Thank you very much to Inkshares and Goodreads for the advance reader copy of this horror novel. Unfortunately I did not enjoy it very much. I’ve always enjoyed a good ghost story but not this one. I continued reading to the end, mainly because I wanted to finish the ARC. If I had picked it up on my own, I’m sure I would not have finished. Nothing much happens for the first maybe 2/3 of the book, just a very slow buildup which was less creepy and scary than it was annoying. By the time I got to the last quarter where things really picked up, I mainly wanted it to be over. I don’t recommend this one.

Violet, by Scott Thomas

Short Take: A loving ode to housework.

(*Note: I received an advance copy of this book for review.*)

Good morning Nerdlings! I recently had a life-altering experience. I have apparently lived a whole lot of adult years without ever making oatmeal no-bake cookies, and now, I’m afraid, there’s no going back. These little chewy chocolate peanut butter flavor bombs may just be the perfect food. Breakfast? Sure! Dessert? Oh heck yeah. Quick energy snack when trying to power through a dull book? I’LL TAKE THREE. Unfortunately, my pants are not happy with my newfound love, but some books require copious amounts of sugar. Exhibit A: Violet.

The town of Pacington, Kansas used to be a tourist destination for one reason: the beautifully named Lost Lake, where summer visitors enjoy fishing, swimming, and boating in its crystal clear waters. However, Lost Lake didn’t always exist - it formed when a worker accidentally broke through an underground spring, and flooded part of the town, killing two workers. In recent years, however, the local economy hasn’t been great, the town is becoming more shabby than old-fashioned, and Pacington seems to be dying.

For Kris Barlow Lost Lake is much more than a pretty body of icy cold water with an odd roof sticking out of it. As a young child, it’s where her family spent idyllic summers until the final one, when her mother died an agonizingly slow death of cancer in the bedroom of their lakefront house. Kris’s father, grief-stricken, never returned to the house, choosing to let it rot rather than relive the memories of that last summer.

Now in her mid-40’s, after the sudden death of her husband, Kris decides to take her traumatized eight-year-old daughter Sadie to the lake house for a summer in hopes that the happy place of her own childhood will help Sadie heal from the loss of her own father.

Duckies, do I need to tell you that living near a drowned town rarely goes well for heartbroken children?

What follows is a fairly cliche ghost story, told in an excruciatingly slow pace. We get two scenes of actual story, then literally 100 pages of Kris and Sadie cleaning the house. Sanding boards, dusting counters, and for some REAL excitement (I guess) washing windows.

The rest of Violet isn’t much better. Kris’s brain is flooding (see what I did there?) with things she sort-of remembers but would rather forget, but it’s nothing that a big heaping helping of prescription drug abuse won’t fix. Sadie is content to chill with her imaginary (suuuuuure) friend while Kris is mostly passed out in between washing bedding and making grilled cheese.

Whenever Kris and Sadie venture into town and interact with the locals, there are the obligatory hints that Things Are Not Right with Pacington, but these are few and far between. The characters themselves are little more than a loose assemblage of tropes - the eccentric guy, the tragic couple, the elderly woman who knows the local history. But really, who needs a story when we can read about bracing a railing?

It all leads up to your generic ghost story climax with flashing lightning and a struggle in the water, but by that point, I just wanted it to be over. Other than the main character being a veterinarian as opposed to a writer (seriously, why are protagonists in ghost stories always writers?) there was not one single aspect of this story that made it different from a few dozen others.


The Nerd’s Rating: TWO HAPPY NEURONS (and a grilled cheese, hold the Xanax. I will take the wine, however. And maybe one more oatmeal no-bake.)

For those who enjoy small town horror, they will enjoy the way this novel starts off. For me, it was closer to small town murder mystery, and had elements of "Silence of the Lambs," and the show "True Detective." It did not have as many supernatural elements as I would have hoped, as I tend more toward the fantastical. This reminded me of the more crime/pulp/noir works that Tom Piccirilli was doing toward the end of his career, as well as the crime material Laird Barron has been publishing of late. Fans of the same ethos of Denis Lehane's "Mystic River" will enjoy this novel more.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book was pretty creepy...Krissy says goodbye to her mother when she is 10 years old. Fast forward three decades and she experiences another loss - her husband in a car accident.

She decides to try to leave her old life behind for a while and packs up her 8 year old daughter and returns back to the summer home that she grew up vacationing at during the summer....but it's also the place where her mother passed.

Both Krissy and her daughter experience things within the old cabin - and there's been mysterious deaths and disappearances of little girls in the small town. Are they related?

This book was a quick read and pretty disturbing at times. Recommend to those who love both!

