I wish I read the synopsis of this book more carefully. I do not gel well with dream scenarios or the whole "is it real or is it a dream?" tropes. I really enjoyed the folklore and imagery n the beginning and the story was rounded out really well, but the dream sequences were so distracting. I also didn't feel like we really got to know any of the characters, even after pages of them raking over he same old ground. I will say that the observations on grief wee very well written and definitely hit a note with me.

This cover is absolutely stunning, and I was very drawn in by the concept of a Cree horror with a magical realism tilt to it. I was unfortunately unable to try it due to formatting issues - I attempted to read this on both mobile and my KOBO libra but it would not display correctly.

Not normally the type of read I would choose. Out of my comfort zone however I found it an intriguing and great read. I read it through very quickly.
Giving it four stars

Without a doubt this will be one of my favourite books of 2023. Unnerving and sinister, Jessica Johns' writing digs its talons into you - a chilly fever dream that unpicks family dynamics and generational trauma against a body-horror backdrop. The horror aspect is deliciously gradual, with sinister omens and eerie happenings creeping their way into the story until they reach a shivering crescendo as the barrier between Mackenzie's dreams and reality erodes completely. With touches of Julia Armfield and Daisy Johnson at their most unsettling, this is a book that haunts, that ensnares and that is bound to stick in the consciousness of anyone that reads it for a very long time.

Set in Canada, this unsettling debut novel follows Mackenzie, a young Cree woman who’s started to have disturbing visions at night. She comes to holding a crow’s severed head in her hands or finds herself underwater, struggling to breathe – yet when she blinks awake, the bird disappears and she’s back on dry land, wrestling with the horror of her nightmares. She contacts her family for reassurance, but the dreams keep coming: her mind is taking her back in time, forcing her to return to the scene of a family lakeside holiday, before the unexpected death of her elder sister Sabrina, and no matter how hard she tries to outrun her past, she cannot escape her own head. After being plagued by increasingly disturbing visions and finding herself haunted by crows around the city of Vancouver, where she ran away to after her sister’s death, Mackenzie eventually decides to return home to Alberta where her family welcome her back with open arms. Slowly, ever so slowly, she starts to uncover the truth about her sister’s death and the significance of that holiday. Steeped in Cree tradition, complicated dynamics found in strong families and the perennial challenges of coming-of-age, this is a slow burn of a novel that smoulders its way towards the gripping, supernatural and unforgettable conclusion.

Great slow burn horror mixed with coming of age, the setting is quite new to me and I felt like it was a good introduction to some of the folklore elements that are involved.

One of the elements of this novel that struck me the most was the way it conceptualises grief. Having also recently lost a sibling unexpectedly, I found that the author was able to put into words some of the feelings that I have found inexpressible. One description that struck me the hardest was when Johns explains how forgetting can at first feel like a blessing, but in fact it is just pain lying in wait - this is exactly how it feels. Despite her wrongdoings, I fully sympathise with Mackenzie, and it is hard not to. Her experiences are visceral, and you feel like you are going through them alongside her.
The horror element is also done brilliantly. I particularly love the focus on dreams - all of the female members of Mackenzie's family have some power, or divinity, that is explored through their dreams. It is such an interesting concept, and also draws on the importance of dreams within Cree culture, which is fascinating. Furthermore, something happened which hardly ever happens when I read horror novels - I was actually scared!

Bad Cree is stunning - so readable, completely moving, more than a touch creepy. Fantastic strong female characters and a really interesting insight into Cree folklore. Loved.

This book was incredible. Just everything about it was amazingly done: the characters, the setting, the emotion and the plot. I was hooked: perched on the edge of my seat having to find out what will happen next. Johns clearly poured out their heart and soul into this book, emphasising the importance of indigenous voices: how they should be listened to and not ignored. The stories of generations and the Cree woven into this beautiful story. Some parts of it made my spine crawl, with it not being predictable and you always wanting to find out more.

