Lila Denning

Malerman is extraordinarily skilled at bringing fear to the ordinary and building a sense of unease into terror. He can terrify readers even while writing from a believable child’s perspective and voice. For fans of novelists who deftly deploy unease and surreal takes on the routine like Neil Gaiman, Catriona Ward, or Paul Tremblay, or Scott Thomas’s Violet, another novels about an imaginary friend.

Readers will be drawn in to this horror novella with broad crossover appeal, thanks to its skillful blend of trans love story, historical fiction, and Southern gothic folk horror.

Balancing a terrifying cursed film with examinations of artistic creation, fandom, and truth, Tremblay’s latest is smart and well-paced and will have broad appeal. Recommended for fans of Tremblay’s The Pallbearer’s Club as well as Clay McLeod Chapman’s The Remaking.