I first heard of Richard Chizmar when he partnered with Stephen King on a book. I wasn't sure what to expect in this one, but it turned out surprisingly good. I enjoyed the storyline and characters and way that everything was weaved together. It kept me hooked after the first few pages!

Thank you Gallery Books for the gifted digital ARC!

4.5 stars rounded up.

Somehow this was my first time reading a book by Richard Chizmar and what the heck was I waiting for? It is *so* good. I thought the concept was incredibly intriguing and Chizmar definitely delivered. We have roadside memorials sprinkled throughout the city I live in and I've never really stopped to think about the stories behind the accidents. Such an awesome premise for a book and I think this would be amazing to see adapted into a limited series.

There was a pretty big twist at the end that not only was unexpected but really well done. This is a great read for scary season. I will definitely be looking into Chizmar's backlist ASAP.

Memorials will be published October 22!

If you’re looking for a total slow burn with creep factor but culminates in horror insanity; this one is for you. It was definitely a really slow burn with a huge payoff at the end and as someone who doesn’t read much horror I still enjoyed it and was sufficiently terrified.

Billy, Melody, and Troy are friends attending York College and together they have chosen to make a documentary on Roadside Memorials as their final project for their American Studies class taught by Professor Tyree. One of the roadside memorials they visit is dedicated to Billy’s late mother and father. With a camper van filled with equipment they set off, nervous and excited, oblivious to the sheer terror that awaits them. I absolutely fell in love with these three characters and found the story to be very interesting, suspenseful, extremely intense at times, and long. I thank Gallery Books and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

3.5 stars but rounding up to a 4. This was such a spooky fun read with a unique concept. We follow three college friends on a road trip through the Appalachian back roads to document roadside memorial sites for a school project. Weird things quickly start happening and as they continue on the trip, their paranoia grows until they don't know who they can trust. It took me about 30% to really become invested in this story but once I was, I needed to know what happened. I grew to love these three and really rooted for them. I loved the conversations that were had throughout regarding life and death, the afterlife, racism, religion, and grief.
Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery Books for providing me with an arc in exchange for an honest review.

What a dark and creepy book this was, perfect for spooky season. Be warned though, it is very long. It took me a little to get into this story and 5 days to read which is a long time for me. Once I got into the story I was hooked and wondering what direction it would take us. It did not disappoint.

I loved the 1980s setting, no social media, no internet, no mobile phones. Research was done at the library, you had to use the home phone or a phone box to call people. It was a different time and I loved the step back.

This is a story of 3 college kids who embark on a road trip to visit roadside memorials and film them for a documentary for their American studies class. All. 3 of them have lost someone close to them and they bond over their grief. They learn more about each other as the days go on, and really they learn a lot about themselves. None of them will be the same after this trip. As their journey through the back roads continues, they start to feel they are. Being watched, and notice strange symbols appearing at the sites.

It is eerie and very much a book that will give you nightmares. It is very well,written and has characters that you will have strong feelings about one way or another.

Thank you to Gallery Books for my early copy of this book to read. Out on October 22, it would be the perfect Halloween read.

There was a lot to enjoy about this book. The writing is engaging, from the very beginning. I thought the plot was really interesting, traveling to roadside memorials to talk to those still grieving and to just bring attention to the lives that were lost and the significance of the roadside memorials.

The eerie, creepy aspects that slowly come in and take over were intriguing. But I def got the ick from the author a couple of times in his explanation of things and people. That aside, the ways in which the plot of this book got under my skin!! It was incredibly entertaining.

My final gripe: Billy and Naomi’s characters. I really struggled with our protagonist, Billy. He just seemed to be creating problems for himself and his friends. I couldn’t find that I wanted to root for him. Naomi was the same.

This has an explosive ending that I thought was done well. All in all, I was expecting a little more than I got from this one, but it was still enjoyable.

Richard Chizmar outdid himself with this one! I blew thru this book in 2 days and loved every moment spent with Billy, Troy, and Melody.

