Rating: /10

Synopsis

A restaurateur lured by pandemic-era incentives moves her family to a seemingly idyllic town in Georgia.

The email message that lands in Billie Hope’s inbox seems like a gift from the universe. For $100 she can purchase a spacious Victorian home in Juliana, Georgia, a small town eager to boost its economy in the wake of the pandemic. She can leave behind her cramped New York City rental and some painful memories. Plus she’ll get a business grant to open a new restaurant in a charming riverside community laden with opportunity.

After some phone calls and one hurried visit, Billie and her husband and daughter are officially part of the “Juliana Initiative.” The town is everything promised, and between settling into her lavish home and starting a new restaurant, Billie is busy enough to dismiss misgivings.

Yet those misgivings grow. There’s something about Juliana, something off-kilter and menacing beneath its famous Southern hospitality. No matter how much Billie longed for her family to come here, she’s starting to wonder how, and whether, they’ll ever leave.

Quick Review

Gothictown’s brand of small-town suspense / horror got its hooks in me and would not let go. It’s a carefully-crafted slow build, then a frantic race to the end.

Full Review

Thanks to Megan Beatie Communications for providing me with an advanced reader copy of Gothictown.

Gothictown is a curious book. On one hand, it’s entertaining, and I suspect it’ll hit a lot of the right notes for anyone craving some small-town horror and suspense. On the other hand, there’s a few details that I personally have some trouble getting behind.

Emily Carpenter is clearly a talented author. Every single character seemed to have their own unique voice. Gothictown has a big cast—we meet just about everyone living in the town of Julianna, plus Billie’s immediate family—so that’s a big accomplishment. It also helped me keep track of who was who in a story that, written by anyone else, could have certainly had issues with that.

The writing is always interesting as well, whether we’re with Billie at work, meeting the locals, or uncovering why the town feels so “off-kilter.” Carpenter balances the mundane parts of this story with the less mundane very well.

The majority of the book is grounded in Billie’s desire to get out of New York City and start up a new restaurant in Juliana. We’re shown glimpses of the conflict to come once they finally arrive at their new home, but it takes a long time for it to come to a head. In the mean-time the plot seems to meander. 

It all comes together in the end, but it does so hastily. I won’t go into spoilers, but I would have preferred a little more focus in the middle, and a little more time during the final act. I felt like I was getting whiplash as we went from the first two thirds, which felt like a suspense story, through all the motions of the finale: a blend of horror, action, and a strangely cozy ending (to be clear, this is not a cozy book). It’s all over in a blink.

Personally, I didn’t find Billie all that likable, either. I could sympathize with her, and see why she did things, but she was so consistently self-destructive. Several chapters revolve around her doing something stupid, then wrestling with herself over it, but rarely actually trying to resolve the issue or make amends.

All that said, I was invested in Gothictown. Yes, I was frustrated with Billie and the way the plot could meander, but I can’t deny that the book had its hooks in me. It was a fantastic change of pace from my usual fantasy and sci-fi books, and I absolutely loved how Carpenter wrote dialogue. There’s some really neat stuff with the town’s history and the residents as well, and the way those stories intertwine in the book.

I recommend Gothictown to anybody seeking a horror / suspense read. While not everything about it was a home-run for me, it’s still a fun, gripping story.