2.5 stars.

I really liked the premise of this but it didn't quite hit for me although it did have it's moments.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy.

I loved the atmosphere of this book; the setting, the tone, and the writing were excellent! The characters could have been a bit more fleshed out; they sometimes seemed a little one-dimensional. Overall, it's a good book!

This one was a little to on the nose for me. A bit predictable, and nothing to really hold the tension. I was entertained, and there were some elements that were a bit spooky. But all in all, this one didn’t meet my expectations I’m sorry to say.

My thanks to the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Gothictown is a great modern Southern Gothic novel.
Billie Hope, husband Peter and six year old daughter Meredith make a life-changing move from New York to ‘Gentle Juliana’ -an idyllic Georgian town.
Post-pandemic, Billie has had to shut down her successful NY restaurant and is dealing with the secondary trauma of her Mother leaving her to go live with a Cult-ish movement that restricts contact.
When an email arrives in her inbox about an initiative in struggling Georgian town Juliana, offering a house for just $100 plus $30,000 towards setting up a new business to be based in the community, Billie can’t help thinking that it must be some kind of scam.
Is this hugely tempting offer just too good to be true?
Let’s face it - it usually is!

Juliana has had many come-backs in its relatively short history of a town. A previously failed gold mine, then a failed Lumber Mill. There’s money to be made, but only if certain sacrifices are made…

The setting of Juliana is beautifully imagined with a great cast of slightly eccentric and intriguing ‘original founding family’ characters.
Billie and her own family do seem quite two-dimensional compared with some of the other characters. I just never really felt for her, so it was a bit hard to fully invest in her dramas.
The action really starts to ramp up towards the end with loads of stomach-churning ‘eek!’ moments.
With so many books failing to hit a satisfactory ending, I was happy that Emily Carpenter was successful in her conclusion. Wrapped up neatly and with a satisfying result, I was left with the positive reading experience with a book that was well-paced and well executed from start to finish.
* Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC

Gothictown by Emily Carpenter is a novel of Southern Gothic genre. It touches on the subject of the impact of 2020 pandemic on ordinary people and how it affected the life of a restaurant owner, Billie Hope. We also get to read about the impact of war on women and children as well as how class distinction played a role in determining their fate.

The premise was good, the writing not so much, but it kept my interest until halfway through the book. The ending was somewhat dubious and implausible and it seemed the writer just wanted to end the novel abruptly.

excellent southern gothic thriller with a flawed protagonist. its one flaw are the flashbacks that periodically occur, but that isn't a huge detriment. 5 stars. tysm for the arc.

Problems with the pacing that is all over the place made this a hard book to read. The character is also naive to the point of absurdity. The writing needs to be polished hard because it comes of a little childish. Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for this chance to read this book.

Gothictown started well, with atmospheric scene setting that really drew me in. However I felt that it really went downhill from there with the pacing and characterisation. The main protagonist, Billie, was increasingly annoying me, and the way she was conducting herself just didn't feel in any way realistic. The writing felt very immature and the whole thing left me feeling very unsatisfied. Not for me at all, though it absolutely should have been. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in return for an honest review of the book.

Sometimes, you see articles about small towns in Italy or Scotland offering homes for small fees. They want to build their communities and perhaps increase tourism income. They all seem too good to be true. Gothictown by Emily Carpenter is a cautionary tale about one of those too-good-to-be-true offers.

Billie Hope is struggling. During the pandemic in New York City, she closed her acclaimed restaurant, Billie's. Her mother has joined a cult and moved to Maine. One day, she receives an email offering the opportunity to join an initiative in Georgia. The town of Juliana is offering homes for $100 and all the support to build businesses there. Billie and her husband, Peter, find this too good of an offer to pass up, pack up their lives, and move south.

Juliana is an ideal small town. Everyone knows everyone. There's always a helping hand and an offer to barter for favors. Billie opens a new restaurant and it's received with much excitement. It's almost TOO easy. No permit or license hold-ups, no construction delays, no staffing issues. Billie is back in her happy place at the restaurant.

