Thank you to Tor Nightfire and NetGalley for this roller coaster of an ARC. It was wildly gripping and definitely a page turner. If you enjoy tense, ominous, disturbing stories with a lot of family drama mixed with the paranormal, pick this up when it drops March 26, 2024.

My god… when I signed up for this book I didn’t quite know what to expect other than a haunting Italian vacation. What I got instead was an incredible thought provoking journey of agency and what it’s like being an “unlikeable” woman. This book was impeccable the entire time and great for fans of “good for her” horror.

If I could give this book some vibe siblings I’d go with Black Christmas (74), Sara Gran’s Come Closer, and Rachel Harrison’s Black Sheep

Thanks so much to TOR Nightfire for access to this Net Galley! I was so happy to be able to read and review this book and it will definitely be a book I want a physical copy of for my library. This book was the perfect amount of scary and oddly enough dark humor for me! Anna and her disbelief that this haunting could be happening to her and her family is exactly how I would feel. Like, REALLY? I am who you want to mess around with? The fact that it happens on a family vacation was also a close hit to home because my wife and in laws love to go on trips to Air B&Bs together and now I will be looking over my shoulder all the time for Caterina! This book is perfect for the horror lover in your life and a book that begs to be made into a movie or series! This is my first book by Thorne and now I will be in search for more of her work.

I was drawn to this title because of the cover and the book did not disappoint. The pacing of the story kept me engaged and wanting to know more about this twisted family vacation that turned quite eerie. There were points where I had chills and felt like I was there. I did not want the story to stop...and at the same time I did not want to be with that house anymore.

Truly an exciting ghost story!

Diavola is a well-paced haunted house thriller that delivers deeper meaning. I couldn’t put it down!

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for this ARC!This was my first read by this author and I was drawn in by the cover.

What I liked:
The setting
The pacing
Jennifer’s writing was top tier

What I didn’t like;
The ending, I wanted more
The labeling of this book as horror, the horror is very light and I’d put this more as a creepy thriller

All and all, this was a solid read! I’d read more from Throne in the future.

I absolutely loved this one and stayed up at night to finish it. The creepiness combined so perfectly with the family drama! I could just picture that sickly yellow color so vividly. La Dama Bianca was done so well and I really loved the unusual background twist it came with (which i'm only not talking more about to avoid spoilers). I loved the sarcastic tone of the main character, Anna. Great haunting overall! Huge thanks to Tor Nightfire for the ARC.

I loved this book!! A messy family vacation with a cast of unlikeable characters taking place in a haunted villa in beautiful Tuscany. What more could you want?

Diavola by Jennifer Thorne was one of my most anticipated books of the year but unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy it. I think the writing style just didn’t work for me because I never felt connected to the characters. The pacing was also very strange through the whole book.

It seems like I am in the minority of people since I didn’t enjoy this so I think this will work for a lot of people. Just not me.

Diavola is a captivating slow burn gothic horror that fills you with unease throughout its pages. It offers a modern twist on the haunted house trope, as a dysfunctional family embarks on a vacation that takes a sinister turn. I really appreciated the atmosphere and felt like the creeping dread throughout was masterfully executed, and while there was a brief repetitive phase in the story about 3/4 of the way through, the pacing quickly picked up again at the end. Overall, I felt that Diavola was a very unique and eerie read and one that I’ll be recommending quite often.

Anna is kind of the black sheep of her family, and when they all go to Italy for a family vacation she knows it's going to take everything she has to survive it. When she arrives at the little villa she knows immediately that something is wrong, and that feeling only grows as the days go by. Not only does Anna have to deal with the growing dread she can feel every time she enters the villa but also her absolutely horrible family, of whom the only ones I cared about other than Anna herself were her nieces. Every moment they are in the villa the creepy goings-on get worse and worse until.. well I don't want to spoil what happens but at this point, I was on the edge of my seat, and the story wasn't even finished yet!
I loved the atmosphere Jennifer Thorne created, and Anna was the perfect main character for this story. There were no points where I wanted to put this book down and ended up reading it in one sitting. The haunting got steadily worse, and by the time we got to the end I had no idea how Anna was going to deal with it all, or if she would even survive it.
I loved this from page one, the ending was great, and I was definitely left spooked after finishing it late into the night. It didn't end at all how I expected, but I loved it!
This is a book that I will absolutely be adding to my physical library, and I'll be diving into her backlist and looking forward to whatever she writes next!

