"Such a Pretty Smile" by Kristi DeMeester is a chilling horror novel that explores the sinister forces lurking beneath the surface of seemingly normal lives. The story is set in two timelines, 2019 and 2004, and follows the experiences of two women, Lila Sawyer and her mother Caroline Sawyer.

Such a Pretty Smile.
This exact phrase said by a man to a girl or a woman. What do you think of it? How does it make you feel? Like skin crawling into itself, huh?
Well, the title is very much on point, as well as the lingering theme of the book. Best described as feminist horror. The author‘s position and message are very clearly stated, yet some mystery and quite a few horror elements are involved. While this book is a clear social/political statement, it‘s also a gripping horror story with a curious end, which makes a reader stop and think again. The way it ends, it would be easy to continue onto the second book if the author would ever wish so. However, if that‘s not to be, then the finale is quite symbolic and thought-provoking as well.
Now I wouldn‘t want to spoil anyone‘s pleasure of reading with too many details, I‘ll just leave it at that. It‘s worth a read, especially if you‘re interested in this kind of genre, a horror story with a political statement.

Such a Pretty Smile
Author: Kristi DeMeester
Publisher: Titan Books
Release date: 10th January 2023

The novel starts in 2019, Acworth, Atlanta, and Lila is a thirteen year old girl impatient for womanhood.
She is a passion project for Macie, who dresses her up like a Barbie doll, but Lila is afraid to show how she really feels about her friend, just as she fears opening up to her mom, Caroline Sawyer.
Her mother is a well known artist who creates very disturbing sculptures. But she is also beautiful and refined, and Lila feels her own inferiority in her bones.
As DeMeester puts it; “Instead, every day was a reminder of exactly how average she was.”
In just the few beginning pages, DeMeester has captured what it’s like to be a young girl burgeoning into her teen years, feeling distinctly inadequate and not quite right in her own skin.
At the beginning of the novel there’s also hearsay and references to a missing girl In the present, being similar to “what happened before,” and a serial killer known as ‘The Cur’.
Though we know this aspect is crucial to the story, as we discover later, it’s the depiction of the young girl discovering her sexuality whilst living with a parent with mental health issues that grips the reader. The fact that Lila’s mom is “so pretty” – yet this veneer of perfection hides her depression and anxiety.
Told in multiple points of view across different timelines, we see how mental health issues within females have been treated over the kast few decades.
Caroline’s point of view, in 2004, sees her under a massive amount of stress caring for her Dad who is terminal, working a teaching job and trying to perfect her art.
On her one day visit to Jazzland with her partner Daniel, more about Lila’s mom and her family heritage begin to make sense.
Also, much of what younger Caroline sees and feels is very relatable. Particularly the role her own mom prepared her for; to hide parts of herself men would not approve of. Added to this is the combined guilt and grief of caring for a loved parent at the end of their life. Having recently experienced this part, I felt it in my bones.
Lila’s search through her mother’s past, back in 2019, is a glimpse at what it is to be female and different in a polite, southern society; “The anger, fury, and deep humiliation that there was something wrong with her,” is threaded throughout the narrative as we read about her mental decline.
With Lila’s transformation back in the present, as she calls her friend Macie out on her lies, the circumstances are eerily similar; “It had been wonderful to finally say what she wanted...”
There are masks these women and teenage girls all wear to hide what’s really under their skin; the darkness and the pain. The compulsive need to give into their various desires.
This novel deftly explores mental health issues whilst treating the subject with respect and honesty. Whilst Caroline knows she is almost suffocating Lila with her strict rules, and fear something might happen to her, she is also aware that the previous deaths and her own mental health issues are exacerbating the paranoia.
There’s a lot of accrued anger in this book, at the treatment of women by a male dominated medical profession, and again, I can relate wholly to this. As I’m sure many other women out there can.
About midway, it’s expressed adeptly as Lila is dragged into the counsellor's office.
“Their age and degrees and inherent maleness offered up as some kind of key to unlocking feminine ills,” similar to the knee patting and patronising “sweethearts” delivered to Caroline by doctors back in 2004. As for Dr Walters, he is the epitome of the superior, male professional.
Echoes of “hysteria” as a so-called valid diagnosis, given by male medical professionals is a recurrence through this novel. This idea and history of treatment goes back centuries as far as ancient Greece, however it was prevalent in the 19th century with the likes of an American physician Silas Weir Mitchell pioneering the move to label many women as suffering from “hysteria”.
Ironically it is Mitchell who ‘diagnosed’ Charlotte Perkins Gilman who wrote of her experiences in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.
I think this is the first time I remember seeing my anger and all of these thoughts expressed in a novel, coupled with the idea of art or creativity as therapy.
Apart from all of that, the narrative thread itself is terrific and scary. The imagery of the dogs, the scene with Lila under the bed. Horrific!
This is a huge achievement and a book that will stay with me for a very long time.
Examining male dominance, the erasure of the female voice, creativity and a young girl exploring her identity and attraction to a female friend, it is a powerful, effective and genuinely scary book.

