Have you ever read a book that had you convinced someone wrote it explicitly to annoy you personally? Simon R. Green's *The Holy Terrors* is that book for me. Spoilers ahead.

The pitch had me hooked immediately. A cast of Z-list celebrities enter a haunted house to film a reality TV show only to find that it's really haunted and everyone is about to die? Sign me up!

I went into this expecting a tense chiller that evoked horror classics like *Ghost Watch* and *The Borderlands* and poked fun at shows like *Most Haunted*. I haven't been more disappointed by something failing to deliver on its promise in a very long time.

It does start strong, introducing us to a pair of main characters who I felt like I could get along with. Alistair is a young bishop who's a hit on TV, and Diana is an aging actress trying to stay relevant and maintain her career. Their initial meeting is fun and we're given a strong sense of who these characters are, and I was optimistic. There's also some fun cynicism aimed at the premise of the show - "Am I to take it you don't much care for the programme?" Alistair asks early on, to which Diana replies "Of course not. I've seen it." - and I was looking forward to seeing it subverted once the action starts and the real haunting begins.

Unfortunately it's all downhill from there. The rest of the characters are flat and one dimensional - Toby, a washed-up comedian who responds to everything with one-liners that aren't even worthy of a child; Leslie, a TV medium and co-host of the show who we never really learn anything about; June, the jaded host of the show who can't decide whether the guests should act scared or not and spends all her time insulting them and the audience; and Indira, the winner of a TV cooking show who turns up with shopping bags full of food and *that's her entire gimmick*. We never learn anything about any of them, even though some of them (comedian and cook, plus Alistair and Diana) develop incredibly deep relationships very quickly. After Indira dies Toby is absolutely distraught, crying over her body and talking about how she was the daughter he never had. We never, ever see any of this relationship develop on the page. Perhaps there's an argument to be made that Green was making a commentary about the way contestants on reality TV forge quick, fake relationships in order to try and avoid getting voted off, but typing that and expecting anybody to take me seriously feels like an incredible stretch. If that's what the aim was here then it doesn't go anywhere far enough to deliver on it.

The characters may be empty and boring but that, unfortunately, isn't the novel's biggest sin. The main problem here is that we're never given any reason to believe anything that we're seeing. Two things contribute to this.

The first is the problem of June, the host. From the moment the group steps through the doors of the allegedly haunted house she spends all her time undermining any attempt to make the haunting feel real. She constantly talks about everything being fake, about how her tech team have "been all over this house" fitting it with hidden cameras and wires and switches to dim the lights. (Having seen *The Borderlands* I assumed this also meant they had hidden speakers inside the walls to make noises, which turned out to be an accurate guess.) She says all this despite the show being broadcast live, telling us that "Derek [the director] will make sure the nice people at home only see and hear what we want them to. He can fade the mikes in and out, and use camera angles to force the audience’s attention to where we want it. We also have a built-in delay, to give him plenty of time to make up his mind."

Unfortunately, we as readers act as the stand-in for the live audience here. The audience may not be able to hear June talking about how it's all fake and how the people who watch these shows are idiots, but we can. Every time she opens her mouth we're reminded that none of this is real, and the contempt with which June treats both her audience and her guests - and thus, us - oozes off the page and poisons the reading experience.

June is also entirely inconsistent in her demands on the guests (and, through them, on us as readers). She wants them to act like they're scared any time something weird happens, but the second they seem to believe that what they're experiencing is real she rolls her eyes and tells them to behave themselves. It's deeply frustrating.

The second issue is that the events are presented to us through Alistair's point of view. We see what he sees and feel what he feels. This means that at some point he has to start believing that what's going on is real, otherwise we can't believe that it's real. The problem lies in the fact that he enters the house believing it's all an act and is never given any reason to doubt it. Green does seem to try to wrestle with this, and we see brief moments of Alistair wanting to believe what's happening is real, but we never tip over into him being actually scared and actually convinced there's something supernatural at play here.

This is also the reason why the ending completely fails to land. After discovering what June has been doing and why people are dying, Alistair somehow convinces her that there are, in fact, supernatural things happening in the house. Her response to this is an irrational, terrified attempt to flee that ultimately ends in her downfall. But there's no reason June would ever believe any of this, because she knows that the whole thing is fake and that she's been in control of it all the entire time. Why would she ever, for a single second, believe that Alistair can summon demons to hurt her? It makes absolutely no sense.

