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Book: “Dead Girls Walking” by Sami Ellis
Publishing Info: Amulet Books, March 2024
Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley.
Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound
Book Description: A shocking, spine-chilling YA horror slasher about a girl searching for her dead mother’s body at the summer camp that was once her serial killer father’s home—perfect for fans of Friday the 13th and White Smoke.
Temple Baker knows that evil runs in her blood. Her father is the North Point Killer, an infamous serial killer known for how he marked each of his victims with a brand. He was convicted for murdering 20 people and was the talk of countless true crime blogs for years. Some say he was possessed by a demon. Some say that they never found all his victims. Some say that even though he’s now behind bars, people are still dying in the woods. Despite everything though, Temple never believed that her dad killed her mom. But when he confesses to that crime while on death row, she has no choice but to return to his old hunting grounds to try see if she can find a body and prove it.
Turns out, the farm that was once her father’s hunting grounds and her home has been turned into an overnight camp for queer, horror-obsessed girls. So Temple poses as a camp counselor to go digging in the woods. While she’s not used to hanging out with girls her own age and feels ambivalent at best about these true crime enthusiasts, she tries her best to fit in and keep her true identity hidden.
But when a girl turns up dead in the woods, she fears that one of her father’s “fans” might be mimicking his crimes. As Temple tries to uncover the truth and keep the campers safe, she comes to realize that there may be something stranger and more sinister at work—and that her father may not have been the only monster in these woods.
Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!
There are a number of known truths in my world, and one of those truths is that if you make a reference to “Friday the 13th” in relation to another movie plot or story, I’m going to be automatically interested. I have a special place in my heart for Jason Voorhees and those pretty not great but super campy and gory slasher movies, so much so that my Terror Tuesday friend group is slowly working our way through the movie series as group member Michael had never seen any of them. Because of my love, when I was browsing NetGalley for upcoming horror novels, I was immediately intrigued by “Dead Girls Walking” by Sami Ellis. It not only dropped “Friday the 13th” in its description, but also “White Smoke” by Tiffany D. Jackson, one of my favorite horror authors. These two things and a very eye catching cover made me pretty excited to read this book. Which means I was a bit bummed when it didn’t quite rise to the occasion.
But as always I will start with the good! I will say right off that this harkens less to “Friday the 13th” (outside of the summer camp setting) and more to the original “Evil Dead” when it comes to the scares. Which is a-okay with me, because I love both of those franchises but “Evil Dead” isn’t seen nearly as much when it comes to general cultural references to gory slasher and horror films, whereas I feel like even those who don’t know horror are familiar with Jason Voorhees at least in passing. Ellis knows how to craft a horror casualty that feels like it’s coming from a gory slasher movie, and I could definitely visualize those moments in all their bloody glory.
I also really liked how Ellis has paid something of an homage to a sub-genre that is, very often and certainly during its heydey, a very white, cis, and straight playing field, and has subverted it by featuring queer Black girls. At the center of that is Temple, our protagonist whose father has been convicted of being a serial killer, and whose hunting ground was her family property which has now been transformed into a summer camp. Temple gets the job of a counselor in hopes of finally finding her mother’s body, and her prickliness and hidden identity is a clashing point for the campers. Temple herself is a character I liked a lot, because even though she is probably seen as pretty unlikable, her trauma, family history, and inability to process makes that prickly personality completely understandable. And while a lot of the other campers weren’t super well fleshed out, there were a few that I thought had a lot of good character development and background foundation (the one that really comes to mind is Yaya, a queer teenager who is also a devout Christian and knows that the two things can be reconciled). It’s just refreshing seeing a cast of characters that buck the narrow trends of the genre.
But there were a few hiccups that didn’t work for me. The first is that there were some aspects of the plot that felt a little undercooked, and at times confusing. I felt like I really understood Temple and her motivations, but when it came to the lore of her family history, the land that the murders/camp was on, and her parents and their own motivators and even their trains of thought, these things felt brushed over, or in some ways a bit unclear. I know that slasher movies don’t really need that much motivation beyond ‘slasher A has motivation B and kills horny teenagers’, but even in those that have stood the test of time we have a very clear motivation set. Even the aforementioned closer analog “The Evil Dead” compensates for a very loosey goosey motivation by leaning into slapstick humor in the second two of the trilogy (and doesn’t make Ash Williams much more than a poor sap with quippy lines and a constitution that can endure buckets of blood and a chainsaw hand). With Temple being so well rounded, I had hoped that her adversary would be well rounded too, but it felt lacking. Add in a bit of a pacing issue and it knocked points off from the overall read. All of this said, I am not the target audience for this book, and while these things didn’t work for me, I know that I would ABSOLUTELY be recommending this book to my teenage patrons who like their horror on the gory side.
I will be interested in seeing what Sami Ellis does with her next novel. “Dead Girls Walking” was brimming with lots of horror goodness in spite of some missteps here and there, and I hope she keeps bring her perspective to the genre.
Rating 6: I liked the cast of characters and some of the gory bits, but the plot was a little confusing and the background felt a bit off at times.
Reader’s Advisory:
“Dead Girls Walking” is included on the Goodreads lists “Queer Horror”, and “Summer Camp Horror”.
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