I’ve been a horror fan since I was a teenager and I’m always looking for something fresh within the genre. Sadly, this tends to be pretty rare and I’m afraid that while this book was unique, it didn’t really work for me.

Lila is full of secrets that she can’t talk to anyone about. This only increases when she starts sensing a malevolent presence within herself while young girls are being killed in the area. Her mother Caroline is an artist, well-known for her macabre sculptures. 15 years ago, Caroline began hearing angry dogs everywhere and it was dismissed as nothing but mental delusions but Caroline knows that it’s something that the men could never comprehend.

Caroline is an oddball within the community and her mother’s infamy seems to follow Lila around. She is aware that the other mothers avoid Caroline and are perhaps even afraid of her. However, I don’t think this is the reason that Lila also appears to be afraid of her mother. After all, Caroline is a pretty terrible parent disguised as a ‘highly caring, concerned mother’.

Lila has severe anxiety and at first, I thought her hauntings could be a manifestation of her fragile mind. She is so secretive but it’s through no fault of her own. I think Lila is a really well-written, accurate portrayal of a girl who has never felt like her own feelings matter. She knows how her parents would react if she ever talked to them about what was going on, which causes her to spiral deeper into her pretty dangerous condition.

Lila’s ‘best friend’ Macie is the stereotypical ‘cool best friend’ for an awkward 13-year-old girl. Lila has a crush on her that she doesn’t dare reveal to anyone but she does also clearly want to be like Macie -pretty, popular and reckless. Their ‘friendship’ was another very authentic aspect of the book, as intensely frustrating as it was.

The saddest part of the book is that in Caroline’s flashback chapters, we see her as a girl who hasn’t ever been listened to and whose anxiety has just been allowed to build as a result. She vows to never stifle her future children, which is exactly what she does to Lila, perhaps without even realising. However, I’m not sure I could believe that the strict rules that she imparts on Lila could have been done unintentionally. She MUST have realised what she was doing. The generational curse trope works on two levels in this story, which gave it a bit of depth but I just wish the supernatural aspect hadn’t been as abstract as it was.

My main gripe was that I couldn’t really understand what was actually happening. Were they both actually werewolves? Or were they actually just women who hallucinated and a string of violent murders happened to be occurring at the same time? I don’t know if this was ever clarified or whether it was and my attention span had just ebbed away by that point.

Such A Pretty Smile had promise but the characters often felt flat and the story got extremely convoluted at the end. It’s a shame because it had all the elements of a great horror but it lost me during the second half. However, I’d be interested in reading another book by the author as she clearly has some pretty cool, fresh ideas for a genre that desperately needs them.

I have mixed feelings. The beginning was intriguing and I was excited about where the story was going, however it soon lost that initial spark and I was often bored and disinterested in what was happening. I also found the two timelines got quite confusing, which made the story hard to follow. Some of the descriptions were graphic and violent, and normally that sort of thing doesn’t bother me, but this was quite disturbing. Overall, an interesting concept that wasn’t quite executed. Thank you to Netgalley, the author, and publisher for a chance to read and review this book.

I liked Such a Pretty Smile a lot. I love horror fiction and this was right up my street. I liked the way the chapters move between present wile Lila struggling to control the dark forces she feels stirring inside her and Caroline’s past showing how the forces threatening to destroy Lila did the same to her. There is plenty of suspense and tension and events built in crescendo leading to a confrontation between present and past. This is a rollocking read.

Wow wow wow. This is exactly the type of grisly, feminist, gut punch that I love. An allegory for the suppression of female suffering & in some ways, as above, the SAME OLD story. But the author brings a twist of the supernatural to a horror all women know well & I was living for it.