The final insult to the intelligence of the readers comes in the dying words of the novel, as Alistair and Diana stumble out of the house and dub themselves "The Holy Terrors". Does this name call back to anything that happened in the novel? No, absolutely not. Does it feel like they do this purely because Green intends this book to be the first in a series, and this is the name of the series? Yes. It's a final act of cynicism that puts a capstone on a thoroughly miserable reading experience. I feel insulted as a reader, as a fan of horror, and as a fan of locked-room mysteries.

The Verdict: Avoid this.

I usually like most things written by Simon R. Green, but this one seemed to be the exception.
I didn’t hate it, by any means, it just took a while to get going for me.
In this book, four minor celebrities and two hosts of a ghost hunting show are spending the night in a haunted building.
Sounds like a great concept. But the first part of the book nothing really happened. After the doors close on the haunted building, there were quite a few pages of just talking heads. That’s it. No excitement. Nothing of any real interest. People talked and tried to get to know each other. People argued about the nature of the show. They had tea.
It wasn’t until about halfway through the book when things started happening.
After that, I had no real problems with the book and read it quite quickly.
This book seemed a bit tame for Simon R. Green. I’m used to his books being over the top in most things. This one, definitely was not.
The ending came about and I was not disappointed.
It just took a while to get there.

As a fan of all of the ghost hunting type shows, the premise of this book grabbed my attention, and I had to know how this story unfolded. We follow six characters throughout this story: Alistair, a newly appointed bishop, Diana, an actress trying to stay relevant, Toby, a comedian holding onto his career, Indira, a celebrity chef, Leslie, the ‘Spooky Time!’ resident medium, and June, the show’s host/producer.

For the positives, I enjoyed the atmosphere of the haunted hall and the idea of these characters being trapped overnight as they filmed this live-streamed TV special. Nothing paranormal really occurs until the 40-50% point in the book, but the banter and dialogue between characters kept my attention, for the most part. I was trying my best to figure out if there were truly paranormal forces behind the events, or it if was all manufactured for the show. It did have me guessing for longer than I anticipated. I will admit I am also a sucker for ghost hunting shows, so I was reading it as if I was getting to witness some exclusive behind the scenes content!

Now for the not so positives. Like I said, nothing paranormal happened until I was well into the book. Personally, I could’ve used more. I also said the dialogue kept my attention for the most part, but I did reach a point where I felt I was reading the same conversations over and over again. Some of the relationships that developed seemed pretty random to me and left me confused at how we got from Point A to Point B. And the ending did wrap up quite suddenly.

Overall, I would say liked it. It was ok. It does sound as though this will be the first in a series of stories, so I’d be interested to read the next installment to see how it compares to this book. This was a quick and easy read that made me want to start watching reruns of Ghost Adventures 😂

Thank you NetGalley and Severn House for this ARC!

I love a locked room horror mystery,
It did take me a little while to get into the story but I did enjoy the journey.
Thanks to Netgalley

Thank you to Severn House (publisher) and Simon R. Green (author) for granting me access to this ARC through NetGalley.com in exchange for an honest review.

Six persons trapped into a house is a common enough setting to be its own trope by now, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing - for me it is one that I tend to actively seek out. It seems like a simple enough setting, but I have found that writing a story like this can make for a lot of different variation and requires real skill to make it work.

The dialogues and interactions between the six characters in "The Holy Terrors" worked really well and the writing was of high quality. The narrator/main character Alistair I think was written to be the most likeable character of the lot, even though I found him a bit too much. Likeability wasn't that much of a factor in the story though, it was credibility - they all came off as quite flawed persons, ranging from sorta-annoying to I-can't-believe-no one-is-punching-them-in-the-face-annoying. That just this sort of group would come together in this setting: the last big effort to save a dying reality show, was also quite realistic.

The entire story takes place during just one night, which is too short a timeframe for any character growth to be expected. I do feel that some more character depth might have been beneficial though. This could potentially have been achieved by switching out the narrator every now and then and letting the other characters speak, so to say. As for Alistair, some more introspective thought on his part, revealing his history and feelings would also have been helpful to create more of an immersive atmosphere and helped the reader actually care more about the fate of the characters.

A lot of great books have been ruined by being made into disappointing movies. For the second time within a month I do however find myself thinking that this book would benefit from being made into a movie. The superb writing when it comes to setting up the dialogue and creating the right sort of personalities in this setting could then better be the actual focus, when the atmosphere would be created visually and with auditory effects. Then the introspective thoughts I recommended above would also be irrelevant as that is not much of a thing in most movies.

