I can’t believe I’m going to admit to this but this is the first book I’ve read by this author. I can tell you without a doubt, it will not be the last. It is so clever and so well written, definitely not what I was expecting in the most surprising of ways.

Alternating between two timelines and two narrators, The Children on the Hill is told by Violet (Vi) in the late 1970’s and Lizzy in present time. Vi lives with her brother and her Gran, a psychiatrist known for her alternative ‘holistic’ methods at the Hillside Inn. Lizzy hunts monsters and is the host of Monsters Among Us, a well-known podcast.

While this isn’t horror in the strictest sense, there is a strong and prevalent feeling of something wrong, especially in Vi’s narrative – a sense of dread that hangs over like a cloud ready to burst – I just knew things weren’t on the up and up but I didn’t know what! When Gran brings another girl, Iris, to Hillside, things get even weirder for the kids. I really don’t like to use this overused term, ‘page-turner’ but for me, it really was.

I think I’ve said enough and you can gather the rest from the synopsis. I’m giving The Children on the Hill all the stars for it’s absolutely thrilling psychological twisty take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein!

My thanks to Gallery/Scout Press for this gifted DRC.

Lizzy Shelley is a podcaster. Her podcast, Monsters Among Us, takes her across the country to hunt the monsters who haunt our dreams. The bigfoot sightings, the muddy tracks from an unknown creature, the strange fur, the stories of those who have seen something they can’t unsee. Lizzy talks to those people and records their stories. She walks where they walked. She goes out into the forest at night with her recording equipment, trying to hear what they heard, trying to see what they saw.

Her podcast picked up even more fans when she appeared on a television show, one of several monster hunters, allowing more attention to come to the cause. That’s good because monsters are real. She saw one as a child. She looked it right in the eye and survived. But she doesn’t talk about her own story. She only tells the stories of others.

As kids, siblings Vi and Eric lived with their grandmother. Gran was the director of the small mental hospital that was across the street from their house in Vermont. She believed in holistic healing, so it was a gentle place for broken souls. Vi and Eric were home schooled and didn’t know the local kids very well. They kept to themselves, in that house on the hill. They read books and wrote reports for Gran. Eric collected damaged animals, healing them and releasing them or caging and caring for those too weak to go back into the wild.

Vi and Eric had a secret. They had a club, the Monster Club. They collected stories about monsters, about the different types and how to protect yourself against them. Vi did the writing and Eric drew photos. Were wolves, vampires, chimera, even the invisible man were all included. Vi was a big fan of horror movies and writers like Mary Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe.

And then one day, Gran brought home a new child. Her name was Iris, and she was small but close in age to Vi. Vi had always wanted a sister and took Iris under her wing. She taught her the rules and helped her get settled. She introduced Iris to the Monster Club. And Vi promised her that she would help Iris find out where she came from. She knew that Gran was keeping secrets from them, and she was determined to find out what they were.

That decision ended up destroying Gran, the hospital, and their family.

Now grown, Lizzy (she changed her name after what happened) is chasing monsters across the country. Everywhere except for Vermont, anyway. But then she finds out about a recent monster sighting. Rattling Jane, they call her. She comes up from the lake, covered in fish bones, and offers a wish to one lucky person. This time, it was to a teenage girl who went missing shortly afterward. Lizzy finds herself retuning to Vermont for the first time since she left. But she’s looking for a monster, and Lizzy is certain that the monster is in Vermont.

That monster is her sister. And Lizzy won’t let her get away this time.

Master storyteller Jennifer McMahon is back with The Children on the Hill. It’s yet another chilling thrill ride that will haunt your dreams. There are layers of secrets and twists that will turn everything you thought you knew on its head. Just when you think you’ve got it figure out, that you know what’s going to happen next, she pulls the rug out from under you and the whole story turns all over again.

I absolutely loved this book. I love the relationship that these kids develop with each other, and the podcasting storyline is just so much fun. And then there is that ending, which changed everything—almost everything—in the blink of an eye. The writing is fresh and beautiful, the story is complex and fascinating, and the characters are surprising and deep. What more could you ask for in a thriller with supernatural overtones, to help teach us about the real monsters that this world holds?

Egalleys for The Children on the Hill were provided by Gallery Books (Scout Press) through NetGalley, with many thanks.

#FirstLine ~ Her smell sends me tumbling back through time to before.

