I am a member of the American Library Association Reading List Award Committee. This title was on the 2020 shortlist. The complete list of winners and shortlisted titles is at <a href="https://rusaupdate.org/2020/01/2020-reading-list-years-best-in-genre-fiction-for-adult-readers/">

A chilling, yet moving story of hauntings, grief, and motherhood. It perfectly captures its Kansas setting and the tension of discerning what is real and what is not. 4 stars.

Thank you to netgalley for the arc.
Unfortunately this was middle of the road for me. I would still like to read something else from this author in the future.

Thank you for an advanced copy of Violet by Scott Thomas. I ended up purchasing the book and haven't finished it fully.

I adored Kill Creek, Scott Thomas's debut novel. I enjoyed Vioet for the most part, but my main issue with it was that there were too many mundane details. Sometimes we'd follow every single meal the characters had and how they got places and it felt like it was paced so slow when it got bogged down with too many details. The last third of the book really picks up, but it took me a bit of effort to get there

I tried really hard to get into this book. It was so detailed it made it boring. I really wanted to like it because I loved his other book but I was just bored to tears.

Very long winded with whole passages that bored me to death. The whole novel is one big description and basically follows a mother and her daughter whilst they cook, clean, go shopping etc etc. That is literally this book. Nothing really happens until the final third of this book.,and by then it's too late. I just don't believe the hype this one's getting at all.

I received a copy from Netgalley.

The synopsis of this one caught my attention when browsing Netgalley. I usually like small town haunted houses with a secret and especially ones where someone’s coming back to a childhood home.

The novel started out interestingly enough. However, it felt very long winded and over written after a while and failed to keep my attention from about half way through. I did find myself skimming over the latter parts of the novel as I was mildly interested in how it all concluded. It took forever for anything to remotely happen.

The story stars with the heroine Kris going back to her hometown with her daughter after losing her husband in an accident, Kris appears to be a workaholic vet and the daughter has withdrawn and seems to be struggling to cope. Kris feels a fresh start will help them move on.

Arriving at the house they find it overgrown and the estate agent lied about the condition of the house - it’s got a bit of a reputation in the town. It’s so slow and boring as Kris and the daughter start to clean the house and Kris finds mementos of her childhood and starts remembering things she’d forgotten. Creepy things start happening.

Whilst visiting the local town Kris learns about a series of murders and missing children. The daughter starts talking to someone who isn’t there – an invisible friend. More creepy things start happening. Kris remembers more stuff from her own childhood and her own creepy invisible friend. Who may or may not have been real.

Interesting concept but the execution didn’t really work for me at all. I didn’t connect to the characters, I didn’t feel any emotion whilst reading other than just wanting to get this book over and done with. Disappointing as I usually like this kind of story. Not for me.

Thank you to Netalley and Inkshares for approving my request to view the title.

I was really looking forward to reading this book. The description made it sound like the perfect book for me. But it was just so boring. Long descriptions of nothing. I figured it would get better. There were hints of it getting better. And it did...a little. But it never overcame the tediousness. I found myself not even paying attention. Great idea, Less great execution.

Scott Thomas is a pioneer of the horror genre. I am always amazed at the ideas of terror that reign from his mind.

This was super atmospheric, amazing, tense, a heart stopping creepy story. I couldn't wait to find out what happened to the characters. I enjoyed every minute of it.

I received an ARC of this book thanks to Net Galley and publisher Inkshares in exchange for an honest review.

So Kill Creek was one of the first books I read this year and I absolutely adored it. When I heard Scott Thomas was coming out with a new horror book, I knew I wanted to read it regardless of what it was about. Then I found out the plot and got very excited.

Violet is the story of Kris, a woman with a troubled past who is dealing with the grief of her husband's recent death. In an attempt to help her young daughter Sadie, she relocates them both to her old childhood summer home. Unfortunately the house is derelict and Sadie starts to behave in a very troubling way. Soon Kris realises that something beyond decay is very wrong with the house.

I'd heard this book was a slow-burn and I definitely think that's accurate, especially when compared to something like Kill Creek. This is a fairly different style of horror but once again I was utterly absorbed by Thomas' incredible writing style. Though the horror elements don't really appear until quite late in the story, I was so invested in Kris and learning more about her that it never felt like it was dragging or moving at a slow pace. In fact I almost read the whole book in a day because I was so absorbed.

