Dec 19, 2025
Fingers crossed I can will myself to go to an ACTUAL book club. I need to get ✨Socialized✨
💚 Herculine by Grace Byron
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Italy
seen from United States
seen from Poland
seen from Australia
seen from United States
seen from Brazil
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from Poland
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from China
seen from South Korea
seen from Canada
Fingers crossed I can will myself to go to an ACTUAL book club. I need to get ✨Socialized✨
💚 Herculine by Grace Byron
Herculine by Grace Byron
Manhunt meets Lord of the Flies in this blistering horror debut following a young trans woman after she arrives at the all-trans girl commune founded by her toxic ex-girlfriend, only to discover that demons, both literal and figurative, haunt her fellow comrades—and she's their next prey!
Herculine’s narrator has demons. Sure, her life includes several hallmarks of the typical trans girl sob story—conversion therapy, a string of shitty low-paying jobs, and even shittier exes—but she also regularly debates sleep paralysis demons that turn to mist soon after she wakes and carries vials of holy oil in her purse. Nothing, though, prepares her for the new malevolent force stalking her through the streets of New York City, more powerful than any she’s ever encountered. Desperate to escape this ancient evil, she flees to rural Indiana, where her ex-girlfriend started an all-trans girl commune in the middle of the woods.
The secluded camp, named after 19th-century intersex memoirist Herculine Barbin, is a scrappy operation, but the shared sense of community among the girls is a welcome balm to the narrator’s growing isolation and paranoia. Still, something isn’t quite right at Herculine. Girls stop talking as soon as she enters the room, everyone seems to share a common secret, and the books lining the walls of the library harbor strange cryptograms. Soon what once looked like an escape becomes a trap all its own.
While trying to untangle the commune’s many mysteries, the narrator contends with disemboweled pigs, cultlike psychosexual rituals, and the horrors of communal breakfast. And before long, she discovers that her demons have followed her. And this time, they won’t be letting her go.
Herculine by Grace Byron
goodreads | storygraph
Have you read this trans book?
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Herculine’s narrator has demons. Sure, her life includes several hallmarks of the typical trans girl sob story—conversion therapy, a string of shitty low-paying jobs, and even shittier exes—but she also regularly debates sleep paralysis demons that turn to mist soon after she wakes and carries vials of holy oil in her purse. Nothing, though, prepares her for the new malevolent force stalking her through the streets of New York City, more powerful than any she’s ever encountered. Desperate to escape this ancient evil, she flees to rural Indiana, where her ex-girlfriend started an all-trans girl commune in the middle of the woods.
The secluded camp, named after 19th-century intersex memoirist Herculine Barbin, is a scrappy operation, but the shared sense of community among the girls is a welcome balm to the narrator’s growing isolation and paranoia. Still, something isn’t quite right at Herculine. Girls stop talking as soon as she enters the room, everyone seems to share a common secret, and the books lining the walls of the library harbor strange cryptograms. Soon what once looked like an escape becomes a trap all its own.
While trying to untangle the commune’s many mysteries, the narrator contends with disemboweled pigs, cultlike psychosexual rituals, and the horrors of communal breakfast. And before long, she discovers that her demons have followed her. And this time, they won’t be letting her go.
books i read in 2025:
"herculine"
grace byron
"longing was easier than reunion"
me reading Herculine: uhh why can't i remember the protagonist's name? i know i've been having memory problems but this is a bit extreme a goodreads review: "...the unnamed narrator..." me: oh good, i'm not losing my mind
Considering reading You Weren’t Meant To Be Human by Andrew Joseph White? Here’s a few tips:
1. Accept that YWMTBH has nothing to offer in terms of horror or plot details, and that it will only be able to offer shock value rape fetish content instead of the alien horror novel you presumably came looking for.
2. Put YWMTBH down.
3. Pick up Herculine by Grace Byron, which takes almost every aspect of an AJW book (trans protagonist, cult setting, forced pregnancy, supernatural antagonists etc) and actually addresses them in a way that is both plot consistent and not blatantly fetishizing or glossing over the trauma of any of the horrific things involved.
May Book Reviews: Herculine by Grace Byron
I received a free copy from Saga Press via Netgalley in exchange for a fair review. Publish date October 7th.
I requested this book because I was intrigued by the trans horror premise. In Herculine, the unnamed trans narrator is attempting to pursue writing career in New York, where she is haunted by the demons that taunt her when she's half asleep. When she suddenly loses her job, she impulsively takes an ex up on her offer to join an all trans girl commune in rural Indiana, where things are not as they seem...
Herculine is a novel where the horror feels more inspired by literary fiction than the orderly explanations of urban fantasy. Even the goriest horror sequences in the book feel much more metaphorical than scary, and all of the fantasy elements are possible to explain away as the narrator's hallucinations or schizophrenia. The literary fiction feel is emphasized by the prose--Byron has a gift for excellent turns of phrase. There's a particularly good passage where she links the narrator's pushy landlord with a description of god as the heavenly landlord, and then quips that her mother taught her to pray for rent money. However, Byron also has a bit of a tendency to dedicate large passages to philosophizing, which may not be to everyone's taste. I wouldn't say Herculine navel gazes, but it certainly glances occasionally at the midriff.
The plot itself is more metaphor than campy horror novel. We learn that demons are tied to people in their worst moment of trauma, and haunt them in attempt to steal their souls. Here, trauma tears apart the trans woman community literally, in the form of demons eating people. Our unnamed narrator is a prime target for demonic manipulation: haunted by the conversion therapy she suffered through as a teen, bitterly jealous of other women writers posting about their successes on instagram, and scraping her way through living in New York with ketamine and parties full of people she despises. And the trans utopia her ex promises her doesn't turn out to be much better...
A dark and spiky trans horror book about intracommunity violence. It leaned a bit too far into litfic stylistically for my taste, but if that's more your thing, you may enjoy it.
Who: Anna Van Patten as Grace Byron What: The Reformation Kaye Silk Dress in Coriander - $278.00 Where: 2x03 “Great Reputations”
