The Queen is the newest horror novel by Nick Cutter that will make your skin crawl (in a good way). We meet Margaret, whose best friend has been missing for a few weeks, when she receives a cell phone at the door from Charity, the missing friend. Charity takes Margaret on a scavenger hunt that reveals what truly happened, and each steps becomes more and more terrifying as we learn of Charity's outcome. Charity has been part of a genetic experiment started by a man, Rudyard, with unimaginable wealth and resources, and an unhealthy obsession with the insect kingdom.

Nick Cutter is a very descriptive writer that immerses you into Rudyard's horrific background and Charity's evolution into a hybrid human/wasp. The story has a great pace as it toggles between the present and the past to fill in the background needed to move the story forward. Underneath the layer of horror, the story also speaks to the haves vs the have nots and the dangers of someone with too many resources and no checks or balances. I also like how the after the story ended, additional background was given in the form of other observers that really tied the pieces together.

I definitely recommend this book to fans of horror and Nick Cutter. Thanks to NetGalley and Gallery books for supplying a copy.

This is the most difficult review I've had to write because it pains me to rate it so low. It was early this year when I discovered The Troop. It was one of my favorite reads of the year - one of my favorite horror novels ever. When I saw Nick Cutter had a new novel, I was through the roof with excitement. Unfortunately, the only times I felt pulled into this book were during the scenes of Rudyard's past & during a small portion of the "event" scenes at the end.

As for some of the positives, I do think Nick Cutter is an incredibly talented writer. This book felt very Stephen King-ish. If you love extensive description & A LOT of side stories, you'll love the way this book is written. I also found the subject matter to be very interesting. It requires quite the suspension of disbelief, but still was fun to visualize the events & "things." It was very true to Cutter's creepy-crawly fashion.

Now for the negatives:

1. If a book is Stephen King-ish, that's a negative for me. I want enough description to visualize what's happening & side stories that contribute to the story. I don't want enough to bore the shit out of me, make me forget what's actually happening in the story, and have me rage skimming. Why do I need to know the make/model phone that each student pulled out of their pocket? How does that contribute anything? It's like when you have a 3,000 word essay & start putting in random stuff to fill the word count. When the end gave me magazine articles & a letter, I nearly DNF'd out of annoyance. All a wanted was to know about our MC & that bundle of stuff gave me nothing.

2. It's mostly the POV of a teenager. When you have strong characters & a well-paced story, it's okay if the POV is annoying or immature - it's a teenager after all. It doesn't work when the characters aren't strong & I'm getting bored. By then, I'm so uninvested that I'm picturing these things coming out of the author's mouth & I get secondhand embarrassment. Examples:
- YAS KWEEN
- This shit's crazy amirite?
- Mr. Foster, shit man. Bro's life is over.
- On god, I swear they did.
- Rape apologist! Enabler! Victim blamer! Cuuuuuuunt!

Okay, you get it...eye roll inducing. Awkward. Hated it.

3. Because of the two points above, the book felt jumbled. There wasn't enough relevant information & too much irrelevant information, which made me feel so bored and miserable while reading this. The best parts were those of Rudyard's childhood. I wish we had gotten more solid chapters of that & the girls' past, not a bunch of paragraphs thrown in throughout the whole thing. It slowed down the pacing so much that I couldn't wait to be done.

I truly hope I am the minority in how I feel about this book because I absolutely LOVE the previous Nick Cutter book & I still have high hopes. I'll still be excited to read another one of his novels, but will be hoping on everything I love that it's more like The Troop & not like The Queen. Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC!

I was so so stoked to receive an ARC of this book from NetGalley, so thanks is due to them right off the bat. Nick Cutter you sick bastard, this novel was tough to get through at times haha. Truly a unique and interesting concept- a millionaire with some severe insect trauma and way too much fuck you money tries to create the ultimate insect/human hybrid? Chaos ensues. Wild that most of this book takes place in ONE day. I’m only giving it 4 stars instead of 5 because personally the body horror was really tough to get through at times but this was a killer book. Would recommend, but only to fellow weirdos like myself hahah.

Thank you to Gallery Books, Nick Cutter, and NetGalley for an opportunity to preview this title in exchange for an honest review.

Wow. Or yikes. I can't necessarily decide. On one hand, Nick Cutter did it again by weaving a tale that is both haunting, touching, and, at times, gross. For anyone that has read a Nick Cutter book, you will know that he does not shy away from body horror and this time that body horror was mixed with insects, quite literally.