There are only really two main characters in this story and both Kris and Sadie felt very real. Kris in particular gets explored through the narrative and I loved the heart and the extra emotional investment this added to the horror element. By the time the creepy stuff starts to happen, you really feel for her and her situation. At the same time, there is almost a barrier between the reader and Kris which is just enough to make you feel slightly unsettled and adds another nuanced layer, particularly to the climax.

Overall, I would absolutely recommend giving this book a chance. It is similar in setup to Imaginary Friends by Stephen Chbosky but in my opinion this is the far superior book. Thomas is quickly becoming one of my favourite authors and I know I will read Violet and Kill Creek for years to come.

Overall Rating: 4.5/5

Amazing, heart stopping scary. I enjoyed every single minute of it. I would gladly read more from this author in the future.

Wow, what a creepy, creepy read! I picked this ARC up for one of my spooky season reads, and it was absolutely perfect for the season! If there is one thing in horror that creeps me out no matter what, it’s creepy little kids and Violet has that down pat!

The story centers around Kris Barlow and her young daughter, Sadie. Kris and Sadie have just been through an extremely traumatic experience, Kris’s husband recently died in a car crash, and the two of them are headed to Kris’s old family lake house for the summer to try and relax. Little does Kris realize, they are walking into a dying town with a lingering sinister presence that just won’t let go.

I loved the overall eerie feeling that Thomas was able to convey throughout the whole story. The town itself, along with several of its denizens, is just downright creepy every now and then. Many people spend a little bit too long lingeringly gazing at Sadie and genuinely unnerving Kris with their attention. This coupled with the intense flashbacks we get of not only Kris’s experience having to identify her husband at the morgue (major gore warnings!), but also of Kris’s experience at the house when she was 10 and her own mother was dying of cancer.

Kris’s inner monologue adds drastically to the creepy factor throughout the story as she tries intensely to tamp down all of the trauma in her own life, in favor of moving on from her grief. And ultimately that’s exactly what Violet deals with, grief and how we react to it and/or runaway from it, and the consequences that might have.

I really enjoyed this read, it felt like the story could have been a bit shorter and still been done well, but overall it was a creepy, emotional tale. I haven’t read Kill Creek yet, but now that I’ve finished and enjoyed Violet, I’ll have to pick that up next!

I don't think I can move forward. Its too detailed. Too expressive and too everything that I want to gouge my eye out instead of reading it. My brain has started a faint buzzing and it won't stop.
The story seems like it has potential but the sheer descriptions is irritating.
DNF

Great tense horror thriller. Enjoyed the great majority of the book, though the ending is a bit lacking (as it is often the case with 'twists' in horror books. Still very enjoyable.

This is a very atmospheric story where the horror creeps in rather slowly. The author takes his time to portray the main characters as well as the location, and by this we are able to get very close to Kris and her daughter Sadie. After Kris loses her husband in a fatal accident, they visit the summer vacation home of Kris' youth, where, when Kris was just kid herself, she witnessed her mother gruesomely dying of cancer. As strange things start to happen and Sadie starts acting weird, talking to herself and playing with an imaginary friend, Kris has to face her own forgotten past to figure things out and to finally come to terms with her suppressed trauma.

While both 'Violet' and the author's first novel 'Kill Creek' share the creepy location of a house with a bad history, this is were the similarities end. Violet is told in a much slower pace and also more subtle, concentrating on emotions and forebodings rather than action. My only criticism is that at times I found myself frustrated with the slow motion things happened in, wishing for the story to move along a bit faster. However, once the tension reaches its breaking point, it erupts in an overwhelming outburst of emotions that had been bottled up and forgotten far too long. A haunting tale focusing on atmosphere and characters, and doing a good job of it. And definitely a new voice in the horror genre to watch out for.

https://lynns-books.com/2019/10/31/violet-by-scott-thomas/
3.5 of 5 stars
Violet turned out to be a different book to the one I expected – which is absolutely on me because having read and loved Kill Creek so very much I confess I barely even glanced at the synopsis for Violet, I just wanted to read it and of course I was expecting another horror. Violet is quite a different style really, much more creepy and insidious, a psychological horror that takes it’s time in laying out the groundwork. Whilst I may not have loved Violet as much as Kill Creek it does an excellent job of showcasing Scott Thomas’s writing chops in fact without his amazing alchemy with words I suspect I might have put this book down in the first half but as it was, even with the slow start, he had me hooked.

