Um okay - I have not read a book like this in a long time. First, it was SO much scarier than I thought it would be,. If you do not like paranormal activity, demons, ghosts, etc., then this isn't the book for you. That being said, I loved this book so much and could not put it down. The story follows the main character Amy and her three best friends, Liz, Jess and Melissa. One day, Liz starts acting strange, and it doesn't take long to find out she's been possessed. Amy, Melissa and Jess are willing to go to great lengths to save Liz....but at what cost. Fair warning, there is kids' imaginary friends that are actually evil, a full-on exorcism, and so much more in this book, so go into it with that knowledge.

This was a super spooky book and I would highly recommend it. Thank you so much, NetGalley for the early look!

This book was so much scarier than I thought it would be - do not let the cartoon cover fool you! I loved this story so much though - it was super conversational and you truly felt like a part of their group. Amy and her three best friends, Liz, Jess and Melissa all live on the same block, And then one day, Liz starts acting strange, and it doesn't take long to find out she's been possessed. Amy, Melissa and Jess are willing to go to great lengths to save Liz....but at what cost.

This was a super spooky book and I would highly recommend it. Thank you so much, NetGalley for the early look!

Do you like horror comedy? If so, this book is for you. This group of women who meet regularly in their suburban neighborhood for wine night are the kind of friends we all know or may have! Kids, husbands, PTA meetings and now demons…life is busy for these women! This book is written well and I enjoyed a lot of the premise, character building and the author’s writing style. Do remember that horror is in the name of this genre because some parts of this book are just that—which were great to keep this book interesting. Overall, a fantastic read!

Alright, I scoffed when all the drama began around the building of a 'she shed' but as I immersed myself into the story of Suburban Hell centered around four suburban moms/wives, I found myself rushing to the finish line.

When one of their friends starts acting a bit funky, Amy, Jess and Melissa take it upon themselves to discover what's wrong. But, Liz is suffering something much stranger than 'suburbia'. You can't help but fall in love with all of them and who they are as people -- especially with the us vs them mentality; where they don't want to be the 'norm' of their neighborhood. At the center of it all, there is a lot of heart amidst the terror where the tethers of friendship and sisterhood run deep.

This was a savvy, modern twist on a tale of demonic possession happening in the suburbs of Chicago with many chuckles to be had -- think Stepford Wives...but with demons.

Reluctant Winchester suburbanite Amy and her band of other "outcast" moms Liz, Jess, and Melissa get together for frequent ladies movie nights as a brief reprieve from their normal lives. A glass of wine and a bad late 90's or early 2000's rom-com and some time with the girls. One night which is particularly heavy-on-the-wine finds the friends discussing how cool it would be to have a She Shed; a place fully their own, away from work, their husbands and their kids. A fun dream but maybe not very realistic.

come the next ladies night, Liz surprises the rest of the group with the fact that she and her husband Tim are actually breaking ground on the She Shed the next day. Little does she know that is going to unleash an evil upon the neighborhood.

Liz changes over night. She is no longer the helpful caretaker. Now her skin is dripping off her face. Can Amy, Jess and Melissa save her friend and the neighborhood from this strange evil?

Honestly this book was absolutely incredible. I was swayed to request this ARC like three lines into the blurb. I love books like this. It has a very heavy The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires (Grady Hendrix) vibe. I live for the female hero who doesn't fit the stereotype. Like Buffy Summers, too. I loved every second of this book.

The characters are strong and distinct. Heather (the insufferable HOA mom) is as insufferable as you would think. Jess, the slightly younger (and thus ostracized by the friends of the ex-wife) girlfriend of Del is unapologetically herself and someone I would love to be friends with myself.

The horror vibe is strong. While some of it is obviously a little silly (because possessed suburban mom) there are really strong horror elements in the book. There is a lot of comedy as well. I laughed out loud at points.

I fully recommend checking this book out if the blurb and anything above makes you even a little intrigued. This book will deliver on all expectations.