This book follows a teenage girl, Margaret, as she goes on a scavenger hunt of sorts from her best friend who has been missing for weeks and was presumed dead. One of the characters mentions that this scavenger hunt has a "13 Reasons Why" feel and I could not have described it better. The story is told through the protagonist visiting different areas of her town, and thus hearing the story attached to that place. This helps the reader to understand how Margaret comes to be locked in a country club kitchen fighting off giant, killer wasps, which is exactly how the novel begins.

There were many times that I was like "What did I just read?" in both the literal and metaphorical sense. This story describes a lot of insect parts, and at its climax also how those parts are mixed with the human form. For me, that was often difficult to imagine (which might be a good thing?). This book is quintessential Nick Cutter so his fans will definitely not be disappointed!

The author behind the disturbing body horror novel The Troop and unsettling aquatic horror The Deep is back, this time with a sci-fi horror twist to teen horror. Lifelong best friends Margaret and Charity are so close that they share everything and know each other well, save for one dark secret that Charity withheld: she happens to have been subjected to a gene manipulation experiment that’s altered her DNA. Cutter doesn’t hold back when it comes to disturbing, gag-inducing horror imagery here, with insects offering no shortage of inspiration for the twisted author to get graphic. In other words, this is for the sick puppies out there, like me, seeking a gripping page-turner that’s likely to leave you feeling a little queasy while getting the adrenaline pumping. All hail Nick Cutter’s dark mind.

Such an intriguing concept and definitely a very original story!

“Nothing made sense, but there wasn’t enough time to get my feet set because everything was moving too fast—and that felt purposeful, too: whoever was behind this didn’t want to give me time to catch my breath, to think.”

This quote is basically how I felt reading majority of this book. I had a hard time with the storyline. It jumped a lot, but also started in the middle and then slowly explained what was going on. I liked how things played out, but it was a challenge for me to get there!

I will say that the insects freaked me out.. I constantly felt like something was crawling on me!

Thank you to Gallery Books for this ARC

Three (or more) things I loved:

1. Good horror scenes, like the first ant scene.

2. Sometimes, Cutter's descriptive writing shines: He crushed me against his wide, freshly deodorized chest. I could feel the lub-dub of Dennis’s heart against my cheek, envisioning a fist covered in gristle bapping behind his ribs. p46

Three (or less) things I didn't love:

This section isn't only for criticisms. It's merely for items that I felt something for other than "love" or some interpretation thereof.

1. Oh no, it's got a writer MC. I might be genetically predisposed to hate this book.

2. Oh wow, this writing is not good.

3. When it dawns that I’m actually outside for the first time in forever, I’m rocked by a lightheaded spell. The sun stings my scalp. I’m an infant waddling around without a sun bonnet. This isn't really how sun sensitivity works. Or even hypersensitivity due to underexposure. Those conditions really don't care if you've noticed the sun yet. And such logical issues abound.

4. This plot is everywhere.

5. He keeps comparing characters to babies, toddlers, infants. Like, often.

6. He tried to turn "Leinengen Versus the Ants" into a novel. It doesn't work. For one thing, he switches bugs after the first 50 psges. The story is just a squirming mass of horror tropes smashed together and sort of resembling a mound of hungry ants.

7. The already rickety plot topples under its own complexity after the turn at the 30% mark. What a mess this book is.

8. This book is trying so hard to be The Return but Cutter is no Rachel Harrison. *edit It's also trying to be Annihilation, but it's not up to Jeff Van Der Meer's skill and creativity, either.

9. This plot is so convoluted and needlessly complicated that I basically have no freaking idea what's going on. I don't even know who the main character is at this point.

10. Miranda Lancaster was stunning in a floor-length, form-fitting, low-key slutty dress that glittered over her curves. p196 The narrator is basically a thin veneer for the author's voice. No big deal, happens all the time. And I didn't have an issue with that until the narrator/author started saying things about the female characters like the one I quoted above. Or this one: Put your eyes somewhere else, bitch, Rudyard thought, or I’ll pluck them out. p198

Okay I give up trying to discuss this book. I don't like it when I can't find anything nice to say.

Rating: 🐜 /5 hungry ants
Recommend? Nope
Finished: Oct 29 '24
Format: Digital, Kindle
Read this book if you like:
🧌 monster horror
🐝 stories about bugs, or uh, bug horror?
✔️ literary references

Thank you to the author Nick Cutter, publishers Gallery Books, and NetGalley for an advance digital copy of THE QUEEN. All views are mine.