Mackenzie has dreams of her dead sister, which begins to become more real forcing her to return home after leaving years ago. Crows seem to follow her - like some impending doom. Are these just dreams or is there more to it? What do they mean?

This is a must read. I have never read anything like it, and I doubt I ever will again. Jessica Johns is a beacon of indigenous voices and they will be heard.

I was so excited to read this book. I love horror and I love reading indigenous stories. The community and family relationships were the star of this book for me - the characterisations and perspectives were so wonderful to read about. I enjoyed the supernatural elements, which were rooted in indigenous culture, folklore and spiritualism, and the meditations on grief were saddening and beautiful. I was expecting more horror, and more of a climax, but it turned out to be very slow-burn. Nevertheless, it was very touching and homely.

Bad Cree is a fever dream of reality versus visions which overlap in their intensity and intent, leaving Mackenzie haunted by the notion of who she really is and where she belongs.

Fleeing from her family and moving to Vancouver following the death of her kokum , her mother's mother, she has not returned even after the death of her sister for the funeral.

Her notion of identity is so intrinsically entwined with her memories of a matriarchal, structured life with her aunties, uncles and cousins that she sees herself as a bad Cree, a person to whom gifts in the form of prophetic dreams are becoming a curse.

Is it hereditary or integral to who she is as a person and is she ascribing more to her imaginings than is actually there?

As the line between the dream world, memories and day to life begin to pull the threads of her existence to a taut and tense fabric, the pull to go back home and find out exactly why she is visioning the death of her sister is unbearable.

How and why she is bringing things from her dreams into reality is one strand of the narrative, the other is unresolved grief from inherited loss, displacement, and shaken identity. The birds amassing around her and seemingly intruding on her daily life could be menace or warning, but the text messages, purportedly from her deceased sister Sabrina are entirely another.

''Dreams can get you anywhere, but sometimes the illusion of safety is better than nothing.''

This creates such a sense of tension, misdirection and connection with Mackenzie that you feel as though you are being folded into her reality, genuinely becoming fearful for her, and urging her on towards clarity and resolution. The horror exists in the spaces between understanding and oblivion, it is deep, abiding and raw, an unforgettable tale which is both deeply personal and enlightening in the constant use of Cree language and acknowledgement of culture and traditions. It is not an expositional way in which we, the reader, are brought into the Cree community, it is described as it is lived, with a keen and aching awareness that transcends the page-

''This place wasn't built to believe us, and white people will try to stamp out anything they don't understand.''

And this is why Mackenzie needs to go home, exposing herself to a white, patriarchal, heteronormative society's perspective on the power of dreams would only lead to medical model management of the symptoms-anti depressants, mood enhancers, therapy, incarceration and worse.

I loved the interplay with language, and the deep, abiding love between characters that transcends biological connections, creates a vivid and heavily physical environment reflected in the nature of these characters, juxtaposed with the motif of birds, commonly used in literature as psychopomps-messengers and carriers of the dead.

It is such a tremendous privilege to be able to bury yourself deep in a book and be transported to another version of a world so beyond our own, and that is the alchemy of writers like Jessica Johns, she traps magic in the pages of Bad Cree.

I love some folk horror every now and then, so I was delighted to be invited on to Scribe’s blog tour for this new release featuring Native American characters and motifs. Thank you to Patricia at Scribe for sending me this lovely copy!

Mackenzie has been waking up from her strange dreams clutching something from her dreamscape for a few days now. While the items always disappear, she can’t figure out why this keeps happening or why her dreams keep taking her back to a memory before her sister Sabrina’s death a year before. It seems that the crows in the waking world are also following her every move. She knows that she needs to seek counsel from her Aunties -the women who might know what’s happening. Leaving Vancouver, she travels back to the family home in Alberta that she hasn’t visited in a long time. While the family are happy to see her, Mackenzie’s dreams intensify now that she’s back home and she’s pretty sure that they are somehow connected to what happened to her sister.