The biggest problem this book has though, in my opinion, is in the marketing: how it is presented to the reader. It's described as a paranormal mystery, which sets the reader to have certain expectations that are not being filled. Sure, the setting is a spooky show, but that is not enough to warrant it being called "paranormal". It would have to delve much deeper into paranormal than it does for filling the expectations the reader gets from that description. Market the book as a "murder mystery" instead and I think the reception would change quite a bit as the expectations would be different; more open as the setting for such allows for a wider range of happenings and playouts. Readers would not be as easily disappointed then, as their expectations would be less narrowed down.

I am giving this book 3,5/5 stars, which I round up to 4. This rating due to that the book itself was very well written - albeit a bit more depth would have been preferrable - and the biggest issue is that my expectations due to the description was way different than how the book turned out to be, and that does create a bit of a discrepancy in how I think of the book while reading it and an overall more negative view.

Great spooky read!
A group of minor celebrities are locked together in a haunted hall for a reality show. Strange happenings lead to a death, and there is no way out!
Brilliant writing, characters and scenery. I was hooked as the plot evolved,with lots of humour too.
Looking forward to the next in the series, excellent read!

From the prompt alone, I thought this novel would lean into horror, but its supposedly a mystery series. I quickly dnfed, because it is just not very subtle. Nonsense dialogue, where characters randomly tell each other about their personalities and what their perception of their dialogue partner is..

I really, really wanted to like this book, but it was not a winner for me. In the spirit of October being spooky season I chose this book hoping it would actually be spooky. Instead, it was pretty boring, and overall just odd. The relationship that developed between Tony and Indira was bizarre. In just a matter of hours of being on the show together he was talking about adopting her. I was waiting for some sort of reveal telling the reader that they were actually related in some way or that he was her long-lost true father, but that wasn't the case. Ultimately it made their relationship super creepy in a different kind of way. Alistair was supposed to be a man of the cloth who makes some strange decisions when it comes to actress Olivia, and is the person who solves the crime. The wrap-up with June was disappointing and I saw it coming from ten miles away.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a chance to read this book. I apologize that I was so disappointed in this in the end.

For a short-ish book, it took me an age to read it as it wasn't as engaging as I hoped.
This supposed 4 strangers strike up such closeness in the space of a couple of hours and it's rather unbelievable and the scary parts, just weren't?
I figured out the twist quite early on.

2.5stars rounded up cause I like Alastair as a character. No nonsense skeptic!

I'm a huge Simon R Gren fan, but this book did not meet his normal standards for excitement and intrigue. I absolutely love his Nightside and Deathstalker and Hawk & Fisher books.
I would still like to thank NetGalley for the chance to read this book early. Even though it fell short, I still enjoyed reading the style. Anyone who reads Simon R Green either loves his flippant conversational style or they cannot enjoy his books. I personally love it, and always feel that I'm on an adventure.
In this case, the adventure is a group of people brought together for a paranormal reality TV show. Is it haunted? Do ghosts exist? And of course there's a murder.
Unfortunately, nothing happens for most of the books, and when things do start happening, they don't really make sens with what we already know of the characters.
Still, with my experience of the author, my disappointment with the first in this series won't keep me from reading everything else by him, and I highly encourage everyone who loves urban fantasy to give him a try.

I had no idea that Simon Green was already famous for his Nightside series when I requested this book from NetGalley and I must say this is book does not do him any favors in me wanting to read it.

The plot sounds cool but everything else was not good to me.

Several people get chosen to be on a show like Ghost Hunters. They got locked in a haunted hallway, which is already a “meh” setting, but they’re being filmed of their survival for one night where 20+ people have already been killed. You get a mediocre build up of tension from random sounds in the walls and footsteps but nobody is there. Then people start dying and there ends up being the same clue on all the bodies which already gives away the big reveal that I almost 100% figured out at about 75%. The “big” reveal happens and the book ends within 5 pages and even the ending was bad. The characters are very annoying. I don’t know if I can ever stand to hear the word “darling” ever again. There’s not one but TWO characters that constantly use the word and it’s given me ptsd.