This story went there. Not only is the author unafraid of approaching the dark parts of storytelling that are often watered down - the whole narrative feels wholly unapologetic & I have so much respect for that. The layers of social commentary are scalpel sharp, the horror imagery bizarre & vivid & the short chapters dashing between past/present fling the story forward with force.

I felt uneasy throughout & that unsettled, queasy feeling is a hard one to sustain for an entire story! I honestly cannot believe that this is a debut - an author to watch, for sure.

13 Year Old Lila is struggling with usual teenager emotions, confusions and urges... but there is a darker undertone that is also lurking and she can't talk to anyone about it. Her friend wouldn't believe her and is only interested in her own issues, her dad has a new family with a poorly new baby, and her mum has her own secrets.....Secrets which also hold the same kind of darkness!

Told from Lilas perspective in 2019 and her mother, Carolines, in 2004 - we uncover the story of The Cur - which is present in both timelines - and seems to be linked to the disappearance of other young girls.

Intriguingly creepy and was interesting to watch it all unfold as we find out the story with Lila in 2019 but also through Caroline when she was younger.

A revisionist and feminist fable which will resonate with all those told 'you would be pretty if you smiled more', this novel deals with women(and young girls) who refuse to smile and challenge other people's (men and peers) who are uncomfortable with that brutal honesty.


The main character you first encounter, Lila, straddles adolescence uneasily, her best friend, Macie, she suspects of keeping her around to make her look better.
Her burgeoning sexuality makes her feel attracted to Macie in a way which is inexplicable given the way society drives girls into the arms of men and boys, and the way her internal dialogue os exposed is so brutally raw and honest it is occasionally painful to read.


Lila's mother barely sees her, her art is all consuming g and yet she lays these laws down to supposedly keep her safe without giving Lila the full facts in order to make a good decision-such as being too young to shave her legs, or go out on her own, and the presence of the Cur, a serial killer taking 'wayward' young women is a convenient boogeyman to reinforce the notion of how a patriarchal society expects girls to behave.


What Caroline is not telling Lila is her own experiences with mental health have left her labelled difficult, temperamental and drove her husband,Lila's father, away.

His new family are all consuming so with him being absent apart from token phone calls,and her mother having her art,Lila is increasingly falling,Alice like, down the rabbit hole of her reality.
She wants and needs to know more about what is going on and why theCur, and men in general box women in with their expectations and wait to draw blood.
Lila wants to be the one to draw blood and her increasingly precarious grasp on who and what she is occasionally breaks and the truth comes out, hard, fast and dirty.


She hurts those around her and worries that she will be seen as her mother's daughter,inhabiting a hinterland of wicked and subverted thoughts.


When she explodes at Macie who uses her once too many times,this scene is redolent with violence and nastiness that let's rip unapologetically. It happens again with her mother before flipping back to Caroline's story, 15 years before the events of Lila's teen years.


The line between beautiful and beauty has rarely been so explicitly and beautifully rendered,I absolutely could not get enough of Kristi's prose and the dark, subversive nature if her storytelling.
This is for every girl who feels the push and pull of societal expectations versus a primal need to stand up and be seen as your own person worthy of opportunity respect and love.

Well, I was expecting a folklore style scary tale and instead I got smacked in the face with a brutal horror story about women being oppressed. And I devoured it! I felt the frustration of the main characters as they are not being listened to or taken seriously simply because they are female. It’s captures their struggles and manifests them into something evil and predatory. This book is smart, emotional, tense, feral and savage!

Such a Pretty Smile tells the story of a mother and her daughter, Caroline and Lila, and how their lives forever change when a series of killings begin to plague their lives.

Lila is young, barely in her teens and trying to find her place at her new school. She's never really been one of the popular girls, and most of the time feels like a bit of an outsider. Fortunately for her her best friend, Macie, is popular enough for the both of them, and has elevated Lila's status somewhat. Unfortunately, though, Lila is secretly in love with Macie, and desperately wants to tell her how she feels. She's barely keeping her life together with her secret love, and her father being focused on his new baby with his wife across the country, but when a series of killings of young girls her age begins to happen it starts to shift her careful existence.

The killer, called The Cur, is taking young girls and leaving them broken and slashed apart, their genitals mutilated, their bodies almost looking like they've been feasted on. Everyone is on edge; especially her mother, Caroline. Lila learns that her mother has a connection to The Cur in her past, something that has left her shaken. But Caroline doesn't want to share her secrets, and Lila is left on her own to figure out what the strange visions she's seeing, and the sounds of howling she keeps hearing means. As Lila begins to change and act more aggressive, Caroline fears that she may soon lose her daughter.

