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Book: “The Curse of Hester Gardens” by Tamika Thompson
Publishing Info: Erewhon Books, March 2026
Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from the publicist via NetGalley
Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound
Book Description: We Need to Talk about Kevin as if written by Jason Reynolds and Tananarive Due meets Model Home by Rivers Solomon in an innovative twist on the haunted house about a mother desperate to protect her sons from the twin specters of gun violence and otherworldly menace in their public housing project.
Nona McKinley raised three boys in the Hester Gardens section of Medford, Michigan, an impoverished community divided by those who follow their faith in God and those who turn to crime to survive. With her drug dealer husband behind bars and her eldest son shot to death at eighteen, Nona has devoted herself to ensuring her other children escape their brother’s fate.
Her second son Marcus is on the right path. He’s a valedictorian heading to an Ivy League school. He can get out.
But then, strange things start happening to Nona and other mysterious footsteps are heard when she’s alone, people have phantom encounters in the streets, unattended appliances go off at all hours. Even more concerning is the state of Nona’s living sons. Her youngest, Lance, is hanging around with a bad crowd, and Marcus becomes moody and secretive. Sometimes he even seems to act like a different person entirely.
Nona has her secrets too. Her affair with the married church pastor has been weighing on her conscience, but that’s not the only guilt haunting her. She fears that someone—or something— is seeking revenge for an act she made in a moment of weakness to protect her family. And now everyone in Hester Gardens must pay the price…
Review: Thank you to Sparkpoint Studio for sending me an eARC of this novel via NetGalley!
I read Tamika Thompson’s short story collection “Unshod, Cackling, and Naked” a few years ago and really enjoyed it. There were so many horror tales that she had in it that were so well done and so compelling, and when I was asked to read her debut novel “The Curse of Hester Gardens” I was really eager to take a look. After all, she had some really strong short stories, and I wanted to see what she could do with a full length novel. And once I started reading, it became quite clear quite quickly how special of a book it was I was reading. I was hooked immediately, knowing that it was going to destroy me.
Given that this is a horror story, I will talk about the supernatural and slow burn dread first. In a similar vein to the film “Candyman” (it’s not a one to one comparison but I was thinking about its themes as I read), we have a housing project that is not only dealing with violence and poverty and being left to the wayside, but is also dealing with hauntings and ghosts of those who once lived there, and an escalating presence. It starts with a bang right from the start, with our protagonist Nona getting ready for her son Marcus’s graduation from high school, and believes that someone, or something, has entered her home, only to be alone. I was hooked from the start, and the creep factor slowly builds and builds with occurences that seem ghostly, but could also be explainable by the realities of living at Hester Gardens. But Thompson does a great job with the kind of weird to the all out terrifying, with resident ghosts making their presences known, and a potential possession of Marcus as he starts acting strange and out of character. There were so many beats with ghosts that could either just be straight forward realities (like a little boy ghost who just pops in and out and the residents are used to it), or something that seems to be growing in malevolence, and Thompson was able to pull different vibes from the various kinds of hauntings and they all worked. There is also some really quiet beats of creepiness, like a stove that keeps turning on, or a voice that could be a family member in the hallway but may NOT be, or straight up nightmare fuel, like a ghost climbing out of a wall to try an grab someone. I loved EVERY level, and the tension builds and builds until it’s unbearable and in need or release.
But the most impactful aspect of this book is the way that Thompson has taken a haunted house and ghost story theme and made it more explicitly about the spectre of American Racism, bringing in aspects of poverty, housing projects that fall to the wayside and become run down and left behind, gun violence and gang violence and the desperation of the residents who feel there is no other way to survive, and the infighting between people who have similar experiences but can’t get past their trauma that just keeps on cycling. Nona has experienced so much loss, whether it’s her husband who has been incarcerated (and whom she has a great anger towards), or her son Kendall who was murdered in a senseless drive by shooting. She is desperate to hold onto Marcus and Lance, and tries to do everything right by pushing Marcus to pursue his education, leaning into the Church (and getting too close to the married pastor), and looking down at Lance’s choices with who he’s hanging out with (which alienates him all the more), as if she has control in a situation where all of the odds are stacked against her and her sons because of their race. So much of my anxiety in this book was directly related to the seemingly insurmountable circumstances that Nona and her boys had to deal with, and as Marcus seems to be come possessed by a rageful spirit, there is also just the stark reality that systemic racism has built these traps for the Black community that directly lead to tragedy and more cycles of violence and loss and trauma, ghost involvement or not. It’s a devastating aspect of this book and I thought that Thompson captures the complicated natures of these things. I loved how complex so many of these characters were, even those who would so easily just be moustache twirly evil in the hands of other authors (such as a local gang leader who is violent and scary, but also adores his baby son and cares for his kind and well loved grandmother). Thompson really shows the pain and also the sense of community of the people at Hester Gardens, and decries the racist systems that keep these traumatic cycles going. It’s stunning work. I was weeping openly by the end.
“The Curse of Hester Gardens” is an incredible debut novel from Tamika Thompson. It’s scary and sad and kind of hopeful and just so, so well done. Horror fans, get your hands on this book.
Rating 10: Haunting, evocative, devastating, and powerful, “The Curse of Hester Gardens” is a haunted house story, but is also the story of racism, gun violence, cyclical trauma, and a woman desperate to keep her sons safe in a world in which they are constantly in danger, ghosts or not.
Reader’s Advisory:
“The Curse of Hester Gardens” is included on the Goodreads list “Horror to Look Fordward to in 2026”.
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