Welcome, friend! The horror challenge that Ariel and I completed last year led me to like the genre immensely. Thus, I am still picking horror books here and there. Jennifer McMahon is the author of numerous suspense and horror novels. One of her other recent works is The Drowning Kind which is on my TBR. The Children on the Hill is her latest book – and that’s the one I am sharing about today. Take a look at the synopsis and then read on for my thoughts:
A genre-defying new novel, inspired by Mary Shelley’s masterpiece Frankenstein, which brilliantly explores the eerie mysteries of childhood and the evils perpetrated by the monsters among us.
1978: at her renowned treatment center in picturesque Vermont, the brilliant psychiatrist, Dr. Helen Hildreth, is acclaimed for her compassionate work with the mentally ill. But when she’s home with her cherished grandchildren, Vi and Eric, she’s just Gran—teaching them how to take care of their pets, preparing them home-cooked meals, providing them with care and attention and love.
Then one day Gran brings home a child to stay with the family. Iris—silent, hollow-eyed, skittish, and feral—does not behave like a normal girl.
Still, Violet is thrilled to have a new playmate. She and Eric invite Iris to join their Monster Club, where they catalogue all kinds of monsters and dream up ways to defeat them. Before long, Iris begins to come out of her shell. She and Vi and Eric do everything together: ride their bicycles, go to the drive-in, meet at their clubhouse in secret to hunt monsters. Because, as Vi explains, monsters are everywhere.
2019: Lizzy Shelley, the host of the popular podcast Monsters Among Us, is traveling to Vermont, where a young girl has been abducted, and a monster sighting has the town in an uproar. She’s determined to hunt it down, because Lizzy knows better than anyone that monsters are real—and one of them is her very own sister.
The Children on the Hill takes us on a breathless journey to face the primal fears that lurk within us all.
Content notes include Child abuse, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Car accident, Murder, Gaslighting, Animal death, Child death, Confinement.
Thoughts on The Children on the Hill
This was a review copy that I got from Simon & Schuster. I requested it (with no hopes to see in the mail) because I had been wanting to try this author and The Drowning Kind still sat unread on my Kindle. When this one arrived at my door, I knew it was time to prioritize! It also felt like such an honor to receive a physical copy of this author’s book as she feels quite popular in horror and thriller circles to me. 🙂
The Children on the Hill took me for a ride! There are two points of views – Lizzy Shelley in 2019 and Vi from 1978. In 2019, Lizzy is a famous person from a monster-hunting show and now she is going back to a place in Vermont where she has history. But she isn’t quite ready to confront it right now nor reveal it to me. At the same time, she knows this is her chance to see her sister and to talk to her.
Vi’s perspective from 1978 was a lot more engaging to me. Like Stranger Things and kids wanting to find out the truth at all costs, she is on a quest to help her new sister, Iris, learn about who she is. This takes Vi down a very dangerous path because while she has known her Grandma runs this psychiatric hospital, there is something going on there that her Grandma doesn’t want her to know. She starts these chain of events that will expose the truth. There is a lot of trauma in that narrative and the story of how the kids ended up being who they are, unfolds like a snowball – it is slow initially and then picks up into a big mess.
Throughout the book Lizzy’s longing for her sister is quite clear. Vi’s reasons to be who she is and to figure out her motto in life, one that she believes in, is an important part of the story. I liked that angle. The kids’ connection to each other as they get older and how their relationships evolve kept the story interesting.
The Children on the Hill truly had a Frankenstein kind of vibe, linking monsters to human research and eugenics. Vi, Iris and their brother had a book about monsters, noting down everything they knew about them. I liked seeing their imagination as well as how that influenced the decisions they made in 1978.
There was an underlying commentary on monsters, how they are man-made, and monsters too can have their own lives and perspectives. I also felt that there were certain truths that the characters were willing to ignore for their own peace of mind and considering the trauma that they had gone through together as kids, it made sense for them to react the way they did. Childhood experiences are our roots and they had a huge hand to play in who the children on the hill grew up to be.
The Children on the Hill was well done! It had a slow-sometimes-confusing start but it ended at a high note and I loved the suspense-thriller feel of the last half of the book. The twists were fun! It’s a spooky-jumpy horror – there is a plan and a target. It is more of a journey of understanding an entity that doesn’t quite make sense and coming to terms with what happened decades ago.
Will you pick up this book? Or if you read it already, what did you think? Find this book on Goodreads and Storygraph.
I would definitely be reading more of Jennifer McMahon in the future!
Many thanks to the publisher for providing me a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
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