50000000/5 stars! I love everything Ronald Malfi writes, so maybe I am slightly biased, but he can WRITE! This is another amazing mystery horror by the author of The Night Parade. (P.S. If you haven't read Night Parade please go do that. It was written pre-pandemic about a a pandemic and is a masterpiece).

This book is hauntingly beautiful, featuring friends returning to their home town to face their pasts and see if there is even a future for them to look forward to. The twist broke my brain and I physically had to put down the book and go for a walk before I could finish it. WOW!

One of the best writer’s and an auto buy author for me! This new book by Malfi was magnificent. A new favorite!

This was a slow burn, dark and creepy read. It’s starts off as a normal spooky read and then the ending made me question everything!

This novel takes a familiar premise, ratches the horrors up a couple of notches, adds some "wtf-just-happened" twists and delivers what is going to be one of the best horror books of the year.

This premise might sound like something you've read before: a group of five friends are involved in a fatal accident as teens and vow to never speak of it ever again. Twenty years later, as they all gather in their hometown near the anniversary of this tragic event, they must fight a supernatural curse if they want to survive.

This was my first Ronald Malfi book and it certainly won't be the last. I love the trope of old friends coming back together and I can't resist a small town horror. The story had just the right amount of atmosphere to provide the spooky vibes, the characters were compelling, and the plot was well-paced. It was all around creepy and a good time and the ending didn't disappoint!

I own this and intend to read it in the future I'm just clearing this off my board to reduce stress. I will update when I read/review.

Ronald Malfi is hit or miss for me, but when he hits it's electric. Unfortunately, Small Town Horror left me wanting a little bit more. Malfi does a great job fleshing out his characters and populating the town with interesting residents, but the central horror never really connected with me. The novel felt less of a horror novel, and more of a supernatural crime novel. Malfi has still become a must-read author for me, and while this one didn't work as well as his others, I look forward to what he will be publishing next!

As a fan of Malfi I was quite excited for this release, I love the title and the cover art. I did enjoy the book overall, but I felt as if I was less witnessing a mystery unfold rather than being intentionally mislead by withholding of information. And maybe I missed some clues, that has happened, but I do feel a little bait-and-switch with the narrative. Still very enjoyable.

**While I wasn’t able to download this Netgally file before being archived, I was able to read/ listen to this book via my local library app. Thank you for the opportunity.

This is the first book I have read by Malfi, but it won’t be the last. His characters were imperfect and acted like real people. Their interactions were so tense, I had to stop reading at times (but not for too long because I also really needed to find out what happened next!)

SMALL TOWN HORROR by @ronaldmalfi is a compelling horror novel by a master of creating uncomfortable situations that you can't look away from. Thank you to the author, @netgalley, and the publisher, @titanbooks for the e-ARC.

☁️☁️☁️

Rebecca and Andrew are having a baby. They are both very excited. So why does Andrew feel like there is something wrong with the baby growing in his wife's womb? When he gets a call from a long, lost friend from his rough and tumble small town, Kingsport, Maryland, he is sure his uneasiness has to do with the night in 2003 when he and 4 of his closest friends at the time witnessed the Rain of Frogs. He knows he can't ignore the fact that Dale's wife Cynthia is missing and that she was acting possessed before she disappeared. He knows he has to go home to face the past.

💀💀💀

I am a pretty big fan of Malfi, and in fact, his short story collection WE SHOULD HAVE LEFT WELL ENOUGH ALONE was a huge jumping off point for my immersion into the horror book genre. I have really loved some of his titles (BONE WHITE, THE NIGHT PARADE, GHOST WRITTEN and the above mentioned) and at least one didn't really work for me (BLACK MOUTH) but I was totally caught up in SMALL TOWN HORROR.

With an unspeakable history, judgmental townsfolk, and a whole lot of dark secrets, this self-titled subgenre is well represented in these pages. I was pretty intrigued by all the main characters, invested in the plot that entwined their pasts with the present, and spiraling with the inevitability of these human lives crashing back together. This would be a perfect atmospheric horror book to end the year with if you need a rec.

Are you a big fan of Christmas? Or is it more of another eye-roll holiday for you?

