Book Review: Bad Cree by Jessica Johns

By Sara Hailstone

Bad Cree is a debut novel by Jessica Johns and is a riveting account of one young woman’s confrontation with the supernatural and tragic events that caused the death of her sister, Sabrina. Set in Northern Alberta and Treaty 8 land, it tells the story of Mackenzie, who confronts the ability to transcend dream-time after she begins bringing physical remnants from the nightmares surrounding her sister’s death into her waking reality. Amongst the female familial bonds of aunties and cousins, Johns presents an empowering narrative of a family of women with strong matrilineal roots facing an enemy within the realm of the supernatural.

Jessica Johns is a member of Sucker Creek First Nation in Treaty 8 territory in Northern Alberta. As an interdisciplinary artist and writer, she has had pieces published in various magazines and anthologies. Johns is on the editorial board for GUTS—An Anti-Colonial Feminist Magazine and she sits on the advisory board for the Indigenous Brilliance reading series. This novel evolved from a short story titled Bad Cree that won the 2020 Writers’ Trust McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize.

The reader ventures with Mackenzie through nightmares to the lake where the family spent time in the past with their kokum, who has also crossed over. We witness Mackenzie intervening in an attack of her sister’s body by a murder of crows and bringing a severed crow’s head back to the waking world. In another episode she is thrown in water and almost drowns, waking drenched and coughing. In preparing for the nightmares, Mackenzie’s family come together to help her journey into the subconscious realm.  

The strength of the novel lies in its underlying theme of the power of women and family to support each other through trauma. Further, Johns successfully weaves together a narrative of interconnectivity with her treatment of the physical environment, community, and characters. I took away from the novel a coming-to-know journey of spiritual alliance with animals like the crows. Initially interpreted as threatening, Mackenzie learns that they are guiding and protecting forces. These themes address current conversations surrounding land, environmentalism, reclamation of walking in balance with nature and portrays a journey only possible with the healing and embracing of feminine connections in the novel.

I highly recommend Bad Cree and can see this novel being added to course outlines and taught alongside novels like Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson. Johns has contributed her voice and creative literary interpretation to a growing repertoire of Indigenous voices in Canadian society and beyond.

Thank you to HarperCollins for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review!

Book Review: Such Sharp Teeth by Rachel Harrison

By Shan Powell

Content warning: body horror, non-graphic mention of childhood sexual abuse

Such Sharp Teeth is a quick read, and a cozy, contemporary paranormal story. It’s not quite a horror novel and not quite a romance, but if you’re looking for chick lit with elements of both, you’ll want to check this out. It’s like a Hallowe’en beach read. The author, Rachel Harrison, is a graduate of Emerson College, where she earned a degree in Writing for Film & Television and wrote horror screenplays. Such Sharp Teeth is her most recent novel, and it reads like a Netflix special. Her debut book, The Return, was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel.

Rory Morris is our protagonist. She has her life under complete control. She’s a big-city career woman with disposable income, a great wardrobe, and a penchant for anonymous sex with good-looking men. Her twin sister Scarlet is pregnant and about to become a single mother. When Scarlet asks Rory to come home to help out for a bit, Rory reluctantly leaves her fast-paced life to return to slow, boring, small-town mundanity. She meets her grade school friend Ian at the local dive bar, and after a drink and some reminiscing (when did he get so good looking?), she heads back home to her sister’s place. On the way there, she is bitten by a strange creature and her life is forever changed.

Rory copes with the increasing horror of her life with humour and sarcasm. She has to juggle with commonplace issues like her sister’s baby shower, healing a strained relationship with her mother, and, horror of horrors, the thoughts that she might actually be considering an honest-to-God relationship with Ian—all of this while learning to cope with her burgeoning lycanthropy. The transformation scenes are vivid and unique.

