‘The Darkest Lullaby’ is the latest book by Jonathan Janz.

The old house waited. For years there had been rumors that the owner, Lilith Martin, had been part of an unholy cult. People spoke of blasphemous rituals, black rites filled with blood, sex…and sacrifices. Then Lilith died and the house sat empty. Until now. Lilith s nephew, Chris, and his wife, Ellie, are moving in. Ellie isn t happy about living in such a dark, foreboding place, but she wants to get pregnant and this house has a lot more room to raise a baby than their apartment. Unfortunately, she and Chris will soon learn that Lilith has other plans.

It’s been a while since I’ve read a really good horror that really terrifies me and it’s fair to say that ‘The Darkest Lullaby’ hit the spot. It’s unsettling narrative and creepy location brought me right back to my teenage years reading the chilling ‘Goosebumps’ series when I couldn’t have the book in the same room as me when I went to bed in case the characters somehow managed to come to life. Yes, it’s really that creepy.

The book is seen from the perspective of couple Chris and Ellie who move to Chris’ old homestead hoping to start a family and recover from old debts, but it’s not that easy.

The old house is creepy and riddled with reminders of Chris’s aunt who never liked Ellie and there’s a presence that they’re not alone in the building. Meanwhile, there’s the woman and man that appears to the couple, freaking them out as well as the rumours of there once being a cult on the land.

The story is reminiscent of ‘The Shining’ and ‘The Wicker Man’, with the cult rumours and the character development as the story progresses. Cleverly written and unsettling throughout, ‘The Darkest Lullaby’ is a wonderfully old fashioned horror story with fills with wit and gore and terrifies the reader to the core.

You can buy ‘The Darkest Lullaby’ from Amazon.

I really do love Jonathan’s books and have read quite a few. Dust Devils, The Dark Game, House of Skin, so I was thrilled to be able to read this book.

This book follows Chris and his wife Ellie, who inherit his aunt’s house. Most people would be thrilled but the house isn’t what they expect and Ellie is reluctant to live in such a dark place. The house also comes with a wealth of history, there are stories upon stories about what his aunt got up to.

As with all his book’s Jonathan Janz manages to convey a sinister atmosphere, especially when talking about the house and the grounds. The forest whilst a thing of beauty is also cast as a menacing character and it is a compliment to his writing that he can switch the most mundane items in to deadly ones.

A great atmospheric book that doesn’t disappoint, well written and intense.

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I think there must come a point in every horror book or film where the viewer/reader asks “why don’t they just leave this place?” In The Darkest Lullaby I think I reached this point around the time my Kindle told me I had read 40% of the story.

Clearly Jonathan Janz also appreciated his characters should have been getting the Hell out of Dodge as he worked in a couple of nice twists to ensure Chris and Ellie (our couple in peril) have to remain in their creepy house in the woods. No escape for Ellie from her husband’s odd and threatening behaviour. No escape for Chris from the strange woman he is compelled to follow into the woods. No escape from the strange things in the old run down house. Uh oh.

I have read a few of Jonathan Janz’s books and he is great at building up the tension, has no qualms about bumping off characters in grizzly and disturbing ways and you cannot be sure if the good guys will survive (or if they even are the good guys). For fans of a good-old horror tale you can’t go far wrong with Janz’s books.

In The Darkest Lullaby we have an entity who wants to use her nephew to find a way to return from the grave…if she even made it to her grave! Chris and Ellie move into Chris’s aunt’s old home in the hope of finding peace and a nice place to start a family. However soon after they arrive Chris starts to behave oddly and Ellie becomes increasingly alarmed by strange goings on in the house.

As the story unfolds we learn that Lillith, Chris’s aunt, had an unhealthy obsession with her nephew and a really strong dislike of Ellie. That really can’t be a good combination!

The Darkest Lullaby is one for the horror fans. Bloody, unsettling and with strong adult themes. A late night page turner which kept me reading…mainly so I could find out which characters survived!

At the beginning of this book I started to wonder if I’d already read it! The similarities between The Darkest Lullaby and Janz earlier work House Of Skin are undeniable.

