Starting the month off with plenty of horror!
Thanks to Apex Book Company for the gifted copy in exchange for my honest review
CINDERWICH – Cherie Priest (Released May 14th, 2024)
With a cover like that, how could I say no?
Book Description:
“Who put Ellen in the blackgum tree?”
Decades after trespassing children spotted the desiccated corpse wedged in the treetop, no one knows the answer.
Kate Thrush and her former college professor, Dr. Judith Kane, travel to Cinderwich, Tennessee in hopes that maybe it was their Ellen: Katie’s lost aunt, Judith’s long-gone lover. But they’re not the only ones to have come here looking for closure. The people of Cinderwich, a town hardly more than a skeleton itself, are staunchly resistant to the outsiders’ questions about Ellen and her killer. And the deeper the two women dig, the more rot they unearth … the closer they come to exhuming the evil that lies, hungering, at the roots of Cinderwich.
My Thoughts: 3/5 stars
I’ve said before, and I’ll never stop saying it, anything with traces of folklore, I’m going to need to read it. At just under 200 pages this was a quick one-sitting kind of read. I feel like this was teetering more into thriller territory over horror BUT definitely still some horror elements. It’s really hard to review novellas like this because it’s so easy to possibly spoil things BUT I loved the creepy little town, the eerie setting and atmosphere, and the dynamic between our two main characters. The pacing is on the slower side, so keep that in mine when starting. I know I always like knowing so I can set my expectations accordingly.
Not bad for my introduction to Cherie Priest and I know it won’t be my last time reading her!
Jessicamap Reviews 