I seriously recommend the publisher do some changes before putting this out to the public…

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review "The Holy Terrors" by Simon R. Green.
Just let me start off by saying that I have been reading Simon R. Green's books for many years now (Tales From The Nightside, Shaman Bond, etc.) so I'm no stranger to Mr. Green's writing; this does not rank among his best, but it's an interesting little side trip into the proverbial locked room mystery - with a supernatural twist.
"Spooky Time!", a hit reality-based ghost hunting show has fallen on hard times, so the producers come up with the idea for a 'live' show, airing from The Most Haunted Hall in England (TM).
A group of not-so-celebrated celebrities are invited: a has-been comic, a one-hit wonder TV chef, an aging actress and a talk-show celebrity, renegade Bishop are invited to be on the show with the caveat that they will be locked in for the night and whatever happens will be live-streamed to the show's audience.
Right away things begin to go wrong: the kitchen is a wreck, the facilities are nowhere up to snuff and the show runners don't really seem to get along. And then, the guests begin dropping dead!
The conversations between characters are peppered with Mr. Green's usual witty repartee, but that's about it.
I'd like to say more, but I really feel that this is not one of his better books. And I figured out the killer (but maybe not the motive, although that should have been apparent) at about the same time that they did.

Rating: 2.8/5

Sadly, I suspect that this book may become a victim of its own marketing blurb. It is described as: 'This first in a spine-tingling new paranormal mystery series from bestselling British fantasy author Simon R. Green will make you doubt your judgement - and believe in ghosts!'

Well, there is very little, if anything about "The Holy Terrors" that is spine tingling and I very much doubt that anyone will be persuaded to believe in ghosts as a result of reading it - but then I don't think that was ever the author's intention. This novella is quite a fun, tongue-in-cheek read that pokes fun at so-called reality tv shows featuring "B" list celebrities in general, but particularly at series such as "Most Haunted" that deal with "investigations" into the paranormal.

The premise is a straightforward one: two hosts and four guest "celebrities" are trapped in a situation they can't escape inside a building that is claimed to be one of the most haunted in the country. The celebs are (at best) "B"-listers who are either over the hill, or never even made it up the incline in the first place. The writing is fluent and predominantly in the style of a humorous cosy mystery. Simon R. Green handles the characterisation effectively - although there is no great depth to any of the dramatis personae - and the dialogue is natural. There is nothing scary here for fans of the horror genre, nor is the mystery going to tax the brains of regular readers of that genre either - but as a light-hearted novella that can be read quickly and easily, while raising a few smiles along the way, it does its job.

The marketing blurb hints that this may be the start of a series of books, but I am not sure that would be wise. I was entertained by this as a one-off, but I am not convinced that either the characters or the format are strong enough to warrant further outings.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for supplying an ARC in return for an honest review.

4 guests and 2 hosts locked up for a whole night in a haunted house to film Spooky Time! show, what could go wrong?
At first we meet the characters where Bishop Alistair and actress Diana stand out, between them a flirtatious relationship begins while comedian Toby and chef Indira seem to understand and support each other. Host June, a strong-willed woman, and Leslie, the resident medium, don't always seem to see eye to eye.
What looked like it was going to be a quiet night slowly turns into a night of terror. Or at least that was the intention of the author who at the beginning succeeds but little by little the story is diluted with characters that do not have too much development for my taste. I also found the ending a bit weak and I was waiting for something more interesting.
It's an entertaining novel but it doesn't go much further than that.

The authors writing is very good, but there is too much over complication with the plot, storyline, characters. Wanted it to be scarier and less about everything else.

This isn’t great but it’s not bad either. A book with only six characters and one location is going to be “talky” and “talky” it is. The problem is that the story just isn’t that interesting. The banter between the two hosts and four B List celebrities is fun but the tale itself lacks muscle. The two main characters , a media savvy priest and an aging actress are well-drawn and as this seems to be the first installment of a series I’ll be interested to see their further exploits.

3.5 stars.

I was excited to jump into this with what seemed like such a creepy premise. Then as I slowly forced myself to just keep reading that excitement sadly died down. This did not have a lot of substance. As a reader, I like to be in the mind of the characters in a book to get to know them. Unfortunately this did not happen as there was barely any inner dialogue whatsoever. There was also no character development going on and I never really ended up caring for any of the characters or the plot itself. I hate giving negative reviews so I will leave it at that. Two Stars.

Thank you Netgalley and Severn House for this ARC.