Memorials is my favorite type of horror: slow build with well developed characters who I feel deeply invested in and an insidious story that quietly establishes a sense of unease and dread while leaving me unbalanced and not knowing exactly what unknown thing I'm dreading.

The story has a strong sense of nostalgia, which I loved. It felt like a glimpse back into that shadowy area between adolescence and adulthood when our friendships were a defining part of our lives, and we were still growing into who we'd one day be. While I was caught up with the early 1980s road trip with friends vibes, the author was sprinkling spooky breadcrumbs and putting things in place for later. The horror crept up on me, and the story showed its teeth when I least expected it.

Richard Chizmar has moved up to a new level of storytelling with Memorials. The story is compelling from the beginning, and the atmosphere is slow burn horror at its finest. Memorials is an eerie journey down country roads into a time and place full of folklore, ancient practices, endless possibilities, and unforgettable friendships.

• Most of this book reads like a young adult novel with juvenile and school age dialogue between the characters
• Expectations were raised by the enjoyment of the Boogeyman books, and this book was a huge disappointment
• 480 pages was was too long, and the story dragged through the first half and picked up a tad after, but could have easily been cut short by 100 pages and been more effective
• Story bogged down with recurring descriptions of the main character's hometown
• The confusing climax seemed disconnected and shallow with 13 chapters of backstory dumped on the reader without been woven into the storyline
• Overall a big disappointment of a book that was highly anticipated

One of my favorite authors! This book did not disappoint. I couldn’t put it down. I can not wait to see what he releases next!

This book is one of my favorite books of the year. I could not put it down. Its exactly what i was craving. Thank you netgalley,

2.5 stars, rounded up

I was super excited to get an ARC of Richard Chizmar's Memorials since his Boogeyman series were among my favorites last year. The premise - a college road trip to film a documentary about roadside memorials - seemed like the perfect way to kick off Spooky Season. I was also looking forward to another dose of Chizmar's well-crafted nostalgia since this book takes place in the ‘80s.

Unfortunately, Memorials didn't quite live up to my expectations and is shaping up to be one of my biggest book disappointments of 2024.

The pacing of this novel felt off, and the first half of the nearly 500 pages felt incredibly slow as the story unfolded in painstaking (and somewhat repetitive) detail; however, I was invested in the characters and their journey, and as I had hoped, there were lots of wistful bits of nostalgia coupled with plenty of unsettling and creepy moments. Even though it was a slow burn, I was sucked in, and I thought for sure that this book was going to be a solid 4+ stars…until I hit the 75% mark, and it wasn’t.

The ending spiraled into chaos with a climax that seemed disconnected and shallow - the “bad guys” were underdeveloped and their motivations unclear, which made the dramatic scene fall flat. This confusion was followed by over thirteen chapters of backstory that, instead of being integrated throughout the narrative, were dumped on the reader post-climax. If the elements of the backstory had been better woven into the main story - for example, if Billy had stumbled across this history during one of his many library visits - it would have been a much more immersive and enjoyable experience. As it stands, it felt jarring and disjointed, and I was left feeling disappointed with the way things wrapped up.

A road trip story is the perfect vehicle for the combination of folk horror and Americana, and this novel does a splendid job of highlighting so many of the celebrated aspects of both those story-telling modalities while keeping some tricks of the contemporary horror genre up his sleeve. The collision of the modern and the traditional is explored in an interesting way. There is the stereotypical clearing in the woods that almost every folk horror story employs, the clearly delineated boundary between the civilized and the unknown, but that boundary keeps moving, following the backroads as we move from one roadside memorial to another, which asks interesting questions about the in-between spaces, and how to avoid them. Our trio of central characters feel genuine and interesting, each feeling rounded in their own way, and they complement each other well. They make sense together in ways that doesn't always happen when assembling a dynamic group of personalities, letting them all develop as more than just a collection of their quirks. There are a few supporting characters that were memorable as well, and while some of them felt a little more expected and stereotypical than our primary cast they were still fun, and they fit into the narrative well. The overall story itself is a fun take on a pretty traditional story, playing with tropes and expectations to come to a mostly satisfying conclusion.