Such Sharp Teeth features a cast of female characters who look like they’ve got it all figured out but who are all deeply flawed. The interplay of their relationships is central to the plot. The characters are sassy, witty, and sardonic. The dialogue is rich with witty banter, and the story celebrates sisterhood and friendships while investigating female bodily autonomy, pregnancy, women’s right to anger, and childhood trauma. Such Sharp Teeth is emotional without being mawkish.

The author cites Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score as a primary influence. Such Sharp Teeth will appeal to fans of True Blood, Practical Magic, Wolf Like Me, and Sex in the City.

Book Review: The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig

By Kaylie Seed

Content warning: child abuse, spousal abuse, domestic violence

Nate and Maddie have moved back to rural Pennsylvania with their 15-year-old son Olly, even though both Nate and Maddie did not have the best of childhoods there. Maddie has always been an artist, and when she was a child, she witnessed something she shouldn’t have seen and began creating haunting sculptures inspired by the experience. Nate grew up in an abusive home and wanted nothing more than to get away from the life he knew, so he became a police officer and left town as soon as he was able to. Their neurodivergent son Olly feels very deeply, to the point where he can feel the pain of others. Long ago, when Nate and Maddie were young, something sinister roamed the tunnels, mountains, and coal mines, and all these years later, the same underlying dark things are happening again—but this time, Olly is the victim.

The main themes in The Book of Accidents are family dynamics and family dysfunction. Wendig also includes loyalty, and the strength of love and belief. The Book of Accidents is listed as a horror novel; however, Wendig blends numerous other genres including supernatural fiction, science fiction, and coming-of-age, leading readers to be fully immersed in a wide array of tropes. Readers may find that it can be difficult to follow all the subplots, but if they pay close attention to detail, they should be fine. However, don’t expect all your questions to be answered in the end.

Wendig has done an excellent job at creating a sense of danger, foreboding, and dread as readers make their way through this spooky read, crafting a brilliant horror novel that is dark and creepy yet vivid and very readable. Some may feel that the 500+-page book is daunting, but it is bound to be one you won’t want to put down, even if you are a little scared. I recommend The Book of Accidents to any reader who enjoys classic horror story tropes or Stephen King’s early work.

Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

By Larissa Page

Ring Shout is a small book that packs a big punch. Coming in at under 200 pages, this novel/novella centers around Maryse and her gang of resistance fighters who are not only pushing back against the Klu Klux Klan as strong Black women, but also against actual Demons called Klu Kluxes (and more otherworldly beings) who thrive and feed on the hate living inside the racist members of the Klan and use it to grow and bring Hell to earth—unless the resistance fighters can stop them.

Before jumping into this one I knew it involved demons but I did not know it fit itself comfortably into the horror genre. Horror is not a typical genre for me but when it’s done well, I do enjoy it. I felt P. Djèlí Clark did it well. The scenes would be considered graphic, with the demons and disguised demons described like the stuff of nightmares, but this all lent itself well to the story and wasn’t over the top or overly gross (that I found).

I really loved the characters, these strong women fighting alongside each other. Even though the book was short in pages, it still gave us little tidbits of each of the women that made me love them. Maryse with her history of pain and loss, Sadie with her badass gun skills, and the former Harlem Hellfighter (WW1 soldier) Chef, together made a team that you could feel the connections in. Even the matriarch of the group leading them in ring shouts and full of knowledge, Nana Jean, was integral to the group.

Due to its short nature, I sped through this book in just two days and found myself plopped into a fictionalized horror story that related very much to a real time in our collective history. The Birth of a Nation was a silent film released in 1915 that really was highly racist and really did fuel the rebirth of the Klu Klux Klan, all facts I didn’t know before reading Ring Shout. 

Ring Shout is a novella that appealed to both me and my husband, who have very different reading preferences, and once I was finished, I was excited to pass it along to him to read so we could discuss it. I believe it has something for everyone (who can handle a bit of horror and demons from time to time) and has the potential to lead to some great conversations.

