This book is an exhilarating ride from start to finish, filled with suspense and unexpected turns. The pacing keeps you hooked, with every chapter drawing you deeper into the story. The tension never lets up, and just when you think you’ve figured it out, the plot takes a twist you didn’t see coming. A thrilling read that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last page.

"I think it's time for 'the talk.' Like in horror movies."

This book was a BANG! 💥 I loved it. It was a love letter to the history of horror and Lucia's knowledge of the horror genre was felt. Great visceral body horror and imagery! Some SAWEET kills! Loses one star simply because I felt it was a bit too long and therefore dragged in places. Solid read though!

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Enjoyed this one very much, another great horror suspense from author Jonathan Kellerman. Never disappoints, highly recommend!

Story about the town of Pleasant Brook. A couple murder each other and two years later, people in weird masks are seen in town and townspeople start to disappear. The sheriff, Grace Matthews, investigates the missing people and eventually starts working with a local teenager, Scott Carter, a handyman, Marty Crenshaw, and a dancer, Julie Lomax. As they try to figure out what is happening, more and more townspeople start to disappear.

This book is a true horror novel. I felt like I was watching a horror movie while I read it. The creeping sense of dread builds throughout the book. The ending was not what I expected but made sense and was satisfying.

Each chapter focuses on a different character in the book. We get multiple chapters for some and just a single chapter for others. I liked this structure and thought the author did a good job making all the characters feel real and distinct.

I like horror but don’t really like gore. I found some of the descriptions of events a bit too graphic. I also found the various killings a bit repetitive.

Overall, this isn’t really my kind of book, but I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. The characters are well developed and the story moves along at a good pace. If you are looking for a scary book to read in October, this one is worth checking out.

i got this arc in exchange for an honest review, so here we go!

small isolated town, gore and body horror, page-turning kind of writing, something something "ancient evil".

i did enjoy this! it was a fun romp imho. my biggest gripe was all the character background and exposition that didn't matter half the time, since the character ended up dead and/or used as a vehicle for the evil to keep spreading and the person they had been was never mentioned again. for this kind of story, i feel like you don't need such a large cast of named characters, but that could also just be me and how bad i am at names.

all in all, i think you should pick it up for halloween, if you like something along the lines of the evil dead, but with a little less chopped-off-hand-running-inside-the-walls, and a bit more don't-put-that-near-your-head-ok-it'll-eat-your-face.

Thank you to NetGalley and Crystal Lake Publishing for providing an ARC of this book!

As a horror / dark literature fan, this book was fun to read! This book has some serious body horror / gore and a strong sense of tension throughout. I think this book will connect strongly with fans of 'old school' horror, like Stephen King and John Carpenter.

The two main characters - Scott, a lonely teen and Grace, the small town constable, were well written and complex. I loved the queer representation threaded throughout the book, and how the author really spun the typical 'bury your gays' trope on its head.

I did get a little frustrated at some elements that felt repetitive. It was helpful to understand how the monster operated, but seeing the same attack/transition on multiple townspeople ultimately got a little boring. Also, some of the writing describing the monster and its mask used similar phrases over and over.

These are small critiques of an overall strong horror novel! I look forward to reading more from Kevin Lucia in the future for sure.

I really loved the premise of this one. Anything with Halloween I am totally going to read. I liked the start of this one and the diverse set of characters. The story was giving lots of old school horror as we got to know the residents of the town and the horrors that lurked beneath bit by bit, and that book cover was 10/10 awesome. My one major issue with the book was the writing style — it felt very unpolished and very hard for me to keep picking it back up, especially considering the book’s length.

"At the edge of the Adirondacks, an ancient malevolence descends upon the quiet town of Pleasant Brook, setting the stage for a chilling battle between the forgotten and an unstoppable evil. Standing resolutely in its shadow is an unlikely alliance—the remnants, the forgotten, the outcasts, and the underestimated. As the malevolence swells, they emerge as the town's last bastion of defense, its only hope against an ancient, remorseless force that brooks no resistance. Yet, how can they hope to prevail against a power so ancient, so pitiless, so inexorable? The town of Pleasant Brook becomes the battleground for a confrontation between humanity's resilience and an evil beyond imagination."
Great characters, great storyline, I give this book 4 stars.
Thanks to netgalley, Crystal Lake Publishing for the opportunity to leave an honest review.
Published Oct 13th, 2023

thank you to netgalley, the publisher, and kevin lucia for the advanced readers copy of "the horror at pleasant brook". this horror story is set in the small, eerie town of pleasant brook. the isolated small town setting really drew me in. it is a classic trope, but a reliable one. this horror story felt very traditional in its scares. blood, guts, and gore galore. lucia was NOT afraid to kill off his characters, and he scares me for that (joking)! i wish i could have read this around halloween, because "the horror at pleasant brook" is the perfect spooky season read. i look forward to seeing more from this author in the future.

