Gretchen Felker-Martin is rapidly becoming not just one of my favorite horror writers of all time, but also potentially one of my favorite writers ever. Violent, fascinating, creepy, deeply unsettling, and yet every page is dripping with love for the genre as well as for its characters. I don't know that I would recommend this book to everybody due to its content, but I do know I'll be blabbing about this title to anybody who will listen for a long time.

First of all, can we talk about this fantastic eye-catching cover. Art by @dysphic: Deena Ramli and designed by @esthersarahk: Esther Kim. Had I not been offered a free review copy I'd still be picking it up for this cover alone. I appreciate it even more having read the book. Seriously great work all around.

How to describe this book? Hmmmm gritty and graphic, vividly penned, s3xually explorative, cinematicly macabre with a disturbingly occultish vibe but deeply meaningful on multiple levels.

Trigger Warnings are in effect for this book. If you're sensitive to violence skip it. The average reader would probably find this book way too graphic. Splatterpunk horror fans, however, would call it literary and mild. I fell somewhere in between. The gritty prose served its purpose for me and sucked me right into the head of the main character. The graphic elements only added to the emotion that the plotline evoked. Full immersion. Though parts turned my stomach, I loved it.

Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Prose: superb
Pacing: fast
Scary: creepy
Gore: yes
Character Development: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Atmosphere: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Powerful, arresting, nauseating — “do I want it?” Yes, I want to read books by Felker-Martin until my eyeballs dry up. Black Flame is an exciting addition to Felker-Martin’s canon, and this installment feels laser-focused. Ellen is a mess, Ellen feels real, Ellen’s repression is detestable, it’s pitiable, and some of the most rewarding scenes are Ellen’s stomach-churning yearning. She wants filth, she wants freedom, and the box she’s folded into won’t allow it.

Our author’s love of horror is the lifeline of this novella, and you can smell Clive Barker in its DNA. The further Ellen succeeds in restoring an infamous and thought-lost exploitation film, the further she unspools. Unapologetically queer, trans, transgressive, and political, Felker-Martin is once again at her best as she hurdles readers into a pus-filled, throbbing mess of repression.

On a technical note, in the chapter The Can, the prose states, “There was a homeless woman in her guest bedroom, for Christ’s sake” (loc 1143). It’s not until the chapter The Artifact that Ellen is called about a homeless woman who knows her: “Do you mean Molly? I don’t, um, I don’t know her last name” (Loc 1456). It’s after this chapter that Ellen brings Molly home. I believe this might be an editing issue, not a looping-timeline-plot-point.

Thank you for the arc! A tremendous read.

As always, Gretchen Felker-Martin goes hard. I love how detailed this is about the work of film restoration, and the internalized and externalized homophobia, transphobia, antisemitism, antifatness, overall privilege, etc was all really well-portrayed and nuanced. All of the violence and transgression directly served these themes. It didn't feel like a single drop of blood was gratuitous (and I say this as someone who is very positive about gratuitous blood in fiction). Really enjoyed it!

Thank you to Tor and NetGalley for the ARC.

This book is trying to make me uncomfortable and succeeding.

Ellen is a giant ball of repression collecting internalized isms and phobias like they’re Pokémon cards. She switches pretty rapidly between being unlikable/pathetic and incredibly sympathetic because she really is going through the wringer over there. The writing style is pretty all over the place and takes a minute to get situated, but it fits pretty well with Ellen’s overall mental state. She is constantly switching between reality and the horrifying fever dream; I found it kind of hard to keep up with at times, but I think that was the intention.

The horror aspect was incredibly dark and disturbing which yknow in a horror book is a plus. I like that it managed to be this horrifyingly violent, gorey, horny nightmare while also being used as a vehicle to communicate some very deep messages.

Ultimately, I think the issue lies more in me than the book. I recognize it has a lot of good going for it and respect that, but I had a difficult time getting invested in the plot because I kept getting confused by the narration. Definitely a check the content warnings situation because while I can read pages upon pages of people being flayed alive and disemboweled I got extremely squicked out by just how much time we spent talking about bathrooms or peeing.

Thank you to Netgalley and the author for the arc!