Woo boy. This one is an ARC so I'mma be as nice as I can be, I promise. I mean, don't get me wrong – I was super emotionally invested in this book, but unfortunately those emotions consisted of boredom (the first half), excitement that something (anything!) was actually happening (the middle), disbelief over the terrible big reveal (the ending), and relief that it was finally over. And I really, really tried to like this book, I truly did.

First off, most of The Holy Terrors consists of unlikeable* characters arguing with each other. And there is a lot of arguing, because this is the most dialogue-heavy book that I've ever read, hands down. There is pretty much no description and almost no insight into the characters' inner thoughts. The characters' backstories consist of a few lines of dialogue each. This book is probably 70% bickering and threats, 20% Diana saying “Bish” or “darling,” and 10% actual substance.

And can we talk about how unnaturally attached the characters got to each other in such a short period of time? They were in this place for, what? Twelve hours, perhaps? Within a few hours of meeting, one of the characters had practically adopted another and was swearing fealty to her like he was a medieval European knight. And “Bish” and Diana needed to get a room. “Ever since I met you, not all my thoughts have been fit for family viewing.” Classy, Bishop, very classy.

Next up: The big reveal. I think pretty much everyone will see the bulk of the it coming – it's rather obvious from very early on. But the method by which certain … things were accomplished? Come on now. Aliens could have beamed into the hall at the end and claimed responsibility via space lasers and it would have been more believable than what was actually written. I wish I could say more without spoiling things because holy crap you guys, but alas.

And then there's Alistair's sudden transformation into an insta-detective for the reveal. One minute he's a bishop and the next he's Hercule Poirot … kind of. It was so disorienting and unexpected.

So what did I like about this book? Well, the premise was good. I'm a sucker for campy ghost hunting shows, and this could be an amazing story with some (okay, a lot of) revisions. I also really liked Leslie's character, despite all of his flaws, and I wish he could have had more page time – nothing makes for a good haunted house (building?) story like a medium communing with the dead. I also think that the relationships between the characters could have been a selling point had they been built up a little more slowly and with some substance behind them.

Final rating: 1.6 stars, rounded up. The idea was good but the execution flawed.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Severn House for providing me with an advance copy of this book to review.

*Yes, I know I'm American, but I've given up on attempting to spell this word the American way. It's unnatural.

I'd like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me a chance at reading this book.

Hrm. I know who Simon Green is, I have the first two books of his London paranormal mysteries series. It was during my Dresden FIles era - and those books are widely known and well regarded.

I guess this was a mixture of expectations not met and a bare bones mystery disguised as paranormal. Lets make this clear: I am 100% on board with a pastor who solves mysteries. I'm 100% on board with a series in which poses as a paranormal vs the living (which you, the reader, are having to figure out if the story's outcome is paranormal or not).

So where are the issues, why did I give this two stars? Well, for starters, the 'paranormal creepiness' does not 'creep' into the book until the 40% mark. So what are we treated to in the meantime? A lot of quips, one liners, and no real substance. We are introduced to a cast of characters (meeting the pastor first, since you seem to follow him through this), and you watch that he is paired with Diana (the actress), who you realize can only say 'Bish' 'Darling' and 'dear' way too much. You also don't learn much else about them or their personalities. You then meet the others, and... again, you don't know much more than why they're there.

People start dying but I was like, 'why do I care? why is this one guy upset over this younger girl he hardly knew and had a connection with and wanted to be like a father to her'? Where is their bonding? Where do two complete strangers who know each other for less than 4 hours get to that level?

The pastor, our lead, literally becomes a detective in the moment we loose ANOTHER person. Wait. Backup. Is the pastor also a detective on the side? What do we know about him? He is in his late twenties, handsome, and he is here because they wanted someone to be a focus point of bringing more exposure to the clergy / religious world. That's it. So when this guy starts going Sherlock Holmes 2.0 and Diana turns into a lack luster Watson, it's confusing as hell because you don't know if he moonlights as a detective on the side.

Maybe some people can just sit back and enjoy the story, but the story itself? I figured out what was going on instantly. So I read the rest of the book to see if I was right (I was) and I was upset with how it ended, because I really hoped for something to pull the rug out from under me.

I think that, with more meet, more CHARACTER development, more 'creep' factor, this could be an interesting series (which this is being pegged as) of a pastor who solves mysteries that are deemed paranormal. Though, I have to question if he is really a pastor ... since he is a bit of a horny little shit by the end of the book.

So. Here I am, writing this review. "Good, but can be better".