Such a Pretty Smile is a book that is filled with atmosphere. It likes to take its time and build tension over the course of the book, only occasionally giving the audience a break be either showing us a moment of happiness, or by going full horror. Kristi DeMeester has crafted a story that just keeps on building and building, creating this huge sense of dread in the reader as we learn more.

Whilst the story is a horror thriller it's also a mystery. When the book begins The Cur has already claimed a number of victims, and tensions are high amongst the affected community. But we don't know who he is, or why he's doing these terrible things. As the book goes on we start to get hints that there's more to this than a simple string of killings; though this book being sold as a horror story does kind of give that away before you even begin. But, we realise that strange things are afoot when Lila starts to see a mysterious figure watching her from the darkness, cold, yellow eyes staring at her, and the sound of wolves howling in the night.

As things progress Lila starts to act strange, and whilst those around her blame it on mental health issues, it's clear that there's something exerting some kind of influence over her; getting in her head and trying to make her act differently. She becomes vicious, downright nasty towards the people in her life. Whatever is out there watching her has plans for her.

But the mystery deepens when we flash back to events fifteen years prior, when her mother was living in New Orleans. Dealing with the impending death of her father, and having to put her art career on hold in order to try and find work that will give her enough money to pay for her fathers hospice care, she almost doesn't pay attention to the killings that are happening in the city. A killer called The Cur. When her father lets slip in his pain and drug induced state that something happened to Caroline as a girl she begins to look into her past, and learns that she went missing during a spate of killings when she was a girl; and that she was the only girl to return alive.

Caroline begins to experience the same kinds of visions and hallucinations that her daughter will in the future, and starts trying to dig into why. These two stories, unfolding at the same time for the reader build upon each other, giving hints to us, who can experience both, yet keeping things from both Lila and Caroline who never really learn enough to figure everything out.

And this is how much of the book manages to keep you hooked, by giving you a mystery that has no rational solution, no grounding in reality. We know that there has to be other forces at work here, and that something truly dark and evil is behind things. And then the book builds to a conclusion that is horrific in a lot of ways. And because DeMeester spends so long building up both characters, allowing the reader to get into their heads and see what makes them tick, when it comes to a scenario where there's no guarantee either of them will live through it, it makes for a tense conclusion.

My one criticism of the book, however, would be the very end. I won't spoil what happens, but over the course of the book we've been given hints as to what's happening and why. There are theories and possible reasons presented that lead you to a point where you can come to a pretty solid conclusion. But then a new character turns up for the last dozen pages to outline exactly what it all is, why it happened, why these girls were targeted, what it all means. It's almost like the author decided that either the audience wasn't going to be able to figure it all out themselves, or they didn't want people to come to any conclusion other than the one they had in mind. I felt like this choice kind of let the book down somewhat. It was a great book, and it got its message across well and was clever enough to not need to hold your hand along the way, then it went and gave you all the explanations.

The very end aside, Such a Pretty Smile was an enjoyable and at times disturbing book. It messes with your head and plays with expectations. The characters feel pretty decently crafted and aren't just two-dimensional monster fodder. It has some dark and twisted imagery, and I loved how its themes were tied to feminism, to the violence that people experience at the hands of the patriarchy, and how certain expectations and demands are made of women and femme people. If you're looking for something a bit different than the normal horror book Such a Pretty Smile is worth considering.

Such a Pretty Smile
by Kristi DeMeester
Pub Date 10 Jan 2023

Titan Books
General Fiction (Adult) | Horror


This is my first ever dip into a horror book I was attracted by the premiese of the story and the cover. Such A Pretty Smile is excellent feminist horror that knows how to disturb a reader whilst still making them think about what is causing the horror, which isn't necessarily a supernatural force but rather our own attitudes and conventions about how women should behave and obey.

This book is told through two different povs
Caroline and Lila mother and daughter pair. I found this very interesting to see both presticve. I had an eerie feeling reading this book.

With New Year we are bombarded with messages to look good, get fitter, be more productive and various other things that remind me of a Radiohead song. For women there will be plenty of articles nd clickbait about how to be better more in tune with what a woman should be. Almost as if there is a single template everyone should be aligned to. This gets explored to devastating effect in Kristi DeMeeester’s excellent dark horror novel Such A Pretty Smile where how girls and women should behave ensnares a mother and her daughter in a terrifying tale that also explores how attitudes to what a girl or woman should be.

