Thank you to Del Rey (via NetGalley) for the ARC!

I'm not 100% sure what to say about this book. I've read quite a few horror books, so I thought I knew what to expect going into this, but about 40% through the book it took a turn. And it was a strange one.

Spoiler

I was not at all expecting the supernatural/demon aspect of this book and I'm not quite sure what to make of the beginning of the book considering how the rest of the story goes. I think I get what the author was trying to do, but I feel like there was something missing because it was such a drastic change in tone from the beginning of the book to how it ended. I get that she wanted to leave an aspect of mystery to the story, but I think the first half of the book spent too much time on backstory/POV of characters that died really quickly when I would have preferred more backstory on the Asterion community and information about those families. That part was more interesting to me and I would have liked to know more about that than just the journal entries and the one meeting that Linda had with the members of the families.

I was excited to read a short book because long, overly draggy books are so common now that an adult horror novel under 300 pages was something that immediately caught my eye. And it wasn't bad, but I do feel like there was something missing. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I felt like I read two different books and neither were quite resolved.