Thank you to NetGalley, G.P. Putnam's Sons/Penguin Group for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I adored the concept. I think suburban horror is on the rise and this fits right into the genre. I did find the voice to be a bit too flat to stir up any real engagement with the storyline, though. It seemed to take a long time for anything to really happen or for me to get interested in what was happening.

Suburban Hell
3⭐️
Read this if you enjoy: creepy beach reads, feel-good horror, female-leads

The story: group of moms desperate from a respite from the monotonous, yet stressful life in the Chicago suburbs. Hoping to swap screaming children for a glass of wine (or 2) and a night out seems harmless enough…until the demon showed up.

The good: The author captures the struggles suburban society places on women: the need to balance it all (often far more so than a male partner is expected to) while appearing practically perfect in every way. The sisterhood developed by the friends feels genuine and heartfelt.
Overall, the integration of suburbia and fighting demonic entities is fun if not truly “horrific”. But I gotta say the idea of certain haunted appliances made for some entertaining images.

The iffy: this is definitely aimed pretty heavily at a target audience. I would’ve liked to see more diversity in both character types and backgrounds. So, some of the struggles of daily life for the characters may be less relatable to some readers and become a bit tedious.

All that being said, this was solid beach read for horror lite fans. I will be checking out future books by this author.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

"Maybe the concept of friendship wasn't that different from possession. It took a different form, of course, but we all borrowed the best parts from each other, sharing in the traits and strengths that we admired."

🍹

Suburban Hell by Maureen Kilmer was such a fun read! Think The Burbs mixed with Finlay Donovan, but with more emphasis on female friendship. Another good comparison would be My Best Friend's Exorcism but with adults with kids. I really liked this one and thought it was an entertaining fluffy horror read! I wanted a little more sarcasm and more gore, but that's just me being a horror fan. Honestly, I find the suburbs terrifying enough! Who's with me?!

I did not like this book. Everything felt too heavy handed that after about 25% the humor became obnoxious and mean spirited rather than funny and relatable. I did not thing the moms we follow had any personality and I found it incredibly difficult to distinguish between the characters. This book felt very dismissive of suburban life. I wanted it to be silly but ultimately empowering, however it never progressed to that point. The husbands were absolutely useless. None of the characters felt real because they were all so flat and generic. The horror elements were unique but didn’t go dark enough for me to consider this even adjacent to horror. This book is a comedy drama, not a horror comedy.

Maureen Kilmer's book Suburban Hell is wickedly funny. Kilmer proves that humor and horror really can combine to leave an indelible impression. Ordinary mundane events are turned into terrifying situations with notes of humor. It is a delightful break from normal thrillers.

Synopsis:
A small group of moms meet at their children's school events and form a bond. Initially, the friends met once a month for a movie and wine night. For their meetings, one member starts construction on a "She-Shed" for their get togethers in her backyard. As the digging of the shed begins, are the women prepared for the demonic forces that soon transform their peaceful life into a Suburban Hell?

Suburban Hell by Maureen Kilmer is a fun read that is laugh-out-loud funny. It is available on August 30th. (4.25 ⭐⭐⭐⭐💫)

Thank you, NetGalley and PENGUIN GROUP Putnam, G. P. Putnam's Sons, for allowing me to review this refreshing book. Your kindness is appreciated.

#SuburbanHell #MaureenKilmer

With the combination of the title and the cover art I knew I had to read this book. My two big comparative vibes for this is Cackle by Rachel Harrison meets My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix.

This book is very in your face in the sense that there's really no deeper meaning or theme behind it. It can really be summed up by this quote, "That our love and friendship had been enough to battle the darkest of forces. [...] We had done it. We had exorcised a demon from our friend and our neighborhood. Just suburban moms, who are routinely dismissed and pushed aside, whose position in society seems to be in the background, taking care of everything. And yet, we had figured out how to save everyone. Suburban moms had saved the world." So, like I said, very obvious there. And I'm not saying it's a bad theme to have, I really enjoyed it. I loved the relationships between the friends and how they were really just women supporting and helping other women. But to me, it feels like it couldn't have been conveyed with a little less direct exposition. Like it almost feels like a fourth wall break.