I loved this book. I love ALL the books by McMahon. She is able to create a genre seemingly all of her own. This is not just one kind of book and that is what is so great about it. There are parts that make you think, others that make you jump and even others where you get the chills. It is such a fun book to read because you never now that is going to happen. I will be thinking of this book for a long time!!!

“Monsters are real and living among us.”

Monsters: 'They can pass as human. They hide in plain sight.'

This is a really intriguing novel--part mystery/part horror story. Lizzie Shelley, now 53, hunts monsters for a living. She has a blog and a popular podcast, and has been a member of a team on a tv series called 'Monsters Among Us.' She even did a TED talk where she expressed 'the idea that monsters mirror the anxieties of society.'

Lizzie has her own personal monsters haunting her from her past and part of the story goes back in time to when she lived at the Hillside Inn in Fayeville, Vermont, with her sister, brother and their grandmother, Dr Hildreth, the psychiatrist who ran the facility. Also included are snippets from the Book of Monsters the kids wrote and illustrated and bits from an article written about the facility by a journalist. All these threads tie together well to create a page-turning story. Who is the real monster here? You'll have to read to find out!

I received an arc of this new novel from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks for the opportunity. This author never disappoints. I enjoyed the many clever references to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Jennifer McMahon’s The Children on the Hill will keep readers up late into the night. McMahon opens with an epigraph taken from the monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: “I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on. Even now my blood boils at the recollection of this injustice,” immediately followed by a chapter titled “The Monster” and set August 15, 2019. The monster pursues a girl—apparently one of several such girls substituted for the sister the monster could not catch forty years earlier.

Set on May 8, 1978, the next chapter introduces 13-year-old Violet Hildreth as she delivers a liverwurst sandwich to her working psychiatrist grandmother, the director of Hillside Inn, an elite mental health facility in Fayesville, Vermont. Dr. Helen Hildreth occasionally brings home “strays” she believes will benefit from living a more normal life at home with her and her grandchildren, Vi and Eric, whom she is raising following their parents’ deaths.

Fascinated by these strays, Vi and Eric have begun keeping notes about the patients, whether from observation or phone conversations they overhear at home as their grandmother talks with the other Hillside psychiatrist. A voracious reader of books about monsters, such as Frankenstein and Dracula, Vi has begun to write her own book, The Book of Monsters, illustrated by brother Eric.
Following the arrival in the Hildreth home of one of Gran’s “strays” and Vi’s determination to discover the patient’s backstory, the trouble begins.

Chapters alternate between Vi, Lizzy, and the Monster, with the majority devoted to Vi and Lizzy. Readers quickly discover that Lizzy is the adult Vi, now a well-known 53-year-old professional monster hunter with her own blog, podcasts, articles, lectures, and television appearances. Although the reason is not immediately revealed, both Vi and Eric have changed their identities, Vi adopting her grandmother’s middle name as her first name, and the surname of Mary Shelley, Frankenstein’s author as her last. As the Monster pursues girls, Lizzy pursues the Monster.

Scattered here and there among the chapters centered on childhood Vi, adult Lizzy, and the Monster are brief excerpts from the childhood Book of Monsters and a 1980 book by Julia Tetreault, The Helping Hand of God: The True Story of Hillside Inn, Dark Passages Press. All changes are well-marked and effective, causing no difficulty for readers in following the story.

Thanks to NetGalley and Scout Press for an advance reader copy. Fans of Jennifer McMahon, Mary Shelley, and good psychological thrillers should add this book to the top of your TBR pile.

What an amazing book! Just when you think you know what’s going on, a twist comes and turns everything upside down. My favorite part was the ending. It was completely unexpected but for the book perfectly. I also loved the cover. It was what captured my attention and I’m so glad I picked up this book!

I loved this read! It had me pulled and turning the pages almost faster than I could read! I loved the bouncing between past and present. While it's creepy and having you peek over your covers while reading, you can't help but have it tug at your heart strings. This will have you questioning all things monster and what can be lurking in the shadows, or even with the people you thought you knew best!

I am a big fan of Jennifer McMahon, but I am sad to say "The Children on the Hill" isn't my favorite. I figured out what was happening about one-third of the way through, and the ending felt rushed and was very unsatisfying. There were too many loose ends, and after so much buildup, the ending felt like a shrug. Like "Oh, okay then. Carry on." Very disappointing for a story with so much potential.

"Some monsters are born that way.
Some are made."