Book Review: Hide by Kiersten White

By Meghan Mazzaferro

Content warning: suicide, blood, death, violence, homophobia, racism, classism, child abuse, gun violence, grief, confinement, death of an animal, injury detail

Hide, by Kiersten White, is an adult horror novel in which fourteen people are given the opportunity of a lifetime: the chance to compete in a high-stakes game of hide and go seek in an abandoned amusement park with a $50,000 prize. For Mack, this offer is life-changing, and even though entering this game brings her back to the darkest time of her life, she’s willing to do whatever she has to win. She’s an expert at hiding, and this time her life doesn’t depend on it‒or does it?

I’ll preface this review by saying that this is my first experience reading horror. I consider myself a bit of a coward, and I wanted to push myself outside of my comfort zone with this book. How could I resist a horror novel set in an abandoned amusement park? While I was nervous for the first couple of pages, I have to say I loved this book! I connected quickly with several of the characters and  was constantly guessing and trying to put the puzzle pieces together. Several times, I thought I knew where the story was going, but I was almost always wrong, or at least missing one crucial piece of information. This book was a fun, spooky ride, and while I’ll admit I was never genuinely scared, I was on the edge of my seat and glued to the page.

Once again, I’m unfamiliar with the conventions of the genre, so I can’t speak to what has or hasn’t been done before, but I found this book excelled as a character study. Mack is our primary protagonist, but many of the competitors get developed as we spend time in their minds during the game. We learn their motivations, why they are the way that they are, and what led them to enter this competition. While many of the characters explored in this book are imperfect, with quite a few being antagonists or even villains, seeing into their minds gave the story a level of emotional depth that I appreciated.

The setting is immersive and richly described, and the story moves quickly (the book is only 250 pages). I enjoyed White’s writing style, with third-person narration that occasionally jumped between characters and revealed pieces of the mystery that kept me tense and anxious for the entire length of the story. There were a few instances where a character came into an item that provided lots of information to them and to the reader, and while it did feel exposition-heavy in those instances, it also felt necessary for either the reader to understand the stakes that the characters didn’t yet realize, or to catch the characters up on what the reader had come to suspect. While I don’t think this writing style will work for everyone, I enjoyed it.

The actual horror component of this book, the dark purpose of the amusement park and the game of hide and seek, was really interesting. While it could be considered a fairly standard convention of the genre (I think? Again, I avoid horror like an abandoned amusement park), I found that the driving motivations of the story’s villains were well-explained (but not justified!), which made the story emotionally relevant for today’s political climate. This book touches on racism, homophobia, classism, and more, as well as exploring themes of trauma, PTSD, and finding community, and I feel like each of these topics was well-handled in a novel of this length.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I enjoyed the suspense and thrills, appreciated that I was never genuinely scared, and was pleasantly surprised by the depth and complexity of the story’s main characters.

Thank you, Penguin Random House Canada, for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: The Devil's Whispers by Lucas Hault

By Lauren Bell

The Devil’s Whispers is a 2022 horror novel written by Lucas Hault. Hault opened the novel with a poignant quote by Mary Shelley: “I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves,” which immediately captured me and set the scene for the Shelley-like novel. The reader will also notice that Hault does well to emulate the Old English and mannerisms in which his novel is set.

 Set in England in 1903, the novel is written in journals and correspondence of Gerard Woodward, a revered lawyer, his fiancée, Raelynn, and their other close acquaintances. The plot is set in motion as Woodward travels to visit the dying Lord Mathers in his castle to settle his affairs. His stay becomes anything but what he anticipated as he is locked into his room and unable to contact the outside world. Sneaking out of his window at night is what allows him to explore the gothic castle and observe its inhabitants. In the novel, the castle is described dramatically, obviously, to encapsulate the mysterious and spooky atmosphere Hault is trying to portray. However, I was not personally intrigued by it. I found the castle to be filled with too many classic horror tropes: an isolated castle, creepy butler, black cats, and Mathers’ beautiful daughter to consider it remarkable. 