The characters were all written pretty well. I wish we had been able to interact more with Liz (the possessed one) and gotten a couple more scares/creepy scenes with her. For most of the book she's tucked away inside her house while our other main characters find a way to help her. The relationships between the women was really nice to read. The characters and their relationships felt really genuine.

I had a few issues with the writing itself. The phrase "pregnant pause" is used far too much and some of the characters have very distinct words/phrases they say but not in a way that felt real. The one character says "yo" and it felt forced a lot of the time. Like it was used as a way to distinguish the character from the others. It stuck out to me. I did find it to be a super quick read, I think I finished it within a day. It was really easy to get immersed into. There were some really funny scenes in this book. The possessed roomba scene was so ridiculous I couldn't help but find humor in it while not being taken out of the story. It still felt like a scary situation and I could feel the fear in the characters but also feel the comedy as an outside, reader, perspective. The horror elements were there but it didn't feel very *scary* to me. The story itself didn't feel like a new idea BUT it was pretty well executed overall.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Group Putnam for sending me a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Wow, this one has been such a fun/creepy read. I loved this!!!! Humor horror - it’s a myth-like beast - you so rarely find it, and then when you do, bam… you’re a believer and you want more. I loved that Suburban Hell hit on real-life issues and neighborhood politics mixed in with the supernatural horror. This was such an enjoyable read.

In some ways this reminded me of YA mystery/thriller mixed with horror aspects from the 80’s that I used to read (Lois Duncan vibes especially) and I adored that.

Recommended.

As soon as I read the blurb and found out this was a book about 3 PTO moms who accidentally summon a demonic presence into their suburban neighborhood during wine night, I wanted to read this. With a premise like that, how could I not request the arc? And I am happy to say that this book was truly horror comedy at its finest.

One of the strongest parts of this book is it’s humor. This was easily the funniest book I’ve read since Kill the Boy Band. Where this book truly succeeds is how nonchalant the humor is. The characters will just drop the most random and outlandish remarks in the most nonchalant way like it’s just no big deal, and it’s so outlandish that it just works. This book was just really FUN. If you’re into dark humor, you’ll especially enjoy this as much as I did.

There are pretty generic elements of horror with nothing new that you haven’t read or watched before, but it’s just so entertaining and so hilarious that you can’t stop reading. I wanted to drop all of my obligations so that I could finish this book. Despite the horror part being fairly generic, some of the more grotesque parts were described very well, being pretty mild. It won’t have as much grotesqueness or unease as a full blown horror novel will give you, but this is horror comedy gold. With two seemingly contrasting genres mixed into one novel, the goal isn’t to put a shiver down your spine as much as it is to entertain you. The characters are hilarious and this book is so much fun. Also, I loved the theme of friendship. Definitely worth a read if you’re a fan of dark comedy!

Thank you to Netgalley and Putnam Books for sending me an advanced copy in return for my honest review.

I absolutely loved this book!! Spooky and creepy and at times downright scary! Gave me vibes of MBFE. I can’t wait to read more by this author.

If you love Desperate Housewives and classic possession stories, then you would love this!

These suburban wives, who met while mocking the PTA, quickly became best friends! During their regular movie nights they joked about getting a She-Shed. A joke that one member decided to make reality.. But,
this group of friends is going to find out just what kind of nightmares you might unleash when you start to dig into the earth.

Suburban life meets demon possession.. what more could you want?!

Thank you @NetGalley and Penguin Group Putnam for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

This book is a mix between Desperate Housewives and The Exorcist in the best of ways. It was a delight. It's easy to read like your favorite beach read, but the suspense of the horror keeps you turning the pages to find out what happens next. Although the book touches on dark topics, it does so with care and a lightness that makes you believe that everything is going to be ok. Despite the flaws of the characters, you are rooting for them the whole time.

Holey Moley, but this was so freaking good. The writing sucked me right in and did not let me go.