There is some pretty visceral, violent imagery in this book, so be aware of that before you go into it. I was really intrigued to discover what the connection between Mackenzie’s dreams and the reality of what happened to Sabrina. There’s something eerily creepy about dreams seeping into reality that had me very invested in the story.

And why were the crows suddenly obsessed with Mackenzie? Like her, I was afraid of them at first. In the first dream that we see her have, she kills one of them and wakes up with a crow’s head in her hand. So, it’s the obvious assumption that the birds are out for revenge and I was just waiting for the moment that Mackenzie would be viciously attacked. I’ve never been scared of birds before but a huge murder of crows tailing you everywhere is horrifically intimidating!

There is lots of exploration of the relationships between the sisters, as Sabrina had a twin called Tracey. It transpires that Sabrina was the glue between all three sisters and Mackenzie’s relationship with Tracey isn’t as easy as her relationship with Sabrina was. However, now that there is a mystery to solve, it appears that Sabrina’s death has given her sisters a reason to spend time together and bond over their shared grief. It was really lovely to see Mackenzie and Tracey become closer and heal the wounds that lay between them.

I really enjoyed the Native American folklore and traditions that were embedded in the story. I learned a lot and felt very embraced by Mackenzie’s family of wise, spiritual women. It is ultimately a story about grief, the Native American relationship with death and the importance of sharing quirks and fears with those closest to you.

Bad Cree is a dark, heart-wrenching read that is full of terrifying imagery balanced by the warmth of a loving family. It’s a tale of re-discovering roots and learning to love your own uniqueness while letting go of the past and remembering love.

Mackenzie fled to Vancouver a year ago after her sister Sabrina's sudden death, unable to cope with more grief. She feels she's abandoned her Cree family and heritage, but doesn't know how to go back. But then she starts to dream vividly of a snow-covered forest and a crow devouring her sister's body. These are no ordinary dreams - Mackenzie brings crow feathers back with her when she wakes, and has to go to bed in jacket and boots so she doesn't freeze in the woods. Mackenzie knows that the only people who can help her are her mother, surviving sister, aunties and cousins, who will understand why she's seeing these things in her dreams. She returns to rural Alberta to try and escape, but also to seek help. Yet once she arrives, her phone stops working, except for cryptic messages from an unknown number, and she's cut off from the outside world. Can Mackenzie and her family work together to find out why Sabrina died and to see off this supernatural threat?

A few weeks ago, I wrote that dream sequences never work for me in novels because 'they are either cheap, cheaty psychological exposition or some annoying quasi-supernatural occurrence that could have happened in another way'. Well, Bad Cree is definitely the exception that proves the rule. I absolutely loved the time that Mackenzie spent in her dreams. I think this was so effective in this novel because Jessica Johns shows how rooted her experiences are in the Cree worldview, making them completely real to the reader. The way that Mackenzie's family spring seriously into action when they hear about what's happening to her also shows that this is very much a belief system that is practiced and practical, rather than a vague sense of 'tradition'. I always like stories that engage seriously with spiritual and supernatural worldviews that conflict with a Global North/white settler sense of what's 'real' and what's 'imaginary', and this novel does this brilliantly. I also loved how Johns connects Mackenzie's experiences to a sense of generational and individual trauma, or the 'bad' that lives inside her. The source of her family's troubles is genocide and expropriation; through the supernatural elements in this novel, Johns is able to trace the gory damage this wreaks on spiritual bodies, with wounds appearing in dreams and disappearing in real life.

