What a great book this was! It was something a little different than I would normally pick and definitely wasn't what I expected that it was, but it was so good!

We meet the Evans women who own a funeral home in a little town. They encounter some strange things in their funeral home that is not so typical of the typical strange things you find around a funeral home. The little town is plagued by random gruesome dead bodies that not only the Sheriff is trying to figure out, but so are the Evans' family women.

We learn about some of the creepy occurrences and what they are. The Evans women definitely have their work cut out for them during this time, both at the funeral home and in figuring out some old family history/drama.

If you like some supernatural beings like draculas and zombies as well as some good ol' fashioned murder mystery with a tiny YA feel, this one is for you for sure! Go check it out. It was just released this month and you need to pick it up immediately!

#BlessYourHeart #NetGalley

Ducey, Lenore, Grace, and Luna Evans know there are the dead, and then there are the restless dead. The Evans' funeral parlor is the only one in town. So it seems sooner or later they all come through there. But the general population of this small southeastern Texas town know nothing about the restless dead. That includes the Deputy Roger Taylor who is lead investigator on a string of murders and disappearances. The coroner has said that it may be some kind of rabid animal. Deputy Taylor has his doubts. And he thinks the Evans have something to do with it. He just isn't sure what.

I loved the cover and title. But, I thought the cover was a little misleading. It looks like it's going to be a vampire book, but it really isn't. The monsters they face, the strigoi, are for the most part zombie-ish in nature. In fact, Ducey refers to them as ghouls.

The main plot is about the ghouls and what's going on with them in terms of the towns people and the Evans family. There is a subplot about Luna finding out about her heritage since she is only half Evans. Plus she needs to find out more about the family business.

The story is told from alternating points of views. This includes all of the Evans women, the sheriff, Deputy Taylor and at least one more. It's a lot, but it works. It's coherent and easy to follow as each chapter starts with the name of whose viewpoint it is from.

Lighter moments are juxtaposed with horrific deaths. There[s a mystery as to who the master strigoi is. There is a dog, Belle, and she doesn't die in the end. There are more deaths than I expected. The ending did surprise me. I did not guess in advance who the master strigoi was.

I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars. It's generally well written. The world building in terms of how the restless dead work was interesting. I liked the Evans women. And I find I am looking forward to the next book in the series. If you like your horror with just a dash of lighter moments, then this could be a good book for you.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. This did not affect my review.

I will unfortunately be DNFing Bless Your Heart. I really appreciate the eARC in exchange for my honest thoughts; thank you, NetGalley, the publisher, and the author.

I was so excited by the plot of this one and loved the idea of a group of Southern women in the 1990s running a funeral home and taking down the Strigoi. However, this failed to capture my attention by 18% in. Even though I didn’t make it too far in, I’m already tired of hearing about how many butterscotch candies one characters sucks on and have grown weary of the skirting around the Godawful Mess as it’s referred to.

Since I didn’t finish this, I’m going to give it two stars rather than one star to be more fair.

In Southeast Texas in 1999, three generations of Evans women run the only funeral parlor in town. But when bodies start arriving and rising from the dead with a hunger for their neighbors’ flesh, Ducey, her daughter Lenore and her granddaughter Grace all know what must be done: the dead must be put to their final rest as per familial custom.

Sometimes cozy and sometimes grisly, Bless Your Heart is a novel with engaging characters, sprinkles of dark humor, horrifying antagonists and more than a couple of secrets. I enjoyed reading about the Evans women, their struggles with their complicated history-particularly following an event fifteen years prior known as the “Godawful Mess”-and at times with one another.

Each member of the family has their own distinct personality and while their mindsets sometimes differ in terms of how they view the vampiric Strigoi and the nature of death, their love for one another is still paramount.

Lindy Ryan does a wonderful job of capturing the nature of a small Southern town; where relationships, secrets and grudges are closely intertwined. The secondary characters are also interesting: with Deputy Roger Taylor trying to puzzle together a growing number of disappearances and dead bodies and Crane, the mysterious newcomer to the town who captures the interest of Grace’s daughter Luna.

The Strigoi are portrayed as utterly horrifying and bear characteristics of both vampires and zombies. The gore depicted from their attacks was initially surprising, but helped to emphasize the extent of their threat as the number of victims increased.

The tension in Bless Your Heart builds steadily to its thrilling and emotional climax, though I wish we had spent a little more time with Ducey, Lenore, Grace and Luna prior to the conclusion.

Thank you very much to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, Minotaur Books and Lindy Ryan for providing access to this ebook. All opinions expressed are solely my own.