Here we have Amy and her group of other mom friends that live in suburbia. They have a night where they all get together to drink and be away from the kids. One night they celebrate a new she shed and summon something bad.

That summary does not actually describe how funny this was, while still being a horror story. I did not get scared or grossed out, but I laughed a heck of a lot.

Writing like this is rare and I really hope to see more of this in the future.

This had an interesting flow that I don't think I was a fan of. Overall, very interesting storyline though it had me confused at the intention of the characters.

Suburban Hell wasn’t really on my radar, but, while browsing NetGalley, the title and the book cover caught my eye. Suffice it to say, I was intrigued, and I’m so glad I read it.

Suburban Hell was over the top and dramatic, but it was a horror comedy through and through. There was a certain degree of cheekiness to how the neighborhood was portrayed complete with an idyllic suburb, PTA cliques, and a group of friends who planned to build a backyard clubhouse—dubbed the “She Shed”—as their official monthly meeting place. What could possibly go wrong, right? Well, as Suburban Hell proved, there were a lot of avenues that ordinary setup could go, and it went sideways and dipped right into paranormal territory.

I really loved the gradual build-up of the intensity within the story. It had such an unassuming beginning, so that when things started going wrong, it created a sense of foreboding that carried throughout the rest of the book.

The setting worked well too. It wasn’t isolated per say, but there was a limitation to it, as the events took place in a very small section of a neighborhood (pretty much within a single community). The characters were sorely out of their depths in this situation, and because of it, the friendship between Liz, Amy, Melissa, and Jess was on the verge of a breaking point.

The book was told only from Amy’s perspective, so you never got into the heads of the other characters. Despite that, their personalities showed through, and I liked Amy’s POV. There was a mixture of her dealing with her day-to-day life (with her kids and husband), as well as her trying to unravel what had happened to her friend. Her emotional journey sort of grounded the story in a way, so it wasn’t too over the top with so many comedic aspects.

All that to say: I had a great deal of fun reading Suburban Hell. I appreciated what it did. And with its August release date, it’s right on time to make it onto any October reading lists.

Disclaimer: this copy of the book was provided by the publisher (G.P. Putnam's Sons) via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, thank you!

Suburban Hell is Maureen Killer’s debut horror book. In it, we follow Amy, a stay at home mother of two who enjoys the suburban life, for the most part. She just wants something more fulfilling. Having one of her friends get possessed by a demon after breaking ground to build a she-shed isn’t exactly what she had in mind though. The summer was supposed to be about being stress free by the pool, not fighting the forces of evil!

If you are a fan of Grady Hendrix’s My Best Friends Exorcism and The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, this book is for you. It has that same kind of humor/horror that makes those books so fun. I think it is exactly the kind of niche horror that I really enjoy.

While I don’t think this book was overtly “horror,” it did have some spooky imagery. That juxtaposed with the summer mom life made it a really good blend of horror and comedy. The first half of this book had me laughing out loud several times. Without doing any research on the author at all, I can tell you with absolute certainty that she is a mother of multiple children. Amy is painfully relatable as a main character if you are a mom. The children characters felt very authentic. I have an issue with children characters in adult books because I feel like they almost never seem like they are true to life. They either act older or younger than they are supposed to be and it always pulls me out of the story. The husbands were the worst in the best way. I also really loved the friendship dynamics between our main characters.

As far as negatives go, I don’t have a lot. The second half of the book is definitely weaker because things become less funny and more serious but it never really felt like it really went all out like it should have. I would have loved more intense horror towards the end. There is also a subplot with Amy’s sister that just felt like it was a different tone than the rest of the story. I know the subplot helps Amy’s character development and creates more backstory for her but it just really seemed pointless for the most part. I would have loved more scenes with the women as a group instead.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book. I had high expectations and I think it definitely exceeded them for the most part. I think this book would appeal most to moms, in particular moms who feel like they don’t really belong in the “PTA type” mom crowd. This is a book that I will be picking up when it is released.