C.J. Dotson's The Cut is a suspenseful and gripping thriller that blends elements of domestic drama with supernatural horror. Set in an eerie hotel, the novel follows Sadie, a woman fleeing an abusive relationship, and her young daughter Izzy. As Sadie seeks a fresh start, hoping to escape her violent past and provide a safer future for her unborn child, the hotel quickly proves to be anything but a sanctuary.
What stands out in The Cut is Sadie's growth throughout the novel. From a woman who is initially vulnerable and unsure of herself, she gradually taps into a well of inner strength as she fights for her survival and her children's safety. Her courage and resilience are both inspiring and relatable, making her a compelling protagonist to root for.
Overall, The Cut is a thrilling mix of psychological drama and supernatural horror, with a strong and determined lead who proves that sometimes survival requires confronting both your past and the monsters in your way. C.J. Dotson crafts a tense, atmospheric novel that keeps you turning pages until the very end, leaving you questioning what’s real and what’s not, and whether some monsters are truly gone for good.

Oh Sadie, how you really worked my last nerve, you stinker.

In The Cut, a pregnant woman escapes an abusive relationship with her three year old daughter in tow, and ends up taking a housekeeping job in an old hotel. The hotel manager Mr. Dryer takes pity on her and allows her to stay in one of the rooms for free, and she quickly befriends a kindly, long term guest named Gertie, who offers to help babysit her daughter while she works.

Within Sadie's first day at the hotel, there are strange wet noises in the hallway, random damp spots on the walls and hallway rugs, and she's witness to an incident from her window, where a guest appears to be drowning in the pool, though when she rushes out there to help, no one is around, the pool is calm and serene, the only evidence of anything untoward is the quickly drying wet drag mark on the concrete.

Mr. Dryer seems wholly unconcerned when Sadie reports it. She tries to put the weird experience behind her until the next day when she learns a guest has failed to check out and take their stuff, and notices dried blood in a tub during one of her routine cleaning jobs. And let's not mention the slimy little tentacled things that appear on the floor of her own tub while she's taking a shower... although, when she grabs Mr. Dryer again, all of the evidence is gone when he takes a look.

Is she losing her shit or is something horrible hiding just beneath the surface of the L'Arpin Hotel? And is Mr. Dyer and the rest of the staff behind it? And what of old lady Gertie, who always happens to show up right after the weird stuff takes place?

Dotson immediately sucks us in with all the strange shenanigans. I had so many questions, you guys. But then it just got meh and kept on meh-ing. There was so much to look forward to, yet so many annoyances kept popping up. The repetitive rehashing of the abuse she took, the constant fits and tantrums and coddling of her daughter, the whole not feeling safe but then running off to check things out and leaving her little girl alone, asleep in the hotel room, and even then when she was out there spying around, talking herself out of everything she saw, it got old quick. So when the real shit starting hitting the fan, I was more perturbed and less hanging on every word, because I had kind of figured out what was going on before we got there and just wanted to get it over with.

A solid three star. Less if I focus on the all the ways Sadie annoyed me and the overall execution of the book, but for the creepy, cosmic weird plot it certainly deserves more.

#ad many thanks for my advance copy @stmartinspress #partner
& @netgalley + @macmillan.audio for the ALC

🆃🅷🅴 🅲🆄🆃
ʀᴇʟᴇᴀꜱᴇꜱ: ᴀᴘʀɪʟ 𝟪, 𝟤𝟢𝟤𝟧

The Cut by C.J Dotson is a slow-burn horror that delivers all the creepy vibes. If you enjoy monster horror then this book was made for you.

Sadie has just found out she’s pregnant again. Engaged to Sam, her abusive finance, Sadie knows she needs to escape him and this pregnancy only exasperates this feeling. Gathering a few clothes and toys for her 3-year-old Izzy, Sadie flees while Sam is out.

Izzy and Sadie land at the L’Arpin hotel where Sadie gets a job as a maid and a free room to live for a bit. But there’s weird things happening here. Water smells and stains, blood in the tubs. Sadie saw a woman fully clothed thrashing around in the pool before the woman disappeared. Something is wrong here Sadie can sense it.

Struggling through PTSD, Sadie has flashbacks and Sam is blowing up her phone begging for her to come back. Is she far enough away from him; is she safe here?

I enjoyed this book mostly but I think it would have been better with a faster pace. While the narrative into Sadie’s mind was compelling, it sometimes overshadowed the plot of the book. But once the action kicked off I couldn’t put this book down.

The audio was perfect. Most narrators irk me with their kid voices, but Jenn Lee does a phenomenal job narrating this book.

The Cut would make an excellent limited series! As I read this I could see how episodes would come together in my mind. It’s one of those books that I think would be better as a TV show than a book. 3 stars - only bc much of the book nothing was happening. Action wise, just suspicions and weird things. Not a page-turner (sorries 😭).