The best word i have for this book is "UNHINGED." Like honestly this book is... wild. just completely off the rails. The comparison to the movie Midsommar is honestly spot on. If you enjoyed that and want to read a queer, kinky version, that's pretty much exactly what you're going to get here. It's like that, or if the Amnesia game had a baby with a queer trauma memoir and then lit it on fire. Basically.

We follow Ellen, a deeply, deeeeply closeted Jewish lesbian who is forced to work on a Holocaust era... erotic snuff film? And once she starts working on it, she finds herself equal parts repulsed and obsessed. She finds herself on a descent into madness and debauchery and starts seeing things, or does she? Things go off the rails pretty soon after - this isn't a long book. I really don't want to say too much else about the plot, lest I spoil it. But I will also say I absolutely LOVED the writing style for the tone of this book. Its violent, graphic, and uncomfortable but I also laughed at some of the things Ellen was thinking to herself. Truly perverse.

5 stars. This book really worked for me. When I read the description, I was hooked. A closeted lesbian film restorer/archivist and a haunted exploitation movie. Deeply repressed lesbians battling hedonism and the real life horrors that haunt them in the daytime. This book is horny and queer and nasty and gross and filled with the kind of gore that makes your stomach turn, and yet also deeply emotional. I loved it. Thank you so much to Tor Nightfire and NetGalley for the ARC.

This book will 100% not be for everyone! Gross! Smart! Painful to read and painful to think about! I like the film stuff! Some of it felt very confused!

Reminiscent of Silver Nitrate, but I found that to be tighter in it's writing and craft.

Black Flame by Gretchen Felker-Martin is a slow, skin-crawling descent into obsession, shame, and the corruptive power of media. It follows Ellen, a lonely archivist who discovers a lost Nazi-era film. What starts as a quiet, almost clinical story spirals into something grotesque, erotic, and deeply unsettling. Felker-Martin doesn’t pull punches; this is body horror layered with psychological rot, and it’s told in prose that’s as gorgeous as it is nauseating. It’s not a fast read, and the pacing may frustrate anyone looking for conventional scares or likable characters. But if you want your horror to be intelligent, perverse, and unflinchingly honest about the things we repress, this book will get under your skin and stay there like a splinter.

I was pleasantly surprised reading i wasnt sure if i would like it and it was great!
it was grim and cruel to read it felt oppresive with that writing in the best way to show the mc dealing with that film and her realization of her sexuality, it was harsh while being poetic to represent coming out from a closeted existence. it was an excellent queer horror

Black Flame follows Ellen, a film restorer who’s closeted after years of being shaped and silenced by therapy, drifting through a life that doesn’t feel like her own. She’s in a relationship she doesn’t want, thinking constantly about the girl she used to love, and barely holding herself together. Then she gets assigned to restore this strange, unsettling film and everything starts to unravel.

The deeper Ellen gets into the restoration, the more reality slips. The book becomes this spiraling, hallucinatory nightmare, full of gore and grief and something even harder to name. It’s scary but also raw and sad and furious. Felker-Martin writes obsession and dysphoria in a way that feels so real.

I didn’t expect the ending to hit as hard as it did. It’s violent and disturbing, but it also felt tender in a way I wasn’t prepared for. I finished it and just sat there for a while, trying to process what I’d just read. I love all of Felker-Martin's novels, and maybe it's recency bias, but this one might just be at the top of my list.

Black Flame is brutal, obsessive, and dripping with dread. It follows Ellen, an archivist restoring a lost 1920s film that starts bleeding into her reality. From the start, it’s grimy and hypnotic. The writing is intense and often disturbing, but with a clear voice and purpose behind it.

This is not subtle horror. The body horror is graphic, the desire is tangled, and the atmosphere is relentless. Felker-Martin doesn’t pull punches, and for a lot of readers, that’s exactly what makes the book hit so hard. There’s a lot going on thematically too, especially around gender, obsession, and the violence of longing.

Some readers might find it overwhelming or too much, especially if they’re not into horror that pushes limits. The pacing can get chaotic, and it expects you to keep up. But if you’re into horror that sticks under your skin and doesn’t let go, this delivers.

