HORROR

Daphne

by Josh Malerman
Del Rey: Ballantine. Sept. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9780593157015. $28. HORROR
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Key author Malerman (A House at the Bottom of a Lake) delivers another winner. Kit is on the heralded Samhattan High School girls basketball team, but before the biggest game of summer league, the girls heard a terrible story from a teammate—a myth from Samhattan history about Daphne, who comes back from the dead and murders anyone who thinks about her too much. It is a story everyone in town knows but have been trained to forget for self-preservation. Readers watch on the edge of their seats as Kit’s teammates are gruesomely picked off, while an outsider cop is desperate to understand and stop the violence. But how can anyone be saved if no one will talk about the undead killer, who is never more than a thought away? Maybe Kit, who has openly battled with her own anxiety, can rise to be the final girl they need.
VERDICT A thought provoking and honest conversation about anxiety wrapped around a Freddy Krueger-esque slasher. For fans of cursed small towns like in Thomas Olde Heuvelt’s Hex, or other fresh takes on the teen slasher like Jessica Guess’s Cirque Berserk.
Reviewed by Becky Spratford , Jun 01, 2022
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