Terrifying story of a woman who is searching for her best friend who is missing. Even though Charity has been missing for a month, Margaret has hope she will find her friend alive even though the town believes she is already dead. During her investigation Margaret finds out many shocking facts that will make her question everything she thought she knew about her friend. Brutal, graphic, not for the faint hearted.

Nick Cutter is criminally underrated. (At least in my circle of friends.) His newest book, The Queen, is one wild ride and takes place over the course of a single day! Everyone in town thinks Charity Atwater is dead, after all she did disappear over a month ago and there has been no sign of her since. So you can imagine her best friend’s (Margret) surprise when a new phone is delivered one morning and she begins to get messages from Charity, setting her down the path to find out what really happened to her friend. I don’t want to say too much more than that, and I’d actually recommend not reading the book blurb (probably too late, right?) and going into this one with as little info as possible. But what I will say is this is one wild/twisted story. If you’d read any of Nick’s other work than you might have an idea of what to expect in terms of gore. I have to say as someone who does not like wasps in the least, this one creeped me out more than a bit, but then I did read most of this one outside in my backyard and the neighborhood wasps seemed especially active…or perhaps that was just my imagination, lol. I’d like to thank Gallery Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review an eARC of Nick Cutter’s The Queen.

https://www.amazon.com/review/R1QZU0IGKU1D6U/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_SRTC0204BT_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

This book takes us back to June 15-16, 2018. Prior to then, there was a high school party called Burning Van. After the party, three boys, Allen, Chad and Will, went missing. So did a girl named Charity (known to her best friend as “Plum”). They are all presumed dead, until one morning Margaret (known to Plum as “Cherry”) gets a package. At her front door is a box with a brand new iPhone in it.

After turning it on, Cherry starts getting texts and audio messages from Plum, telling her to go to a specific intersection where she sees her friend Harry, also with a new iPhone. Plum is texting both of them, giving them directions that they follow…until deciding this was some kind of sick game. They defied the texts, then they get a call - not from Plum, but from a girl named Serena, a girl who says she has Plum, and if they don’t follow her directions, Serena will kill her..

I liked the beginning of this, and the original premise, but then this story totally went off the grid, with a secondary story about some men and their connection to these kids. This is my first Nick Cutter book, and his writing is immaculate. I loved the imagery, the gore, the insect theme…but for the majority of the book, I was disappointed. Finally, towards the end the two storylines connected, and while it was clever and made much more sense after that, I still didn’t like the way the story was presented.

Sometimes when this happens, it’s because straight horror turns into fantasy, but it was more sci-fi than fantasy, and I like some types of sci-fi. This must not have been my type, because again, I just did not care for this book overall, even though I feel like it’s written for readers like me. I’m giving it 2.5 stars, rounded up for the stellar writing and the beginning being good.

Thank you to @gallerybooks and @NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my review.

Graphic and gory at times, this highly descriptive sci-fi horror novel will make you shudder. Be a little patient, I was almost halfway through the story before it really reached out and grabbed me. With a sense of constant foreboding Margaret Carpenter discovers a phone on her doorstep that begins delivering eerie words from an unknown source . . . ongoing messages which seem like her friend Charity Atwater who has been missing for over a month. The contact provides information that only her dear friend would know and slowly reveals disquieting details of a traumatic event that took place before her disappearance. At times, it reads like a fever dream and you can sense damage, of mind and body, the trauma of lies and secrets . . . the palpable destruction of channeling rage and revenge.

I like the story's inclusion of the science behind queen pheromones and the control it gives her. I recommend this book for any hardcore fans of horror.

I thank NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of The Queen for my unbiased evaluation.  3.5 stars

I was so happy to get an ARC of this read! I absolutely loved The Troop, but was a little disappointed by The Deep. After reading this entry in the Nick Cutter bibliography, I think I'm going to lean more towards his books being good, but not great.

Cutter writes absolutely excellent body horror and his imagery is out-of-this-world. However, I couldn't help but feel like that the rest of the book was just a way to connect his insanely brutal descriptions. I found myself feeling slightly let down by the rest of the story. The motivations behind the main dilemma in the story? Not developed enough for me to fully engage. The last chunk of the story - which was a quasi epilogue/explanation of the story - felt like a safety net in case someone didn't understand the point of the novel. I didn't really care for it to be honest. There were also enough tropes - evil rich people! jocks are bad! - to make me wish Cutter had focused more on the core of the story. And, let's be honest - Charity absolutely raped the three villains in this book. While their reactions were less than sympathetic, she got off way too easy. She basically drugged them into sleeping with her, with no remorse. If anything, she was portrayed as the victim. That was pretty off-putting.

