DANG. This was good and relatively reminiscent of Mister Magic by Kiersten White due to the other worldly-paranormal aspects of this film-to-tv-show adaptation. I am realllllllly thankful to Josh Winning, PRH Audio, Putnam Books, and NetGalley for granting me digital access and audiobook access to this twisty, horrific tale of what the spotlight will do to possess your soul, both metaphorically and physically in this case.

Laura, an esteemed journalist for an entertainment-focused magazine, is en route to cover a story that hits very close to home. A cult-favorite movie is getting reprised as a TV show remake, and nothing good has ever followed the actors of the old film. To be clear, nearly everyone on set has horrifically died except for Polly or Laura as she goes by.

Perhaps she's returning to where it all started to halt production in hopes of saving lives. Still, she finds out that she can hardly trust anyone, friend, foe, or family because everyone is super invested in the lore and history of this unfortunate media. Laura is up against something not of this world, a bit ghostly and demonic, working through someone to cause these untimely exits. Laura must face her past and the secret she's worked so hard to bury and stop this ritual-like murder.

Burn the Negative hits shelves on July 11, 2023, and I can't wait to see what everyone else thinks.

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for this eARC. I really enjoyed this book from the start then it slowly unraveled for me. I can tell many people with enjoy this book but just wasn't for me.

What an interesting concept for a book. You have the perfect set up an old horror movie where 8 major people involved with the film died. They didn’t just die, they died in the same manner that people in the film died. There are twists and turns at every corner in this book. You think that you have something figured out and then everything you think you know is gone. This book is just amazing. I am not a huge horror movie fan, but I ate this book up. It is the perfect horror, or suspense novel. I have already started recommending it to patrons. I can’t wait to hear what they have to say.
Thank you so much to Penguin Group Putnam, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, and Netgalley for allowing me to read an advance copy of this title.

Part slasher, part supernatural thriller, part exploration of childhood trauma, Burn the Negative successfully combines all these elements into an exceptional horror novel. When she was 7 years old, Polly Tremaine starred in a well-loved slasher film, The Guesthouse, that featured the terrifying killer The Needle Man. But the deaths in The Guesthouse weren't limited to the screen, almost everyone involved with the movie died in a horrible way, creating a rumor that the movie was cursed. 30 years later, Polly lives on the other side of the world, changed her name to Laura Warren, and done everything possible to forget about The Guesthouse. But, then her boss sends her to LA to write an article on the new television show It Feeds, which just so happens to be a remake of that cursed movie Laura wants so badly to forget. Worse still, as soon as Laura arrives, the curse begins to take more lives, and Laura has to race against the clock to stop whatever sinister force is killing people
I loved Laura's character in this novel, she was wonderfully complex, and her development throughout is captivating. She is also an excellent portrayal of PTSD and how greatly a person is effected by childhood trauma.
The story itself was fast-paced, exciting, and had some great, surprising twists thrown in. I highly recommend this one for any horror fans, it is an exemplary novel of it's genre.

"Burn the Negative" is a good mix of mystery, supernatural suspense and a little bit of horror. If you are a lover of classic 80's horror movies a la "The Poltergeist" or "Amityville Horror" then you will likely enjoy Josh Winning's newest book. Overall it was a great, fun read with a few slower moments mixed in (likely to give you a second to regroup).

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book in advance of publication.

If you love slasher films, this book is for you. I enjoyed the references to classic horror films while giving an original take. At times I found the character development to be a bit weak and the pacing was a bit off. The ending was perfect!

A kid star, that has gone in hiding (changing her name, career, etc) is brought back to the old set of The Guesthouse, a horror movie with a deathly history. As soon as she lands in LA, death starts to follow her, including the boogey man - The Needle Man.

It had a very paranormal theme, but also talks about people being destroyed by what they hold back/in. The trauma of the past can become something evil and dark, and it can destroy our future.

I loved the campy, gory storyline. It wasn't very action filled, but would still make a great summer horror read.

I was very sucked in by this book from the very beginning. I loved every minute of it...until the end. The ending was very lack luster and I was disappointed. I know Laura has the makings of a final girl but every one dying in quick succession at the end felt cheap and just thrown in there. I felt Laura didn't need to become the villain. I also didn't really like the idea of the monster being Laura and her trauma. I much rather liked the idea of it being controlled by someone else that had been talked about earlier in the book. Most of the book, great. Ending, not for me.

"In this incendiary mash-up of horror and suspense, a notorious slasher film is remade...and the curse that haunted it is reawakened.

Arriving in L.A. to visit the set of a new streaming horror series, journalist Laura Warren witnesses a man jumping from a bridge, landing right behind her car. Here we go, she thinks. It's started. Because the series she's reporting on is a remake of a '90s horror flick. A cursed '90s horror flick, which she starred in as a child - and has been running from her whole life.