The full five star review is up on my goodreads account! Make sure to click the link below and thank you so much to net galley and inkshares for giving me this arc in exchange for a review!

“She did not know that, in this place of beauty, something dark and malicious was mutating beneath her mother’s sun-kissed skin. She did not know that her parents had been aware of it since she was three, or that it was the reason her father had bought the summerhouse on the shore of Lost Lake...She did not know of the unspeakable things that came after she left—the shadow that fell over Pacington, the pain and fear that twisted through the town like a barbed, poisonous vine. Perhaps it was for the best. Sometimes it is easier to not know. Life is happier lived in ignorance.”*

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

After the death of her husband, veterinarian Kris desperately seeks an escape from the cloying sympathy of her family and friends. She hopes a change in scenery, in the form of her family’s lake house, will help her young daughter Sadie deal with her grief. But, Kris has forgotten the dark side of the vacation home, the place where her mother spent her final days as cancer destroyed her body. The town itself provides no safe haven. Not only is it dying a slow death of its own, it’s in mourning for several dead young girls-all of whom happen to be around Sadie’s age.

Thomas is a master at evoking mood through visceral and sensory description. His lyrical writing style perfectly plays on the emotional chords of the story and the creepy atmosphere of Lost Lake. The characters are well-drawn. Kris in particular stands out in the way she battles her emotions related to the loss of her husband and parents, and her maternal role of protecting and comforting Sadie. Her need to self-medicate to dull her pain and anger is nicely rendered. Sadie’s attachment to Bounce, her perfectly imperfect carnival prize, plucks at the heartstrings. The novel unfolds slowly, a little too slowly for me at times, but nevertheless provides a rich and deep immersion into the story world and the inner lives of Kris and Sadie.

Thanks to NetGalley and Inkshares, Inc. For providing an Advance Reader Copy.

*Please note that my review is based on uncorrected text.

his book is amazing. It’s about a mother (Kris) and daughter (Sadie) who spend their summer at Kris’s family lake house after the death of her husband. It’s a story of grief. I absolutely loved this and was totally engrossed I couldn’t put it down. The writing is beautiful. Let me tell you, the pages about cleaning the place had me wanting to stop and clean my house, the mixtape had me singing songs and wanting to dance. I felt such a mix of emotions in each chapter from happy to sad to scared to surprised. I will also probably have the song Blackbird in my head for days. Absolutely a 5 star book I cannot wait to read Kill Creek.

Violet comes out September 24th I highly recommend reading it.

I began this book with high expectations, however, found I could not finish it as the writing was far too detailed - it was a slog to go through some chapters. I enjoyed the premise of the story but was ultimately defeated by the pacing and level of detail. I'll try the next book by Scott Thomas but this wasn't for me!

Thank you so much to NetGalley for this creepy and engrossing read! The spooky season is drawing near, and although I can't feel the chill in the air just yet, this novel brought a chill to my bones that only October can bring. I've been needing a truly scary book to read, and I found my match! Imaginary friends, a distant and sleepy town, and a sadness that permeates every written word draws you closer and closer to these characters and the mystery that longs to drag them down into the depths of River's End.

We are introduced to Kris, who is no stranger to tragedy. Her mother was taken from her by cancer at a young age, and now that she is grown, she has found herself in that weightless void of despair once again after the gruesome death of her husband. She wants to take her daughter away and hopes that some time in her childhood summer home will alleviate her grief. She has so many happy memories there, despite the fact that her mother died within its walls. Once they get to the house, however, it has drastically changed since the last time she saw it. It has been left to rot, and the house smells of decay and disuse.

Kris does not let this deter her, and in a moment of genius decides that cleaning up the house with Sadie will clean their minds as well. From that night forward, Sadie shows signs of improvements. She's talking more, eating, and even singing. Kris is elated until her own grief starts to swallow her sanity. She starts to remember snapshots of herself as a child, Krissy was what she was called then, and she slowly sees that maybe she wasn't happy at all, and that maybe there is a darkness to this house that is begging for her attention through Sadie.

Kris falls down a rabbit hole of unsolved murders of young girls, and struggles to piece this information together with the memories she is uncovering. Sadie's condition deteriorates before her eyes, and when she starts to question things that Kris never told her, the false illusion of hope falls away almost instantly. There may have been someone that she left behind in her childhood that has been trying to replace her all this time, just as Kris replaced them with a normal life. I don't want to spoil anything, but rest assured, you will feel phantom fingers on your cheek and a disembodied breath on your neck for an immeasurable amount of time after reading this tale. I've even been left with an uneasiness that will follow every time I hear Blackbird by the Beatles. Scott has created a truly terrifying tale, and I'm ready for Halloween.