Peter, however, is not happy. He's sleeping during the day and is increasingly angry. The family cat has also started acting feral.

As Billie learns more about Juliana and gets to know the residents, she finds that the town's old guard has more than a few secrets.
---
Emily Carpenter has written a modern Gothic thriller with Gothictown. Full of small-town drama and secrets, Juliana is a nightmare of a town.

While I did find some issues with Billie, as a person, she was still someone that I rooted for. Did the end wrap up a LITTLE too nicely? Yes, but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy reading the story of Billie Hope trying to find herself and to find a home.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Free ARC provided by Kensington Publishing via NetGalley in exchange for a fair review. Publish date 25 March 2025.

I requested this book because I was intrigued by its Southern Gothic premise. In Gothictown, ex-restauranteur and stay at home mom Billie is lured into moving her family down to picturesque small town Juliana, Georgia after seeing an advertisement for houses selling for only one hundred dollars. However, as you might guess, the offer is inevitably too good to be true, and Billie is dragged into a dangerous tangle of Juliana's dark secrets stretching back centuries...

This book got off on the wrong foot with a spelling error on the very first page (mantel where they meant mantle), and I wasn't especially enamored of the casual, unpolished prose. My second impression was that Gothictown is very much a post-COVID book, set perhaps a year or two after 2020. I'm so-so on including the pandemic in novels, but I found its presence compelling here. The specter of lockdown in a small New York apartment with a husband and six-year-old is obviously the driving force behind Billie's eagerness to snatch at a clearly too good to be true offer.

The book's pacing is somewhat erratic—while Billie's husband Peter picks up on the obviously cursed house and seems to be on the verge of nervous breakdown relatively quickly, our POV Billie is remarkably oblivious to the atmosphere. Besides from a handful of nightmares, she's under the impression that Juliana is a sweet and charming town well into the halfway point, which slogs down the pace. That is, until the novel breaks unexpectedly into a thriller-like confrontation more suited to a hotshot crime TV show in the last quarter. In addition, the choice to include flashbacks to the actions of the town founders throughout time from very early on rather spoils the tension, since it's relatively clear to the reader what's actually going on, even if Billie doesn't know. These anticlimactic spoilers contributed to the overall impression that the book was reluctant to commit to the horror genre, clinging instead to the plausible deniability of litfic rationalizations.

I liked down-to-earth Billie's narration, but I found the horror aspects rather disappointing. If you're looking for a stand-out Southern Gothic, I'd recommend Tananarive Due's The Reformatory instead.

Have you ever dreamed of moving to a small, remote place where life is still guided by old-fashioned values and flows peacefully, free from dangers or dissatisfaction? "Gothictown" might shake your belief that such a place could truly exist.

A New York family—a father, mother, and young daughter—decides to relocate to Juliana, a small town in Georgia where time seems to have stopped. Lured by enticing and favorable financial offers, they hope to finally lead a life far from the stress of big cities, economic pressure, and the disorientation of fast-paced modern living.

But, of course, the fairy tale will soon morph into a chilling horror story.

"Gothictown" is a contemporary southern gothic novel that begins with the kind of tension every good thriller should have. The first 50 pages genuinely unsettled me and raised my expectations so much that I had to slow my reading to avoid being overwhelmed by anxiety.

Unfortunately, as the story progressed, boredom gradually took hold.

In "Gothictown," too many dynamics start to intertwine: the town's eerie folklore, the personal struggles of the two protagonists, Peter and Billie, their deteriorating relationship, psychological twists, and Billie's relationship with her mother. The events in this novel unfold excruciatingly slowly and feel overly diluted. This pacing undermines the suspense. Once all the cards are on the table, the ending feels rather implausible—a conclusion to a story that began with great promise but ultimately failed to fulfill it.

