Dead Girls Walking by Sami Ellis
A shocking, spine-chilling YA horror slasher about a girl searching for her dead mother’s body at the summer camp that was once her serial killer father’s home—perfect for fans of Friday the 13th and White Smoke
Temple Baker knows that evil runs in her blood. Her father is the North Point Killer, an infamous serial killer known for how he marked each of his victims with a brand. He was convicted for murdering 20 people and was the talk of countless true crime blogs for years. Some say he was possessed by a demon. Some say that they never found all his victims. Some say that even though he’s now behind bars, people are still dying in the woods. Despite everything though, Temple never believed that her dad killed her mom. But when he confesses to that crime while on death row, she has no choice but to return to his old hunting grounds to try see if she can find a body and prove it.
Turns out, the farm that was once her father’s hunting grounds and her home has been turned into an overnight camp for queer, horror-obsessed girls. So Temple poses as a camp counselor to go digging in the woods. While she’s not used to hanging out with girls her own age and feels ambivalent at best about these true crime enthusiasts, she tries her best to fit in and keep her true identity hidden.
But when a girl turns up dead in the woods, she fears that one of her father’s “fans” might be mimicking his crimes. As Temple tries to uncover the truth and keep the campers safe, she comes to realize that there may be something stranger and more sinister at work—and that her father may not have been the only monster in these woods.
Review:
I received an advance galley of this book courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I am a huge horror fan – especially anything slasher or paranormal. I don’t particularly enjoy body horror or gross-out scenes, so I often find myself drawn to YA horror because it tends to be less graphic. One of my favorite tropes is the tried and true campground slasher – teens cut off from the outside world fighting for their lives. It has been a favorite of mine since I was ten years old and first watched “Friday the 13th”. Because of this, I’m always going to read a horror novel set at a camp, so that (and the amazingly creepy cover) is what drew me to this book when I saw it on NetGalley.
The story follows Temple Baker, a 16-year-old young woman whose father is The North Point Killer – a notorious serial killer who murdered and mutilated several people. He’s been caught and is now in prison, having been charged with several murders, but the one murder that still haunts Temple is the death of her mother. Her body was never found, and many believe she may just be missing, but Temple’s father told her himself that he killed her.
When a horror camp opens up on the outskirts of Temple’s family’s old farm, she does everything she can to ensure that she is selected as a camp counselor so that she can get to the camp and explore the land. The family farm is where all of the bodies were buried, and she is certain that this is where she will find her mother’s body and finally close that chapter in the messed up book that is her life. But when she gets to camp, strange things start to happen. Temple can hear voices and strange knocking – all things her father used to warn her about. When someone winds up brutally murdered in a similar fashion to her father’s murders, Temple fears there may be a copycat on the loose, and it’s up to her to figure out what is going on before everyone at camp winds up dead.
Ellis does a fantastic job of creating a tense and atmospheric setting, and this is probably one of the strongest aspects of the book. I could easily picture the creepy woods, hear the sounds, and feel the energy. The overnight camp for queer, horror-obsessed girls serves as the perfect backdrop for an unconventional and intriguing mystery.
I liked Temple and understood why she was the way she was, and I really felt for her. Anyssa (the resident mean girl), Cali, a slasher-obsessed trans girl, and Yaya, a God-fearing lesbian, were some of my favorite characters, but I have to admit, the other characters all kind of blended together for me. Honestly, it felt as though many of them were just there to up the body count, which is fine, but I had zero emotional attachment to any of them.
While I thought the overall story was intriguing, and the addition of the paranormal element added a refreshing twist to the slasher trope, I felt that the plot was a bit convoluted. For about 80% of the book, I could not figure out WTF was going on. There’s a subplot about a local author who ended up buying the land and wrote a book that many of the girls at camp are obsessed with that, for the longest time, felt unnecessary. It finally comes together at the end, and we figure out why the author and the book were important to the plot, but for the longest time, it seemed totally irrelevant. I feel like this could have either been fleshed out more or edited down. Also, the paranormal element – while fresh – felt like it was a little overdone. While the complex plot adds to the suspense and intrigue, it also detracts from the overall cohesiveness of the story. I also didn’t really get why we needed the interview transcripts, forum chats, and other things that were thrown in. They really broke up the momentum, and none of them held anything super relevant to the overall progression of the story.