This review is based upon an advanced proof copy provided by the publishers and Netgalley and is not influenced by this in any way.
I have to say that I was extremely pleased to get a proof of this as I've had Kill Creek on my to read list for ages and not got round to purchasing/ borrowing a copy. Pleased to say that overall Violet is well worth it. Thomas spends a large part of the book setting the scene, introducing characters and outlining the setting. My main crirticism of this draft is that it does seem to take ages for anything to happen and you need to have a bit of patience to get through the seemingly endless scenes of Kris and Sadie cleaning the House where most of the action is set.
Once through this section, the tension and then the action begins to ramp up really well so by the time we get to find out exactly what is going on, the reader is well and truly hooked. Thomas does have fun subverting certain character cliches along the way ( especially when it comes to the bookstore owner and Ben the policeman) but the focus is definitely on lead character Kris and her daughter Sadie.
One word of advice, the blurb does not say why the book is called Violet, or who/what Violet is. I'm not going to say either- it works much better finding out as you and Kris go.
A very strong horror novel all-round and worth buying when its released.

This book was unsettling, but in a good way - if that makes sense. I know some others have commented on the amount of descriptive language and I will agree that there was a fair amount of that, but for me that enhanced my experience and enjoyment of the story.

The first half of the book (roughly) hints at the spookiness of the story to come, but it truly starts to pick up after that. Though for some that could make it feel a little dry, I found that it made the creepiness factor greater, because one becomes familiar with the setting, and with the story first.

Also, the last paragraph of the book felt very satisfying.

Thank you to NetGalley and Inkshares for the chance to read this book!

I LOVED Thomas' first book. Loved it. Gobbled it up in a day. But this one was so disappointing. It seemed it took forever to get somewhere and I found myself unable to like the characters. I'm so bummed I didn't like this more. I don't think this will stop me from reading about of his books, but I guess I expected way too much from his follow-up to Kill Creek.

I really, REALLY enjoyed this book. It was just perfect for what I was hoping to read. There were thrills, spooks, and over all, a loving mother and her daughter.

Violet is about Kris returning with her daughter Sadie to the lake house of some of her happiest summers after a tragedy. There's something besides the rotting house waiting for Kris's return, and that's where the fun begins.

First, I will agree with some other reviews of this book that it is... drawn out. There's a lot of detail that goes into the writing for this novel that, while I personally didn't mind, others disliked. I liked feeling like I was there at the lake house and experiencing what the main characters were.

I really enjoyed all of the secondary characters that we met in detail, like Hitch, Ben and Doctor Baker. Of course, the stars Kris and Sadie were very awesome.

I think the only thing that I would almost consider a "negative point" was that it did take about 50 or 60 percent of the book to actually get scary. But! In the meantime, there was a lot of character build up, and some small things to get your skin crawling in preparation.

This is certainly a book that I'm excited to add to my library's collection.

This novel is an absolute masterpiece. Dark and brooding, legitimately terrifying, yet poignant and emotional at the same time.

I adored Scott Thomas' last book, Kill Creek, so when I saw Violet was available for review, I jumped at the chance. Thank you so much to Netgalley and Inkshares for the opportunity to read this early. This was easily a 5 star read for me.

When Kris Barlow's husband is killed in a horrific car accident, she takes her 8 year old daughter Sadie back to the idyllic summer home of her childhood. Kris remembers this place warmly, even though it was here that her own mother died of cancer when Kris was 10 years old. She hopes the lake house can be a place of healing for Sadie, but as soon as they arrive, she realizes something is off. Someone has been waiting for Kris to return, and that someone is not very happy it's taken so long. . .

Although this novel is technically horror, it is also so much more than that. At the heart, Violet is about a family crippled by loss, and the lengths that one of them will go to deal with that loss. It is a beautifully written story, rife with rich descriptions that fully immerse you in the paragraphs. At the same time it is a terrifying tale, which makes for some tough nighttime reading. Especially on a Kindle in a dark room. Yikes.
I jumped in terror, I cried several times. I emerged at the end of this story emotionally drained. An amazing reading experience. I can't wait for this to come out so I can buy the hard copy to add to my collection.

Wow, just wow. This is the first horror book that I have read in a while that left me feeling uneasy. Just to give you and example, I was home alone and reading this book. My phone rang and I swear my soul left my body.

I wasn’t even reading a section that was particularly creepy, its just that Scott Thomas created this world where everything seemed normal yet left you feeling uneasy. The story follows Krissy and her daughter as she tries helping her cope with the recent death of her father. She decides to take her daughter to the summer house that her and her family would go to when she was a child in order to try and “save” her daughter.

