The Horror at Pleasant Brook

Lucia’s (Joey Leonard’s Last Horror Movie Marathon) novel is a fun throwback to ’80s Halloween horror grown in small-town America. Pleasant Brook is a little burg in the Adirondacks that feels even smaller after COVID-19 forces students into remote learning, businesses to close, and Halloween festivities to be very limited. This perfect storm allows an ancient evil to rise and slowly start to take over the entire town, transforming its residents into near-unstoppable monsters. There are but a few who have the chance to prevent this evil from consuming the town, including an overburdened constable and a kid who’s seen something like this in horror movies, but they may already be too late. Horror fans will recognize the formula here, but Lucia gives it a more modern coat of blood-red paint. Lucia does not shy away from the rather gory deaths perpetrated by the infected townsfolk, who all sport the same mask-like face and have the same penchant for violent kills that border on campy.