This book made a great bedtime horror story for me: the kind where nothing truly nightmare-inducing happens, but there’s enough tension and disturbing stuff to keep my attention firmly off my own day-to-day worries. I enjoyed the family drama parts and all the contemplations on how our families shape us even when we reject them and/or get rejected by them, but we can still choose who we are. Those themes were handled in a way that resonated with me a lot.

Vesper grew on me fast, her jaded and cynical outlook providing a cool lens for this type of story. I ended up really, really liking her when she just kept illustrating that not expecting much good from the world doesn’t have to mean actively wishing it harm. I cheered for her during her ups and worried for her during her downs. Unfortunately, other characters didn’t have half the same depth and appeal. Most of them were just walking clichés the author hardly bothered to flesh out.

I went into the story practically blind, knowing only that it’s a “coming home after a prolonged absence and confronting the skeletons in the family’s closets” type of horror that may or may not have something to do with cults. As such, the reveal about what sort of cult this is exactly turned out to be a real surprise. Other twists were much easier to call in advance, but this first one really, really got me. Though looking back, I think the foreshadowing for it wasn’t discreet either, it just went completely over my head because

it didn’t occur to me to associate Satanism with the type of rigid rules, “questioning is discouraged” etc belief system presented here. I know this isn’t an atypical horror movie/satanic panic-style interpretation, but it just makes *so little sense*

.

On a related subject,

I had trouble accepting the bad guy here was actually Satan/Lucifer. He just never seemed ancient enough, or powerful enough, or overall impressive enough—neither in his personality, nor in his actions, especially toward the end. I kind of wish Vesper’s assumption that this was simply a cult leader believing himself to be Satan (and indeed possessing some weird horror powers on top of that) ended up true. Or maybe this could be an average demonic Jo using the big boss’s name to mess with a bunch of mortals and score himself brownie points in hell. Maybe that’s what happened there. But as actual Satan, he just didn’t live up to my expectations, lol.

Overall, the fright factor here is rather mild, outside of a few gorey body horror moments late in the book. The focus is more on the family drama and learning to live with your past, and those parts were quite well done (though, again, I wish the cast of characters was more three-dimensional). Also, I liked the metaphor with the lamb early-ish on. Transparent, but effective.