Nonetheless, "Gothictown" remains an enjoyable thriller. It deftly navigates the supernatural and the mundane to tell a tale of abuse of power and collective madness, dismantling the ideal of an "Eden" and delivering a simple yet searing truth: even the most idyllic and perfect places are full of shadows. Because humanity is never immune to greed and malice.

Forced to close her restaurant due to the pandemic and her mother moving to join a cult in Maine, Billie feels lost in New York with her young family. Until Billie and her therapist husband, Peter, receive the offer of a lifetime. A small town in Georgia is offering home and business opportunity for $100 to anyone willing to relocate.

This book had the hair on my arms raised almost the entire time. Juliana, Georgia seems like it would be the perfect place to raise a family, but something is off. There are small, odd things that happen making you wonder if it is something to ignore or if it leads to something bigger. There were plenty of twists, and turns that kept me guessing.

I know other reviewers have said the same thing but this book is super atmospheric and gothic, which I love! It creeped me out almost the whole way through after sucking me in from the first page. I didn't want the book to end! Some parts made me raise an eyebrow but it was a fun ride.

When her restaurant closes due to the pandemic and her mother joins a cult in Maine, Billie Hope feels adrift. Life in New York City with her therapist husband, Peter, and their gifted six-year-old daughter, Meredith, is not enough to pull her out of depression. One day she sees an offer that sounds too good to be true. An idyllic small town is offering a home (for $100!) and an opportunity for any entrepreneur or professional willing to relocate to Juliana, Georgia. Tired of living trapped in their apartment, the Hopes leave everything behind to move into a Southern mansion. While Peter works remotely and Mere explores their sixteen acre property with her cat, Billie sets up her new restaurant next door to a handsome antique dealer.
It appears that their dreams have come true, but the entire family is experiencing horrific nightmares, the beautiful house is constantly covered in a fine white dust, and rumors of an uncapped well somewhere on their land disturbs both parents. Something about Juliana begins to feel "off." There is trouble in Paradise and terrible secrets.
Gothictown is an enthralling and well-written book with some serious flaws.
Billie is supposed to be a savvy New Yorker, but she is entirely too trusting and eager to please. She is also, despite thirteen years of happiness with Peter, overly susceptible to the charms of her new neighbor. Even when her marriage starts to fall apart, I didn't believe that Billie would respond as she did. The problem with her mother disappears almost immediately after she makes a phone call to Maine and asks for help. She has spent months agonizing over their estrangement but Mom doesn't seem all that distant. Later, I figured out a crucial secret much sooner than Billie did and that ruined the last quarter of the book for me.
The more serious problem with this novel is that the central mystery makes no sense. The entire town is run by three old families and their acolytes, all of whom worship "Gentle Juliana", the daughter of one of the founders who died over a hundred years ago. (This is not a spoiler, as the prologue supposedly explains the origin of their devotion, but even after reading the prologue twice, once before and once after reading the entire novel, I don't get the point.)
Supposedly, Juliana owed its comfort and security to a gold mine. When the miners left to fight the Civil War, their wives and children took over their jobs. Then, General Sherman marched his army through Georgia and destroyed anything that might help the Confederacy. He burned buildings, stole food, and blew up mines. Juliana's town council decided to blow up the entrance to their own mine and disguised it, hoping that Sherman would leave the town undamaged. The logical problem that made no sense to me is that before blowing up the entrance, they forced all the women and children who had worked in the mine to go down a deep shaft with a small amount of water, blankets, and candles. Why? They then swore all the other residents to secrecy. What was the point of making people hide inside the mine? Couldn't they have just sworn them to secrecy too? Sherman bought the ruse and left Juliana untouched except for stealing all their food., but when the mine was reopened, all of the women and children inside were found dead, drowned in a pool of water. The town fathers blew up the entrance, again, with the bodies still inside and, after the war, told the returning soldiers that Sherman had shipped all their families out West. (Apparently, Sherman actually did that in some places.) Juliana's father decided that his dead daughter had taken all the dead women and children as a sacrifice to ensure the safety of the town and, because he was rich and powerful, he convinced his fellow councilmen to accept this hogwash as their new religion. Even their descendents would continue to worship 'Gentle Juliana" and do whatever was necessary to keep the town's secret.
Aside from the whole "dead girl protecting her town" business, I had a real problem with the gold mine story. If the mine was so important, how come it was never reopened? They could have buried the bodies and reopened the mine after the war, but this never happened. The rich men started other industries based on timber and manufacturing but kept the mine a secret. Despite their commitment to this policy, the big shots let Billie and her family move into the house formally owned by the original gold-mining family. Why? They wouldn't sell it to anyone else, so why did the Hopes get "lucky?" I won't go into detail about the reason they were so eager to keep Billie happy, but she would have done fine in a different house without risking the Big Secret.
Anyway, despite my issues with Gothictown, I enjoyed most of it, and, more importantly, read the whole thing. Three stars for fun, but I don't know if I'd bother reading anything else by this author without checking Goodreads really carefully.
I would like to thank NetGalley, the author and the publisher for a free advance copy of Gothictown in exchange for my honest review.