I have to admit, though, this novel was long, and it really felt it. There is almost no spooky action until 40% of the way into the story, and everything before that point drags. I suppose that time is supposed to be deepening our understanding or appreciation of the characters while also setting tone and setting, but it really felt like a good amount of wheel spinning. Even when the scary things start happening it still feels like a far more languid pacing than I would want in this kind of story, where a more frantic and unsettled pacing would match the characters’ anxieties and growing dread… a hundred pages could be cut out and the story would be stronger for it. The writing style was saturated in an intimate nostalgia that can only come with a first-person narration. I liked that entry way into the story, I liked it feeling personal, but the whole story was framed as a recollection of past events. We get a foreboding line as the first sentence, the narrator saying he should have seen the warning signs from the start. Similar things are sprinkled throughout, just throwaway lines at the end of paragraphs, “little did we know we wouldn’t be smiling again any time soon” kind of lines. This is one of the parts of Chizmar’s style that wears the heavy influence of King, to be honest, and I was torn on it here. When those kinds of lines are used in a close third-person or omniscient narration they create a sense of foreboding and doom, with a little wink to the audience while you’re at it. But when it is used in first-person narration it is telling the audience not only that our narrator has survived whatever events are about to happen but also that they are in control of the narrative in a way that often lessens the tension, I find. Of course, it is a common literary trope within folk horror for the narrative to be presented as a story told by one of the characters, giving the feel of a campfire story, an urban legend, the tumultuous veracity of folklore. With that in mind I understand why this framing was employed, it fits with the mood of the folk horror mode, but it just didn’t work for me here.

The unapologetic saturation with nostalgia feels like another King influence, and it didn’t do a lot for me here, especially the halcyon descriptions of his hometown that feel like they take up endless pages somewhere around 2/3 of the way through the story. The writing itself was strong, it felt competent and curious in ways that I enjoyed. Disregarding the knowing asides, I thought the first-person intimacy was used to great effect. The dialogue felt genuine and real, never falling into the uncanny valley of stilted dialogue that can plague authors reminiscing on how young people speak. Sometimes the dialogue did feel a little juvenile given the characters’ ages and experiences, but for the most part it added to my appreciation for the depth of the characters. This is all to say the writing was strong, but it felt too stretched out and burdened by nostalgia to be entirely effective. I don’t think there was anything bad about the writing, it just didn’t seem to fit the story being told here, or at the least, it didn’t elevate it. Every scene where we interacted with a supporting character, be they a one and done character or a repeat supporting character, felt like a breath of fresh air. I don’t think this is because I didn’t like our main trio, as I did like them, I just think it points to what I felt was a pacing problem.
I have really enjoyed Chizmar’s Boogeyman novels, which did raise my expectations for this novel. Some of the writing and narrative techniques that contributed to the strengths of those novels are used here, but since the tone and subgenre is so wildly different they weren’t as effective, that’s what it comes down to. I still had fun with this story, I thought it was a clever take on a common story. Road trip stories have their own unique potential, a special type of energy, and it was genius to combine that with the folk horror mode or genre. I certainly recommend this novel, it was fun, especially if you’re interested in contemporary folk horror stories. If you go in expecting the story itself to take its time, and you enjoy luxuriating in that nostalgia, are happy to sit with a story that takes its time, then you will find even more enjoyment here.

I want to thank the author, the publisher Gallery Books, and NetGalley, who provided a complimentary eARC for review. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Woahh this book was so fucking good. S0oo well written. I didn't wanna put it down. I read it all and ended it in bed before I went to sleep and it gave me nightmares.

Thank you NetGalley and GalleryBooks for the advanced copy of Memorials by Richard Chizmar!

I love 80’s horror and this did not disappoint! It was long (480 pages) and I feel like it could have been shorter and still had the same effect.