Lila is the thirteen-year-old daughter of Caroline a famous artist known for haunting works of sculpture. They live alone and Lila is currently struggling with becoming an adult and her sexuality as she develops feelings for her best friend Marcie. Caroline though is often distracted and haunted by her past. A series of horrific murders focused on teenage girls further disturbs Caroline and Lila finds herself feeling watched and on occasion compelled to do and day terrible things. Lila uncovers that her mother had similar experiences in 2004 and slowly the truth about that time when Caroline was a young struggling artist comes to play and terrifying pattern emerges.

Such A Pretty Smile is a brilliant work of feminist horror exploring how those who do not fit society’s of women and in particular mens’ view of it can suffer the most for being out of line. It is hugely atmospheric and ethereally creepy. This is a novel with a constant sense of menace hovering just underneath the scenes. DeMeester cleverly uses a tale of two time periods – Lila in 2019 and Caroline in 2004 to explore the roles of daughter; teenage girl, mother, and wife which the two core characters all have to fit within. Lila being gay is struggling with working out her feelings for her friend who is actually far more obsessed with being a girlfriend to a older student with a car and rebels and brings Lila along with her wake. These scenes are often painful; a toxic relationship; unrequited love and the sickening way boys treat young girls as playthings to be used and thrown away all come to pass. Lets be clear this is not a YA tale certain scenes are chillingly graphic. What is fascinating is Lila slowly releases the hidden anger and fury she has in a strange, menacing almost animal-like behaviour which makes us as the reader concerned if this is teenage rebellion to the extreme; a mental health condition or as the similarities to Caroline’s tale emerges something supernatural.

With Caroline we have a character who in 2004 appears distant; secretive and forever fearful and then DeMeester shows us the scenes that led to this older incarnation. Caroline in her twenties is married to Lila’s father Daniel and superficially we think a happy couple. But Lila’s father is dying, and she is using her pay checks to keep hi in a decent hospice; Daniel appears a tad controlling on what Lila does and eats and also jealous of her work. A series of murders focused on teenage girls begins, and this seems to bring out fugues; hallucinations and a dreamlike state on Lila – the reader gets worried as to the cause just as we do in 2019 with Lila. What is Caroline’s connection to the murders? The tension amounts and the scenes get more graphic (be aware there are some reference to dead and dying animals) What really brings the topic of the book hoke though is the attitudes then displayed to Lila her husband does not care and forces her to a very unsympathetic and sexist psychiatrist. Neither Lila or Caroline are treated anything more than problems; irritants and they do not get listened to which pushes them into more danger.

This is a story that holds the core explanation close to its chest for most of the novel which really helps push the tension as we jump timelines. The horror we experience is watching how Caroline and Lila’s behaviour changes and none of the men they encounter help and instead often seek to exploit the situation. Notably the malignant force appears to be part man part snarling beast almost giving this tale a dark adult fairytale dimension. In the final third of the story, we start to get hints as to what the force behind this is and we realise the extent of its power plus why it chooses the victims it does bringing again the core subject of the book to the fore in a very terrifying final set of scenes. I have a slight issue with a coda at the end that while brings a note of hope also slightly tries to turn the story into a bigger battle than the rest of the book signalled but the overall journey into these two characters’ lives is compelling and I highly enjoyed reading this.

Such A Pretty Smile is excellent feminist horror that knows both how to disturb a reader but also make them think about what creates the horror; and often that isn’t just needing a supernatural force but instead our own attitudes and conventions as to how women should behave and obey. Perfect cold horror for a January night’s reading and strongly recommended!

I'd heard this title mentioned a lot pre publication and being published in the horror genre by Titan with this beautiful cover guaranteed my interest.

Told in third person across three time lines Demeester tells the story of school girl Lila and her mother Caroline's past and present.

Lila struggles to understand her mother, beneath the constant medication and macabre scupltures she knows something isn't right, there's a secret in Caroline's past that Lila is desperate for her to share.
Whilst struggling to hide her attraction to best friend Macie, Lila begins to see and hear strange, terrifying things. Believing herself to be genetically predisposed to mental illness, Lila fights to understand what happened to Caroline and whether the same thing may be happening to her..

I enjoyed the mystery of Caroline's past, slowly uncovering what repressed trauma occurred at Jazzland, but felt Demeester could have explored the setting a little more. A derelict theme park is a place rife with horror opportunity but despite its repeated reference there wasn't enough description and the atmosphere fell a little flat.