We’re presented with an unhappy couple, (one of whom is a writer of course) arriving at an old house inherited from a dead relative with a dark past, surrounded by woods in a small American town.
Adding to this the rumoured history of cult orgies, the evil ghostly entity of the afore mentioned dead relative and the town-wide superstitions- I struggled to find anything new in The Darkest Lullaby.

Despite the rehashed plot beginnings I was pleased to find the story took a different turn and actually of the two titles I did prefer this one.

There were a few random unexplained parts, that seemed a little pointless. For example- why was there a tiny hole in the wall filled with old razor blades? Why bother with the realtor sub plot?

I have to say I’ve grown tired of the shock-value debauchery, incest and animal cruelty Janz uses in his particular form of horror so unfortunately The Darkest Lullaby didn’t really leave its mark.

I did enjoy the claustrophobic atmosphere of the creeping forest and quite liked Ellie’s character but I think this ends my foray into Janz’ work.
Despite the constant hype I see over this author I think he’s simply not for me. I’ve thrown myself into 5 of his novels hoping to discover that special something that’s hooked so many readers but I guess I’m just not one of them.

The Darkest Lullaby follows Chris and Ellie who are down on there luck and have decided to live in Chris’s aunt’s old house not being able to sell it they hope to raise a family there but being a horror novel you know things aren’t going to go well. For one the aunt was rumoured to be in a cult and believed she could somehow return as a vampire.

I won’t say to much about this as I wouldn’t want to give anything away, but the author does a brilliant job with the setting and the forest surrounding the house almost becomes like a character as well changing along with Chris, also the isolated atmosphere definitely comes through in the writing style. It’s easy to see that the author is a fan of Stephen king as this has slight nods to the shining with Chris’s decent into evil/madness, and even has a reference to Jack’s writing in the shining. A short horror novel that definitely leaves you disturbed.

I’ve come to the conclusion that you are always in for a treat with a Jonathan Janz book, I invariably look forward to getting stuck into one of his Novels, The Darkest Lullaby was no exception to the rule.

The setting is perfect for a Demonic Cult tale, Chris and Ellie have inherited his late Aunt Lilith’s estate, the house is old and is surrounded by forestland. As always Janz’s imagery was excellent, from the run-down house, the stream, bridge and clearings to the creepy woods that envelope Chris and Ellie. I felt like I was there and know what the house and land look like in my mind even after finishing the book.

Just to point out there was a brilliant paragraph at the end of one of the ‘happier’ earlier chapters where you think yep, these two are cute and it might all be ok, then JJ swoops in and dashes all of that in an instant. I love that little Kingism Mr Janz!

‘’She’d look back on that night and remember the feel of her Husband’s arms around her, the sound of his voice in the gloom. Their lovemaking. She would remember these things and hold them close to her like talismans against the onslaught of darkness. But they would prove useless. In the end, everything did’’

I liked the way that although this was a ‘haunted house’ type story you really felt that the house and woods themselves were evil, not just land that was used by a demonic cult and still haunted by an evil presence. Looking at some of my notes I wrote ‘the Shining and Amityville Horror feels’ meaning the property itself was slowly sending the protagonist (Chris) into a descent of madness/evil and slowly turning him into a stranger. A few pages later Janz made a lovely nod to the shining;

‘’Ellie’s own husband who was turning into Jack Nicholson in The Shining for chrissakes. It wouldn’t surprise her if she picked up a page from his manuscript and read ‘All work and no play makes Chris a dull boy’’

Chris and Ellie were both well rounded characters, there was a fair amount of back story for depth of character. If only they would have spoken to each other! Neither one trusted the other, I wanted to shake some sense into both of them on several occasions! Saying that they were both well written, especially Ellie, the sheer helplessness and fear portrayed by her character was palpable.

Lilith, the antagonist was a creepy figure indeed, she filled me with a real sense of dread, that scene when Ellie is sorting through her belongings and video tapes *Shudder*

I would have loved some more back story on Lilith and the house, she was a huge part of the story but I felt I didn’t really know much about her.

The darkest Lullaby was full of graphic unsettling scenes which will creep under your skin and stay with you. Did I mention the sex? There’s lots of it, but it’s a story of malevolent spirits, sacrifice, vampirism and cults after all, there is going to be sex right?! Approach with caution if you blush easily.

As I said before, you are onto a winner with a Jonathan Janz book if you are a fan of Horror, I suggest you pick a copy up!

