Book Review: "Serenity Falls" by C.J Tudor

Check out my review of CJ Tudor's brilliantly gothic thriller The Gathering below:

Serenity Falls is CJ Tudor's newest novel and I have to say, she is shaping to be the new queen of modern horror. Folkish, terrifying with a touch of the suburban gothic, this novel is a change of pace and atmosphere from what she has previously written but still follows the stories of strange secrets that we as fans, are used to. About a father and daughter who leave Manchester to go to Florida after inheriting a strange house in a strange town in Florida, this town claims to be perfect - somewhere where no crime is committed at all. However, when a body is found in the swimming pool there's something deathly wrong and it's clear. Then, when they start to see an ice-cream truck patrolling the streets at night, things start to unfold. There's something desperately wrong in Serenity Falls and god help whoever finds out what...

Serena was the first child to be born in Serenity Falls, a town in Florida that seems to be based on that town just outside Disney World where everything is happy, commercial and perfect - designed to be a place for traditional families who base their values on perky 1950s advertisements from middle class America. So, why is she dead? Cash was a mailman who was in love with his job. Frankie didn't want to be dressed up that day. Ellen is someone who is the best organised traditionalist in all of Serenity Falls - but now, they want a 'fresh pair of eyes' on the pumpkin patch. As the darkness progresses, there are different times and people we are introduced to - and of course, there is a dead child involved. He was wearing a cowboy hat. CJ Tudor shows us the dirt underneath the fingernails of perfection, the decay that isn't quite as noticeable if you don't want to find it. However, as it bubbles to the surface, we cannot ignore that there's more than one thing wrong in this small town.

Sadie and her father have suffered enough. CJ Tudor paints their life as a flawed one. A mother who walked out, never to return and never seen again, a grandmother who has recently passed away and on top of that, Sadie's father has lost his job as a teacher in Sadie's school for punching another child's father in the face. Sadie's grandmother has left them a house in Serenity Falls in a will, providing that they live there for five years - there's a bunch of legal stuff with Serenity Falls. When they move to the little town in Florida, Sadie's father starts to experience strange things. There's footage missing from their home cameras for the same twenty minutes every night, people fall asleep dead on 11pm whether they are in bed or rowing a boat in the middle of an alligator-infested river, and there's a dead child in a cowboy hat and nobody knows where he has gone. CJ Tudor creates an atmosphere of unease from the moment we step through the gates of Serenity Falls and the weird wristbands are snapped on to the wrists of new residents. It is deeply unsettling.

When Sadie starts to make friends, it is clear that everyone wants to know whether Frankie was murdered. The question was: who murdered Frankie and why? When we are taken back in time and across different narrators, we see that there is something relative between Frankie and a mailman named Cash. The idea that everything is perfect in Serenity Falls is something that makes no sense to Sadie from the outset and yet, she cannot ignore that not only is everything actually perfect, but someone must be keeping it that way. When a young boy is almost eaten by alligators and disappears under a river, he swears he sees an image of Hell. Whatever it is, it is no accident. Sadie knows that there is something dangerous about Serenity Falls and she wants to know why this is and why, atop of this: Sadie and her father are the first new residents in the town in a decade. Not anyone is allowed to live in Serenity Falls.

A town that bans 'bad' influence literature but is littered with ghost stories about a woman who hanged herself in a hotel room, an atmosphere which shifts when anyone asks a question and one person walking the town in overalls whom nobody has ever met - CJ Tudor's new book is a twisted game of appearances and a perfect Halloween read.