"I have weeds woven into my hair. I am covered in a dress of bones, sticks, cattail stalks, old fishing line and bobbers. I am my own wind chime, rattling as I run. I smell like the lake, like rot and ruin and damp forgotten things."

". . . I'm a real monster now."

Since the tragic car accident that killed their parents, Vi and her brother, Eric, have lived with their grandmother at Hillside Inn, one of the best private psychiatric institutions in New England.


". . . the Inn was not like any other hospital anywhere."

Though the center does not accept children as patients, one day a girl around Vi's age arrives to live with the siblings. Their grandmother encourages them to accept Iris, but not to encourage her to remember her past. Naturally, that's exactly what the kids decide to do . . . with very unpleasant consequences.

We also meet Lizzy, minor television celebrity, and host of a popular monster hunting podcast. She's been all over the country investigating the strange and unusual, but has scrupulously avoided her home state of Vermont.

"The most terrifying unfaceable monster of all dwelled in those hills and mountains; the dark, shadowy form of my own past."

But she's in Vermont now to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a teenage girl whom the locals insist was taken by a rumored local specter known as "Rattling Jane." Lizzy thinks she may know the monster, however; she's sure it's her sister. And, her terrifying past is about to catch up with her.

This is another chilling winner by McMahon. Her tale unfolds slowly, with well-timed twists and surprises to keep you turning the pages. A fine spooky story for any time of the year.

A M A Z I N G!!
This book was so addicting, it kept me saying "one more chapter" late into the night. I can't wait to read more by this author.

Thank you NetGalley and Gallery Books for this e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

"Here's why the world needs monsters: Because they are us and we are them. Don't we all have a little monster hiding inside us? A little darkness we don't want people to see."

What a creepy book! This was unputdownable! The monster theme was on point along with the creepy psychiatric facility setting. This book alternates from past to present, which had me hooked! Lots of twists with a shocking ending! Loved McMahon's writing and thought it was interesting how she used the classic novel, Frankenstein, for inspiration.

This book is a must read for all thriller lovers!

In 1978, Dr. Helen Hildreth is far past retirement age but still brilliant and deeply committed to her work as a psychiatrist at a small facility in the country in Vermont. She lives next to the facility with her two grandchildren, whom she homeschools and dotes on. Occasionally, Dr. Hildreth will have a patient stay with them for a short time. But when she brings Iris, a mute and skittish girl, to live there, she hopes it will be permanent, a new sister for Violet and Eric. She instructs them to make her feel at home and do all they can to help her be comfortable and come out of her shell. The two do so, including inducting her into their Monster Club, where they discuss different types of monsters that exist, how to recognize them, and how to defeat them. Eventually, Iris begins to talk and open up to the two children.

In 2019, Lizzy Shelley is the host of a popular podcast, Monsters Among Us, and she travels around the country to collect and share stories of monster sightings. When she hears about a missing teen girl, taken from Vermont, she knows she has to go there and investigate. She knows exactly who has taken her, as well as other teen girls who have disappeared from various places. And she knows it’s time to put a stop to the monster responsible: her own sister.

The Children on the Hill is inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I’ve read maybe four of Jennifer McMahon’s novels, and this one is the best yet. I could not put it down; I read it in one sitting. It has layers of secrets and mystery, and the reveals are biggies. The denouement of the suspenseful hunt is … well, I can’t say much. I didn’t expect it. I highly recommend this to anyone in the mood for horror, suspense, thrills, and psychological twists and turns.

This was a great monster story! It was full of twists, and just when I thought I knew what was coming, something would change. The times flip between the 1970's at a psychiatric hospital and current time in the life of a 'monster hunter'. There are elements of supernatural, but mixed with human monsters too. I highly recommend this book!

This book surprised me many times, and I’m so happy for it. I really can’t even write much about it without spoiling something. But what I can say is that Eric, Violet, and Iris don’t know Dr. Hildrith like they think they do. And once they find out, everything will change.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC. This review contains my honest, unbiased opinion.

3 stars

I am grateful to Gallery Books, Gallery/Scout Press for sending me an advanced copy of this book for review.

This is the fifth book that I have read by Jennifer McMahon, and she is definitely one of my go-to horror authors. However, I have found that while I always enjoy reading her books, some of them are great while some of them are just OK for me. This was one of those books that, while I enjoyed it and I thought there were many positive qualities, it did not stand out to me in the way that some of her other novels have. This is definitely a horror novel; however, I find that many of the horror elements in the story were not particularly intense and at some points it felt more like a mystery.
This story follows McMahon’s normal formula, where you have two timelines and you follow people in two different narratives that surround the same general topic, and at some point, these storylines converge. For me one of the issues I had with this story was that I felt like the two storylines did not exactly work in this book. While I did not have an issue with either storyline; I thought they were both interesting, I did find that the shift from past to present was quite awkward. This may be because I think the two timelines were two completely different genres that didn't quite mesh.