I've also begun to tire a little from the 'men are bad' trope. Between the pathetic husband, sexist psychotherapist, helpless father and dismissive counsellor there isn't a single moment of good done by any male in Such A Pretty Smile.
Almost every strand of the plot is woven around women being punished for independent thinking or stepping outside the fictional realms of how a good girl should behave.
The threat of Lila's expulsion for merely saying something violent one time to another student struck me as particularly excessive.

Such A Pretty Smile ends in anticlimax with a short finale followed by a long detailed explanation that bashes the reader over the head with the intent behind the story.
There is nothing left unsaid, nothing to read between the lines and no chance to make your own conceptions.

Despite my irritations there are some tense moments and the need for explanation kept me reading into the night. The writing itself is well paced and easy to follow but I needed more show and much less tell.
Animal, emotional and sexual abuse feature in Such A Pretty Smile.

Lila’s mother, a famous artist, keeps her past a secret from her daughter.

“Tell me. Tell me about before.”

Thirteen year old Lila wants more freedom but her mother refuses to give it to her.

Caroline is haunted by her past. She’s convinced that The Cur is back and wants to protect her daughter from experiencing what she has.

“There are things that I’ve seen … Things I can’t ever forget.”

Told by Lila in 2019 and Caroline in 2004, this is a story of fear, nightmares and accidental art. It’s the past intruding on the present, it’s patronising men, it’s equating being good with being safe, it’s about what happens when we refuse to be silenced.

I was interested in the relationship between this mother and daughter. I wanted to find out what had happened in Caroline’s past. Some of Caroline’s art fascinated me.

As I read about Caroline’s sculptures, I could see them. There was some repulsion attached to them due to some of their components but I could imagine myself finding treasures from nature, random leaves and branches (not some of the other objects Caroline uses), and attempting to create art from them.

I expect this will be a polarising read. I finished reading this book over a month ago and still don’t really know how I feel about it. Where this book lost me was the ending. After having me hooked until that point, I just didn’t buy the explanation. Maybe I missed something and a reread will fill in some blanks for me.

Content warnings include mental health, murdered and mutilated children, mutilated dog and sexual assault.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Titan Books for the opportunity to read this book. I’m rounding up from 3.5 stars.

Undecided on whether I liked this or not. Young girls are being brutally murdered and The Cur is to blame but I just didn't understand it. I know many people are going to love this but for me it was just OK.

Such a Pretty Smile is a standalone horror novel by author, Kristi DeMeester. This book was a lot of fun to read. I was worried when I saw this was advertised as ‘feminist’ but it wasn’t heavy handed at all and the themes were well portrayed. It’s hard to say much of the plot without spoilers but suffice to say this book offers up both psychological and supernatural delights. The plot would suit fans of horror but also people who enjoy psychological drama or domestic suspense novels. The characters are detailed, complex and relatable. The story is told by two characters (multiple POV) across differing timelines so you get to see how events in the past impact on the characters in the here and now. I really enjoyed this horror gem and would read more by this author.
Thank you to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for an ARC of this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC to review.

2 stars!


Ahhh I really wanted to like this. I've had this on my TBR for a while and though ooooo joy when I saw it as a possible book to review for the publisher on NG. So, I jumped to that chance!

I really liked the beginning. I thought ooooh damn The Cur is going to maybe get Lila or something but then I thought there would be a secret werewolf story brought in.

I did like the message of this book at the end. I did and it's a very important message, but I was expecting something completely else when reading this and with how it started and felt disappointed almost. I also thought that the message about getting your voice and using it or finding was almost overshadowed by the whole story right until the last section of the 2019 section like it was slid in just to be like, hey this is a message that has been conveyed through the book, but to me it didn't UNTIL that moment.

Despite this, I really liked the idea of this story, just shoukd have held off my hopes of a either Serial Killer story or hidden werewolf plot.

Thoroughly enjoyed this psycho-supernatural thriller. I was particularly drawn to Caroline, a flawed, beautiful woman and mother who does what all of us try to do and protect the ones we love. When a demonic trauma from her early adulthood returns to threaten her daughter, Caroline must navigate her fragile mental health, terrifying past memories and a very fraught relationship with her beloved daughter and save her from the 'monsters' that encircle a creepy, old funfair called 'Jazzland'.
Really well written and captivating. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC in return for an honest review.