Woodward’s silence to Raelynn and his other peers is what creates a ripple effect of worry for the other characters in the novel, who are also experiencing their own unsettling events. For instance, Raelynn is visited by her cousin, Nathan, who suddenly falls ill, and during his sickness, he is visited by a mysterious woman that turns him against Raelynn. Within these subplots, the trend of horror tropes continues with the new moon influencing character behaviour and the “possessed” (for lack of a better word) character’s aversion to garlic. 

I will, however, give Hault credit for his integration of Asturian mythology and the introduction of the Xana as his antagonist. This was my first time learning of this creature, and it made the story less generic. With the Xana now involved, I noticed a transition within the atmosphere of the novel. It became less Frankenstein and Dracula-esque and shifted to being more like The Exorcist with the involvement of the church and the possessed characters crawling up walls. 

As I finished the novel, I was disappointed with the lack of characterization; most were one-dimensional, and I found them hard to sympathize with. As well, I felt the novel didn’t really have an ending when compared with its slow build-up. Ultimately, The Devil’s Whispers was not my favourite novel, but  it’s a quick read (~200 pages) for those interested in horror and willing to try it. 

Thank you, TCK Publishing, for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: Red X by David Demchuk

By Anusha Runganaikaloo

Content warning: graphic violence, sexual assault, animal violence, homophobia, ableism, racism

Red X by David Demchuk is a novel unlike any I have ever read. It calls attention to the disappearance of vulnerable men from Toronto’s gay village, a recurring phenomenon that has been consistently met with indifference from the police and society at large for decades, and therefore remains unexplained.

The novel is divided into several stories centring on the lives of gay men just before they go missing. Their disappearances are usually greeted with disbelief and incomprehension by their friends, as nothing in their quiet, unassuming routines hinted at suicidal tendencies. The victims’ friends struggle to solve the mystery, alerting the authorities as well as estranged relatives. But they typically face a complete lack of interest or support, and eventually give up on their searches.

The author’s frame tale periodically interrupts the set of interwoven stories and provides the context for the disappearance of the main characters. He starts by sharing memories of coming out in his youth and moving to Toronto, where he was confronted with the dreary reality of young gay men trapped between the jaws of the Big City and saddled with dead-end jobs. They end up detaching themselves from families that fail to grasp their struggle and becoming more and more defenseless against predators as their support networks dwindle to nothing.

As both the author’s personal reflections and the set of stories progress, we are drawn deeper and deeper into an atmosphere of utter horror, where the lines between reality and fiction, between the author’s own life and that of his doomed characters, become blurred. Steering us away from the false lead of predictable homophobic hate crimes, Demchuk exposes a reality that is far more complex and disturbing.

Red X is a dark fantasy novel that gives a refreshing new twist to the horror genre. We encounter literary devices reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project and its found-footage technique, so that as readers, we feel irresistibly pulled into the story along with the hapless protagonists. 

Moreover, in horror stories, villains are often—implicitly or explicitly—gay or queer. One notable example is Dracula, where the Count lays claim to Jonathan Harker, stating, “This man belongs to me!" David Demchuk subverts this overused trope by emphasizing it in an almost parodic manner. 

Red X can in fact be interpreted as an allegory representing the grim reality of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and Two Spirit people who are sucked into a vortex of loneliness, discrimination, danger, and self-harm in soulless cities. The city becomes a monster that eats its victims alive while everyone else goes about their business, uncaring, and the authorities turn a blind eye to the horror unfolding before them—when they are not actively participating in it. Because of that, the city is haunted by centuries of unavenged crimes.

Inseparable from the fate of its victims is Toronto, a character in its own right, whose semi-fictional history is told from the viewpoint of the gay community. Hanging menacingly above the old Town of York and its inhabitants are mythological creatures that manipulate people and events like puppets. This sometimes produces dramatic, satisfying instances of poetic justice.

