romance. The relationship at its centre is the source of the horror, not a love story heading for a happy ending. If you came for a spooky sapphic love story, adjust now; if you came for a horror novel and worried the romance would soften it, relax — it does the opposite.
My honest note: A slow burn in the horror sense, which will test anyone who needs a story to move early. If you can give it the first half, it pays you back with one of the most unsettling final acts in recent sapphic horror.
| Element | In A Thousand Monstrous Forms |
|---|---|
| Central relationship | Poppy Reed & Celia Marie Fox — newlywed ceramic artist and wealthy art dealer, a whirlwind marriage that turns controlling |
| Core tropes | Bluebeard retelling, haunted house, forbidden room, toxic relationship, gaslighting, isolated manor |
| Setting | Busirane — Celia’s remote, art-filled manor, far from Poppy’s West Coast life, cut off by snow |
| Heat level | 1.5/5 — low; not indexed on romance.io |
| Series | Standalone — no sequel |
| Content notes | Toxic relationship, emotional abuse and gaslighting (graphic); domestic abuse, blood and gore (moderate); physical abuse, death and mental illness (minor) |
How Dark and Spicy Is A Thousand Monstrous Forms?
Low on spice, high on dark. romance.io has no entry for the book, which tells you it is not being catalogued as romance at all, and in roughly seventy reader reviews I read, not one mentions a sex scene. The desire between Poppy and Celia is part of why Poppy stays, but readers do not describe it on the page, hence 1.5/5.
The darkness is where the content notes matter. StoryGraph readers rate the toxic relationship, emotional abuse and gaslighting as graphic, with domestic abuse, blood and gore at moderate. The body horror in the final act is described as visceral and gruesome, and the mirror scenes are the ones people say stayed with them. No reviewer I found flags sexual violence. For the same low heat in a gothic register, The Animals at Lockwood Manor and The Brides sit in the same band.
Who Should Read This Book?
You’ll likely love it if: you want horror that is actually frightening, you love a haunted house with an opinion, you are interested in how abuse works between women rather than only between men and women, and you are happy for the relationship at the centre to be the threat.
You may want to skip it if: a slow first half will lose you, a heroine who ignores every warning makes you throw books, you know Bluebeard well and need surprises, or you want a sapphic love story with a happy ending.
In short: a patient, frightening gothic about a marriage that is the real haunting, for readers willing to wait for it to bite.
What Readers Are Actually Saying (September 2026)
The first thing to know is how new this conversation is. The book has been out for less than a week, and the 424 Goodreads ratings and 323 written reviews are overwhelmingly early readers: in one 30-review sample, 23 mention an advance copy from Crooked Lane, NetGalley or the audio publisher. Amazon shows just 12 ratings so far. Advance readers skew enthusiastic, so treat the 4.27 as provisional; StoryGraph’s 4.23 comes from the same crowd. I could not check Reddit or TikTok for this one. What is driving attention is Schaefer’s momentum: this is their third book of 2026, and many reviewers arrived because they liked Trad Wife.
There is also an audio edition, released the same day by Spotify Audiobooks and narrated by Imani Jade Powers, running 10 hours 17 minutes. Listeners praise the narration, and at least one says the audio kept them connected through the slower stretches.
Prefer audio? Listen to A Thousand Monstrous Forms on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.
Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The atmosphere, first and most consistently — “creepy” and “atmospheric” are the recurring words, and the statues and mirrors are the images people cannot shake. Then the treatment of abuse: readers repeatedly praise a book that shows love-bombing, isolation and gaslighting inside a sapphic marriage. The final act gets its own praise — “unhinged” comes up more than once — and Aditi, the best friend, is a clear fan favourite. Notably, a minority say the slow build worked for them.
What readers argue about and complain about: Pace, above everything. The first half is the most repeated criticism, with readers saying it drags, feels repetitive, or only catches fire past the midpoint; one 3-star reviewer says the book felt too long for the story it was telling. Poppy is the second theme — readers call her naive and frustrating, though some argue her history explains it. Third: predictability. Anyone who knows the fairy tale sees the shape early. The ending splits people. Most love the explosive last act, but a minority find the swing from haunted house to something bigger rushed or out of place, and at least one disliked the final pages.
The trade coverage is worth reading against that. The Amazon listing carries praise from Booklist, Library Journal and Publishers Weekly, but the PW line is clipped from a cooler review: it calls the plot well-paced and the ending “fairly predictable,” and says the book will hold horror fans without fully blowing them away. So PW and the readers agree on predictability and disagree on pace — the one thing the readers will not stop mentioning is the thing the trade review praised.