In The Guesthouse, Laura played the little girl with the terrifying gift to tell people how the Needle Man would kill them. When eight of the cast and crew died in ways that eerily mirrored the movie's on-screen deaths, the film became a cult classic - and ruined her life. Leaving it behind, Laura changed her name and her accent, dyed her hair, and moved across the Atlantic. But some scripts don't want to stay buried.

Now, as the body count rises again, Laura finds herself on the run with her aspiring actress sister and a jaded psychic, hoping to end the curse once and for all - and to stay out of the Needle Man's lethal reach."

Scream meets the curse of The Crow!

Thank you to NetGalley and PENGUIN GROUP Putnam, G.P. Putnam's Sons for the digital advance reader's copy.

This is a fun, if predictable, horror story.

If there's such a thing as comfort horror or cozy horror, this is pretty darn to close to it. It's not treading any new ground. It's not going to knock your socks off. It very much a familiar mish-mash of popular horror flicks. And yet, it's exactly what it should be, if you're looking for a straightforward horror movie tale.

Laura Warren, a pop culture journalist, is on the set of It Feeds, a "reimagining" of the cursed 90s movie, The Guesthouse, when things start to go wrong and people begin dying again. Unknown to those on the set, Laura is actually Polly Tremaine, the child star of The Guesthouse.

Is Laura's past somehow connected to what's happening now, nearly thirty years later?

(Not-so shocking spoiler alert: Yes. Yes, it is. Of course it is.)

As Laura works to unravel what's happening now and what happened then, the secrets and lies of those around her are revealed, until Laura faces the final, shocking (or not-so shocking) truth that may bring an end to the curse.

The writing is sturdy, the characters are enjoyable, if not original, and the beats of the horror genre come in a steady rhythm, enough to keep you turning the pages.

All in all, a quick and breezy summer horror read.

*language, violence

I think "retro horror" must be a new category. I liked the writing here, which moved the story forward with few hiccups. The trick for this book would have been to make something actually scary that relies heavily on kitsch and Hollywood lore. This book really didn't hit that bar. It just wasn't scary to me, and the various murders felt like set pieces when I know everyone is just an actor. I did like the backstory of Laura's character. It just wasn't fleshed out enough to make me feel her terror, much less to explain what was happening in the present. The ending felt like a forced twist, not like an aha moment.

I wanted to like this book more than I did. The writing itself is competent, but the plot never seems to quite find what it wants to be. Sections/explanations sometimes feel overly edited as if the editing team didn’t trust the audience to understand the nature of this monster.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

*Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Group Putnam, G.P. Putnam's Sons for providing me with an early copy in exchange for an honest review.*

This new horror/mystery book from Josh Winning is essentially Poltergeist meets Nightmare on Elm Street and I'm here for it. Journalist Laura Warren is heading to LA from the UK to write a piece about a reboot of a classic horror movie called "The Guesthouse" with a mysterious villain called "The Needle Man"- the kicker is that Laura was the 7-year-old star of the original, and she was lucky to survive. During filming several people mysteriously died so her family fled LA and moved to the UK where she's lived in anonymity ever since. She's terrified to be back, and rightfully so. Soon after she arrives tragedy strikes the set of the reboot and Laura, sets out to conquer the notorious Guesthouse Curse before more people die.

So I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It had so many twists & turns, and every time I started to think I knew where things were heading the author threw another curveball at me. I suspected nearly every character of being the Needle Man at some point. I thought that maybe it was a movie within a movie, I thought that Laura was in a psych ward and this was all in her head. I thought the Needle Man was a serial killer, no wait, a paranormal entity, no definitely a serial killer. My brain never stopped trying to figure this one out!

The story, combined with all of the mixed-media elements this was perfectly executed. My only "complaint" was that there were multiple points where two female characters would be conversing and the dialog would go back and forth with just "she said", so I had to backtrack a few times to make sure I was reading the conversation with the right speaker in each role, but hey, it just shows that this book passes the Bechdel test with flying colors! There are also great commentaries about Hollywood, fame, and the morality of child acting. I had never heard of this author before, but after reading this one I will absolutely pick up other works by him.

