Ronald Malfi

Inheriting her childhood home after her distant father's suicide, Laurie notices disturbing manifestations in the house and sees an uncanny resemblance between her daughter's new friend and her own childhood playmate.

Little Girls

Sky Katz

Maggie Gordon

I suspect if I hadn't been trying to read this novel around a terrible illness relapse, I would have been able to settle into the creepy atmosphere a lot better. But the fact that I recognised that there was one means Little Girls was going it's job as a horror novel! That being said, I think the novel could have been better. Malfi's book is about a woman who goes back to her family home after her father's death. Her marriage is in trouble, she's a bit disconnected from her daughter, and now she's dealing with her estranged father's sudden death. Intertwined with these problems is the largely unspoken of death of her not-so-friend as a child, and the possible haunting of the house. Both of these issues were brought up minimally in the first 3/4 of the book in order to build suspense, but I think the story would have been stronger had some of the revelations come earlier and the characters had to deal with them directly more. Overall, Little Girls was a decent horror novel though, I just wish Malfi had pushed the narrative a bit more.

Alexa

Melissa Bragg 

Jessica De Hoyos

Theodore Kaplan

From Bram Stoker Award nominee Ronald Malfi comes a chilling novel of childhood revisited, memories resurrected, and fears reborn . . . After years away, Laurie returns to the home where she was raised by a cold, distant father who recently exorcised his demons. But no amount of cleaning can wipe away the troubled past. She feels it lurking in the broken moldings, sees it staring from an empty picture frame, hears it laughing in the moldy greenhouse deep in the woods . . . At first, Laurie thinks she’s imagining things. But when she meets her daughter’s new playmate, she notices her uncanny resemblance to another little girl who used to live next door. Who died next door. With each passing day, Laurie’s uneasiness grows stronger, her thoughts more disturbing. Like her father, is she slowly losing her mind? Or is something truly unspeakable happening? “Much more than a haunted house story.” —Cemetery Dance Magazine “Takes well-known tropes and completely turns them around.” —IHeartReading “Slowly but surely creeps under your skin.” —The Horror Bookshelf “The perfect ghost story.” —HorrorBuzz

Little Girls

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