The standalone question worth asking first: This is a complete, single-volume story, with nothing to wait for and no sequel announced. If it works for you, the next stop is Trad Wife, Schaefer’s most-read book, but know that it sits nearly half a star lower on Goodreads at 3.80, with Serial Killer Support Group at 3.66 and The Last Time We Drowned at 3.48. On early numbers this is their best-received book; whether that holds past the advance crowd is the open question.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is A Thousand Monstrous Forms a romance?
No. It is gothic horror with a sapphic marriage at its centre, and that marriage is the source of the horror. There is love and desire in it, but readers who expect a romance arc will be disappointed.
Does A Thousand Monstrous Forms have a happy ending?
Not a romantic one. The relationship is abusive and the book treats it that way, so do not expect a happily-ever-after for Poppy and Celia. Readers describe the ending as explosive and unsettling, though a minority found it rushed.
How spicy is A Thousand Monstrous Forms?
Barely. romance.io has not indexed it, and none of the reader reviews I read mention a sex scene. I rate it 1.5/5 — the desire matters to the plot but stays largely off the page.
Is A Thousand Monstrous Forms a standalone?
Yes. It is a complete single-volume novel with no sequel announced, and you do not need to have read Schaefer’s other books first.
Is there an audiobook?
Yes — narrated by Imani Jade Powers for Spotify Audiobooks, running 10 hours 17 minutes, released 15 September 2026. Listeners praise the narration, and some found it helped carry them through the slower first half.
If You Loved A Thousand Monstrous Forms, Read These Next
The closest match is Our Wives Under the Sea, another marriage between two women that turns monstrous, told with more grief and less gore. If it was the hostile house that got you, White Is for Witching gives you a home with its own designs on the women inside it. And for gothic sapphic horror with more playfulness and a cursed setting, Plain Bad Heroines is the natural next read.
For more in this register, browse our sapphic gothic books list or the full Book Reviews collection.
The Bottom Line
A Thousand Monstrous Forms sets out to turn Bluebeard into a story about abuse between women, and it mostly gets there. The manor is truly frightening, the portrait of control inside a sapphic marriage is sharp and unusual, and the final act delivers the scares the setup promises. It is also slow to start, built around a heroine many readers want to shake, and predictable to anyone who knows the source. Whether that trade is worth it depends on your patience with a slow burn — but the reader who stays with it gets one of the more genuinely unsettling sapphic horror novels of the year. Check A Thousand Monstrous Forms on Amazon →
The Eikna Overall Ranking
On the Eikna scale, A Thousand Monstrous Forms ranks as a genuinely frightening sapphic gothic retelling — atmospheric and sharp about abuse, held back by a slow first half and a familiar shape, and best approached as horror about a marriage rather than a love story.
The Evidence Scorecard
Overall ★★★★☆ 3.9/5
- ✓ 4.27 average across 424 Goodreads ratings
- ✓ StoryGraph close behind at 4.23
- ✓ Only 1% did-not-finish on StoryGraph
- ✓ Ratings mostly from advance readers so far
Romance ★★★☆☆ 3/5
- ✓ Love-bombing rendered with real precision
- ✓ Readers understand why Poppy stays
- ✓ Desire drives the plot, not decoration
- ✓ Deliberately a threat, not a love story
Characters ★★★★☆ 3.9/5
- ✓ 72% of StoryGraph readers see strong development
- ✓ Aditi is the breakout fan favourite
- ✓ Celia stays unnervingly opaque
- ✓ Poppy frustrates a sizeable minority
Writing ★★★★☆ 4.1/5
- ✓ Atmosphere praised almost unanimously
- ✓ Statues and mirrors are memorable imagery
- ✓ Art woven into the horror
- ✓ First half repeatedly called slow
Emotional Impact ★★★★☆ 4.3/5
- ✓ Abuse between women rarely shown this clearly
- ✓ Readers say the gaslighting rings true
- ✓ 96% of StoryGraph readers tag it dark
- ✓ Predictable shape blunts some reveals
Heat Level ★★☆☆☆ 1.5/5
- ✓ Not indexed on romance.io
- ✓ No reviewer describes a sex scene
- ✓ Desire is central to Poppy staying
- ✓ Low heat, but graphic emotional abuse
Ending ★★★★☆ 3.7/5
- ✓ Final hundred pages widely praised
- ✓ Jump scares and body horror pay off
- ✓ Complete standalone, nothing left hanging
- ✓ Minority find the turn rushed
Re-read Value ★★★★☆ 3.5/5
- ✓ Atmosphere rewards a second visit
- ✓ Imani Jade Powers audio well reviewed
- ✓ Mirror and statue scenes linger
- ✓ Slow start discourages a quick return
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