I did not finish this one, it was not for me, I couldn't relate to the characters, and just did not care for the story.

I was excited for this story and, while it is a solid story about family relationships and righting the past, I admit that I wanted a little more from it. A little deeper characters, a little more horror, and a break to the slow tension. The odd piece of levity or quick action would have increased my enjoyment of this book, but it was interesting and I will try whatever else Jessica Johns writes, as it has good potential.

Too much horror in this one for me. I will watch for other titles by this promising writer. Thanks to the publisher for the opportunity to read this novel.

I haven’t read horror in a bit so I was happy to pick up something on Ariel’s recommendation and discuss it with her here. :) Bad Cree had a great start and I love the connection of dreams to horror. Like Moon of the Crusted Snow which is also a indigenous read set in winter, Bad Cree has the right feels. It was well written and the merging of dreams into reality was a really good hook for me.

I particularly enjoyed the familial aspects of the story. Mackenzie moved away from her home in Alberta to Vancouver city and as the story progresses, she journeys back home to make sense of what is happening to her. The big family setting, the ways the cousins and aunts mingled and supported each other through crisis was heartwarming to see. Working through grief as a family and being able to talk about loved ones who have passed away added a lot of depth to the story.

I quite enjoyed the connection to Alberta and was also able to get in with a friend who lives in Vancouver about the sheer number of crows there. The landscapes were described well and it was easy to immerse myself in a story set in familiar places.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Loved this book, there is a reason I've been seeing it everywhere, I really enjoyed the writing and the entire novel

Bad Cree is about a young Indigenous woman being stalked by crows and haunted by dreams of her dead sister. It explores themes of grief, family, and self-discovery.

For a debut, I thought it was really well-written! I enjoyed the Indigenous lore and focus on the power of the matriarchy.

Since it’s marketed as horror, I was expecting a more intense and scary climax. The story was so chilling early on that the ending wasn’t quite what I had anticipated.

If you’re looking to diversify your reading, check this one out!

CW: death, blood, body horror, alcoholism, racism

What an excellent debut! Equal parts spooky and heartwarming. I'll look forward to what Jessica Johns does next!

Bad Cree follows Mackenzie, a Cree millennial living a mundane existence in Vancouver…until the day she wakes from a nightmare holding a bloody crow’s head in her palm. Drawing on Cree mythology, this debut novel is a tense, moving exploration of loss and the importance of community.

While the horror elements are undeniable – hello, bloody crow’s head – Bad Cree is a story about grief first. After her beloved kokum dies, home doesn’t feel right anymore and Mackenzie takes off in search of a new life in Vancouver. But a change of scenery hasn’t lifted the fog of grief, and when news comes that her sister Sabrina has also died, Mackenzie can’t deal. Unable to face the reality of her loss, Mackenzie doesn’t even go home for her sister’s funeral. As if the sadness, guilt, and shame aren’t enough, Mackenzie soon finds herself plagued by terrifying dreams and followed by crows wherever she goes. Desperate, she reluctantly returns home in hopes that her family will know what’s happening to her – and how to stop it.

Jessica Johns masterfully crafts a protagonist you can’t help rooting for, even when she’s far from perfect. I love reading about characters who make crappy choices, who screw up but keep trying, because that’s real life. We don’t always act in the ways we know we should, especially when we’re hurting. Mackenzie loves her family deeply and wants to be close to them, but she allows her fear and self-loathing to drive her away from them. Maybe all the freaky things that keep happening to her are because she’s a bad Cree. Of course, it’s when she’s surrounded by her family and their “Aunty energy” that Mackenzie can make sense of what’s been happening to her.

I love reading about characters who make crappy choices, who screw up but keep trying, because that's real life.
The Aunty energy in this book is strong and essential. Healing hurt and unravelling mystery happens when the younger generations rely on older women in their community for knowledge and wisdom. These “Aunties” might literally be your aunt but they could be anyone you share a kinship with. Aunties will give you guidance, they’ll scold you, they’ll give you good medicine, and they’ll love you even when you don’t love yourself. Without Auntie energy, there would be no Bad Cree. In fact, every single speaking character in the novel is a woman or nonbinary person!

From the characters to the setting, the supernatural to the mundane, everything in Bad Cree works because of Jessica Johns’ strong writing. Her prose is understated and compulsively readable, and I especially loved how she described the Canadian prairies. There’s a lot of love packed into her evocative descriptions of the unending sky, the unique storms, and even the haunting sight of abandoned buildings dotted along the landscape. That love of the land is balanced against the creeping, unsettling sense that something is deeply wrong there — and it has been ever since Mackenzie’s kokum died. Even after the mystery is uncovered and that “wrongness” is defeated, Mackenzie still needs to work on mending her relationships. That realism felt good and right, and I was completely satisfied by the ending.