Hi and welcome to my stop on the blog tour for The Darkest Lullaby! Many thanks to Anne Cater for the invitation and to Flame Tree Press for the eARC through NetGalley. And kudos to both for seducing me into accepting the invite when I had sworn I would most certainly not take on any more tours this month 😉 What can I say, I’m a sucker for Flame Tree Press, the publisher that’s been scratching all my horror itches since 2018, the one that reminded me of how much fun horror can be when it’s done right, and how much I actually love speculative fiction in all its shapes and sizes.

Alrightie, enough waffling, we’re here to talk about one particular Flame Tree baby today: The Darkest Lullaby by Jonathan Janz, in case you hadn’t noticed. Speaking of babies, this one is not a cutesy munchkin you want to fawn over and cuddle until it’s blue in the face, it’s more Rosemary’s baby that wants to strangle you until you’re blue in the face…

Chris grew up in Indiana with his aunt Lilith. He has fond memories of her. She might have been a bit peculiar at times, but still, she was a kindly lady and she treated him well. Lilith has passed away and left everything to her nephew and Chris has decided to leave sunny Malibu behind and return to Indiana. His wife Ellie is not so sure, and she’s even less sure once she sees the somewhat dilapidated mansion they’re supposed to live in from now on. In fact, she’s getting more sure by the minute that she wants to get the hell away from there and ASAP too. Sure there’s a lot of privacy, no neighbours for miles and miles, and a lot of peace and quiet and space, the ideal location to finally get pregnant and raise their child, but the place just makes her antsy and paranoid. Or is she? Is she seeing things that aren’t there, are the remoteness and spookiness and general gloom of the place getting to her, or is there something there, a certain malevolence?

Before long, things are escalating and Ellie finds proof that dear aunt Lilith was more than a little creepy (like way way WAY more). Chris however, is not open to any criticism. Actually, Chris is not open to anything Ellie says or does. He seems to have undergone a personality transplant and this new Chris? Well Ellie isn’t sure she even likes him anymore, and I, as the reader who knew what Chris had been up to, I actively loathed him. I had to keep reminding myself it wasn’t his fault, he had fallen under the spell of the naked young woman in the woods (anyone want to hazard a guess who she turns out to be???). Still, I kept shaking my e-reader, hoping to shake some sense into him.

Did I see you cock an eyebrow at the nakedness of the woman in the woods? Yes, well, there is quite a lot of nudity, and the malevolence in The Darkest Lullaby is fed by lust and sex, more than fear, violence and blood (although there’s lots of that too). This is the third Janz I’ve read so far, after The Siren and the Spectre and House of Skin. While lust and nudity and sex were used there too, I feel that Janz has gone an extra mile or two with The Darkest Lullaby! The fact that he explores demonism and vampirism made it okay for me that The Darkest Lullaby ventures a tiny bit towards eroticism, since demons and especially vampires have always been portrayed as lustful creatures in horror and that made the more erotic scenes make sense, and they also aptly show the demise of Chris’s values, and with them, his sanity.

The Darkest Lullaby comes together cleverly and satisfyingly. An enjoyable read, not for the faint of heart on account of some truly excellent horror scenes, and best not read in the dark, even if you do consider yourself a very tough cookie! Recommended to horror fans who don’t mind a bit of nudity and sexual shenanigans.

Having read a couple of Jonathan Janz books, I knew I was in for a proper scare. The book did not disappoint with cults, demonic realms, and vampirism and immortality.

Chris had inherited a remote house and land around it from Aunt Lillith. Wide Ellie was nor keen on moving. (The house was painted in black with black walls. I wouldn't want to move too.) Ellie became pregnant and soon got to know what really had happened to Lillith in the clearing near the house.

A good roller coaster scary ride, this book had all the expected bells and whistles that I would expect from a Janz book. His introduction to evil was insidious, the horror slowly enveloping the story with its darkness. I could literally feel the skies growing darker, the blood creeping into the crevices as the story unfurled.

The pace was swift, malevolence of the spirits mounting higher with each part of the story. My niggles too moved in; the story didn't appear cohesive, characters transformed to evil abruptly. Too many scary scenes bogged the flow down.

Overall, a fun story during my evening tea. A twilight read.