THE CHILDREN ON THE HILL

SYNOPSIS

1978: At her renowned treatment center in picturesque Vermont, the brilliant psychiatrist, Dr. Helen Hildreth, is acclaimed for her compassionate work with the mentally ill. But when she’s home with her cherished grandchildren, Vi and Eric, she’s just Gran—teaching them how to take care of their pets, preparing them home-cooked meals, providing them with care and attention and love.

Then one day Gran brings home a child to stay with the family. Iris—silent, hollow-eyed, skittish, and feral—does not behave like a normal girl.

Still, Violet is thrilled to have a new playmate. She and Eric invite Iris to join their Monster Club, where they catalogue all kinds of monsters and dream up ways to defeat them. Before long, Iris begins to come out of her shell. She and Vi and Eric do everything together: ride their bicycles, go to the drive-in, meet at their clubhouse in secret to hunt monsters. Because, as Vi explains, monsters are everywhere.

2019: Lizzy Shelley, the host of the popular podcast Monsters Among Us, is traveling to Vermont, where a young girl has been abducted, and a monster sighting has the town in an uproar. She’s determined to hunt it down, because Lizzy knows better than anyone that monsters are real—and one of them is her very own sister.

Title: The children on the hill

Author: Jennifer McMahon

Publisher: Gallery/Scout Press

Publication date: April 26, 2022

REVIEW

RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Monsters are among us. Monsters are everywhere.

Drawing inspiration from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Jennifer McMahon delivers an atmospheric and gothic thriller that will appeal to fans of the genre.

1978: The Hillside Inn, a psychiatric hospital in Vermont is home to Dr. Hilldreth and her grandchildren Viv and Eric. They love monsters so they wrote a book about them, “The book of monsters”. When their Gran bring home a girl called Iris they soon adopt her as a new sister but, who is she? Where did she come from?

2019: Lizzy Shelley is a podcaster and monster hunter. When a girl disappears in her old hometown she feels compelled to investigate. Locals say it was the local monster, “Rattling Jane”, but she has a different suspect in mind…her own sister.

Told in dual timelines through Viv and Lizzy’s voices, the author manages to weave both in a very engaging way, with a mix of fiction and popular folklore about monsters that was quite impressive. The writing was so vivid that there were moments you could really believe those monsters were real.

While the past timeline had a more of gothic vibe and some 70’s nostalgia, the present one read more like a modern thriller and the mix worked great, in my opinion.

The pace was not super quick, taking its time to set the different pieces in place, especially in the past, and that helped to convey that sense of dread and tension that permeated the whole story and that, although not scary per se, was quite unsettling.

There were a couple of big twists, one I predicted early on and one I didn’t, and this last one was a complete game changer, adding a really interesting element to the resolution.

I listened to the audiobook and the narrator did such a fantastic job with the different characters, having each of them a pretty distinctive voice and bringing them and their emotions to life in a really disturbing way at times.

Great story that proves once again that the worst monsters are those in human form.

Thanks to Edelweiss and Gallery/Scout Press for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.