Fabulous and spooky. My first by this author was a treat. Great writing and very atmospheric too. Pick this one up and you will be in for a real treat.

👶👹😈 BOOK REVIEW 👶👹😈

Thank you @Netgalley, @Gallerybooks, and @jennifermacmohanwrites for the e-arc of The Children On The Hill, and my bookish friends for the hard copy of the book! I am excited for the discussion as I read this book as part of the buddy read with #thrillerobsessedbuddyread!

“We carry all our traumas, all our body memories with us”

Thoughts 💭: I was grateful the approval of this novel as I love complex psychological thrillers. There are some books that you want to savor, and others that are just like a television show - fast paced, engaging, historical fiction. Although the book initially starts slow, it explores so many interesting ways in which it reimagines Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein tying to themes of scientific experimentations, eugenics, and monstrosity.
As the novel unfolded, we learn that there are three children Iris, Vi, and Eric under the care of Dr. Helen Hildreth fondly called Gran by them. Things change when Vi discovers that the life that she has been living is a ruse as she discovers that her grandmother has been experimenting with human life, and using practice of eugenics to “reform” children/girls who were seen as monsters in the society (involved in juvenile detention, drugs, and alcohol) and transforming them into something else. As the truth comes out, one of the children recognizes that she has become a monster - a product of scientific experiment. The author refers to Nazi experiments that occurred during the Holocaust as well - that we as humans are capable of monstrosity as well - and it has happened historically not just in wars, but the reason why sanatoriums have been abandoned since the 1970s and 80s in the US was due to their unethical treatment of those considered “unworthy” of citizenship because they were viewed as othered due to their identities as mentally challenged. The novel, then, follows a similar path to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as the story comes to a close, and ends on a good and hopeful note. If you haven’t read it yet and enjoy horror/suspense/psychological thrillers, this is an amazing book to add to that collection.

QQOTD ⁉️: I won’t lie as I was reading it, I dozed off and had a nightmare filled with young creepy people and random showers that started to spray without my control (I have always been scared of plumbing noises). What was your strangest nightmare that you have ever had?

#JenniferMcMahon #TheChildrenontheHill #Gallerybooks #Netgalley #thrillerobsessedbuddyread #bookstagram #instabook #book-photography #bookporn #igbooks #ilovereading #bookhaul #bookhoarder #bookaddiction #bookstoread #whattoread #fortheloveofbooks #bookblogging #bookpics #weekendreads #bookrecs


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What a great read! The eugenics angle was a delightful surprise... It was done tastefully and put a nice twist on the creep factor here. Imagine...your grandma is the head Dr at the mental hospital she runs down the hill and all the staff knows u and your brother and then boom, here comes another child, a girl, and she's staying with the family at the house instead of in a room at the hospital, and wouldn't you be just a little curious about wtf is going on? Like REALLY going on?? Of course! The unfolding of everything was done beautifully and expertly. I really enjoyed myself here. 4 stars!

Thanks netgalley for giving me the advanced pdf so that I can share my thoughts and opinions with y'all 🧡

THE CHILDREN ON THE HILL by @jennifermcmahonwrites is yet another powerhouse of a spooky horror/mystery combo novel and once I saw that it was inspired by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein I KNEW I would be into this one. This is my second Jennifer McMahon book and I am 100% on board with reading anything she has written as I thoroughly enjoyed the mystery in this story and was basically scarred for life by THE WINTER PEOPLE (in the best way that a book can scar you forever).

PAST
In 1978, Violet and her little brother Eric live with their Gran, Dr. Helen Hildreth in Vermont. Dr. Hildreth is known for her work with mentally ill as a psychiatrist at the local treatment center. While Gran is at the "Inn" as they call it, Vi and Eric spend most of their time hunting monsters and writing (Vi) and illustrating (Eric) their very own monster book. When Gran brings home a young girl they call Iris who is around Vi's age, she is excited to finally have a sister. But their new companion can't remember her past or her real name and at first doesn't even speak. As Vi tries to help Iris remember who she was before and where she came from, Vi knows she will have to disobey her grandmother and get into the files in the Inn to get to the truth. What she finds is more surprising than she expected.