The story begins in the year 1999 within a small Texas town where four generations of southern woman ranging from the age of fifteen to eighy-two run the one and only funeral parlor where it may seem strange to some folks but for the Evans women it is their day to day livelihood. Deputy Roger Morgan usually delivers the bodies to their morgue without problems but today he has to talk to the women about this particular body that he thinks was torn apart by wild animals and wants to prepare the women for the horrific state of the corpse while in the meantime in the room next door Mina Jean is getting her final touches for her viewing when she suddenly sits up out of her open casket!

They have to get the deputy out of the building immediately because they have work to do that they haven't had to perform in a long time and the three women are the only ones privy to the information that they are also monster hunters when dead bodies sometimes wake up.

Luna has no idea about this other work but today she will get a fast and rough lesson to the devastating secrets that her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother have kept from her all these years! What happened to all the men in the Evans family anyway and what will happen to Luna when she finally learns what happened to her father!

What a wonderful, engaging and fun book this was to read! This novel had a little bit of everything thrown in and it played out so well. Definitely atmospheric with the southern town influence and also taking place in 1999 was very realistic and entertaining while trying to imagine that this could possibly happen. Such great fun!

The author Lindy Ryan was a fantastic storyteller and the writing was simply captivating! I felt as if I was watching a terrific horror movie with dark humor and I enjoyed this book so much!

I highly recommend "Bless Your Heart" to all horror readers and some others as well if they can handle quite a bit of the graphic gore in many of the unusual situations many of these characters will encounter. I just have to say again how wonderful and unique this book truly was. I will be looking forward to reading more books from this talented writer!


I want to thank the publisher "St. Martin's Press" and Net galley for the opportunity to read this novel and any thoughts or opinions expressed are unbiased and mine alone!

I have given a rating of 4 1/2 LIVING DEAD 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌠 STARS!!

Bless Your Heart was a fun romp. I loved the "proper lady" theme but mixed with vampires. Well done.

I really enjoyed this book! I loved that the humor and thriller were both in the book. I can't wait to read more about this author. I would definitely recommend this book.

The novel Bless Your Heart by Lindy Ryan combines elements of light horror with the oddities and quirky nature of a lighthearted cozy mystery. Sure, there are bloodthirsty vampires out there, but the novel also features some humor and an intriguing family at its core.

In a small southeast Texas town the Evans women run the only funeral parlor. Business is normal until the presumed-dead town gossip rises from her casket. The Evans women do what they have for generations stake her through the heart. They know that they must protect the town from the powerful ancient Strigoi. . However the bodies pile up, they know what to do. What will they do?

The author has written the novel so that multiple points of view are given. The cast of characters in this novel are well developed. The family secrets that haunt them must also be buried. It’s a horror mystery novel that has a “Southern bite” to it. The worldbuilding is excellent.

Bless Your Heart
By Lindy Ryan
Minotaur
April 2024

Review by Cynthia Chow

In 1999 Texas three generations of women run the family business that Grace Evans’ likens to a beauty salon, where clients are pampered and get a new look. Of course the Evans Funeral Parlor normally deals with customers who are a little more passive, and while still needing a new outfit and hairstyle their customers are quite dead. Or at least they should be, as their latest deceased client Mina Jean Murphy has just sat up and attempted to rip the throats out of every living being in sight. They had thought they were past this period of monster-hunting, even though 80-something Ducey Evans, her daughter Grace, and granddaughter Lenore have spent their lives aware of and fighting the undead who have plagued their town. Strigoi are the original undead ghouls, horrific creatures that can turn the living after being invited in. While Ducey, Lenore, and Grace have grown up with their family mission, they have yet to share this burden with Grace’s 15-year-old daughter Luna. It’s something she becomes aware of in the most shocking of ways after Mina rises and turns into a mindless bloodsucker. It’s only the start of a string of missing persons and homicidal Strigois though, and the women find themselves having to assist the unprepared law enforcement before more of their neighbors become predators and prey.

While readers might be expecting a paranormal mystery in a similar vein (hah, sorry) of Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse series, this debut novel is a bit gorier while also focusing on the relationship drama between the four generations of women. While the premise of three Women of a Certain Age monster hunters could lean into being overly humorous or absurd, the Evans family are written so real and their characters so well-developed that the threats seem genuine with dire repercussions. Luna is experiencing the normal emotional turmoil of teenaged romance, but one of her suitors may be something more than just a broody, angsty teen. Her reliable boyfriend Andy has not been responding to her texts, while new kid Crane Campbell had to leave his school in Colorado after being suspected of being one of the Trenchcoat Mafia associated with the horrific events of Columbine. The tragic fates of the men in their lives looms over all the women, and as it’s slowly revealed readers will be drawn in further and incredibly invested in the Evans family future. The mythology is solid as the rules are laid out clearly and the stakes (sorry, again) feel very real as the women band together to protect one another while still dealing with the complicated relationships between mothers and daughters. This is an entertaining and very compelling entry that stands out in the extremely popular genre of paranormal mysteries.