I am a big fan of sitting by the Christmas tree in the dark days of winter so I am happy we put our tree up this weekend! 🎄🎄🎄

💚SMASHBOT💚

Small Town Horror is a well-crafted and suspenseful read that will appeal to fans of Stephen King and classic horror. Malfi's atmospheric writing, compelling characters, and chilling plot make this a standout novel in the genre.
Highly recommended for readers who enjoy atmospheric horror with a touch of psychological suspense.

I have fallen in love with Ronald Malfi books over the past year, so I was so excited to get this one in advanced!
That being said, I think the "disgruntled friend group" has been overplayed in the writing world lately.
Small town horror, for sure though! There is a level of creepiness throughout this book that just sort of eats at you and raises the hairs on the back of your neck. It is slower than some of his other books but DON'T SET IT DOWN! Sh*t is about to get really weird and you're not going to want to miss that ending!!

Special thank you to NetGalley and Titan Books for this advanced copy in return for my honest review.

Pub Date: 04 June 2024

A harrowing curse returns to claim the souls of a group of high school friends at the Chesapeake Bay! For fans of “I Know What You Did Last Summer”, “IT”, “A Nightmare on Elm Street”...sure, it’s a classic horror trope, but it still draws audiences! Me included.

Andrew leaves his pregnant wife to return to his childhood home after a phone call from his old friend Dale. Struggling with lack of sleep due to nightmares of impending fatherhood, Andrew’s psyche is tested in his own father’s home, which is dark and dank, not to mention the terrible smell that won’t go away. The friend circle continues to act suspiciously; no one wants to speak about what occurred on the Fourth of July so many years ago.

What I enjoy the most about this motif of hidden secrets is that it’s relatable to most people. Whether they, themselves, have some skeletons in the closet, or someone they know does, and it’s that fear that gets pushed down after the canon event; the fear that the big mystery will be revealed and change perception about that person.

These days, it’s hard to keep things private and there’s always an interest in investigating privileged information. When someone piques our curiosity, what’s the first thing we do? Google them. Find their social media profiles.

Another great element to this book is this idea of trying to escape and build a new life for yourself. In some way or another, one must “pay the piper” and this story drives home the anticipation of consequences.

Malfi is wonderful at sculpting moods for stories and creating real page-turners, so if any of this appeals to you, please check it out!

If you are sleeping on Ronald Malfi, STOP. His horror/thrillers are absolutely fantastic, and he is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. Small Town Horror reminds me of Stand By Me quite a bit - those really intense childhood friendships that are cemented by some major event.

Andrew has an important job and a pregnant wife, but he gets an emergency phone call from an old friend in his hometown, and he has to go back and deal with his issues: what happened to them when they were younger, and his boyhood home. He's trying to figure everything out while still keeping everything at a distance, but he's finding himself drawn in more and more as secrets start to come out and he has to confront his part in all of this.

The twists were very twisty. The ending...I feel like I need to reread it. I don't think I fully grasped it. I also think you'll either love the ending or hate the ending. It's the kind of book that you want to make everyone read so you can talk about it. Another solid book from Ronald Malfi.

Another fine read from Ronald Malfi. Similar to a few of his previous novels (Come with Me comes to mind) SMALL TOWN HORROR is mostly a mystery novel with some light supernatural touches. Laced with Malfi's perfect prose and untouchable descriptions, a group of old friends are called back to their small town to face the ghost of their past.

If you haven't read Malfi yet, SMALL TOWN HORROR is a good place to start.
If you 're looking for something a little darker or scarier from him, try The Narrows , Snow or December Park.

Andrew Larimer is summoned home following the disappearance of a friend's wife in Ronald Malfi's superb Small Town Horror. It's been twenty years since Larimer has set foot in Kingsport, Maryland, but the secrets that united he and his childhood friends still lay between them, haunting them, both literally and metaphorically. A shadowy figure watches them, follows them, a spectral reminder that each of them are cursed following a shared trauma decades past, and that the supposed witch living at the heart of this small fishing town may be to blame.