Another interesting point is that along with homophobia and transphobia, issues such as racism from a lesbian person’s standpoint and ableism are addressed, which makes this novel a fine addition to Canadian intersectional fiction. It is definitely a must-read!

Thank you, Penguin Random House Canada, for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: Kill the Mall by Pasha Malla

By Kim McCullough

Kill the Mall by Pasha Malla opens with an eloquent letter penned by a never-named narrator seeking a placement as the local shopping mall’s artist-in-residence. After winning, he finds himself on display, mandated to “make art” and “engage the public.” 

The mall security guard, K. Sohail, shows the narrator around and gets him settled. The narrator is disconcerted to find that the guard’s last task before leaving each night is to lock him into his room. One of the few named characters in the book, K. Sohail anchors both narrator and reader to the outside world as events inside the mall descend into fantastical strangeness. She moves in and out of the story at critical junctures; the reader can never be sure if she is friend or foe. 

The menace that lurks beneath the familiar throbs with hints of malice right from the start. Soon, horrific interactions and supernatural threats arise from the usually commonplace customers and stores the reader expects in a mall.

Malla amps up the creepiness through his use of adversaries like hostile clumps of hair and a gang of cars in the parkade. Teenagers who prepare whole roasted chickens at the food court’s only restaurant are blank and robotic. The narrator’s friendship with a salesman from a jeans store is detached yet obsessive. By the time his true nemesis arrives, stealing his artist-in-residence limelight, the reader has left behind all expectations and is invested in seeing if the narrator makes it out alive.

Malla balances the story between horror and hilarity—the tension between these two poles never lets up. There is a low-grade hum of disorientation throughout the story that calls to mind psychological horror stories by Iain Reid, Stephen King, and at times, whiffs of Edgar Allan Poe. The ridiculousness of some scenes cannot be overstated. Not to give anything away, but the scenes with the ponytails will make the reader laugh—nervous laughter underscored with unease. These things couldn’t really happen. Or could they?

Malla’s control over the narrative is impressive. The progress report sections are brilliant in their syntax and construction. Every week the reports heighten the deepening unreality of the narrator’s situation. Malla never clears up whether the events of the story are in the narrator’s head or if they’re actually happening, but in the end, the reader’s desire for answers is sated by the beautiful sentences, deftly set mood, and incredible craftsmanship of the book. 

Book Review: Near the Bone by Christina Henry

By Kaylie Seed

Content warning: domestic violence, gore, animal violence, sexual assault, miscarriage

Christina Henry’s latest horror novel Near the Bone is twisted, compelling, and intense. Mattie and her husband William live a secluded life in the mountains, but life for Mattie is far from idyllic. Mattie hasn’t seen another person for as long as she can remember, and her life is constantly in danger. During one of her regular checks at a rabbit snare, Mattie comes across the body of a mutilated fox and is no longer sure that she and William are alone on the mountain.

Mattie has an interesting character arc and without giving anything away, she goes from timid and submissive in the beginning to finding herself in the end. Near the Bone is written in the third person, however there is a heavy focus on Mattie’s inner dialogue and the reader will get to know Mattie as if the story was being told from her perspective. Henry focuses on the present but also ties in Mattie’s past so that the reader can understand why she acts the way she does.

Henry has created a story that evokes dread and creates suspense for the reader, something that not all authors can do with ease. While Henry has written a horror novel that is meant to spook the reader, she has managed to include some themes in Near the Bone that are quite important, including bravery, coming-of-age, and self-discovery. Near the Bone will keep the reader up until all hours of the night wanting to know what will happen next while also wanting to keep the lights on because it has quite the scare factor. With some supernatural aspects, Near the Bone reminds readers that some of the most terrifying monsters are closer than we would like to think.

*Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review!