The story sets out with Kris and her daughter Sadie as they finish their long drive to the family’s vacation home at Lost Lake, Tragedy has struck Kris’s family for the second time in her life, her daughter is traumatised and barely speaks and Kris has made the decision to spend a few months at the lake, enjoying the water, soaking up the sun and trying to revive both herself and her daughter. Unfortunately, things get off to a shaky start. Upon arrival the house is barely inhabitable which comes as a surprise for Kris. She may not have visited since her childhood but she believed her father paid for its maintenance and in fact rented the house out as a holiday home. Apparently not. Let me be plain, the place is something of a wreck and nature has started to claim back the space.

However, after the initial shock, Kris makes the decision to stay and put her DIY skills to the test, picturing the place revamped with herself and Sadie spending future years on vacation there and at first the idea seems to be going down well. The two are getting on and Sadie seems to be slowly opening up a little but then things begin to slowly change, seamlessly almost. Noises in the house, unexpected neighbours across the lake who seem to be watching the two and slightly strange remarks from the locals whenever Kris and Sadie visit town. Little things that taken by themselves can be brushed off instead start to mount up into something bigger. Kris starts to recall more of her childhood vacations and they’re not always the sweetest memories. Her mother died many years ago of cancer and her last months were spent at the lake. Of course Kris has whitewashed a lot of those memories out remembering instead all the good times but slowly she’s beginning to recall the past and it’s not all rosy.

On top of this Sadie has started to spend a lot of time alone. Undoubtedly she’s come out of her shell, laughing and running around the house but does it sometimes sound like she’s talking to herself?

Anyway, I’m not going to give anything away about the plot. Read it for yourself instead but, I will say that you need to be patient with the first half of the book. There’s a lot of cleaning and DIY’ing while Kris is sprucing the place up and it has a repetitious feel to it which having had a chance to consider things more I think was deliberate on the part of the author. Maybe to lull you into a false sense of security, maybe also to really drive home how oblivious Kris was to the changes occurring around her until things were really set in motion. It’s difficult to say what the intention is. There are some stunning moments that really chilled me, a shadow behind a door, it’s just a shadow, but did it seem to move. The sort of thing that you can imagine thinking yourself but then also talking yourself out of. The only problem with it all is that these moments become a little bit swallowed up with Kris, cleaning, hammering, drilling and sanding. Like I said, I think the idea was to show, slowly but surely, that the two characters were in fact spending very little time together. That Kris was so focused on the house itself that she’d almost abandoned Sadie in some respects, and like Kris, it didn’t really occur to me just how much things had changed because I was so busy reading about her everyday chores. I just wish (I know, if wishes were horses right) but, yes, I can’t help thinking that this could have been tightened up a little so that the moments of shock felt a bit more dramatic and their impact lasted a little longer but at the same time, now I’m writing this review and really considering it, seriously, I think the author wanted you to feel the mundaneness of what Kris was doing, to feel how absorbed she’d become and how little she was aware of what was taking place around her – it’s absolutely the way that he made me feel.

So slight reservations aside what else can I tell you.

The writing, as I mentioned above is so good. I love reading this author, well, I’m two books in and I would say is writing is confident and powerful. He has the ability to make you think and anticipate so even when the most dull things are taking place your mind is racing ahead reading meaning into things and trying to second guess the outcome. Even the words used here and there feel suggestive to me – although I’m sure that’s just my own oddity. The title itself, Violet, it’s not a far cry from ‘violent’. Lost Lake – sounds very ominous. I don’t know, just little things that create a certain suggestiveness – to me at least.

The characters. Kris is definitely what you call an unreliable narrator. Don’t get me wrong, she’s had some terrible experiences and slowly most of them will be revealed to you but at the same time this also shows how she’s suppressed her own memories and has a false sense of happy times that maybe isn’t quite so accurate. On top of that she seems to be becoming ever more dependent on alcohol and drugs to get her through the days and nights which leaves her feeling sluggish and at times unable to recall details.

The setting. Well the house and lake are almost like a character themselves. They feel creepy and in fact you feel like you’re in a constant state of suspense just waiting to breathe. The nearby town is also very intriguing. Reliant on tourism things have happened that have brought the place low. There’s a sort of hushed feeling of secrecy, as though people are afraid to talk and almost a forced joviality that is starkly out of place and only surface deep. Again, I won’t go into the details as they’re best discovered during the read.

