They called her a nightmare, so she became one.

Haven Powers has spent years trying to disappear. Once a loud, troublemaking girl who defied every expectation in her small town of Friendship, Texas, now she’s learned to hide her fire behind a quiet receptionist’s smile. It’s safer that way—for her, and for everyone else.

When an unsettling encounter with her predatory boss cracks open the tightly locked box inside her, Haven dreams a terrifying dream about him, only to wake up and discover it’s come true; he’s dead. Desperate to gain control of this deadly power once and for all, Haven returns home.

Welcomed suspiciously with open arms, Haven is immediately met with the ghosts of her past. Under the suffocating pressure of the town and her family who believe obedience is next to godliness, Haven soon finds herself on a path to revenge. She’ll show them what happens when the girl they called too much, too loud, too everything, finally lets her demons loose.

I received an advance copy of this book courtesy of the publisher. All thoughts are my own.

I had really high hopes for this one, and I’m sad to say I didn’t love it as much as I wanted to. I enjoyed it, but it didn’t quite deliver the scares or the punch I was hoping for.

Haven Powers used to be the kind of girl her small Texas town of Friendship couldn’t handle. She was loud and defiant much to the chagrin of her upstanding family. These days she is the polar opposite of who she used to be. She works as a receptionist, keeps her opinions to herself and does what is expected of her. Mostly because she’s learned that when she lets out the rage and frustration, bad things happen, and she doesn’t want a repeat of what happened years ago. When her boss (who has a nasty habit of preying on women) crosses a line, she dreams about him dying. She’s not surprised when she wakes up to find it really happened. Determined to get a grip on this, Haven heads back to her hometown. Her family and the locals welcome her with open arms, and the pressure to be a good, quiet, obedient girl comes right back. Old ghosts start showing up, and Haven begins moving toward payback against the people who spent years telling her she was too much.

This is a book about women being used and controlled by men, and it also has a lot to say about generational trauma and how it shows up in the younger women who inherit it. I loved what the author was going for. The message is front and center, and it’s one I can get behind. Honestly, the creepiest parts were the dream sequences. Haven dreams about bad things happening to people who cross her, then learns those dreams came true. I spent a good chunk of the book wondering whether she was blacking out and committing murder herself or whether something in her nightmares was doing the work. That uncertainty kept me engaged.

My biggest problem is the synopsis alluded to a blood-soaked revenge against an entire town. That made me think of Stephen King’s Carrie, and I went in expecting a similar kind of bloodbath. What I got was a few people receiving their comeuppance, which was fine, but it wasn’t the town-wide reckoning the blurb suggested. It didn’t punch as hard as I wanted it to.

Some of that may come down to how I read it. I did a tandem read, and Gail Shalan’s narration was good, but I felt she played Haven far too subdued. She was almost too timid. She sounded beat-down when I wanted a woman who was doing her best to fight her rage. A smile through gritted teeth rather than afraid and obedient. The synopsis sets up a strong woman holding back immense power until she finally lets the rage go. What I heard was a meek woman with big powers she can’t control. That mismatch in tone pulled me out of the story more than once, and it may have dulled the impact for me. It’s possible I would have felt differently reading the print copy alone.

Just to be clear, I didn’t dislike this book. The themes are strong, the dream premise is clever, and a few of the scenes really work. I just wanted the rage to hit harder and the revenge to be bigger. It just didn’t quite hit for me.

If you want a horror book focusing on female rage and trauma with a side of creepy, mysterious power, this is worth a look. Just don’t go in expecting mass carnage.