Book Review: Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

By Megan Amato

Thanks to a duo of teenage babysitters who introduced four-year-old me to The Blair Witch Project and Alien, I had nightmares for years, jumping at every brush of a branch against my window.  I avoided horror with varying degrees of success over the years and literally ran from the room at the first sign of any advert promoting a horror film. Despite this, the supernatural has always fascinated me. Throw in a speculative element and a haunted house, and I’m hooked enough to ignore the internal warning bell’s toll. That’s why despite my hesitation to read anything labelled horror, Mexican Canadian Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic intrigued me enough to add it to my Goodreads list. 

At the novel’s opening, Noemí is sent to check up on her cousin, who has written a hysterical letter claiming that her English husband is poisoning her. Greeted with cold hospitality and prevented from being alone with her cousin, Noemí worries about this once-romantic cousin wilting in such an oppressive place. When she begins to have weird dreams about a dead woman, she suspects that there is more amiss in High Place than the mold-ridden walls and strict rules, and she discovers a history of cyclical violence that has stained the house and its members. At times romantic, sometimes grotesque, and often chilling, this gothic horror is sinister in a way that draws from Mexico’s colonial history to highlight the twisting insidiousness of race theory eugenics and exploitation wrought by Western Europeans on Indigenous peoples around the world. 

In the beginning, the protagonist seems like an unlikeable character: Noemí is spoiled, toys with men and is seemingly fickle. As you read on, you discover that she is exceedingly clever, determined, and loyal to those she loves but ultimately a product of her time and place. As a young woman in 1920s Mexico, she has ambitions to be an anthropologist but is dependent on the men around her to get into the university and gain entry to all the places she wants to go. 

At times the story can be slow-moving as Moreno-Garcia weaves the mystery around the history of the house and family, but never enough to pull me from the story or stop me from reading the book in two evenings. The plot is intricately woven, and I found myself collecting details to try and figure out just what was going on in that creepy house. The foreshadowing was done so well that even the hints I guessed accurately were only the tip of the vast iceberg that is the plot. The twist ending was unique, compelling and, to be honest, a little weird—but it worked. 

Silvia Moreno-Garcia has masterfully written a book full of atmosphere and an eerie charm, combining myth and allegory with the exploitation of Mexico to deliver a terrifying novel that has even the scaredy-cat in me wishing to reread this novel all over.

Book Review: Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay

by Kaylie Seed

Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay parallels what is happening in the world today in regards to reactions of COVID-19 that is devastating the world. A genius writer in the horror genre, Tremblay has created a story about a fast spreading rabies-like virus that causes humans to become incredibly violent and no longer able to function as themselves. Tremblay places the reader in Massachusetts at the home of Natalie (Nats) who is a very pregnant woman. Natalie and her husband Paul are attacked and bitten by a rabid man in their home and when the attack is over, Nats seeks out the help of her long-time friend Ramola (Rams) who is a paediatric doctor. The two set out to find help for Natalie before it’s too late.

            The story weaves through both Nats and Rams perspectives as they try to navigate through a very violent and unprecedented time. Nats is a loud, tell-it-how-it-is kind of person. She swears like a trucker and is incredibly sarcastic. During Nats narration she records voice recordings on her phone that she is leaving for her unborn child in case she doesn’t make it out alive. Rams is the opposite of Nats. She is a sensible English woman who has moved to the States for work. Rams tries to provide a beacon of hope for Nats as they travel from hospital to hospital trying to find help for Nats and her unborn child. Through engaging prose, Tremblay does an excellent job at making each woman’s voice unique and their story believable.

            Tremblay uses Survivor Song as a way to shed light on human nature in times of extreme duress. Not only does Tremblay use a pregnant woman as the forefront of this novel, but he also portrays teenagers who believe this is the zombie apocalypse and men who feel the need to stop the spread themselves. These characters show just how desperate people can become to survive in unlikely times. Survivor Song is a horror novel and what makes this book so compelling is that we are dealing with uncertain times in real life. While horror books about demons and ghosts can be scary, it is the books about scary humans, about viruses, and about things that can actually happen in our daily lives that make the horror genre petrifying.

Thank you to HarperCollins Publishing for providing this E-ARC through NetGalley.