The tension and suspense were definitely being built by someone trying to pay rent..! Anna's family seems to be made up of some unpleasant characters that seem fine on the surface but once you get to know them, you realize they each possess one big red flag that can't be overlooked. This was definitely a book that brought discomfort from the two sides of the living and the dead but also kept the story rolling so that you'd want to stick around to see how it all resolved. I do wish we had been given more details about the fates of the rest of Anna's family at the end, but overall, I think the story concluded on a satisfying note.

"Jennifer Thorne skewers all-too-familiar family dynamics in this sly, wickedly funny vacation-Gothic. Beautifully unhinged and deeply satisfying, Diavola is a sharp twist on the classic haunted house story, exploring loneliness, belonging, and the seemingly inescapable bonds of family mythology.

Anna has two rules for the annual Pace family destination vacations: Tread lightly and survive.

It isn't easy when she's the only one in the family who doesn't quite fit in. Her twin brother, Benny, goes with the flow so much he's practically dissolved, and her older sister, Nicole, is so used to everyone - including her blandly docile husband and two kids - falling in line that Anna often ends up in trouble for simply asking a question. Mom seizes every opportunity to question her life choices, and Dad, when not reminding everyone who paid for this vacation, just wants some peace and quiet.

The gorgeous, remote villa in tiny Monteperso seems like a perfect place to endure so much family togetherness, until things start going off the rails - the strange noises at night, the unsettling warnings from the local villagers, and the dark, violent past of the villa itself.

(Warning: May invoke feelings of irritation, dread, and despair that come with large family gatherings.)"

Damn, I love the "Warning!"

This is a wonderful paranormal horror story that includes some serious family drama. Set in an idyllic Italian villa, the author creates a juxtaposition between the beauty of the location and the horror elements that make this story so intense. Anna is on a vacation with her family with whom she has a bad relationship. As the week progresses the house and La Dama Bianca's activity builds. What follows is a riveting story that had me turning pages and I definitely did not see where the story was going to go or how it to end. I loved the atmosphere, all the regular family moments that played so well off the creepy happenings, and especially the creativity of Diavola.

Thank you Tor Publishing for the advanced gifted copy. This is my honest review.

The haunted house plus possession plus insane family tensions all on a vacation in Italy? This was an amazing ride, with ebbs and flows of pace, but all pretty great. The best part is Anna's attitude - she claps back whenever needed, takes control when needed, and still tries her best to give her frustratingly hard-headed family what they need. And the haunted house elements were just enough to be spooky, but never too much to verge into crazy gore horror - a perfect balance to me. I will look forward to more spooky tales by Thorne!

Absolutely loved this! First time I’ve been genuinely creeped out by a book in quite a while. Haunted house stories can often flop for me, but this one was just what I’d been looking for. Horrifyingly creepy and subtly eerie at once, building sense of dread throughout, relatable main character, messy family dynamics, incredible setting, and hilarious dark humor. Can’t wait to read more from this author!

This book made me want to go to Italy reeeaal baaad. But, you know, maybe skip the haunted villa portion of the story and just do a casual trip without evil spirits. That would be ideal.

Diavola was a great slow burn horror story. The tension builds as the characters become certain that the lovely Italian villa they have rented in Tuscany for their dysfunctional family trip has a dark entity stalking the halls and a mysterious tower that shouldn't be opened under any circumstances...and that's just to start with.