Highly recommended for horror fans and those looking to read more Indigenous fiction.

This is a beautiful story about love and loss, and grief and home. Haunting, and unsettling, but at the same time full of so much love and care and community, you don’t feel alone while reading it. The characters were wonderful - real and human, and so vividly portrayed you could close your eyes and picture them in front of you. Ugly and beautiful all at once, this book was a treasure, and I can’t wait to read more from Jessica Johns.

Finally, a book that got me out of my reading slump! Bad Cree is an excellent debut novel by Canadian author Jessica Johns. Thanks to Netgalley and HarperCollins Canada for the advanced review copy! This book begins with Mackenzie, a young Cree woman living in Vancouver, waking from a dream with a crow's head in her hand. This starts her journey back to the prairies of Alberta, in a story filled with both dreamlike Indigenous lore and the unconditional love of mothers, sisters, cousins, and aunties. Set against the eerie but beautiful landscape of Northern Canada, I haven't read another novel quite like it. I look forward to reading more by Jessica Johns!

#bookstagram #bookrecommendations #bookreview #badcree #jessicajohns #netgalley

Oh man, this book! 4.5 rounded up to five stars!!!

This has pretty much everything I have been craving in a horror novel but hadn't found yet - plus all the family and Canadian elements made it all the better. I loved going from Vancouver's hilly seaside to the vast plains of Alberta.

I loved how everyone was going through their own trauma, and how all of those aspects were explored. I'm trying to find a good way to describe it without spoilers but it's hard, just trust me the way things play out in how they need to heal their hurts are so interesting! The character growth is great to see!

There were some moments where I wanted to reach through the book and shake Mackenzie, get her to talk to her family, but I understand that level for grief and shame she was in, and how it's mot exactly easy to open up when you feel like that.

The dreams and the creature are particularly horrifying, especially once I found out what the creature was, and that's all I'm gonna say or think about it anymore yup yup yup

This was fantastic. Just loved it.

Thank you so so so so so much NetGalley and Harper Collins Canada for this arc!!

BAD CREE is everything! Set between Vancouver and the prairie landscapes in Alberta, it does more than deliver. John's writing is seamless, full of lamentations on grief, trauma, and family. The horror elements of this novel are just that: horrifying. The imagery is so descriptive that its visceral. I was uneasy for most of the novel - the tension magnifying with every dream, page, and conversation. Her characterizations felt so real - each family member of Mackenzie's were distinct and lifelike, and reminded me of people in my family.

This deserves all the stars, all the hype. More nehiyawewin in books please!

Johns' Bad Cree is an affecting novel that not only traces how grief impacts a family but how the unacknowledged loss and distance further affects a family. When Mackenzie begins dreaming and holding on physically to certain dream inhabitants, she seeks help from those who care for her the most.

But all is not well within the home or between sisters and mother and daughter. The lack of observance and communication around what and who they all have lost weighs heavy and has left a broken family in its presence. This is a story about healing within a unit, facing the heavy and unspoken that paralyze us, and coming through the other side the better for it.

The details of Cree life and worldview that are depicted here allow for the reader to become even more attached to this story and family. The undertones of fear and a looming darkness are subtle yet leave a sense of anticipation and impact as we get closer to what it means to walk these dreams.

Ooooeeee this was a slow burn, I found myself leaving and coming back to it in-between other books, not because I wasn’t enjoying it, maybe because it was such a nice familiar feeling that I wanted to always be there! Didn’t want it to be over too soon!

Bad Cree is about MacKenzie, a Cree woman living in a city far from home (running from the grief of losing her kokum and then her sister) just trying to survive her dead end job and shitty boss with only her friend Joli as support when strange things start to happen to her. First, the local crows start to follow her around, then she wakes up with things she’s brought back from her dreams in her bed—a stick, a dead crow’s head, nothing to be alarmed about probably. Except of course it is because girl is bridging the dream world as she sleeps!! 😫 Then she starts seeing her dead sister and suddenly everything she thinks she knows about her past might be wrong. Trying not to sleep for fear of what she might do in her dreams, Mac finally realizes she needs to go home, get real help, figure out what’s happening to her, and to finally understand what really happened to her family on the night she keeps revisiting in her sleep.