Equal parts The Evil Dead meets Demons, you can tell Kevin Lucia is a genre fan with his novel The Horror at Pleasant Brook. While it doesn’t reinvent the wheel, it does provide a fun read. If you’re looking for deep characters, this may not be the book for you. If you’re looking for a worthy entry into the splatterpunk genre, welcome to Pleasant Brook.

This definitely gave me some old school horror and had a quick fun start! It did start to slow down a bit and stalled my reading of it, but once I got back into it, it picked up! I did not care for the trope of characters doing dumb stuff, but sometimes that’s fun a slasher-type book!

Horror at Pleasant Brook by Kevin Lucia was a pleasant surprise. I am a lover of horror but so often, horror is written in ways that can be derogatory to women and minority groups and this one I felt really turned that on it's head. As it began with a lot of sex (which is very common in horror as well) I was worried this was going to be one of THOSE kind of books but that was the only time it was used and it was part of the story. I can handle that.
Moving forward, we are hearing from a diverse group of characters, each with their own hidden pain and trauma. You get to know them and I honestly started to like them all. It's a real bummer when they start getting picked off one by one....
As for the actual horror, the others were terrifying and the use of the mask was truly disturbing. I never want to run into those things. My only quibble would be I don't know if I ever fully understood what exactly they were or why...but they were creepy and totally made the story.
Without any spoilers, I was devastated by the ending. Way to rip my heart out Lucia!
I would highly recommend this author to any of my patrons looking for a good horror novel. I will add Lucia to my must read list.

(This Digital ARC was provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review)

An engaging, horrifying read that hooks you into the action & its world from the very beginning. Here, a small town is plagued with a supernatural threat that creeps up onto them, and the plot that follows feels both realistic and terrifying. The motley ragtag group of protagonists are forced to deal with a situation they are woefully underprepared for, and the final third of the book leads to a climax of the plot that was so insane I could not look away.

The Horror at Pleasant Brook is meta in its awareness of itself as a horror story set in a world where horror movies are a thing (one of the protagonists is himself a horror movie aficionado), but it also heavily borrows from horror tropes to further its plot. The more typical horror story elements did result in some scenes of the book feeling repetitive and drawn out, but for the most part, they were used well. The story also features descriptions of gore and violence that border on gratuitous. but in my opinion, it was still tastefully used.

Normally books that feature COVID as a plot point aren't typically my favourite, but I can accept the necessity of requiring such a massive event to be referenced in stories set in the post 2020 period. This story does not fall into this category. Without spoilers, the inclusion of the COVID lockdowns adds greatly to the horror setting.

As for the flaws: Despite featuring a range of characters and POV's, almost everyone's inner monologue sounds identical. I also thought the romance being included half way through the book was ham-fisted and unnecessary, especially since it felt like it came out of nowhere.

Overall, this is a great horror read, with one of the most terrifying monster-villains I have ever read. 4/5, would love to see what this author comes up with next.

Pleasant Brook is a small town that's barely big enough to be called a town. As Halloween approaches weird things are happening in the town. People are disappearing and people in strange masks are stalking around the shadows. Can whatever evil that's plaguing Pleasant Brook be stopped?

Kevin Lucia is a great story teller. The Horror at Pleasant Brook played out like a movie in my head. I grew to knew and love the characters as well. I wish we would have gotten a touch more lore on the big bad spooky stuff but otherwise really enjoyed the book.


Thank you to NetGalley and Crystal Lake Publishing for the ARC!

I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley (thanks, NetGalley!). There was a lot I liked about this book--the somewhat unique concept, a variety of characters, genuinely creepy moments--but I did have my complaints as well. I do spoil a few things in this review, so proceed with caution.

First, the positives. I thought the masked creatures were an original concept, combining a lot of the horror of vampires and zombies. Lucia's visual descriptions were strong and striking; I had many visceral reactions to the scenes. It certainly spooked me. I also liked that Lucia tried to incorporate characters from a variety of backgrounds, and I especially appreciated the focus on queer characters. The characters drew from archetypes (horror-loving teenager, small town law enforcement, etc.) but still felt original and real to the book, not just a stock cast of characters. They each had a fair amount of backstory and their own personalities.