I loved the descriptions in this. The story has some very spooky moments. Some of the messed up family dynamics became repetitive and got in the way of the haunted house plot, which I was invested in and wanted to read more of, but overall this was a solid read that kept me engaged to the end. And oh, what an ending it was! I love a book that goes off the rails in the final portions. It really fills my cup.

Ghost stories are one of the most common kinds of stories in horror, so it's always a bit of a challenge to try to innovate on its tropes and ideas. Recently, writers like Allison Rumfitt or Gwendolyn Kiste have been trying to expand on what a haunting can represent through media, and in my opinion it is this interest in taking the old but trying to converse with it in a novel way that has made the subgenre come alive again.

Jennifer Thorne's Diavola is another intentful reimagining of classical ghost tropes to invoke something more novel in our conversation about haunting and being haunted. In this case, Thorne places the story in Tuscany, where the not-so-nice Pace family goes for a vacation. Anna, the story's protagonist, is the black sheep of the Pace family, and she is haunted both by a literal ghost, but also the residual haunting of her family's perception of her past actions.

The story's conflict ultimately resolves around who Anna is now in comparison to who Anna was, and how difficult it is for her family to forgive her past indiscretions (if they can even be understood to be indiscretions) as Anna has grown into her own self. So much of the book can be attributed to Pace family malice toward Anna, a malice that is felt and mirrored by the malevolent presence of a predatory ghost trapped in their Tuscan villa rental.

The book really swings wide by exposing the way that the Pace family thinks and feels about Anna, about their projected narrative of Anna's life even as Anna herself hides a deeper truth none wish to acknowledge. The book's plot makes a major turn in the last third of the book; the transition the book makes is still thematically part of the big swing Thorne seems to be making about how toxic family relationships have the potential to throw lives completely out of balance. The book uses Anna's haunting as a means to inspect Anna's own identity and performative meaning-making, which thus attributes a kind of dual-purpose for the book's major metaphor about haunting or being haunted. The ghost of La Dama Bianca is a fascinating presence in the book so far as it juxtaposes two different conversations about how we frame identity and autonomy in and through relationships.

The book is also quite funny in places, where it is clear that Thorne is having a lot of fun. It's rare to discover a book with a genuine sense of humor that is still provoking worthy conversation about complicated and emotional themes. Diavola offers a triumphant laugh as it works through unsettling material, both domestic and supernatural.

I think this is yet another fine addition to the folk-horror/ghost story genre, definitely worthy of reading and reflecting on.

Disclosure statement: I received a copy of this book from the author's publicity team in exchange for review. My opinions have not been influenced by either publisher or author in any capacity. Any thoughts are entirely my own.

I loved Lute so much, so I was very excited to receive an ARC of this one. It was SO good. I loved to hate every member of Anna's family because they were just so terrible to her. These characters were despicable, and I found myself constantly wondering why they treated her so terribly - like someone just be kind. Thorne did an AMAZING job writing a highly dysfunctional family. The family dynamics were often MORE disturbing to me than the actual ghost shenanigans, which to me means she nailed it.

The atmosphere was SO well written. The bits in Italy felt like they had that surreal, hazy quality of an Italian summer vacation, and I was here for it. As the ghostly presence became more and more prevalent in Anna's life, there was a creeping sense of dread, and I found myself genuinely worried for her. Thorne really did a great job conveying these feelings of despair and hopelessness.

Overall, the plot was very well executed, and I felt a serious sense of pressure building. If you like horror, this is a do not miss!

A slow burn, with a nice payoff! This is a story filled with the horrors of toxic family dynamics, the pressures of having to keep your shit together, and (maybe) a haunting, all set against the back drop of a beautiful, Italian vacation. And I loved it!

It was the right amount of unhinged, and Anna may be one of my new favorite characters. She tells it like it is and has a ICONIC method for dealing with the supernatural. So much fun!

Featured in this reading vlog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0L8g5amE0jE

Thank you to the publisher for granting me access to an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions remain my own.