PRESENT
In 2019, Lizzy Shelley is a semi-famous host of the podcast Monsters Among Us. She spends most of her time on the show, investigating urban legends and keeping in touch with her brother Charlie whose name is hard to remember since they have both changed their names since childhood. Lizzy is headed to Vermont where Rattling Jane, the local legendary monster, has purportedly taken a young girl. Lizzy believes this latest attack is part of a string of events by the same person pretending to be multiple local legends. She is after this monster because she believes it may be her sister.

In my opinion, Jennifer McMahon is the queen of dual timeline stories and has a way of weaving together past and present events that keeps you on your toes because you know the characters are revealing the information to you in the exact order that will lead you to the glaring conclusion but you have to pick up the breadcrumbs and follow along the way to get there. I can feel her creepy suspense in my bones and the only way to scratch the itch of knowing is to finish the book as frantically as possible. I have to say I was surprised by the ending of the future tense storyline of this one in the best way.

This book is a story of monsters among us and how those monsters are sometimes brought into existence. Like Frankenstein, these monsters are often misunderstood due to circumstances beyond their power not to mention that it often starts to get hard to tell who the real monster is, the creation or the creator.

Absolutely read this book if there is any part of you that likes spooky mysteries with complicated characters, dual timelines, and exploring the monsters among us.

Thank you to the author, @netgalley, and the publisher @gallerybooks for the e-ARC.

#thechildrenonthehill #jennifermcmahon #gallerybooks #netgalley #booknerd #constantreader #horrormystery #monstersamongus #booksta #booksofig #igbooks

Sadly I just don’t think this author is for me. This was my second book by her and unfortunately I found no creep factor, the flashbacks to the main character’s childhood didn’t always feel purposeful and I was bored. I really wanted to love this one, and I tried but really, really just not for me. I hope others enjoy it!

Jennifer McMahon knows how to write a chilling book...with enough eeriness and fear-factor that keeps a reader engaged with both the story and the characters. Lizzie Shelley and her brother Charlie have made new lives since they were the children on the hill......and have new names to help them move on. But the monsters still call to Lizzie...and she has become a well-known monster-hunter. Lizzie and Charlie were raised by their grandmother, who ran The Inn--where she treated psychiatric patients with very unorthodox methods while furthering her study of eugenics. As Lizzie chases down monsters, she finds clues that will lead her to her most feared monster ...her sister. The dual timelines and excerpts from a book written abaout what was found at The Inn, lead the reader down a twisted tale where the children find their true stories, along with the reader. The "end of the chase" brings with it a few surprises and an ending that is both surprising and anticipated. Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery Books for the opportunity to read and review this advance reader copy. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. #ChildrenontheHill #NetGalley.

I had a hard time getting into this book. I think I found the writing slow and slightly too fantastical for a fiction book. It felt more like magical realism at the beginning, so I wasn't in the right headspace for it. Overall, it was just OKAY for me.

Yoooo Jennifer McMahon does it AGAIN. This was a page-turner and a twist that I DID NOT see coming. Highly recommend.

The Children on the Hill by @jennifermcmahonwrites

This book!!! This book! I went in basically blind other than seeing in a few other reviews that it was a Frankenstein retelling (which I’m embarrassed to say I knew basically nothing about). But, I think it made for an even better reading experience!

The pacing for this was fantastic! Creepy, dark, full of trauma and mystery, and so, so, smart. The writing, the chilling tone, the twist, the disturbing, unreliable characters, all made this one of my new favorites.

Excuse me while I go read McMahon’s entire backlist.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

4.75*

This was such an amazing book! The atmosphere, the vibes, the two timelines OMG! I devoured this book in one whole day!

This was my second Jennifer McMahon book and I'm happy to say that she is definitely a new favorite author. I absolutely loved the atmosphere of this book. I think that is something that Jennifer McMahon does really well. I also loved the two timelines. I found myself eager to read both timelines and really liked them equally. I had no idea who to believe while reading this, I found myself not trusting anyone. The one thing that I struggled with was the pacing. I felt that at some points the pacing was off but other than that I adored everything else.

Thank you so much to the publisher and NetGalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review!