That said, several aspects of the book took me out of it. First, the pacing. The book opens with a pretty gruesome scene, and several of the opening scenes are similarly dark. While these scenes pack a punch at first, it really throws off the pacing of the rest of the book. It is hard to raise the tension and the stakes when you start off with murdering people and making more masked creatures. Every scene that follows, you can basically assume that there's a good chance the character you're reading about it about to die in a fairly predictable way. I found myself comparing the book to 'Salem's Lot, which I think does a better job of pacing (for example, a dog found dead in a graveyard and people getting sick rather than immediately jolting the audience with bloody murder scenes). This unfortunately makes the book a bit formulaic and it means a lot of the deaths lose their impact. Lucia often tries to remedy this by giving characters lots of backstory, but this doesn't really help the issue. For example, the death of the security guard who finally gets his opportunity to show his bravery ends up losing a lot of its emotional weight because that chapter is the first time we ever see that character.

Additionally, I felt like there were some inconsistencies and examples of characters not acting very wisely in a way that was very frustrating. For example, we learn fairly early on that the creatures fear crosses, yet about halfway through the book, all the protagonists seem to stop attempting to use this knowledge or learn more (e.g., does holy water work too? Would a cross drawn in permanent marker work as well as a tattoo in providing protection?). Another example is the fact that the creatures are somehow able to use mind control to a certain extent, but they seem to use it really rarely, making it feel more like a convenient plot device than a genuine part of their backstory.

Further, I was pretty disappointed in the lack of character development. Many of the protagonists struggle with something--alcohol abuse, questioning their sexuality, uncertainty over career prospects, parental relationships--and yet we rarely see any moments of growth. Of course, part of the tragedy of the book is that some things are cut short and that people die before pursuing their goals, but even so, I think this detracts from the book. An example is Scott and Jasper's reckonings with their sexuality. Jasper shows just the beginnings of self-reflection when he is turned, but Scott's arc does not really end up going anywhere. I would have loved to see him question what it means to have Jasper showing up at his doorstep night after night, even in monster form, or some kind of processing beyond just the immediate shame.

I want to end by saying that despite the book's flaws, I really enjoyed reading it. Lucia definitely excelled at creating memorable, chilling moments. Three weeks after finishing it, I still find myself a little unnerved entering my house at night, as a little part of me fears coming across one of these masked creatures. I expect scenes from the book will continue to flash through my memory as the weather gets colder and we get closer to Samhain.

The concept is cool. I just found the style of writing to be a bit amateurish. I found myself skipping over paragraphs about halfway through. And every time someone new saw someone wearing the mask, we get the description over and over and over again. I get that’s part of the story but jeez.

3/5 Stars

This was a quick and fun read that would have been even better had I been able to read it during spooky season. More than serviceable prose, fast pacing, and a unique take on small town horror. I don't have much else to say other than this makes for a great palette cleanse read in between larger books. I enjoyed the 80s vibes despite not taking place in the 80s and the evil big bad reminded me a bit of the antagonist from No Country For Old Men in a sense that he was an inevitable dark fate for the protagonist. Inescapable.

Thank you NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

My thoughts:

👹 The Positives:

▪️ I really enjoyed the plot. It reminded me of the movie Slither, only instead of slug-like aliens taking over a small town, it was a multiplying demon mask.

▪️ The characters were great. There was gay, lesbian, and nonbinary representation, and the story felt overall inclusive. There was even a homeless character that wasn’t written in an overly stereotypical way, which was refreshing.

▪️ The demon masks were creepy, and the kills were creatively gruesome.

▪️ There were nods to other horror books and movies, which were fun to spot.

👹 The Negatives:

▪️ I found this book to be repetitive at times.

▪️ Something I think will be a negative for some is that this story takes place during COVID, and there are a lot of mentions of remote schooling, shops closing, and people’s views about precautions, mandates, etc. If these things bother you, this is probably a book you’d want to avoid.


Overall, I enjoyed this book. I felt it could’ve been a 5-star read had a lot of the repetitive stuff (recapping the plot, describing the mask over and over, etc.) been cut, but as it stands, here are my ratings:

Plot: 👹👹👹👹 /5
Characters: 🧟‍♀️🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️🧟‍♂️ /5
Scare Factor: ☠️☠️☠️ /5
Final Score: ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 /5

The Horror at Pleasant Brook? More like the horror of an unpleasant book. I liked the concept of the story, I just wish it was a bit better. Would still recommend reading it though.

Oh my lord I wasn't expecting to like this as much as I did. It had me gripped straight from the get go. It felt like I was reading a teen slasher movie (specifically Scream because it talks about horror movie tropes and cliches, which I find is in itself a cliche now however this book did it well). It follows a lot of characters of a small town in America during the Covid pandemic being terrorised by beings wearing masks. Highly rate for a spooky and quick Halloween read.