social horror | Musings of the Monster Librarian

The Curse of Hester Gardens by Tamika Thompson

The Curse of Hester Gardens by Tamika Thompson
Erewhon Books, 2026
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1645663195
Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook
Buy: Amazon.com | Bookshop.org

Hester Gardens is a housing project cursed by a history of violence, especially gun violence, and the residents are haunted by its victims.

Nona believed she was living a law-abiding life, until ten years ago, when she stumbled on her husband pistol-whipping a drug-addicted teenager to death in an alleyway and helped him cover it up. Now her husband is in prison for drug-dealing, and her oldest son is dead, a victim of a gang shooting. Her youngest son, Lance, is just starting to join in the activities of the local gang.

If only there were a way to escape Hester Gardens. It is possible– Nona’s nephew Harlan, an investigative journalist, made it out, and nursing student Kiandra is only held there by her younger brother.

Nona’s second son, recent high school graduate Marcus, has a ticket out, with a full scholarship to Brown University in the fall… if he can only make it through the summer. But Marcus, always the “good kid”, has a lot of anger and grief over Kendall’s murder, and he can’t quite keep it under the surface anymore. Thompson creates a disorienting atmosphere in Nona’s apartment, which already has an unstable feeling to it ,due to the disturbing changes in Marcus. It is just haunted enough to make her and her sons uneasy… until it suddenly escalates into a life-and-death situation.

Thompson’s talent is not just in creating an uncanny atmosphere, but in bringing the neighborhood and characters to life. There are ghosts… maybe… in the alleyways, and a smart person keeps a sharp eye out. While mainly told from Nona’s point of view, we also occasionally get the point of view of other characters: Harlan, Nona’s nephew; Lance, her youngest son and Marcus’ brother; Gretchen, Marcus’ girlfriend and gang leader Peter’s baby mama; Donnell, a gang member; Kiandra; and police officer Sgt. Victoria Prager, who was in charge of Kendall’s case and is involved in the ending of the terrible, shocking, night where six young people were silently executed with a rifle.

Readers will grow to care about, cheer for, and fear for characters who could easily have been cardboard cutouts. Gretchen, for instance, as a point of view character, is shaped by the trauma of having her twin murdered in a drive-by shooting right next to her and the stress of raising a child in an unpredictable environment. She’s much more fleshed out than she would be if we were limited to only Nona’s judgmental mindset. We get to see Donnell’s regrets and terror because he did not stop the execution of a boy about to escape Hester Gardens for college, and now can’t escape his ghost. In a “closed community” like Hester Gardens, lives are entangled because everyone knows everyone: the same kids who were friends with your own kids, could grow up to be the killers of someone you loved, and Thompson does a great job of revealing that complexity. Thompson convincingly creates a claustrophobic and terrifying atmosphere: to escape Hester Gardens, its history of violence, and tangled relationships, isn’t easy. It’s a place that doesn’t want its residents to leave alive.

There’s a lot packed into these pages, and I found myself going back to this more than once. Highly recommended.

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Booklist: Great YA Horror of 2022

Wow, it’s been a great year for YA horror! I feel like we are seeing much more diversity than in the past, which is great, and it isn’t just surface: it’s essential to many of these stories. I read more than I got reviewed for Monster Librarian, and there were definitely other great reads (Angel Falls by David Surface and Julia Rust, Bitter by Akwake Emezi, How to Succeed at Witchcraft by Aislinn Brophy, Prelude to Lost Souls by Helene Dunbar, and My Dearest Darkest by Kayla Cottingham to name a few) but these are the ones that stand out from the rest.

Cherish Farrah by Bethany C. Morrow:

This is outstanding social horror. Morrow wrote that she initially intended this for an adult market but it hits the mark as a YA crossover.

Cherish is a Black girl adopted by progressive, wealthy, privileged white parents. Farrah is the only other Black girl at the private school they attend.. They have been best friends since fourth grade. Farrah’s father has lost his job and she is staying with Cherish’s family while her parents sell their house and look for new jobs. Farrah is in an antagonistic relationship with her mother, who she also identifies with. There is something wrong with Farrah, and something odd about the situation with Cherish’s family. All of them seem to be individually following their own, different narratives but it is hard to spot because Farrah is the point of view character and she is very focused on controlling situations to her advantage, so she doesn’t notice it in the other characters. There are a few scenes with disturbing body horror and several near-drownings that made this hard to read, but it is really a compelling, dark, and chilling book.

Hell Followed with Us by Andrew Joseph Wright

This follows trans boy Benji through his flight from the evangelical doomsday cult the Angels, who have infected him with a bioweapon that will eventually turn him into a genocidal monster. Benji finds support through a group of queer teens surviving in the ruins of their community center and they come up with a plan to destroy the Angels and prevent another apocalypse.

The Weight of Blood by Tiffany L. Jackson

Carrie was my first King book, and since I read it as a teenage girl, probably the most impactful. So I was curious to see the differences between the original and this race-bent version. The bones of the original are there but Jackson has updated the story, added depth to many characters, and brought issues of race and class to the fore.

The Honeys by Ryan La Sala

Mars, a nonbinary teen, decides to go to the summer camp their sister attended after she dies attempting to murder Mars, and join their sister’s cabin, The Honeys, known for living in a cabin near the beehives where they are responsible for tending the bees. But something sinister is going on under the surface. This one is so creepy, and original. You’ll never want to go near bees again.

The Whispering Dark by Kelly Andrew

Wow, this is a wild ride. If it doesn’t make the Stoker shortlist it will be an absolute shame.

Delaney is Deaf (with a cochlear implant) and has brittle bones. She has always seen and heard shadows (her deafness plays a role in this). Now she has been admitted to Godbole College. Students at Godbole all have some kind of occult ability: most have died and come back.

Several months into the year, a missing Godbole student, Nate Schiller, is discovered severely hurt in Chicago. Unknown to Lane, Nate had died and was haunting her, but has found a way back: he is now possessed by a dark godlike force that is destroying his mind and body. When Lane visits it senses a more acceptable vessel. And then the story goes into truly strange and scary territory.

These Fleeting Shadows by Kate Alice Marshall.

Helen Vaughan and her mother left Harrow, the Vaughan family estate, when Helen was seven, and return for the first time for her grandfather’s funeral. Her grandfather leaves Harrow to her, if she will agree to be its mistress, live there for a year, and go through a ritual at the end to see if the house accepts her. Basically all of her family except her cousins Desmond and Celia are terrible people who clearly do not have her best interests at heart. The house itself is designed to seem to be a spiral labyrinth, or trap, for a dark force, and Helen finds herself wandering for hours, hearing voices tell her to “find the heart of Harrow.” The descriptions of the house are amazing, in some ways reminding me of Hill House. When her cousins leave she begins a cautious friendship with Bryony Locke, the Harrow Witch, who wants to release it. She and Bryony find a journal in cipher which Helen gets Desmond to crack, which tells a disturbing story about the founder of the Vaughan family and the gruesome way the family has kept the dark god trapped. It is foreshadowed, but the story completely flips in an unexpected and satisfying way.

Parts of the story, especially names, are inspired by Arthur Machen’s story The Great God Pan. Women in that story have very little agency, and Marshall gives it back in the form and actions of Helen Vaughan in this book. I think this is the best of Marshall’s books I’ve read to date and will be surprised if it isn’t on the Stoker shortlist.