Part horror, thriller, a good sprinkle of supernatural and cultural elements, Bad Cree was a great ride. My favourite part of this book though, was her with her family, interacting in such a funny beautiful loving way that felt like sitting in my own kokum’s kitchen just quietly watching people come and go, talking that loving shit and taking the piss out of each other while I eat all the chocolate Whoppers sitting in a carton on the table. I wish I could be there—where someone’s always cooking, making tea, dancing, laughing or solving all your problems.

I loved this book, it was spooky but not scary and just really well done.

"That's the best and worst thing about being connected to everything: you are a part of it all, but you can't choose what gets sent out into the world. Or what can find you."

Thank you to the publisher for an advanced #BadCree #Netgalley eBook copy.

Mackenzie is a twenty-something nehiyaw iskwew grappling with the grief of losing her kokum and sister. Running away to Vancouver, BC, she is confronted by her sister's sudden death and a family mystery through a series of visceral dreams in which she's able to bring items back with her to the waking world. Weaving together elements of horror and magical realism, Johns brings you on a journey through a dreamworld, rooted in nehiyawak relationality.

Jessica John's debut novel Bad Cree is a beautiful story of love, grief, and family wrapped in a wonderfully creepy horror novel, rooted in Northern Alberta. A true love song to newhiyaw iskwewak and the lands that raise them, Bad Cree brings you on a journey of the interconnectedness of us with our more than human kin.

I loved this book. As a Cree-Métis woman who has had to do a lot of soul searching of what it means to leave my northern home to move to the coast, there were aspects of this novel that sometimes hit a little too close to home. The way John's describes the rural prairies and rural prairie towns, I felt like I was seeing my own home. This call to home wrapped up in a horror story that explores grief and the intricacies of navigating lived and generational trauma? I could not set this book down, and now that I'm finished, I can't stop thinking about it.

The horror aspects of this book, the dream world, and the creature haunting them, are genuinely creepy. Maybe it's my own familiarity and family stories about this creature that made double check that my doors were locked and leave a little offering by my windows, but I had moments where I was a little scared. Honestly, all I could think of is how amazing of a movie this book would be. Someone option this, right now.

I think strict horror fans might struggle with the pacing of this novel, but I would gently challenge them to push their understanding of horror as a genre and lean into the threads of magical realism and the story that is being told. I do think there are aspects of Bad Cree that lean into the "if you know, you KNOW" arena, but I also think that shouldn't push potential readers away, and instead entice them to suspend their rigidness and lean in and learn something new.

My only critique of Bad Cree would be that I wish it was longer. I would have loved to see the dream sequences teased out more, but this is because I personally loved them and wanted to explore that dreamworld more. Honestly, if this book was 900 pages, I would have read them all.

All in all, a delightfully creepy and beautiful ode to newhiyaw iskwewak, Bad Cree should be on everyone's pre-order list for the new year.

This book is creepy and lovely all at onceflowing .Bad Cree is a book about dreams, family and home. It's about harming and healing. Not my usual genre to read but not bad.

I am so happy I had the chance to read an advance copy of Bad Cree by Jessica Johns. It is a beautifully written horror novel that focuses on family and grief.

It opens with Mackenzie, a young Cree woman, waking from a dream in which she was fighting off crows. When Mackenzie wakes, she is shocked to realize she holds a severed crow’s head in her hands. She blinks, and it is gone. But the crows that have been following her during her waking hours remain. This nightmare is the beginning of a series of bad dreams that sets Mackenzie on a path of figuring out the cause of these nightmares that feel like memories.

After her kokum died, Mackenzie moved from High Prairie to Vancouver to escape her grief. Mackenzie also lost her sister a year ago. Now, she returns home to try to remember what happened on one of her family’s trips to the lake and to investigate why crows are still following her.

This supernatural horror is character-driven and is a bit of a slow burn. It focuses on Cree family dynamics. The slow parts might be a drawback for some readers, but as an Indigenous woman, I lapped it up. It reminded me of growing up and hanging out with extended family.

The author provides context for the handful of Cree words throughout the text. I know a scant amount of Cree, but fortunately, I understood nearly all of the terms and messaged a family member for the one word I didn’t. But as I said, context is there, and Google could be handy.

The tension ebbs and flows in this novel. It starts with a nightmarish quality (literally) and becomes more strained and eerie as it progresses.

It is exciting to see more Indigenous writers having a chance to share stories. I might be biased, but Indigenous people are great storytellers.

I can’t wait to read more from the author. I highly recommend picking this up as soon as you can.

Thank you to HarperCollins Canada for providing an arc via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

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