Journalist Laura Warren is sent on assignment from London to L.A. to cover a story about a remake of a cult horror movie from 1993. What she discovers, much to her chagrin, is the movie in question is The Guest House, a film she starred in at seven years old and has tried to put behind her. Because the film is rumored to be cursed due to eight mysterious deaths to cast and crew that occurred during and after production. Struggling with her secret and the prospect of this new show based on the movie, she reluctantly goes about interviewing the parties involved. But soon people begin to die in unusual circumstances, when Laura is near and has blacked out, knowing only that the villain from the movie and her nightmares, The Needle Man keeps appearing to her. Is The Needle Man real? Are the deaths directly connected to her? Or are the police right and she's responsible for the deaths?
This novel obviously is a love letter to the horror movies of the 80s and 90s, with a movie within the story centered around a haunted house with a creepy little girl and a slasher-type figure. The story is pretty engrossing and does play out like a classic slasher film. My only real issue was the pacing was off somewhat - a lot happens in a short amount of time early on and then later there's a lot of dragged out "trying to solve the mystery" parts, especially in the climactic chapters where all is to be revealed, but it revealed in too many small snippets. But overall any horror fan and especially horror movie fan should enjoy this.

Horror fans will absolutely love this one, but it fell flat for me in the same way that most horror does, especially horror with supernatural elements like a villain that is the human embodiment of trauma or challenging emotion. Still, I was hanging in there and prepared to give this a high star review... but that ending destroyed all of my goodwill. It's a no from me.

The Guesthouse was a 90's horror film featuring the Needle Man, that was known for being cursed after most of the cast died in the same manner and order as in the movie. Seven year old Polly was the star of the film and one of the few to stay alive, but she ended up moving to England with her family and changed her name to Laura to escape Hollywood and the fame. Now on the 30th anniversary of the film, a reboot is in the works and Laura ends up back on set as part of her job as a journalist. As soon as she lands in LA, people start dying, just like before and Laura begins to wonder if the Needle Man is back and if the new set is also cursed. This book includes classic horror tropes, a bit of the paranormal, and red herrings as Laura tries to overcome the events of her past. Overall, an homage to horror films, with a bit of an unreliable narrator.

Urban legends? Curses? Identity changes? It’s a great combination of things that can keep me on the edge of my seat. The story follows a unique yet classic recipe for a quality horror piece of media and it was executed very well. My only criticism is about the last 5 pages of the book. If those were saved for a sequel, I would’ve given this book at least 4 stars, maybe even 5, and had been SO excited for a sequel. But alas, that’s not what happened, and I’m not planning on reading a sequel if one does come out. I’d definitely recommend this book, just don’t read those last 5 pages if you’re hoping for a series to emerge from this.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of Burn the Negative.

I love horror movies, I mean I was watching horror movies at an age when it was not appropriate horror fan so I was excited my request was approved.

1. The Needle Man isn't scary, nor is his origin story. He sounds like a D-list version of Freddy Krueger, who we all know is one scary mother****.

It's takes a lot to scare me. I've been around a few years and have watched and read a lot of horror movies and books, but it was hard to keep a straight face every time the Needle Man was mentioned.

Not even his name is scary, and I don't like needles. Who does?

I wasn't scared or creeped out or disturbed by anything, but I kept reading because I wanted to know what happens.

2. I loved the horror movie references, and the multimedia pages of emails, newspaper clippings, and tweets added atmosphere to the story. But I wasn't a fan that this wasn't available in Kindle form because it wasn't fun to read on my phone. Hurts my eyes. That's not the fault of the author yet I wanted to throw it out there.

3. The premise began to sound a bit like Smile and The Machinist, where an entity feeds on trauma (Smile) or a tragic event weighs heavily on the main character, causing his or her mind to unravel (Christian Bale goes all Method in the latter film).

4. Character development is weak and I didn't dislike Laura, Amy, or Beverly, but I didn't like them.

Beverly the psychic felt off-putting and just wrong, somehow. It felt very woo-woo to me and I believe some people are more intuitive than others and can sense things most of us can't but I never bought into Beverly's role in the story.

5. I love revenge stories and the ending makes it sound like that was the true motive behind the murders.

But I felt like it didn't work here, and that might be because of the dull characters and the repetitive cliches peppered throughout the book; Laura seeing the Needle Man out of the corner of her eyes, convenient blackouts, the tone of the writing just didn't feel right to me.

I really wanted to like this more, I was so hoping I would be scared and terrified but I wasn't.

But, I do look forward to see what the author comes up for his next book.

I read the shadow glass and thought you know what , Josh winning is going to be a auto buy. And I keep my word when I say, this is a great author that really knows how to tell a story.

There were some things I liked about this story. I think horror movie fans will like all of the references to classic slashers and horror movie cliches, and the premise of the story was promising. In my opinion, it just didn't deliver. There was more suspension of disbelief required than I was able to give the story after a certain point. I also wish it would've ended a chapter earlier; the evil-villain monologue and hand-holding about what had happened weakened what could've been a fine final scene. I could see some people enjoying this story, and I really liked the premise, but it just wasn't my cup of tea in the end,