I did like how the mystery concerning the childhood of our perspective character as well as the mystery of what's going on in present day were linked. But beyond a certain point I did find the remainder of the story to be quite predictable. Even with this predictability I did still enjoy the way the story ended, and I think that putting most of the more unbelievable portions of the story in the past timeline was smart. We are getting this information in a journal format (story within a story) so we can speculate that there may be some over dramatization of past events since they are being relayed to us by children. Another strength of this book was in presenting us with different sorts of complex/interesting relationship dynamics.

I found this book quick and enjoyable to read as I usually do with Jennifer McMahon, mostly because her writing style is very accessible, has a very good flow to it, and fits this style of stories that she writes. I recommend this to fans of mild horror, mystery, and family stories.

Based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, The Children On The Hill was a 5 star read for me!

Dr. Hildreth, a brilliant psychiatrist at Hillside Inn, has two grandchildren who live with her. One day, she brings home another child, Iris, whom Eric and Violet are to treat as their sister. But as Violet tries to learn more about her new “sister” she uncovers some very dark secrets surrounding Hillside Inn, its patients, and her Gran.

I really enjoyed the dual timeline going back and forth between 1978 and 2019, and I loved the setting of the psychiatric facility. I also loved that this book surprised me a couple of times. There are two big twists, and while I figured one out, the second one left me with my mouth hanging open. I definitely recommend this book!

Thank you so much to Gallery Books and Netgalley for this arc in exchange for my honest review.

Some may say this book is a modern take on Frankenstein and it may be that, or inspired by, but what came to mind for me was an Ode to Frankenstein.

Delightfully murky and shadowed, Jennifer McMahon is a master of suspense of course, but yet also so much more as any good book is. This is a horror story but it is also a love story. A story of betrayal and redemption (maybe,) Of coming of age but still wanting, needing to believe in the unexplained.
I always find it hard to review these type of books because I don't want to give anything away but I can say that
I loved the characters, as much as they would let me love them, and any story set in a mental hospital isolated in the New England forests can't be bad. The writing was excellent as you would expect from an experienced and talented author like McMahon, and if you believe in judging a book by its cover, well it's stunning isn't it?

What a book! At one point I was reading in bed and my husband touched my arm and I jumped out of my skin! This definitely was a chilling read but it had so many layers to it and addressed a ton of topics. This had a ton of twists and surprises and kept me on my toes. I don’t want to give too much away (definitely go in blind if you can!) but this is a great book for thriller fans.

The first part of this book, I was in love. Probably up to 75%, honestly. I loved the character of Violet, the mystery going on, the monster hunting, all of it. I did guess what I think was supposed to be a "twist" but I don't think I'm unique in that regard. However, the part of the book (basically the ending) was a big disappointment to me (OK, the last couple of pages were a little shocking but at that point, seemed to come out of nowhere). It just didn't make sense. The things that the monster hunter found along the way did not go with the ending of the book AT ALL. Also, I don't understand the title at all. It literally could have been 100 other things and make so much more sense.

1978: Dr. Hildreth is a well known psychiatrist who treats patients at the Hillside Inn, a psychiatric facility in Vermont. Outside of work she is Gran, taking care of her two grandchildren Eric and Vi. One day Gran brings home Iris, another child who will now be living with them. Eric and Vi are quick to accept Iris, showing her their Book of Monsters and taking her on monster hunts.

2019: Lizzy Shelley travels on the road hunting monsters and sharing her findings on her podcast Monsters Among Us. Lizzy is on the hunt in Vermont after a local girl goes missing and she believes a monster has something to do with it. Lizzy has believed in monsters since she was a child, and knows that the worst monsters are right in front of us.

I am not one to stay up late reading, but this book had me up way past my bed time. I could not put this one down! I was not sure I would enjoy the monster theme of this book, but Jennifer McMahon did it extremely well. I love when books alternate from the past to the present, and this one does it in a way that will have you hooked. On top of that, the ending has shocking twists. Bonus points for the creepy psychiatric facility setting. This is a new favorite of mine!