The core of the novel is Mackenzie's family, and for this reason, I did wonder if Bad Cree spent a little too long in Vancouver before she decides to return home. Her friendship with Joli, a young Squamish co-worker, seems to be intended as a key connection for her in Vancouver, but I never really believed in her bond with Joli in the same way as I believed in her relationship with sister Tracey and cousin Kassidy. However, once Mackenzie arrives back in Alberta, this book flies. The first half lulled me into a false sense of security, as I believed this would be a gentle exploration of grief and loss, but it actually gets properly scary near the end, as Mackenzie's family discover what's following Mackenzie in her dreams. (The first 'kakepâtis' scene and its explanation was bonechilling). I'm always a fan of a powerful grandmother figure, so I also loved how Mackenzie's relationship with kokum was developed even though kokum was dead for the whole of this novel; the final scene between them was so great, and reminded me of the hilarious, strong-willed grandmothers in Zen Cho's wonderful collection of speculative Malaysian short stories, Spirits Abroad.

Bad Cree is a brilliantly effective horror novel, but it shouldn't be skipped by readers who usually steer clear of the supernatural: its story is rooted in history, trauma and Cree religious belief.

I'm looking forward to taking part in the blog tour for this novel.

Bad Cree is a story about coming of age, grief, family, and tradition. It's also a mix of psychological fiction, paranormal and much more.
The author delivers a fascinating story making me meet a differnt culture and a different type of family.
Even if I don't alwyas love Mackenzie I loved the women of her families: they are those who keeps the family together and pass the tradition and the ancestral role.
It's a slow burning book, I was a bit confused at the beginning and felt that it dragged a bit at times. That said I loved and was involved in the story and the creepy moments kept me on the edge.
I think it's a good debut and I hope to read more books by this atalented author.
4.5 upped to 5
Many thanks to Scribe UK and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

This was an atmospheric and compelling book that explores the power of family ties in the face of tragedy and just what we will do to protect those we love. I thought Mackenzie was a really relatable protagonist - selfish and self obsessed at times, but ultimately ready to step up and do the right thing for her community and family. I loved the friendship between Mack and Joli and also the relationship between Mack, her sister, Tracy and their cousin, Cassidy. Sometimes unsettling and with a good build to the finale, this is definitely more of a slow burn suspense than an out and out horror, but I really enjoyed the journey and will look out for whatever Jessica Johns puts out next.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This book was absolutely fantastic. I had read that it was a horror but it was so much more than that. It was certainly eerie and tense. The atmosphere created simmered throughout the whole book. I really loved the characters and how the narrative unfolded. This was really a story about grief and love and our connection to the land. It was also about the consequences of our mistreatment of the land. I loved the blending of indigenous folklore and legend with the mundane and ordinary. It was truly gripping and I devoured this in a day. Highly recommend.

At the heart of this story is a strong group of individuals learning to navigate grief, guilt, their beliefs and each other. The bond between them is tangible and heartwarming. Imagine a mystical mystery with a few steel magnolia vibes and a supernatural aspect to it which is, at times incredibly creepy. There is some great diversity throughout this book and it was really interesting to gain some insight into Cree Culture. I thought this book was fantastic, am blown away that it’s a debut and would 100% recommend to anyone looking for something a little bit different within the horror genre.

I will be publishing this review on Instagram/goodreads as part of the book tour on 15th February.

My thanks to NetGalley for a free e-ARC of "Bad Cree" by Jessica Johns.
A supernatural and eearie Horror that focuses on character development and atmosphere.
Starting with a symbolic nightmare and moved trough explorations of grief, the notions of family and culture with a promising voice, it had some refreshing ellements.
I realy appreciated this debut and I'll definetely read this author future works.

Jessica John's Bad Cree is an exploration of grief, guilt, culture, female familial relationships and community. It's about the struggles that people face when they experience the profound loss of someone dearest to them. This is one of first books I have read written by a Native American author, but the first looking at the Cree nation and women. The writing was beautiful and descriptive and drew me in from the first few chapters. While the book is a slower burn, it is such a unique supernatural horror with opportunities for learning and insight into Cree culture and representation.

Thank you to Jessica Johns, Doubleday Books, and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this ebook in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.

I thought this book was very confusing, and hard to get through. I did love to learn more about the Cree culture.