It wasn’t until chapter 18 that I was finally really enjoying this book. The last 3/4th of the story was exciting and fun. It then became a page turner.

Will def read future books by this author.

What really saved this book for me was the author’s message about strength not coming from people surviving an abusive situation, but that that strength was already in them all along. DV is a matter that is close to my heart for personal reasons. And I 💯 support and appreciate this message.

Triggers: DV
People might not like: calling her kid “Stinker” lol - supplying alcohol to kids under 21. Gaslighting

Let’s rip the Band-Aid off: The Cut is like swaggering into a Michelin-star joint, drooling for a juicy cheeseburger, and getting served a soggy saltine with a ketchup skid mark and a whiff of meat that might’ve waved hello from the kitchen. It’s got a badass cover that screams “fuck yeah,” a premise that could slay, and all the trappings of a creature-feature horror banger—except it lands somewhere between a melodramatic soap opera and a limp-dick episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? that even Nickelodeon would’ve flushed.

C.J. Dotson’s a fresh face in the horror pit, and props to her—she’s clearly got a raging boner for the genre. You can practically smell the love for The Shining and The Mist oozing off the pages like the mystery slime dripping from her haunted hotel’s crusty pipes. But this debut? It’s less a story and more a mushy valentine to every horror trope in the book. There’s raw talent here, sure, but it’s drowning under dialogue so clunky it could sink a ship and characters so shallow they’d lose a staring contest with a puddle.

Meet Sadie Miles, our preggo protagonist, hauling ass from her shitbag ex-fiancé with her toddler, Izzy (aka “Stinker”—a nickname hammered so hard you’d think it’s tattooed on the kid’s forehead). They wash up at the L’Arpin Hotel on Lake Erie’s grimy shores—a crumbling dump that’s basically a neon sign blinking “TRAP” in blood-red letters. Naturally, Sadie snags a job and a free room, because horror novel. Cue the weird wall noises, vanishing coworkers, and staff who act like they’ve had their souls sucked out through a straw. Oh, and there’s something slimy in the pipes that’s itching to tentacle its way into your dreams—or maybe your womb. Classic haunted-shithole vibes.

The real horror’s split between the squelching, fishy abominations (think B-movie rejects with a greenish flubber fetish) and Sadie’s own baggage, which the book smartly frames as the root of her paranoia and grit. Too bad it’s bogged down by repetition and character arcs flatter than a steamrolled pancake—otherwise, we might’ve actually given a shit about her. The Cut wants to be a deep-dive buffet of trauma, gaslighting, isolation, and abuse—both the domestic kind and the cosmic, tentacle-waving variety. It flirts with eco-horror (Lake Erie’s basically a cesspool with attitude), maternal dread, and a sprinkle of body-horror grossness. The hotel’s a solid stand-in for abuse cycles: a leaky shelter that screws you over, staffed by assholes who wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire. Sadie’s pregnancy and the water freaks tie into some nasty invasion metaphors. It’s got ideas, alright—they’re just half-baked, underseasoned, and left on the counter to rot.

Dotson’s prose swings from “damn, that’s creepy” to “oh, fuck me, really?” The L’Arpin Hotel’s slime-slick dread sticks to you like wet dog hair, but then someone talks, and it’s like a sledgehammer of awkward dialogue and the 47th “opay” (Izzy’s toddler gibberish for “okay”) smacks you awake. If that kid were real, I’d yeet her into speech class. In a book? Edit that shit down, for the love of God. Sadie’s inner monologues loop like a broken record—apparently, Dotson thinks we’ll forget she’s desperate to GTFO if she doesn’t scream it every five minutes. The character chit-chat feels like it was scraped from a Lifetime movie’s cutting-room floor. Real people don’t spew vague trauma metaphors at strangers like it’s open mic night—someone tell Dotson.

Strengths
Credit where it’s due: the setting’s creepy as balls. The L’Arpin Hotel sweats decay like a hungover frat boy, and the water motif—drippy walls, sketchy puddles, pipe-lurking tentacle fuckers—hits that sweet spot of “what’s under the bed?” unease. The creatures have a Lovecraftian slither that could’ve been pants-shittingly scary with better timing and punch. Too bad they stumble in late and fizzle like a wet firecracker.

Critiques

Pacing? More Like Pacing Yourself to Death
The first half crawls slower than a sloth on Xanax, slogging through Sadie’s brain vomit and Izzy’s babble. The back half? It’s a plot-twist pileup that derails faster than a drunk Uber driver. You don’t build tension by boring us to tears and then yeeting the kitchen sink at us— that’s just narrative whiplash, baby.