Vampire, mystery, and a dash of horror? Yes, please? This book was so much fun. I was a little worried it would be too similar to other vampire stories set in the south, you probably know the ones I am talking about, but this was such a fun and fresh take, I just had an absolute blast with it.

I really enjoyed the beginning of this book. It was fun and quirky but as I kept reading I felt like the plot started to drag a little. I enjoyed the characters a lot but at times it was a little hard to keep going because of the slowness of the plot and story line. Overall I would give it 3 stars but would love to give this author another go in the future! She writes fabulous characters that are quirky in the best way!!

This uniquely situated book manages to somehow make horror, blood, and gore fun. Largely centering around mother-daughter relationships and the greater connection between female family members. The Evan’s’ must figure out how the dead are suddenly rising and terrorizing the community.

I just finished Bless your Heart by Lindy Ryan and here are my thoughts.

The Evan’s women have a job to do. They own the funeral parlor and they bury the dead and for 15 years the dead have stayed dead but something has changed. The dead are again, coming back to life and the only people who even know and can do anything about it, are the town’s outliers, modern day southern Strigoi hunters.

As more and more of the town starts turning up dead and then undead, the Town Deputy has more questions than answers and as the Evan’s women gear up to fight, they know that it might be time to tell the secret that has plagued their hearts for the last 15 years.

I have a habit of not reading synopsis for books and I saw this one on instagram and was like, heck yeah looks good….. I requested it on netgalley and boom!! Was excited to start. I had no idea it was a paranormal mystery, I thought it was a romance so when I started reading I realized I had made the best mistake of my life! Even the cover didn’t give me a hint… The lady literally has fangs haha! I was drawn right in. It was a lighter horror kind of book and the Evan’s women family dynamic had me chuckling! Ducey was so funny. Each Evan’s got their own POV and it was a little much I understood why the author went this way.

It was a dark humor with some horror splashed in while the mystery of who the original vampire is in town. It was highly entertaining. I enjoyed the plot a lot, I am really glad it is book 1 of a series. The character development was well done and each person added value to the story. Big fan of southern books too. The tone was epic with a decent pace which is always a bonus when you are reading a mystery book.

I’m hoping now that we have been introduced to the main characters, that we will get less POVs in the next book because I really would like a more tidy storyline in the next one. If you are looking for a paranormal mystery that will make you giggle, pick this one up.

4 stars Thank you @netgalley and @minotaurbooks for my gifted copy

(3.5 stars rounded down to a 3)

Bless Your Heart by Lindy Ryan is a paranormal horror fantasy.

I really liked the premise of this book, but the execution wasn't fully there for me. It took me a while to finish this because I just didn't feel like picking it up. But I was also kind of slumpy so take that with a grain of salt.

That being said, the humor worked for me and I liked watching four generations of a family work together to solve supernatural problems. Ducey, the eldest Evans, reminded me somewhat of my own grandmother (whom we lost a little over a year ago).

The plot did feel a little draggy for me, and that may have partially been because there were tons of point of view characters. I love a multi-POV but it felt like there were maybe too many here, at least for my brain to comprehend at the time.

I enjoyed the back half of the book way better than the first half. When the next book in the series comes out, I'll see if I'm in a better headspace or if this author may not be for me.

Oh, and this book is set in the 90s so if you want to feel nostalgic, this is great for that.

CW: violence, gore, body horror

DNF I could not seem to get into the plot at all. I may try again later, but I didn't make it very far. I do blame being more into fantasy and romances right now than I do the book itself for my lack of desire to read this.

I had no idea cozy horror was a thing. This was a really cute story and I hope there are more to come.

Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and author for the copy of this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

It seems weird to describe a book with as much blood and gore as this one has as delightful, but it truly was! The subject matter might have been dark, but it was so light and funny.

The characters were wonderful, and the setting of 1999 Texas was so pleasantly nostalgic. I loved every minute of it and was entertained from start to finish. The four Evans women running the funeral parlor together definitely gave me some Steel Magnolias vibes. Ducey especially was amazing!

I absolutely enjoyed this cozy horror filled with southern charm. Lindy Ryan does a fantastic job bringing this small town and these characters to life. I can't wait to see what she writes next.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are my own.

DNF @ 33%.

I received a widget of this one & it did seem interesting but once I started reading, I just didn’t enjoy it. It was strange and I didn’t really like any of the characters.