Reviews

Girls of Little Hope by Sam Beckbessinger & Dale Halvorsen is a smalltown coming-of-age horror story set in the town of Little Hope, California, in 1996.

After hearing about the Legend of Hope Gold Mine, three friends go in search of it one Summer. Only two return - but it's almost immediately evident that they're not telling the truth about what happened.

Donna, Rae & Kat make zines and enjoy investigating some of the town's legends, making sure to steer clear of notorious criminal Ronnie Gaskins, rumoured to have buried his parents alive. When the girls go to a cave to try and find the Hope Gold Mine, only Donna and Rae return. There's no sign of Kat, much to the horror of her mother, Marybeth, who is insistent that the other girls are hiding something from her.

Marybeth is also struggling with her own guilt over how she has raised Kat, pressuring her to get involved with beauty pageants from an early age and failing to hide her disgust when Kat intentionally gained weight to take control of her own self-image (and piss her mother off as a bonus).

As Marybeth investigates and gets closer to the truth, Donna and Rae quickly realise that the truth won't stay hidden for long... not in a small town like Little Hope.

I LOVED this. It reminded me of Point Horror, The Goonies, Fear Street, Goosebumps - all the horror I grew up with. The addition of Marybeth's story made for a compelling read, it's not often we get the POV of a parent in this kind of story and I really appreciated the insight into her character and how she became the way she was.

Rae's family, too, made for a clever, satirical look at a stereotypical conservative 1990s family in smalltown America. Their behaviour when they realised what was happening was darkly hilarious.

I loved the girls, I loved their friendship, and I really enjoyed this. It did have echoes of "My Best Friend's Exorcism" or the girls from the Hocus Pocus sequel, but it was a fun, gruesome, gory, nostalgic romp.

Thank you so much to @titanbooks for the ARC via Netgalley.

phaedraismyusername's review against another edition

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dark mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No

2.0

This could've done with some tightening up in my opinion, the fast pace but meandering writing style made reading some parts of this feel a little tedious. Mix that with the character voices all being incredibly similar despite supposedly being wildly different people and it just wasn't as compelling as a plot this wild and fun could have been.

They also really did not feel like teenage girls, they felt like what some guy writing a first draft of a novel thinks teenage girls are like. The author also fell into using some super tired tropes, and while I think the initial goal was to subvert the stereotypes (the fat girl, the oversexualised girl of colour, the repressed church queer girl, the "ugly" girl who grows up to be a pushy mother to her daughter, etc) I think it was just too much of a superficial attempt to be anything but a spectacular failure in that regard.

100 pages less and some more thoughtful character work and maybe another draft or two and I think this would absolutely have been a higher rating

chelseamayxxx's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

This book was horrifying and so weird and so screwed up. I don’t really read horror books and after reading this one I understand why I don’t tend to read them. I enjoyed this book somewhat as I wanted to know how it ended and what happens in it but if I am been honest I didn’t really like this book at all and I didn’t really understand the story or the plot at all. The ending was such a big let down and disappointing to read. The characters I didn’t really enjoy as they were annoying and insufferable to read about. Such a waste of me time reading this book sadly to just not enjoy it or understand it xxx

jendev's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional lighthearted mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.0

cassroxburgh's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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