A “true crime” book about band The Shivers, the rise and then the big, tragic fall: from their early days, the blood soaked riots at their concerts, to the day, at the height of their fame, lead singer Lily Lawless confessed to a murder ten years before… The band agreed to finally break their silence and tell their story in this series of interviews, revealing a tale of prophecy, death and the end of the world. Oh, and a really, really bad break up.

A new Craig DiLouie novel is always an automatic read for me. I’ve covered Children Of Read Peak, Episode Thirteen and How To Make A Horror Movie And Survive, and everytime I’ve enjoyed the way he has fun writing a scary story. This time around, the book is structured as a series of interviews with the band members, each telling their side of the story. A bit like Daisy Jones and The Six, meets The Omen, really. The book is broken into sections, like very long chapters.

It’s no spoiler to say that Lily’s boyfriend, the man who she started the band with, is the Antichrist. It’s an interesting concept. On the one hand, it allows for some gory and eerie storytelling, and on the other, allows the author to explore the idea of what this person would be like. If Jesus was a little reluctant to be the Messiah, for example, might the Antichrist not also feel a little the same way? The idea that a musician might be linked with the devil is an old one, and the idea that some kinds of music are of the devil is not new, but would that mean that the Antichrist would be someone charming or monstrous? Rubbing his clawed hands together in glee or a pawn in a game designed to bring about the end of the world? Seductive or compelling? The author uses this book to talk about some philosophical aspects of this idea, as well as a love of all things music.

While I did like this book, I don’t generally love books that are fake interviews and articles, like this one. For me, they end up losing some tension and pacing in this writing style, which is fine when it’s a certain genre of story, but I think horror needs the immediacy of a different format, generally. This book got a little bogged down, for me, cutting between characters all telling the same story, and felt overlong. Because it was musicians being interviewed, there was a lot of musical detail as well, which was a bit lost on me.

So, this wasn’t my favourite of the authors works, so far, but I did enjoy it. Something I really did like was the way things switch up a bit in the last quarter. Things take a bit of a turn in a way that was really fun, and creative. And there are also a couple of really fun, gory splattery horror scenes as things really get going here as well. Overall, not a bad spooky season read.

Read This If: perfect if you love horror and music, which often is an overlapping crowd! A little slow and dry in places, but has it’s gory charms as well.

Thank you to HBG Canada for the ARC of this book for review.