7/14/26
KEENEVERSATIONS is back from vacation.
Worthy Nostalgia - Keeneversations - Episode 49
Brian and Mary are back from break with a conversation about lesser-known but no less beloved creative works from their childhoods, and why these properties have withstood the test of time and corporate greed.
Available exclusively on Patreon for the first week, then available to all on Spotify and Brian Keene dot com.
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A reminder that there’s an index for all of these Women in Horror Year reviews. You can find it here. So when you see somebody online ask, “Any good Horror recommendations for books written by women?” you can say, “As a matter of fact…”
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Women In Horror Year: Day 82
My Darling Girl by Jennifer McMahon
Hardcover - Paperback - eBook - Audiobook
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Children on the Hill, a chilling psychological thriller “that delivers both chilling scares and genuine emotion” (Chandler Baker, New York Times bestselling author) about a woman who takes in her dying, alcoholic mother—only to fear that something far more demonic has come home with her.
Alison has never been a fan of Christmas. But with it right around the corner and her husband busily decorating their cozy Vermont home, she has no choice but to face it. Then she gets the call.
Mavis, Alison’s estranged mother, has been diagnosed with cancer and has only weeks to live. She wants to spend her remaining days with her daughter’s family. But Alison grew up with her mother’s alcoholism and violent abuse and is reluctant to unearth these traumatic memories. Still, she eventually agrees to take in Mavis, hoping that she and her mother could finally heal and have the relationship she’s always dreamed of.
But when mysterious and otherworldly things start happening upon Mavis’s arrival, Alison begins to suspect her mother is not quite who she seems. And as the holiday festivities turn into a nightmare, she must confront just how far she is willing to go to protect her family in this “twisty, propulsive, character-driven, and hair-raisingly scary” (Nick Cutter, author of The Troop) novel.
I find myself bemused at how out of their way Jennifer McMahon’s publishers will go not to call her work Horror, when much of it clearly is. Case in point is My Darling Girl — a riveting, gut-wrenching demonic possession novel that the publisher insists on calling “a chilling psychological thriller” despite the fact that it’s got the word “demonic” right there in the marketing copy, and has a ton of blurbs from some of today’s top Horror writers. But it doesn’t matter, I guess. Readers — and writers — know that Jennifer is one of us. One of the Halloween People.
My Darling Girl sets some pretty high emotional stakes early on — the protagonist was abused and mistreated by her mother when she was younger, but rose above all that and is now married and has a family of her own. But now, with Christmas approaching, the mother is terminally ill and wants to die at home, with family. Our protagonist reluctantly agrees, and thus, the stage is set for the psychological thriller the publisher says this is. And that would be enough right there — a woman coming to grips with her past under the thumb of an abusive parent whil simultaneously caring for that dying human parent? That is pathos aplenty. But… what if that dying parent is posssessed by a demon, and what if the whole point of her visit is to pass that demon on to one of the kids? Well, now my friends… we’ve got ourselves a white-knuckled HORROR novel.
Jennifer’s characterization is solid and makes the scares that much more effective. And something from this book that I haven’t seen enough reviews mention is how great she does at portraying the husband’s gaslighting of his wife. It starts subtly, but continues to build as insidiously as the possession itself, and adds a whole second layer of threat and menace to an already harrowing story.
My Darling Girl is available in hardcover, paperback, eBook, and audiobook. from Gallery Books/Scout Press.
