A bereaved woman seeks shelter in a haunted rooming house and seeks to come to terms with her losses. A strange collection of characters and a parade of ghosts slowly unveil the depths of grief. A compelling short read.

The nitty-gritty: Another strange and bloody tale, part horror, part sci-fi, and one hundred percent WTF.

The first book in the series, The Murders of Molly Southbourne, was a bloody, violent surprise of a story, a horror tale steeped in mystery where the reader is in the dark about what’s going on for quite a while. To catch unfamiliar readers up to speed, our protagonist Molly is a young girl who has a unique but terrible condition: every time she bleeds, she creates a new “molly” who immediately tries to kill her. Molly has been trained by her mother and father from a young age to kill these clones, or “duplicates” as she calls them, as soon as they appear, so Molly’s life has been filled with murder and plenty of strict rules to follow. Don’t bleed. Kill the mollys. Burn the evidence. What a life!

The sequel opens right after the events at the end of the last book. Molly has just escaped a burning house and has called a phone number tattooed on her arm. The phone number is a help line, where a team will come out and obliterate all traces of the fire and the blood. But something is wrong. Molly isn’t actually Molly, but a molly, a duplicate. The real Molly, or Molly Prime, died in the fire. Now molly must navigate a dangerous and unfamiliar world, armed only with Molly’s memories and the story she told her right before the fire.

One day molly runs into another of her kind, a woman named Tamara who also creates duplicates when she bleeds. However, Tamara has learned to live in peace with her tamaras, and they’ve formed a sort of commune where they take care of each other. But this raises so many questions, and Molly isn’t sure what to believe. Why can they create duplicates? And who is behind it? The answers may lie with Molly’s own mother, whose past she is about to discover.

Welcome to mind fuck territory, people! It’s hard to describe any more of the plot, for a couple of reasons. One, this is a very short novella and I don’t want to spoil this if you’re planning on reading it. And two, the plot is confusing and I’m still not sure I understand everything that happened. But as I mentioned in my review of Murders, the plot really takes a back seat to the horrific elements. Thompson does atmosphere really well, and this story is chock full of that.

There’s also a lurking horror behind everything that’s going on. There is a character from the first book named James Down, who is doing something terrible to himself in this book. I almost wish I had time to go back and reread Murders, because for the life of me I can’t remember why he’s doing this awful thing. The story is surprisingly violent at times, although maybe it’s not so surprising since this is a story about clones who are born out of a girl’s blood. Even more horrifying is the way the characters react to the violence, which is to say they barely react at all. Violence is a way of life, and that in itself makes you wonder what sort of life these duplicates can really have.

I did find that the story overall felt a bit fractured. Molly ends up in different kinds of trouble throughout the story, and sometimes wakes up in unfamiliar places. This jumping around was confusing, and the story at times felt like a series of vignettes rather than a cohesive tale. But because Molly thinks of herself as a duplicate, and therefore not a real person, this fractured storytelling sort of makes sense, especially since the story is from her perspective.

The ending circles back to the beginning of the first book, which I thought was a nice touch. I’m not sure whether Thompson has another book planned for this series, but it feels finished, in my opinion, and I don’t think another book is necessary. Although—we still don't have complete answers about Molly's and Tamara's condition, so who knows, maybe we do need one more book? Please read The Murders of Molly Southbourne first, otherwise you will be lost. I love Thompson’s writing and the way he conveys a sense of menace and unease, even if not every part of the story made sense.

Big thanks to the publisher for supplying a review copy.

In this second novella featuring Molly Southbourne, Tade Thompson expands offers another entertaining, twisty and intriguing mystery. It’s very difficult to review this without spoiling the whole story of The Murders of Molly Southbourne. I think I want to avoid that, so I’m going to keep this review very short and to-the-point.

If you enjoyed the first novella, I’m sure you’ll enjoy this sequel. If you’ve read and enjoyed the author’s Rosewater series, then I also think you will enjoy this (even though they are very different). If you’re a fan of strange, slightly horrific real-world fantasy, then I strongly recommend you try this series.

Thompson’s prose is excellent, the pacing for both of these books is also great. A superb protagonist, fascinating characters, and excellent world-building. I very much enjoyed the way Thompson built on the foundations set by the first novella, expanding and changing our understanding of the “rules” of Molly’s condition, not to mention its origins and whether or not there are others like her. A side character from The Murders… returns, in a thread that is rather unsettling to read.

Very highly recommended.