I liked most of this book, and was glad that part of it turned out the way I predicted. But one of the big twists just didn’t feel like it fit the tone of the rest of the story.

In 1818, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, essentially creating a new genre and making her readers rethink what the word "monster" really means. This year, Jennifer McMahon, who always manages to keep me on the edge of my seat and is one of the only horror writers I will read, puts her own spin on that idea.

In The Children On The Hill, we're introduced to Lizzy Shelley, a modern day monster hunter, the kind you'd find in shows on the Travel channel. She doesn't entirely believe in the kind of monsters that she's hunting but she does believe in monsters because she's seen them in action. As we meet her, Lizzy is off on another chase to research a legendary monster who her sister may be using as the foil for her own monstrous acts.

Throughout the book, we move back and forth in time, between the children's search for the truth about Iris's past and Lizzy's search for her sister. McMahon also weaves in pieces from the children's Book of Monsters, excerpts from a book called The True Story of the Hillside Inn, and the voice of the monster, herself. Throughout, McMahon keeps building the tension, as she slowly reveals the truth about what happened in 1978 and the truth about the monster. All of it builds to first one big surprise and then a final twist I never saw coming. I know, I know, you're thinking that it's not the least bit unusual for me not to see the twists coming. But I promise you that you won't see that final one coming, either.

It's been a long time since I've read one of McMahon's books, although I've been meaning to pick them up again for years. This book did not disappoint and has been more eager than ever to pick up more of McMahon's books. They are just the kind of horror stories I can handle - loads of tension but not a lot of gore and always plenty to make readers think. But even if you're not a wimp like I am, I think you'll enjoy this one.

Creepy story of Eugenics experiments gone wrong. The author puts a twist at the end that isn't quite as shocking as it should be but the story holds together.

I absolutely loved this book! To be honest, I haven’t read a Jennifer McMahon book I didn’t liked. It was so suspenseful and was the perfect book to read in October. The perfect amount of creepiness!

I am usually a fan of Jennifer McMahon but I really couldn’t get into this one. The storyline wasn’t interesting to me and it had trouble keeping my attention. I will still try future books.

This might be my favorite book of 2022 so far. I ADORED it and all it's twists and turns. McMahon never disappoints. I love her writing style. I love a book that makes me want to turn on all lights and this hit the spot. I loved that you found out more and more of what had been kept from the children as the book went on.

I went into this one expecting a whole different story - I was surprised by the direction it took. I guess I should’ve known with the whole Frankenstein reference.

I really wanted to love this one, but I struggled so much getting into it. The first few chapters had me hooked, but that didn’t last long. I didn’t love that ending. This is the second book I’ve read by this author and they’ve both been three stars… I really want to love her books. There were some twists here and there that I thought were very well done. The story also dragged at times and was a bit slow.

Woah! This was super creepy, and I didn't expect that ending at all. Gave me The Haunting of Hill House vibes.

The Children on the Hill is my definition of a perfect thriller. It had me sucked in from the beginning, and I could not put it down. Jennifer McMahon does a fantastic job of revealing the twists at the perfect times. There were several surprises that I would have never predicted. I highly recommend this book!

This book starts off very slow moving which made it difficult to keep me interested. This was another book that I kept walking away from and then having to start over because I’d put off reading it for too long. It was a just okay book for me once I got to the end. I felt it was overly predictable (except a small piece of the ending, but I won’t give spoilers) and drawn out. I honestly wanted to just give up on this book. The novel follows Monster Hunter, Liz Shelley. It jumps back and forth between then and now. It also contains excerpts from a book she wrote on monsters along with her siblings as a child as well as a book written on her grandmother and her background by another author. In the past sections, a third “sibling” is brought home by grandma, Vi becomes suspicious about what experiments her grandmother is actually doing at her psychiatric hospital. Vi and Iris become close and start investigating together along with their brother, Eric. In the now sections, she has changed her name after the incident (which isn’t explained until the end), to Liz Shelley, and travels the country hunting monsters. She notices a that 10 teenage women have gone missing after claiming to meet monsters. I didn’t really get interested in this book until I was about 70% done and even then, it was only okay. I would give it 2.5 stars.