I would definitely read Cutter's next offering. Although I'll probably go into it with more reservations.

I’ve really enjoy Nick Cutter’s writing in the past but this one was just lacking for me. The body horror was great when it was there, but too much of the book was moving too slowly for my liking.

I have loved every Nick Cutter book I've read. So my expectations were high. I had trouble connecting to the characters in the book. I found myself drifting and hoping for something exciting. Mostly, it was very high school. I know. It was a book set in a high school. I don't have trouble reading about teenagers but sometimes I just can't immerse myself in their world. This was one of those times. I never quite made the mental image of the characters and places that I usually do. The story was not bad. I think my expectations were too much.

The story takes place over the course of one day, and follows a teenage girl as she starts to uncover some devastating, life altering secrets about her friend who recently disappeared. The things she uncovers are pretty life shattering and will change the course of her life and everyone around her forever.
Also, should probably come with trigger warnings. But if you've read Nick Cutter before, you probably won't be surprised. Body horror at its finest.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and Gallery Books for this e-arc.*

wow this book was so good. this book was scary with really graphic and gory body horror. absolutely good.nick cutter knows how to do good body horror.

I love everything Nick Cutter writes. This was no exception! 
The Queen by Nick Cutter is another phenomenal horror novel written by Cutter!
The setting was eerie, the dialogue believable, the character development absolutely phenomenal and the pace was perfect. I could not tear myself away from this book.
If you are looking for a really disturbing book with masterly crafted characters and personalities this should be on your tbr!
If you want a chilling story and are willing to let it slowly build until it finally grabs you and you stay up determined to finish it, check out The Queen by Nick Cutter.


Thank You NetGalley and Gallery Books for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

I honestly didn't think Cutter could write some more viscerally upsetting than The Troop but here we are.

His descriptions have an uncanny ability to make me feel an echo of the pain I'm reading about. It's so well presented despite being the most disgusting and gag-inducing things I have ever read happening to the human body.

I'm not even scared of insects but I might need to rethink that after this read. Like I don't understand how you can make ants so scary but Cutter managed to do that and so so much more.

The way that information is trickled to the reader at just the right points for maximum effect should be studied in a lab. Presentation and character are just executed so well but if you're not strong enough to stomach near splatterpunk levels of gore you might want to look elsewhere for a read.

Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review. I'm always very happy about an ARC and being able to give it a review! <3

Since I wasn't that interested in his The Troop and The Deep, this interested me even more. The blurb sounded very promising.

Unfortunately, over time I realized that I don't like the writing style that much... the whole story was a bit too confusing for me. I imagined something completely different. However, I thought the text messages were great and interesting and that encouraged me to keep reading.

Nevertheless, I have to say that the story didn't grab me and Nick Cutter's books are, unfortunately, not for me. But they are definitely for many others!! :)

Pulling themes from 13 Reasons Why and Carrie, Nick Cutter tells a story about Margaret, a girl grieving the possible death of her best friend, Charity. What Margaret doesn’t know is that Charity has a story to tell that she wants her friend to be a witness to. Via text messages from a mysterious phone that shows up on her doorstep, Margaret is taken on a journey to discover what really happened to her friend. Although this story pulled heavily from other popular books (which, humbly, Cutter acknowledges and gives credit to) it is still unique in its execution. In perfect Cutter fashion, this is a graphic, gory horror book that still has a decent story to keep the reader interested and invested. I enjoyed the premise for the story, yet unlike The Troop and The Deep, this book felt like it skipped over an editing process. First, there was a lot of repetitiveness. Information was given about the characters over and over that were unnecessary and showed a lack of trust. Secondly, there were several plot holes, specifically one that was due to the route Cutter took with the ending. Finally, the ending had several parts where it seemed things were getting explained, yet they were confusing or unclear. Either leave it up to the imagination or give a clear understanding. Oh, and it was a tad predictable. Although, this didn’t really bother me for this book. This is still a great gory horror book and fans of Cutter will probably still enjoy it, albeit not as much as previous works. Some editing, fixing up of some plot points (or changing the ending slightly), and making the book a touch longer to add explanations would have made this book so much better.
***Thank you NetGalley, Gallery Books, and Nick Cutter for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.***