After reading and loving 𝑺𝒖𝒃𝒖𝒓𝒃𝒂𝒏 𝑯𝒆𝒍𝒍, I was eager to read everything else this author wrote. I didn't like her next book as much, and this one I believe suffers from a case of an ineffective and misleading blurb.

When I read "a horror tinged 𝑵𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒂𝒍 𝑳𝒂𝒎𝒑𝒐𝒐𝒏'𝒔 𝑽𝒂𝒄𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏, I was ON it and so excited to read. Until I realized there was no horror. And then I realized there were no comedic moments.

I wanted to love this book so much, but I didn't. I'm holding out hope that her next one will be the winner! Thank you to NetGalley and Putnam Books for the early read. This title will publish September 10, 2024.

When the Somerset family heads out on a road trip from Wisconsin to Florida, mom Leigh expects plenty of bumps along the way – but even she doesn’t expect to be haunted by ghosts after a strange incident at an abandoned house.

My family has always been big on road trips, and consequently I have spent days driving down endless roads in both the United States and India. You see plenty of road trips on television and in books, but rarely the family caravan type. Here it is reproduced with all its humor, stickiness, and hair-pulling between siblings.

This is a light-hearted, somewhat episodic story which mixes all the usual family road trip vacation cliches with all the cliche horror movie cliches and makes its hay with the stark contrast between the two. There’s plenty of moments with humor that work all the better because of how realistic they feel, and I enjoyed reading the tight-knit bond between the whole family. The sequences with the “Tooth Fairy” and the maternity leggings made me crack up.

However, I did think the story wandered somewhat, maybe because the ghosts weren’t very clear with their hauntings about what on earth they wanted from the Somersets. As such it takes a long time for the plot, slight as it is, to come together. While I enjoyed the paranormal happenings in the story, I wished the ghost storyline had had more of an impact and a payoff at the end of the story than what we got.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this eARC.

A humorous and engaging story, however the scary underlying storyline never completely comes to fruition, after the big build-up.

Also, the main character who fears the various apparitions throughout the entire novel does an "about face" at the very end. After waiting through 98% of the story, for a confrontation, I don't know that the experience (over in a few final pages - the ending felt rushed) lived up to the built-up expectations.

However, if you are looking for a mildly distracting "cute" feel-good, lightweight "family-oriented" read, look no further.

I'm sorry, but “a horror-tinged National Lampoon's Vacation this is not, no matter what the blurb says. I didn't hate it, but it's not particularly funny and it's definitely not scary. It just kind of … is.

So first, the good: the premise is outstanding. Who doesn't want to read about a haunted road trip? I mean, I guess pretty much any road trip that requires sitting in a minivan with family members for a double-digit number of hours can be considered “haunted” in an “I am going to be haunted by this trip for the rest of my days” sort of way, but I don't mean like that. There are actually ghosts and stuff.

There are also a few funny bits. Not a lot of them, but I might've chuckled once or twice.

And, yeah, that's all I've got. I've been sitting here for twenty minutes trying to come up with something else that I particularly enjoyed about this book and I just can't. Sorry, Maureen Kilmer. So I guess that brings us to the lackluster bits …

For starters, it just isn't scary. Every “horror-tinged” scene is so brief and superficial that you just kind of don't care. A ghost throws things around for a page and then the Somerset family gets in the car and eats some snacks. A ghost pulls a blanket off of one of them while they're sleeping and then everyone's back in the car headed to the next destination. The main character has a vision of something disturbing and then they go play in a water park. There's no building sense of dread and even the very small bits of “scary” are surrounded by lots of mundane family vacation scenes. Perhaps these scenes are supposed to be funny, but they mostly just fell flat for me.

And, for all of the same reasons that this book isn't scary, it also isn't very exciting. See above.

I also don't really understand the point of the haunting. I can't really give a whole lot of details without spoiling things, but let's just say that the ghosts put a lot of unnecessary energy into getting Leigh's attention. The things that happen could have happened at the beginning of the trip and that would have been that, no haunting needed. Why even attempt to scare anyone? The ghostly Vickery family has apparently never heard that phrase about “catching more flies with honey than vinegar …” They probably could have just asked nicely and achieved the same results.

With all of that said, this novel is … okay. There's no real horror and only small amounts of comedy, but it is kind of vaguely interesting at times, I guess? And the premise really is fantastic even if it falls flat in execution.

My overall rating: 2.55 stars, rounded up. I really wish that Goodreads allowed half stars because a 2.5 feels much more appropriate than a 3.0, but it is what it is, I suppose.

Many thanks to NetGalley and G.P. Putnam's Sons for providing me with an advance copy of this book to review.

Ok this was an interesting book. Definitely a good beginner horror book. Horror is not my favorite genre normally but I wanted to check this out and I’m glad I did. It was fun!

3.5 stars

This was a nice little cozy horror. I think it’s meant to be horror, it doesn’t really fall into a specific genre, more of light on everything kind of book.
A lot of relatable characters and situations. I enjoyed the humor, and I look forward to more by Kilmer in the future.

Also (not part of my review, just a large opinion), I’m in love with this cover art!

Normally I like the formula of [blank] but make it horror.

The issue I have with "Nightmare of a Trip" is a small one but it makes a world of difference.

The property that's being horror-ified and referenced in the Book blurb existing in the world of the book detracts from the dark comedy. We as readers get the picture already, direct references to National Lampoon does nothing but reassert what readers should already know.

As for scares? Seasoned horror fans won't find anything too inovative here, but this is a good place to begin for a first-time horror reader.

People who've experienced some awful road trips will 100% find at least one relatable instance throughout the book. I for one found several, my reactions ranging from uncomfortable recollections to "ha- we did that too".

The family dynamic especially the "been in a car together for days" variety is absolutely spot-on.

The epilogue is also pretty wholesome but the trip to get there is rough. Not scary enough to be a nightmare but not sweet enough to be a daydream either.