Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read this in exchange for an honest review.

This started off so strong. A chilling novel about a woman with a troubled childhood who lets her elderly and unwell mother move in with her…and a lot of creepy shit ensues! Lots of very visceral horror that made me honestly feel a little sick while reading…which is the sign of a good horror writer. However, the turn the plot took in the last quarter of the book felt honestly quite silly and it kind of lost me :( 3 stars.

I love scary stories but finding one that is well-written through the end? It's hard. This book grabbed me at the beginning and never let go. I didn't read it at night, it totally spooked me. Which makes this one of my FAVORITE horror stories ever. Loved it!!

Thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the ARC!!!


This book definitely gave me the heebie jeebies. I love the idea of generational trauma for the main theme of the book. Was quite surprised by the twist with the mom. Would have given this book a higher rating if the end didn’t feel so rushed or incomplete. Overall good read!

This is A slow burner which takes a while to get going but when it did it took you at 100mph. Whilst I’m not normally keen on horror I enjoyed how different this was to my normal reads and struggled to put it down.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.
This one was hard to put down. I kept wanting to see what happened next with Tamar and Ruth. I would have felt like I was loosing my mind if I had been a character in this well written book.
It’s a slow burner but it gets you hooked right from the beginning.
Really great read.

Wow what a ride that was.
Bitter is the Heart by M. Hardy, published by Crooked Lane Books is a horror that creeps on you and the moment when you least expect it, it throws full power on the reader.
Tamar is a woman who grew up rough. She left home at 18 and is estranged from her mother for decades.
Now she has to go back to care for the frail woman when starnge things start to happen that become stranger and stranger, cresting in the great finale.
A slow burn that had me on the edge of my seat, unable to put the book down. It was like a car crash on the other lane, you don't want to but you just can't look away. A fantastic read.

A well-paced tale that follows a mother-daughter relationship; what is expected of them, their reality, and the generational trauma that can accompany them. I found the main character Tamar interesting and loved the slow decline into horror.

Tamar Glass was abused by her mother when she was a child and she got out of the home as quickly as she could, leaving at eighteen. She and her mother have been somewhat estranged for decades, then, one night, Tamar wakes to find her mother, disoriented and standing over Tamar while Tamar is asleep in bed. Tamar has a massive heart attack, dies and that’s the end.

Well, no. That’s what would have happened to me.

Tamar lives on. Then her mother is ejected from her assisted living facility and no other place will take her, so Tamar reluctantly lets her move in. Then strange things start to happen. The house is unbearably hot, cabinets open and shut in their own and Tamar is sleepwalking. Plus Tamar’s childhood traumas come rushing back. What is happening? Who is Tamar’s mother? Or is Tamar the problem?

I’ve got three words for Tamar and those three words are “state mental hospital.” I would have dropped that woman off with a garbage full of whatever, then I would have taken off to Mexico. Tamar, you owe that woman NOTHING, my friend.

So, this was a nice slow burn of a book. I didn’t really know what to expect, so I couldn’t have predicted anything. The Jewish religion was tied in very well. I enjoyed this.

Thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for an ARC of Bitter Is the Heart.

This is my second Mina Hardy book (one thriller and one horror) and unfortunately I do not think she is an author for me. This was probably the least scary horror book I've ever read, it was more just...sad and kind of a downer of a story. If I hadn't been provided a copy for review, I would have DNF at 50%.

Sadly, I can't recommend. 2 stars.

trigger warnings for content of novel: mild gore, blood & violence, mild body horror.

oh, man. i’m a little conflicted on this book. while i do like complexities of the mother-daughter relationship portrayed, and while i did think it was a good study of how abuse, no matter it be physical, verbal or just substance, can affect a child’s life, i just did not feel like it was that engaging. let me explain.

bitter is the heart follows TAMAR, who takes in her elderly mother RUTH following her expelling from an elderly home, apparently due to violence and misbehaviour towards other residents. left with no choice, tamar, who refuses to let her younger sister near the mother that has abused her all her life, allows her to live with her until she can find another home for ruth. what follows is several weeks of horror, mystery, and almost psychedelic-like terror. what has plagued tamar the most during her childhood has returned to haunt her— and this time, she’s not so sure it’s human, anymore. or maybe it hasn’t been all this time, and that’s the most confounding bit of it all.

on paper, this is a fascinating premise. i adore works commenting on mother-daughter relationships, abuse and trauma, and this fit the bill. but it didn’t live up to my expectations. let’s get into why.

1) a major issue for me was the pacing. this is a little over 300 pages, but it dragged quite a bit at the middle and start. it picks up towards the end, but if that’s the only redeeming point about a book’s pacing, then it’s a sign the book may be struggling in this department, which i thought it was. for most of this book, i was intrigued— i was waiting for things to pick up, i was waiting for a moment that would truly pack a punch, but it unfortunately never really came until about 60%(?) percent in, when [SPOILERS] ruth cut tamar’s hair and swallowed it. now that was the true horror i was looking for, especially in a book tagged as such. [END SPOILERS]

2) ruth’s switch between coherency and [SPOILERS] being lost to the presence of the dybbak was a little confusing to me. while it definitely was alluded towards to that ruth was not entirely human and that perhaps possession was in play, it was not all that clear for me to genuinely understand that there were two voices speaking out of ruth, one of the actual woman and the other of the demon. i only really understood this towards the end and had a bit of a oh, THAT’S why moment. [END SPOILERS]

3) i wish the dybbak’s origins, history and powers etc had been explored a bit more. it’s a fascinating concept to me. an eldritch horror living in female vessels, passed down from generation to generation, woman to woman? generational trauma in the form of love and hatred? sign me UP. however, this fell short. the reveal of the [SPOILER] demon was done fine, nothing noteworthy, but i was curious about how exactly the dybbak came to be, it’s place in jewish belief &. mythology, why it needs women as its hosts and things like that. the book did not explain that at all. it didn’t even really tell us what a dybbak is. [END SPOILERS] it just sort of named the creature, and left us to connect the context clues. the ending was a little abrupt as well. the ending line could’ve been a different one to really pack a punch, because i thought this one lacked impact.

overall, though, i did enjoy this. it was a decent read. despite the pacing issues and some questions left unanswered, it was entertaining. thank you for the opportunity to read this ARC! 3 stars.