Jill is a horror novelist, which made me suspect she’s an author stand-in, and the afterword pretty much confirms it. Her sister Kitty is a social media influencer, so both of them have jobs which are extremely difficult to make a living at.

For about the first fifth of the book, the only horror in Jill’s life, besides her tragic childhood, is PTA meetings, group texts, MLMs and a serious case of writer’s block. I like that the book debunks the razor blades in Halloween candy myth and other hoaxes.

It takes a while to get going, but once the first murder happens, it’s visceral. Interestingly, not all of the attacks end in murder. There’s quite a lot of brutal maiming. Leaving some of the victims alive but seriously maimed seems more cruel than simply killing them. Just because the victim survives, doesn’t make the attack any less terrifying. It kind of makes it worse. Other horror authors should take note.

Since Jill is a horror author, she’s aware of horror tropes. She refers to herself as the final girl and points out slasher tropes as they’re happening. The self-awareness did take me out of the book a bit. I mean, we’ve had characters in horror stories pointing out horror tropes going back to at least the 1996 movie Scream. Self-aware horror characters don’t feel new by this point.

The person you most suspect does end up being the killer, so no surprise there. There is an extra twist towards the end, but it came out of nowhere, so I don’t feel it was earned. The best surprise twists don’t feel random like this, but are ones that cause earlier scenes to make more sense. The best surprise twists clear up earlier confusion, not create new confusion.

The description claims the book contains ’90s nostalgia, but only the first chapter does, so I felt deceived by that.

Overall, it was an enjoyable, if average, horror novel. I liked that the killer only maimed some of the victims, which was more brutal than killing them. Some of those scenes were hard to read, so this book succeeded in being horrifying.