Characters Flatter Than a Pancake’s Ass
Sadie’s 100% trauma, 0% personality. Everyone else is either Shady McShadeface or a walking “fuck you” button. Gertie, the old babysitter, is the only one with a heartbeat—and she’s still just Creepy Granny Plot Device. Mr. Drye, the manager? He’s got the charisma of a soggy tax form.

Dialogue That’ll Make You Gouge Your Ears Out
If I hear “Mama loves you” one more time, I’m billing Dotson for my therapy. The repetition’s so bad it’s like the characters are stuck in a glitchy NPC loop.

Logic Takes a Vacation
Water monsters? Fine. Creepy staff? Sure. But Sadie poking around security footage instead of hauling ass with her kid and bun-in-the-oven? That’s when the story’s brain checks out and leaves us holding the bag.

The Cut could’ve been The Shining meets The Mist with a feminist kick in the nuts. Instead, it’s Scooby-Doo on sedatives, swinging a rubber mallet of subtlety and sporting the emotional depth of a used Kleenex. It’s got something to say about trauma and survival but gags on its own metaphors. The monsters are wet and nasty; the pacing’s dry as a desert fart. The characters? About as likable as stepping in cold puke. The ending’s a trainwreck I won’t spoil—let’s just say it’s a damp squib. Some diehard creature-feature freaks might dig the gooey, slow-burn weirdness, but for most horror junkies, The Cut is less a razor-sharp stab and more a limp poke with a soggy breadstick.

I wanted to like this. It sounded good. It was so slow at the beginning I had to try like 5 times just to get started on it and then it just didn’t realize into what I thought it was going to be. Thanks to the publisher and netgalley for this copy for read and review

The premise for this sounded so promising, but I think this was a case of “not the right execution”.

The beginning of this book had me interested, though maybe it was a little slow. The dialogue, particularly the dialogue between Sadie and her daughter, felt repetitive and got a little boring after a while, and the “stinker” nickname was overused. I appreciated that the creepy vibes were high with all the mysterious things going on around the hotel, and how the suspense slowly built up. By the time we reached the end, things had gone in a different direction than I was expecting, and it felt too rushed and like I had to suspend too much belief.

I think the idea for this book was better than the reality.

40/100 or 2.0 stars

The first few chapters of this were engaging and hooked me into the story, but as the story progressed, my interest got lower and lower. The ending was not the best and it just didn't work for me, and that is sad since I thought I was going to really like this one.

Thank you to the publisher/C.J. Dotson for the #ARC in return for an honest review.
Pubdate: April 8, 2025
Horror

I did not finish this... this was a highly anticipated read which ended up being very disappointing. I got towards 59% and finally decided to DNF. I really wanted to love it due to the cover, the plot line, and the vibes of an old Sy-Fy movie I saw when I was younger. It was giving creepy, unsettling, and unreliable narrators. I started skimming at the 38% mark hoping that it would get better. I liked the idea of a supernatural element. I will say 10/10 on the cover because it's awesome!! But here's where we started to go wrong:
- I did not understand why we needed so much baby talk???? I get it. There is a kid in the book, but it was tiring.
- repetitive and slow
- too much dialogue that cut into the buildup of the book
- Sadie as a main character could not pick a decision. Her choices made it hard to sympathize with her.

I love books like this where there's a real human bad guy (and with her family, arguably multiple bad people) and the victim runs for safety into a terrible supernatural situation. Sadie is looking for safety for herself, her toddler and her unborn child. It's lucky she finds a job in a hotel that lets her have a room, but what is happening around her? Are the new dangers worse than the ones she's fleeing?
Sadie is a good character because she's not just a victim. She may not have chosen the best partner but she has priorities and even tries to rescue someone she thinks is drowning. I definitely wanted the best for her, so it was suspenseful.
Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the eARC.

I had absolutely no business reading this book. Too new to horror for this to have actually appealed to me.

This was my first cosmic horror book and I was really intrigued. There were some slow parts and some repetition. However, I found it interesting.

Creepy and goosebump-inducing, Dotson gives us a story that sends a chill up your spine. Not only is our protagonist, Sadie, on the run from her abusive fiancé, but the place she now lives, and works at, is unsettling. Sadie knows something is wrong-even if everyone else sees nothing amiss. But people start disappearing, and no matter who she turns to for answers, she continues to get stonewalled. On top of that, Sadie swears there’s something in the pipes trying to slither its way into her room. It’s a nightmare she feels stuck in.

The idea for this story is a solid one. It gives off eerie vibes and builds throughout-as you see Sadie desperately trying to hang on to her sanity, and try to leave the L’Arpin Hotel for good. The story also had a variety of characters that add to the overall uneasiness of the setting-leaving us trying to figure out what is truly going on at the hotel. Unfortunately, what should have built up to a slam-bang finish ended up being a whimper. It left much to be desired, despite all the great elements that formed the story.

I truly wanted to like this story more than I did. It had a lot of potential to be an awesome horror story. The idea as there, but the follow through wasn’t enough.

