The Glowing Hours

Praise for The Glowing Hours

A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Pick: Spring 2026 SF, Fantasy & Horror Preview
Ms. Magazine Most Anticipated Feminist Reads of 2026
CrimeReads 27 Horror Novels to Look Forward to in 2026

“The Glowing Hours is a haunting, surreal, and utterly engrossing gothic horror novel that hooked me from the very first page. With her adult debut, Leila Siddiqui has distinguished herself as an incisive and exciting voice in horror.”
—Alexis Henderson, author of The Year of the Witching

“With slow-burning terror and creeping dread, Leila Siddiqui’s The Glowing Hours conjures a Gothic tale that enthralls as it spirals into the hallucinatory madness of history’s most legendary monster-maker and her companions. Dark secrets, ghosts, and the grotesque lurk on every page!”
—Corinne Leigh Clark, coauthor of The Butcher’s Daughter: The Hitherto Untold Story of Mrs. Lovett

“Siddiqui masterfully evokes the time period and creates an atmosphere dripping with unease as Mary and Mehr begin to have converging nightmares in their eerie vacation villa. Though the life of Mary Shelley has often been mined for material, Siddiqui brings a fresh perspective through the eyes of the witty and sullen Mehr, whose backstory and fraught relationships with the increasingly entangled Geneva party add to the intrigue. This is a real treat for fans of gothic fiction.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“Injecting new menace into the history of a beloved horror classic, this is a great suggestion for fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic and Donyae Coles’s Midnight Rooms or Frankenstein-inspired tales in the vein of Tim McGregor’s Eynhallow.”
—Library Journal

“A feminist, revisionist exploration of Mary Shelley’s troubled past and the cult of fame that surrounds her. Told from the perspective of an Indian immigrant, the novel offers a fresh and compelling lens on the Shelleys’ complex history. For fans of Caitlin Starling’s The Death of Jane Lawrence and Johanna van Veen’s Blood on Her Tongue.”
—Booklist

“Scares abound.”
—BookRiot

“There’s been quite a few takes on that rainy summer when Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in a Swiss villa, but The Glowing Hours takes this historical moment into supernatural territory for my favorite take yet.”
—CrimeReads

“Atmospheric and evocative, The Glowing Hours is an eerie and engrossing ode.”
—Ms. Magazine

“The summer that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein is one of those stories I will reread in various facets, but Leila Siddiqui’s take is especially compelling.”
—Literary Hub

“[The Glowing Hours] Reminds us that Romantic literary genius was not created from inert historical matter. Rather, it was born from a world where colonial violence engendered the greatest horrors of all.”
—Historical Novel Society

“Terrifying.”
—The Lineup