In terms of criticisms – well the only thing I have is the pacing issues I already mentioned. Seriously, you need to be patient with this one – that’s the best advice I can give. Or read quickly during the first half. The story really gathers momentum and the ending is brilliant so I think it’s worth it.

I think my only regret with this book is that I rushed into it expecting an insane and blood soaked horror (because, Kill Creek people). If I could go back to the start of the read, adjust my expectations and not be in a rush to discover just what’s going on then maybe I would have enjoyed the first half of the story a lot more and just savoured the build and the delicious writing. That’s my advice to you, this is a book with a lot of psychological build up and a scary ending and it’s a book that needs a little patience, read it and absorb all the nuances and suggestions along the way.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks. The above is my own opinion.

This may shock a lot of folks, but I never read ‘Kill Creek.’ When I began to fully engage and interact with the horror community on Twitter, this book was getting A TON of love. People left, right and centre were raving about it and I knew I had to check it out.
Unfortunately, at the time, I stumbled onto a Twitter fight between two folks. In this subtweet battle, one of the folks spoiled nearly every aspect of the book. It wasn’t even something I could avoid. I’d close Twitter, go back to work and when I’d reopen it – the first tweet that would load would be another subtweet.
Needless to say, I messaged a few folks and all of them said – no point in reading the book now – you already know the twists and turns.
When ‘Violet’ was announced, I was excited! I wasn’t going to let this one slip away. So thanks to Mr. Thomas, Inkshares and Netgalley for letting me get an early ARC. Also – my sincerest apologies – as I completely dropped the ball on the release date, so I powered through this over the last few days.
‘Violet’ is a slow burn. It opens up telling a bit of the back story and Thomas uses some fantastic language to set the tone. Paraphrasing – he writes things like “the town was creating its own darkness.” Lines like this that really gave the reader the atmospheric dread early on.
This one is a slow burn. No doubt about it. As things unfold, I was reminded a bit of reading some of George RR Martin’s epic “A Song of Ice and Fire” series, where things would link back to stuff discussed/described 100’s of pages prior.
This book is one that you really need to take your time and digest everything that Thomas throws at you. At times it’ll feel like it’s dragging a bit, but I found that I wanted to know just what happens.
I’d compare this book more to a mini-series than a movie. The author wanted to fill six episodes worth of stuff versions 120 minutes, so at times there is some slower spots, but if you can power through, then you’ll be rewarded.
For me, I would have bumped this up to a 5 star if things moved a bit quicker, but at the end of the day, I think Thomas executed exactly what he wanted too, and for that, readers will be richly rewarded!
** This review will feature on Kendall Reviews! **

3 stars.

"𝓢𝓸𝓶𝓮𝓽𝓲𝓶𝓮𝓼 𝓲𝓽 𝓲𝓼 𝓮𝓪𝓼𝓲𝓮𝓻 𝓷𝓸𝓽 𝓽𝓸 𝓴𝓷𝓸𝔀. 𝓛𝓲𝓯𝓮 𝓲𝓼 𝓱𝓪𝓹𝓹𝓲𝓮𝓻 𝓵𝓲𝓿𝓮𝓭 𝓲𝓷 𝓲𝓰𝓷𝓸𝓻𝓪𝓷𝓬𝓮. 𝓑𝓾𝓽 𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝓭𝓸𝓮𝓼𝓷'𝓽 𝓶𝓮𝓪𝓷 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓾𝓷𝓼𝓹𝓮𝓪𝓴𝓪𝓫𝓵𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓼 𝓪𝓻𝓮 𝓷𝓸𝓽 𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻𝓮."

TL;DR:
What happens: After a car crash kills her husband, Kris returns to the lake house in Pacington, Kansas where she spent the summers with her daughter Sadie. Kris has only good memories of the house, despite the fact that it's where he mother died of cancer when she was 10. Things aren't what they seem in Pacington however, as Kris and Sadie soon find out.
Plot: Spooky, a slow burn realization, not an action-driven plot
Writing: Overly descriptive and wordy
Characters: Repressed, unreliable, limited cast

Pros:
-Super creepy as the novel goes on
-Writing produced a tense, creepy atmosphere
-Really fascinating concept incorporating horror elements into the overall theme of grief and dealing with tragedy

Cons:
-The writing/pacing is slow. Like, INCREDIBLY slow
-I understand a slow burn, but most of the plot didn't even start until halfway through the novel

I received an advance readers copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.