I just don't think I should be 25% into a horror novel and not have any idea what is happening. I'm tired of hearing about this woman hearing water drip and jumping every time her phone rings. Like girl just turn it off??? I'm bored, I'm not invested. I don't care about the characters and quite honestly I don't even remember her name and I just put the book down a second ago. I won't be finishing.

On Lake Erie there sits an old and prestigious hotel, though not as busy as it once was.
Sadie Miles finds herself a new member of the cast of characters that occupy the L'Arpin Hotel after escaping an abusive relationship with her young daughter and a baby-on-the-way. Sadie finds herself trapped due to circumstance and perhaps by sinister motivations from people around her--or is she just unpacking her trauma from the abuse afflicting by a manipulative and controlling ex? As Sadie comes to terms with and learns to cope with being an indeendent caregiver, she also has to question the reality of happenings around her. Who is a friend and who is out to get her? Or is it all just in her head from years of questioning herself?

This could almost be considered cozy horror, if it wasn't for all the times I felt unsettled by this story. I enjoyed the small and intimate cast and setting. And the things that bothered our main characters are things that I could envision happening to myself.

I was highly anticipating this book, so I was so excited when I got the opportunity to read it! I love that the setting takes place in a creepy hotel and the main character gets a job there. The workers are also very odd and weird stuff starts happening. This was a solid horror book and I was very satisfied with it.

This book had promise but unfortunately it just wasn’t for me.

Sadie finally leaves her abusive finance, fleeing with her three year old daughter to an interview at an old hotel as a housekeeper. She keeps a permanent residence there and weird things start happening.
While the story had a good foundation for a haunting, it took a turn to green things that I just couldn’t keep a straight face with while reading.

I didn’t connect with any of the characters. And while I sympathize with Sadie’s struggles and what she’s been through, it was very repetitive.

But if you like monsters and creepy hotels this book is definitely for you!

Thanks for the read!

Let's get this out of the way before I say more. This book is what I would call a creature-feature, one of my favorite horror sub-genres. But the creatures in this book are GREEN people! Did this cover designer even read the book? Moving on.

Sadie and her three-year-old daughter, Izzy, are running away from Sadie's abusive fiancé and land in a small town on Lake Erie, Ohio. Sadie interviews and get a job at a historic hotel, L'Arpin, which works out well because the manager/owner allows Sadie to live there as well. Soon after her arrival she begins to hear strange water sounds coming from the hallways and a trail of water left behind. In addition, people are coming up missing and no one at the hotel seems to care. The man who runs the power plant next door keeps accusing the hotel employees of sabotaging his building and the old lady, Gertie, who has lived at the hotel for what seems like forever keeps finding more and more reasons to be around Izzy.

This book started out kind of slow. I was about 40% in when it eventually picked up. It wasn't that I ever thought about DNF'ing, but I just found myself putting it aside and not in any real hurry to pick it back up. However, once I reached the last 30%, I couldn't put the book down. I also found the setting and some of the characters pretty creepy, even though Sadie was annoying most of the time. That being said, it is also clear she is a victim of domestic violence, and the past abuse was the root of many of her actions and poor decisions, so I completely get it. I found the ending somewhat over-the-top but it was dramatic and fit the creature-feature Modis Operandi.

Overall, The Cut was exactly what I expected, except for the red creatures. It wasn't perfect but it ended up being fun and sometimes that's all you need from your horror. If you are even slightly curious about this one, I recommend you give it a try.

Unfortunately this was very very repetitive and became boring. It had so much promise. But ultimately it wasn't for me. Thank you for the copy!

2.5 / 5 stars rounded up.

In The Cut, a single mother escapes from an abusive husband and finds a live-in job at a hotel that increasingly reveals that it and all the people around it are hiding something.

This story really had all the elements of some of my favorite horror stories.. The Shining’s haunted hotel, The Mist’s mutated monsters… but it just didn’t really come together.
A lot was really way too repetitive among the main character’s inner monologue. It was understandable why she would be in a panicked state as a single mother running away from an abusive ex, but I swear she had the exact thought “I need to get out of here as soon as I can” at least 20 times throughout the book, as well as a lot of other sentiments that were repeated over and over again.
I also didn’t really understand what drove Sadie to try to get to the bottom of things. After the coworker disappeared, it made a little more sense, but especially as a single mother trying to protect her daughters, it was weird to me the way she was barreling through at the beginning demanding to see the security tapes, etc.

Overall, the story had a lot of promising aspects, and there were parts where I didn’t want to put it down, but it did drag especially at the end, and I just feel like this could have been a lot more captivating than it was.

Man, this had so much promise and I love a creature feature horror book, but this just wasn't it for me. It got really repetitive and overall became boring. ending up skimming to the end and I'm left feeling unsatisfied