It’s a bold, messed-up, and strangely beautiful novel. Not perfect, but powerful. A solid 4 stars.

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for providing the eARC. This review reflects my honest opinion.

Black Flame wasn't clicking for me at first but as the book progressed I really enjoyed the various expressions of queerness and gender. I was more invested in the main character's slow and painful excavation of identity and less so the film aspect, though the culmination of it all was wild and satisfying. Based on other reviews I had read this wasn't as intensely disturbing as I was anticipating, but it was certainly strange, eerie, and gross. There were a couple of gaps in the narrative and some continuity confusion though I am unsure if these are things to still be corrected, or if it was intentional. For example, our lead mentions hosting an unhoused woman (Molly) at their apartment, but Molly doesn't actually move in until later in the book. It might just come down to editing. This story has stuck with me several days after finishing the book, and I look forward to reading more of Felker-Martin's work.

i love when horror is weird and gross and queer and perverted and this was all of those things. definitely would recommend

80s New York, Film horror and Jewish representation.

This book is so interesting and engaging. I will be suggesting this to my audience it's so good.

Once again, Gretchen Felker-Martin reaches deep within the horrible heart of humanity while also exploring all the visceral guts of queer identity. I'm also a sucker for haunted film horror and Black Flame is an amazing addition to this subgenre. Could not recommend more.

Thank you, Gretchen Felker-Martin NetGalley, for the ARC. I leave this review voluntarily and happily. Also, thank you publishers for your hard work!

OK, this was truly a wtf. Did I just read the kind of book. Im honestly still trying to understand what all is going on in this book. There is a darkness, savagery, and definitely gore throughout this book. I had to stop a good few times to just comprehend what I had read. This is why it took me a bit longer to read this book. I definitely think this is a book you should go in blind to read. Besides just knowing the very basic plot that goes on. This is why I won't do a paragraph about the plot. Itle will probably be a sentence or two just to make it simple. I just can't get over the amount of rage there is in this book. The hatered and just all the emotions this book has to make it up. I will say if you're not ok with Homophobic language or the overall not likeness of the lgbtq community, there are some hostile moments in this book. Also, there are parts about Jews and their culture that might upset others.

Other than all of that, this book was very much twisted and dark. A book that did confuse me at times and made me so mad I wanted to strangle some of the characters. The imagery played just like a film as i read, and i love it when a book does that. It certainly makes me fall deeper into the story and makes me experience the book in a better way. It certainly has me feeling sick along with the main character and wanting some of the things that she did along the way.

I definitely will have to reread this a second time to get a better understanding of the complete picture. This book definitely was worth the read.

This was fine! Felker-Martin will never write a book with characters that hit me as hard as Fran and Beth did, but I did truly like Ellen; closeted, scared, pushover, deeply into film restoration. I think I would have liked this to be longer. The cursed film situation wasn't as interesting to me as Ellen was. The woes of her lift and the horrible people in it took a bit of a weird backseat to the shenanigans of the film in the middle of the book and I just wanted ... more somehow.

this book is remarkable: wholly unapologetic in its transgression, deeply visceral while still being poetic, with a deep historical thread rooted in cultural disruption. kinky, gory, and heart-wrenchingly painful, gretchen felker-martin captures the terror and anguish of a closeted existence with such beauty. truly a masterpiece of queer horror, this one is bound to become a cult hit just like the films it pays homage to.

Ellen, a super closeted Jewish lesbian, is tasked with restoring a Weimar Republic-era 'pornographic' film. But as the film is painstakingly brought back to life, it awakens...well, a LOT in Ellen — particularly as she starts to hallucinate the characters from the film in waking reality.

Eerie, hella queer, nasty, vengeful, and ultimately rewarding, Black Flame was a little less my cup of tea than I hoped but still an interesting read. It took me a while to get into the 'can't put this down' mood (about 2/3 of the way?) but once I did, I was totally invested in what would finally happen. Lots of really cool gory imagery that will stick with me for a while, and I'd love to see this as a film.

(Also, special shoutout to the cover art as it's cool as hell and was 100% why I checked this out in the first place!)

Thank you to NetGalley and the author for providing me with a free eARC in exchange for an honest review.