Understandably Sadie, her young daughter, was quiet and withdrawn because of losing her father but instead of letting her mourn she is trying to force her to get better. Going to the summer home was supposed to be a good idea but when they arrived the home was falling apart and almost rotting away. This did not deter Krissy and she decided to try and restore the home as much as she could so that she can make it a happy place for her daughter. But stepping foot into this house set forth a chain of events that would not only make her face her past, it would also leave Krissy fighting for her daughters survival.

Overall this book was fantastic! The characters were written extremely well, they almost came off the page. Thomas brought us from the present to the past and back again flawlessly. Through out the story he tossed out little breadcrumbs for the reader to follow in order to find out the darker truth behind this small town and it just worked! With each clue that he gave I found myself wanting more. This book was so hard to put down and really did an amazing job pulling you in an not letting go. I will absolutely have to read Thomas’ other books! This book comes out September 24th but is already out to pre-order. I am so thankful that Netgalley gave me an ARC copy of this book! Not to repeat myself but I think this book was pretty fantastic!

I was very much looking forward to reading Violet by Scott Thomas as I am a huge fan of horror and literary horror, and while it is a decent horror novel, it falls a bit short.

Violet is the story of Kris Barlow - recently widowed and depressed, with an equally sad daughter, Kris whisks them off to her childhood lake house for a summer healing. Of course, this doesn't work out as planned - insert missing girls, rotting house, creepy neighbours, imaginary play friends and the mysteries of the lake itself. While Kris battles her own demons, her concern for her daughter's behavior grows, and the summer slowly spirals out of control.

Slow is the key word here, and while I love a good slow burn, and I also love succinct writing, in which I want to relish in every sentence written. This is where Thomas fails - it is just too wordy, and the excessive descriptions distract from the overall spookiness/ horror of the novel. I would have adored this novel if it had been 80-100 pages shorter - it just did not need the over-descriptions. I also felt that Thomas muddled in a few too many tropes - spooky house, creepy child and ancient mystery at the bottom of the lake. It would have been a much tighter and scarier novel if it had just focused on the house or the character of Violet. Overall, not bad but not the greatness I had hoped for.

Thank you to Netgalley and Inkshares for an ARC in exchange for review.

This was overall really great. This is definitely a horror novel, but I think those who don't appreciate or like horror could also enjoy this because it's so much more than that.

Kris has had a fair share of emotional trauma throughout her life, starting with her beloved mother dying at a young age. Three decades later, and her husband has passed away. She decides to uproot to herself and her 8 year old daughter Sadie to their family lake house that has been abandoned since her mother died. The house is clearly in a terrible state from neglect, and you already know something bad is happening in this house, in the small town of Pacington that has suffered it's own share of tragedies.

While Kris is consumed with grief but trying to keep strong for the sake of her daughter, Sadie is unsettlingly joyous. Past memories from Kris' summers at the lake come back to haunt her, and more specifically, Sadie. As town secrets come to light, and she realizes their own mental healthy is now in a state of neglect, Kris has to fight back against VIOLET.

The writing was exceptional; it could have been a little bit shorter as I felt the first half dragged on, but I think the author does a really good job overall of setting the stage to tell this story!

I enjoyed the creepy lake setting and the slow unraveling creepiness but I must agree with a few others that it gets a bit too descriptive in parts. This story unsettled me a little bit but I feel like it was too drawn out to scare me. I give 3.5 stars

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC

I was super excited about this book. Unfortunately it was a little to much of a slow burner for me. A horror/thriller that relied heavily on building a tense atmosphere but as I mentioned earlier unfortunately to slow for my tastes. Well described location and interesting characters. If you like your horrors atmospheric with a slow build. Many thanks to Net Galley for the advanced copy.

Spoiler Alert!

I enjoyed this book and found it well written. The characters rang true.

I began to think the book was part psychological novel, part thriller and part mystery when I got to page 300 and still was not clear about what or who Violet was or whether the novel was striving to be fiction or thriller. It did become clear after Kris could see and hear Violet when Kris stopped her drug use. I liked the addition of rock music and how it was a tool to instill the reader with understanding the character through her memories. This was very effective. There were a couple of awkward sentences that bothered me, however the story and it’s thrust forward kept me entranced.

I was not clear as to what or who Violet was but it seemed unlikely Kris created Violet out of need, making Violet real and giving her life. It seemed more likely Violet was a lost soul from the buried town beneath the lake. As for her only being a “little girl,”perhaps Violet was a little girl, who not only lost her way spiritually, but who so fed on her own anger, that she became a murderer. It did make me think of all the old adages about nature or nurture, which are still valid arguments today regarding deviant behavior. The fact that I considered these threads is proof of the book’s merits.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and heartily recommend it!