This was a good nod the the 80s , nostalgic creepy novel. It was a bit slow to start, but after the half way mark, the pacing was well. The story line was just a bit confusing. I didn't understand for awhile and had to read parts over as to why they were putting the symbol on memorials to begin with. It was just a little all over the place, but still I would recommend. I loved Troy, he was my favorite. And this just goes to show that good books don't have to have a happy ending. I'm assuming this is maybe going to be a trilogy or at least have another book. The ending seemed like it

***A BIG THANK YOU TO THE AUTHOR AND PUBLISHER FOR PROVIDING ME WITH AN ARC OF THIS UPCOMING BOOK***
This is the tale of 3 college friends in the 80's that embark on a road trip to film a documentary about a very interesting topic: roadside memorials. I did not read the synopsis of this before going into it so I was not expecting the creepy directions that this one took. I should have known better, this is Rich Chizmar baybeeeeeee!

This is a very engaging, if just a wee bit too long, thriller that goes in some truly dark directions. The ultimate mystery unravels nicely with plenty of fake outs, twists and turns. The main characters are all likeable and Chizmar writes in a comforting style that goes down like your favorite refreshing beverage. I classify him in the group of authors that I consider the true disciples and heirs to the GOAT, Mr. Stephen King himself.

You may be a little put off by the length, but don't let that put you off of this one when it hits shelves. You'd be hard pressed to find a better spooky story than the ones that come from the mind of Richie Rich Chizmar!

Chizmar does it again with this scary roadtrip story. The first half of the book I found to be very slow, though I could almost feel myself in every single scene. Upon finishing the story, I realized how important every single line was in the beginning to create the full picture and give hints of what was to come; however, it was exhausting to read. As I neared the end, I was ripping through every page at the speed of light because I could not wait to see what was next. I appreciate that it was not a happy ending but what made sense for the plot. My only displeasure with the end portion was how the sexually graphic scenes felt so forced and unnecessary; I believe the goal of those scenes could have been achieved without that. As always, I will continue to purchase every single book Richard Chizmar puts out.

As a fan of Chizmar’s recent Boogeyman series, I was excited to get into this one too as the premise, and the 1980s time period, appealed to what I like about his other work. Chizmar is perhaps one of the best authors today in establishing context, mood, and vibes. He establishes the context of time and place better than most authors without relying on “remember this” referential crutches. Also, “Memorials” has a well-developed underlying sense of paranoia and distrust. Like in his Boogeyman books, Chizmar proves he is adept at building this tension and suspension throughout his work.

He also writes and develops his main characters well. Each of his three main characters feel like real people, avoiding stereotypes and common archetypes. By the end, you will definitely care about Billy, Troy, and Melody. To me, he was less successful at developing the depth of his secondary characters, especially Naomi, but the villains of this particular work seem particularly underdeveloped. So if there was one letdown in this book, it is not only that the motivations and lore behind the villains was a bit convoluted, but also that there is an expository section that explains them only after the main action has concluded that causes the book to drag a bit by the end. Despite that, the suspenseful and mysterious ride that gets you to that endpoint is certainly one worth taking.

3.5 stars

I was super impressed by Richard Chizmar's CHASING THE BOOGEYMAN, but his latest MEMORIALS (publishing October 22, 2024) didn't land as successfully with me.

The premise of this novel was so interesting. Three college students (Billy the narrator, Melody, and Troy) embark on a week-long trip in western Pennsylvania in May of 1983 documenting roadside memorials, including a memorial dedicated to one of the filmmaker's own parents, for a class project. They see strange symbols on these memorials, and people act oddly toward them during their travels, creating an unsettled feeling throughout most of the novel.

PROs
1. Great premise
2. Feeling slightly unsettled (what's going on?) throughout most of the novel
3. Lots of dialogue - allows the reader to be in the novel
4. Documentary filming set apart in different font
5. Would be a good movie

PRO and CON
1. Liked how it incorporated racism toward Troy but it had a 2020s sensibility to it that pulls you out of the 1983 setting.

CONs
1. Reads young adult instead of as an older narrator reflecting on 1983 self
2. A lot of repetition in the middle with different roadside memorial scenes, dragged down the pacing A LOT
3. Didn't buy into one of the big scenes at the end
4. Not as many 1983 vibes as I wanted

I found this to be a decent read due to its premise and some more novel inclusions into the narrative, but I didn't find this to be as compelling as other works by this author.