Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to read THE TOLL by Cherie Priest. I am not sure what to think of this book. I liked it, but found that some of the back and forth got confusing.
It starts off with a newlywed couple driving to go canoeing in a swamp - not a great vacation spot, but that is the destination. They argue back and forth and finally come to a strange bridge that makes them feel very strange, and then the young man wakes up on the bridge and his wife is GONE.
He calls the local police and tells them what happened and although they assist him, the young man, Titus, gets the feeling that they have seen this happen before.
Titus is taken to the small town of Staywater where he meets a cast of characters that seem to know the secrets of this small village, but don't speak of it.
Titus wants desperately to find his wife and enlists the local bartender to help him who also has a strange past with this town.
I found the ending confusing, and I am still unsure of what happened. I think this book had potential, but the ending was just to confoluted to follow.
2.5 stars.

I could hardly put this book down. Cherie Priest is brilliant at building up a mystery by dropping just enough hints to get you guessing and keeping you hooked.

The Toll by Cherie Priest, a strange and dark tale. The story of a young man in a strange town, and a honeymooning couple who sort of get lost. This is their tale, read it if you dare!

Cherie Priest has long been a favourite author and this is a return to her earlier novels where the themes are ghosts and monsters.

Titus and Melanie are on a decidedly unromantic swamp honeymoon. After much bickering while driving to their cabin they get lost on the road that leads through the swamp and before they know it something very weird has happened. Titus wakes up in the road to find Melanie gone. Missing? Wandered off? Or dead?

The nearest town is Staywater and while it provides some cops to search for Melanie it doesn't provide many logical answers. Titus soon learns from the town crazy lady that there's a monster in the swamp that takes a toll every thirteen years and the people it takes stay gone. The only hope may be two slightly batty old ladies who live just out of town.  Miss Daisy and Miss Claire seen to know a bit about things but they've got their teenage godson to worry about especially when he gets mixed up in things.

Priest excels at producing small towns where everything feels creepy or should do. The ghost who sits at the local bar talking to customers should be creepy but instead he's just a hint of how strange the town is. The mannequins at the abandoned store who change their own outfits becomes kind of sweet. It makes the real monster all the more scary and mysterious. This is a classic monster in the woods tale but avoids clichés with enough twists to make it compelling.

I have been craving a good horror novel and this one hit all the marks! It's creepy, grotesque (but not overdone), and chilling! This is my first Cherie Priest novel and it certainly won't be my last! I look forward to reading her previous novels especially if they are anything like this one! It's a treat!

Imagine going on your honeymoon to the swamps of Florida and your wife disappears. Not only does she disappear without a trace but this isn't the first time it's happened. This book was dark and creepy, gory in parts but not unnecessarily so. It had a horror-suspense factor to it but it didn't keep me glued to it as much as I had hoped.

To be honest, a cabin holiday in a Florida swamp sounds like a terrible idea for a honeymoon. On their way to the Okenfenokee Swamp, newly-married couple Titus and Davina Bell are already having pesky arguments, mainly about this weird choice of holiday which Titus insisted upon. If only he knew what was coming for them…

The Bells are driving across a strange and ancient one-lane bridge when the young husband loses consciousness at the wheel. He wakes up to find himself lying in the middle of the road. The engine is still running but Davina seems to have disappeared into thin air. The local Police, though sympathetic, sound quite sceptical. But Titus is quite sure that they are keeping something back from him. And he is right. In the nearby town of Staywater, this mysterious disappearance raises disturbing memories of a mysterious being which lives under the bridge: an entity supposedly slain years before by the now elderly cousins Claire and Daisy, but which seems to have returned to extract its toll…

The Toll is a fun horror book which taps into several different streams of Southern Gothic. There is the “grotesque” element as represented by the eccentric, if not downright crazy, characters who live in the tiny settlement of Staywater. There is an underlying sense of danger coming from the hostile environment: the treacherous swamps, the roaming giant alligators. But above all, the novel exudes a sense of supernatural dread – it is haunted not only by the presence of the malevolent entity, but also by other weird goings-on such as a house full of possessed dolls, and ghosts who roam the town and chat matter-of-factly with its inhabitants. All these ingredients are moulded into a novel which is, at its best, spine-tinglingly scary.

If I must criticise the book, it’s because sometimes it has the feel of an unfinished draft. Some passages of dialogue sound repetitive and could do with some judicious editing. The attempts at humour sometimes fall flat, especially during key set-pieces in the final chapters which would have had greater impact had they been conveyed as unadulterated horror. Several plot elements remain unexplained or unresolved – I kept hoping, for instance, that there would be some backstory concerning the family of Cameron, Claire and Daisy’s ward.

Despite these reservations, The Toll remains an interesting and entertaining addition to the Southern Gothic canon. I also feel that its coming-of-age elements (courtesy of Cameron, one of the main – and most likeable - characters) could make it appeal to the YA market as well.

In a small swampy Southern town, a young couple comes for their honeymoon but a strange bridge appears out of nowhere and when the husband wakes, his wife has disappeared. Cameron after being abandoned as an infant is being raised by two elderly women who seem to be harmless but he is soon realizing that they are not they claim to be nor is what is going on in the big farmhouse they live in. The town's history contains an urban myth about multiple floods, missing people and a bridge that you can only find some of the time. The out of towner just wants to find his wife and leave town, Cameron wants to find the barmaid who he is madly in love with but is too old for him and the witchy women just want the creature and bridge gone forever. A bit "Billy Goats Gruff" and very spooky, this is one bridge in the weird mist that you do not want to find yourself on. My thanks to the publisher for the advance copy.

No lounging on a Caribbean beach for Titus and Melanie Bell, this couple opts to spend their honeymoon in the Okefenokee Swamp, where they will camp and canoe. Now, the Okefenokee is a beautiful place, but even on the sunniest of days, there is a darkness to it. When the couple pass over a bridge that doesn’t appear on any map, Melanie disappears and Titus wakes up in the middle of the road with no memory of what happened. The police are skeptical, mainly because there is no bridge on that road. So what happened to Melanie. There are those who tells tales of the missing bridge and what happens to those who cross it, but they aren’t eager to share their stories with someone from away. This book is a perfect Southern Gothic, with all the elements to keep readers awake late into the night