Secrets, of course, are at the heart of Small Town Horror, and as such I'm loathe to give much away. What Malfi does brilliantly here is subject readers to a cast of shady folks with varying degrees of unlikeability. Central to them is our narrator, Larimer, whose story unfolds in first-person point of view. Malfi puts us right in Larimer's shoes, but not always in his head. We don't know, for instance, why Larimer takes off his wedding ring upon returning to his hometown and lies to his childhood friends about being married. That's just one more secret in a large bucket overflowing with them.

Dale is the primary suspect in his wife's disappearance, but as things heat up between each of the five friends it grows ever more clear that he's not the only one with a likely motive. And then there's Robert Graves, a figure from their shared past and the son an old crone rumored to be a witch.

Malfi smartly blends crime and horror here, creating a work that is positively thick with tension and atmosphere, enough so you can practically taste the saltwater on the air of Kingsport. At times, Small Town Horror feels like a deeply layered east coast Alan Wake by way of Mystic River. The reveals, once they begin to unfold, are heavily loaded and precisely timed bombs, one of which actually made me rock back in my seat and put the book down for a moment, so perfectly done was the audibly-gasped 'what the fuck' nature of it all.

Small Town Horror is, in a word, sublime, and an easy contender for Horror Book of the Year in my estimation.

Thank you Titan Books, Netgalley and Ronald Malfi for the eArc of Small Town Horror.

Having read a few of Ronald Malfi's books, I really enjoy the slow burn, creepy horror of them. You get a great sense of the character's with this slow burn, packing in details to build a great balance between the two. This gives a great coming of age, claustrophobic, home town horror.

Narrated by Joe Hempel, which gives even more life to this book if that's ever possible. Joe has a great voice which keeps our characters separated and individual. Joe has one of them voices which can switch from calming, alluring into abject terror! A pleasure to listen too

4 stars

SMALL TOWN HORROR I immediately found both exciting and engrossing: exciting because of how engrossed I immediately became, and because of its innate Spookiness and subtle Horror. Mr. Malfi makes one believe that all these frights, occurring to several individuals, are perfectly possible, that such Paranormal events can and do occur; that certain individuals reach out from beyond the grave and alter the lives of those still (ostensibly) living. I say "ostensibly" because for the survivors of the horrible event that occurred one Fourth of July, when the (grossly unreliable and untrustworthy) narrator turned sixteen, "living" is not what has happened all these years, locked as they are in residual guilt, survivor's guilt, remorse, and panic. What is buried won't stay buried, and this comes true for secrets as well as guilt. Eventually, for either psychological reasons or Paranormal interference, the center cannot hold.

4.5/5 ⭐️

Andrew is called back to his hometown, Kingsport, when one of his childhood friends phones him in the middle of the night and vaguely insists that he return to the small fishing town. Andrew is reluctant to leave his pregnant wife in New York and have to encounter his four childhood friends who he hasn’t spoken to since he was 16 years old. Having moved away after high school, Andrew has avoided going back to Kingsport and facing his past and what happened one night with his group of friends, almost twenty years ago.

My opinion:

HOLY 💩💩 this one was intense and creepy! I could not sleep without my husband next to me thanks to this book. It really scared me. The ghostly presence, which I will leave unnamed to not spoil it, freaked me out!

I know other reviews mention the “childhood friends return home decades later” trope and it being overused, but I did not care. It sucked me right in. I didn’t want to put this down.

I got Stephen King vibes from this book. It also reminded me of the show, “Marianne” which creeped me the hell out too.

The twist…my jaw dropped.

The book is extremely well written and I had no trouble picturing everything described in detail. I couldn’t read it fast enough.

This is my first book by Malfi and I am excited to read more of his books!

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for access to the ARC of this book! I truly appreciate the opportunity!

First off big thank you to NetGalley and Titan Books for the spine tingling scary, horror novel.

At first I thought oh boy this is going to be like “ It” and it’s so not! This book is different. Sure it has small town mystery and friends reuniting after a dark night in their past. But that’s it. Trust me the way Malfi writes he takes it in a totally different direction. It’s so good!

Scared me but also kept me guessing with the storeyline.!!

Highly recommend!

4.5 /5 ⭐️ rounded up!!