Pretty good riff on Bloody Mary/it follows type mythology, ending kinda fell apart for me ( )

Book Description: It’s the last summer for Kit Lamb: The last summer before college. The last summer with her high school basketball team, and with Dana, her best friend. The last summer before her life begins.

But the night before the big game, one of the players tells a ghost story about Daphne, a girl who went to their school many years ago and died under mysterious circumstances. Some say she was murdered, others that she died by her own hand. And some say that Daphne is a murderer herself. They also say that Daphne is still out there, obsessed with revenge, and will appear to kill again anytime someone thinks about her. And when she strikes the smell of smoke and whiskey fills the room.

After Kit hears the story, her teammates vanish, one by one, and Kit begins to suspect that the stories about Daphne are real . . . and to fear that her own mind is conjuring the killer. Now it’s a race against time as Kit searches for the truth behind the legend and learns to face her own fears—before the summer of her life becomes the last summer of her life.

Mixing a nostalgic coming-of-age story and an instantly iconic female villain with an innovative new vision of classic horror, Daphne is an unforgettable thriller as only Josh Malerman could imagine it.

I devoured this book. It's a coming of age story, a love letter to basketball, and one of the most effective horror stories I have ever read when it comes to tackling the issue of anxiety (which I've suffered from). Josh Malerman's Daphne is a fierce novel about repression, anxiety, and fear. It's a brilliant slasher that reads as a very personal work for Malerman as Malerman so effectively describes suffering from anxiety and accurately describes the game of basketball. You can tell Malerman is a baller.

In Daphne, we mostly focus on star player Kit, a girl who loves her teammates and the game, but is also plagued by her own struggles with severe anxiety, even before she starts obsessively thinking about Daphne and those around her start dying. Malerman does a fantastic job of slowly pacing the tension in this story so that the reader goes through similar beats as the characters. General unease slowly morphs to gear morphs to genuine dread. The characters find themselves thinking of Daphne, and then she comes for them in truly grotesque, slasher-y ways, and let's just say it freaked the bejesus out of me.

The local legend and how it’s spread, saying her name, thinking about her, is a trope horror fans have seen again and again. However, Malerman take on this trope is unique. The coming-of-age themes, like Kit learning about her anxiety and the pressure she feels toward the notion that she can do anything, are very fitting of YA novels. It will be interested to see if this novel gets nominated for the Alex Awards next year.

When things get revealed that Daphne has inspired a cult following, things get a little murky, and the ending is a bit convoluted. And things are resolved rather quickly. That being said I enjoyed the heck out of this book, even if the ending is a bit abrupt. Still, this book so fittingly addresses anxiety that I had to round up to five stars.

And now I smell smoke and whiskey.....

( )

This was good, not great. I loved the concept, and the writing was good. Honestly, I kept getting distracted and having to rewind, so I think a rerea at a later date might be necessary. ( )

Finished this 4 hours after finding it and I'm reeling.

The feeling you get after riding your favorite rollercoaster that you haven't been on in years? That's how my brain feels right now: all wind-blown and recalibrated.

Insane props to Malerman for being able to for the first time ever in the history of the entire world to write believable (!!!) diary entries!

Kit's frantic, painfully self-aware scribbling reads nearly identical to how my high school journal does. It felt weird, and comforting, and unnerving, and... charming; the empathy I had for Kit's awful situation (not the whole "ghost/demon/legend brutally hunting down my peers" thing, thankfully, but the "panick ataculas" thing lol) added such an unexpected but very welcome surprise. For years I struggled with undiagnosed OCD, and even after all this time still find myself casually stalked by the backseat terror of accidentally "thinking a bad thought into reality", and oh- and her reasons for the panic attacks in the first place!!! there is nothing more terrifying than your own potential- like- hello?? did you steal my file from the therapist??? :D

In my perfect world, John Carpenter & Dean Cundy would adapt this into an all-time horror classic.
I seriously can't stop thinking about it, aagh!! The pacing, the characters, the vivid scenery!! Be still my bleeding heart!

I feel like Daphne was written with a checklist in mind for things that would specifically chill and thrill me. It's my favorite scare of the 2023 so far, and it's going to be hard to dethrone. ( )

Daphne is not anywhere near my normal genre of choice. But seeing that I have loved everything of his that I've read so far I figured I'd give it a shot. It was so good, definitely just in time for the spooky season. Kit was such a great character. She was very thoughtfully developed and you really felt that you got to know her very well.
Daphne of course was extremely creepy and definitely had me on the edge. Highly recommend for horror fans. ( )