You had me at the title!! I love anything Gothic!

This was a creepy, quick-ish read.

Would you jump at the chance to purchase an old Victorian home for only $100. I would have before reading this book!!

If you love gothic and creepy atmospheric books, this is for you!

Gothictown is a fun, engaging, creepy read that's a bit Stepford Wives meets Hot Fuzz (one of my favorite movies). The writing is easy to follow and flows nicely. If you're a regular consumer of such books, you're unlikely to find many surprises in this one, but in some ways, that's what makes it fun--a new take on tried and true tropes.
Thank you to Net Galley and Kensington books for the opportunity to read this advance copy!

Release: March 24, 25
Publisher: Kensington Publishing

Rating: 4.25/5 ⭐

Emily Carpenter’s Gothictown was an atmospheric and gripping read that perfectly blended suspense and gothic elements. The setting was vivid and haunting, almost a character in itself, pulling me into its eerie world. The pacing kept me hooked, balancing slow-burning tension with moments of intense action. I appreciated how the characters were complex and layered, making their struggles feel real and their decisions impactful. The twists were well-executed, leaving me guessing without feeling contrived. Overall, Gothictown delivered on mood, intrigue, and storytelling, earning a strong 4.25 stars from me.

Gothictown by Emily Carpenter is a dark and atmospheric tale set in a mysterious, eerie town where secrets and danger lurk at every corner. The story follows a protagonist who is drawn into a web of deception and intrigue, uncovering shocking truths about the town and its inhabitants. With gothic elements and unexpected twists, it’s a suspenseful journey that keeps you on edge until the very end.

Favorite Quote:

"Welcome to gentle Juliana, where you can have it all.... If you pay the price

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

Please note this is a 3.5.

I genuinely liked this book. It was definitely somewhat formulaic, however, it did have the right amount of creepy and weird cult vibes that it needed to have. The characters were definitely flawed, and the writing of the main character was not incredible, but it still felt compelling. The story itself, however, was a really fun ride, and while it seems slightly beyond the realm of possibility, the idea of schlepping to a town to live in a house you bought for $100 is definitely something that I can imagine many would want to do.

The supernatural aspects of this book were definitely stand-outs, and I found myself particularly intrigued by the mine and the potential for the ghosts and visions to be the answer to the strange things that were happening. I was hopeful that this book would lean more into the supernatural stuff, but I unfortunately found that this didn't end up being the case. I thought the storyline with the husband was a strong one, as were the dynasties of creepy families.

The ending was the weakest, but the start and middle were fast-paced and well worth the read. This book is a good one for fans of horror, and it's worth looking into for any horror fan.

Southern gothic masterpiece? YES PLEASE! I adored this. It was incredibly atmospheric and Carpenter did an amazing job of capturing the essence of what makes southern gothic lit so timeless.