A psychological horror/thriller novel, perfect for this halloween season.
Thank you so much to TBR and Beyond Tours and Diana Rodriguez Wallach for allowing me to be part of this experience and also providing me with a complimentary book and media kit!
Book Information
Publishing Date: October 10, 2023
For fans of Kara Thomas and Courtney Summers comes a supernatural horror that reminds us family can be our saving grace–or our biggest curse. Set one-hundred years after the Borden murders, this propulsive thriller imagines what a similar trial might look like today.
When the parents of the richest family in Fall River are found murdered by axe, the town is quick to blame newcomer Vik. It doesn’t help that he was caught standing over the bodies with blood on his hands and can’t remember anything about the night in question.
But Vik’s sister, Tessa, knows that Vik would never be capable of such a gruesome crime. Haunted by the mistakes she made that led her family to Fall River in the first place, she sets out to prove her brother’s innocence.
Her search for answers will lead her into a sprawling, supposedly cursed forest, as well as the childhood home of Lizzie Borden—the original axe murderess of Fall River.
Content Warning: Violence, mentions of murder, blood, grief, abuse
Book Links
- Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60174897
- Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Hatchet-Girls-Diana-Rodriguez-Wallach/dp/0593643410/
- Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hatchet-girls-diana-rodriguez-wallach/1142929090
- IndieBound: https://bookshop.org/p/books/hatchet-girls-diana-rodriguez-wallach/19650639
About the Author
Diana Rodriguez Wallach is a multi-published author of young adult novels.
Her most recent, Small Town Monsters, is a YA Latinx horror novel that published in September 2021 through Random House’s Underlined imprint. Her next YA horror, Hatchet Girls, will publish in hardback in Fall 2023 through Random House’s Delacorte imprint.
Additionally, Diana is the author of the Anastasia Phoenix Series (Entangled Publishing), a trilogy of young adult spy thrillers. The first book in the series, Proof of Lies, has been optioned for film and was chosen as a finalist for the 2018 International Thriller Awards for Best Young Adult Novel. Additionally, Bustle listed her as one of the “Top Nine Latinx Authors to Read for Women’s History Month 2017,” and Paste named Proof of Lies one of the “Top 10 Best Young Adult Books for March 2017.”
Diana is also the author of three YA contemporary Latina novels: Amor and Summer Secrets, Amigas and School Scandals, and Adios to All The Drama (Kensington Books). Amor and Summer Secrets placed second at the 2009 International Latino Book Awards for Best Young Adult Novel. She also penned a YA short-story collection entitled Mirror, Mirror (Buzz Books, 2013).
Author Links:
- Website: http://www.dianarodriguezwallach.com/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/dianarwallach
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dianawallachauthor/
- Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1404210
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dianarwallach/
Review (no spoilers)
If you’d like to follow along with the rest of the tour, you can find the tour schedule here.
For those who are looking for haunting books to read during this Halloween season, look no further! Hatchet Girls is a book, told through dual perspectives/timelines, about a young man named Vik who is on trial for the gruesome double murder of his girlfriend’s parents. Readers get the perspectives of Vik’s sister, Tessa, who is determined to clear her brother’s name and Vik’s girlfriend, Mariella, who is a living witness from the night her parents died.
As Tessa struggles to piece together the clues of what happened that fateful night, she’s thrown into unexpected stories about her town’s haunted past and discoveries of violent supernatural forces at play. I know this book is labeled as a mystery novel in the description above, but I think it actually plays extremely well into the genre of psychological horror/thriller. While there is technically a mystery included in the main plot (i.e. who murdered Mariella’s parents and why), I don’t think the truth was ever really hidden from us in the first place. For me, this was a book where I knew what was going on and what was going to happen almost the entire time. Rather than the plot being driven by uncertainty, I felt like the real magic was in the world-building—feeling like I was being haunted with every turn of the page.
I’ve read a lot of novels in the YA mystery/horror/thriller realm, and while I don’t think this one was anything special, I do think a lot of readers are going to have a blast with it.
Jenjenreviews 
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