Creepy. Suspenseful. Gothic. Stormy seas. A curse. Disappearing girls. And, a lighthouse with a red light that must never go out. How many generations of women will the strange female in the sea drown?

They Drown Our Daughters has a lot going for it. One more thing it needed was a search and delete button. I swear, nearly every character smirked. Sometimes one person smirked on one page followed by another person smirking on the next page. I have a feeling that, if we could see the creatures under the sea, they'd be smirking, too. My smirk-o-meter got so over heated while reading this book that I had to pour ice water on it to cool it down. This seems to be a thing now, that characters respond to everything by smirking.

The next way characters respond is by rolling their eyeballs. There was so much eye rolling that I started rolling my eyeballs at every roll. There was so much eye rolling that my eyes got stuck and I had to lube them. There are lots of books out now where the characters all react the same way--please, just anything but smirking and eyeball rolling. Every time it happens, it pulls me out of the story because I'm thinking, "There it is again."

I liked the plot. It was creepy, and I'd give this a higher rating had most of the characters reacted differently than the hordes of characters in so many books today.

Thank you to Netgalley and Poisoned Pen Press for allowing me to read and review They Drown Our Daughters.

They Drown Our Daughters is a very striking title and once the reader gets past the prologue, set back in 1881, it becomes abundantly clear where Katrina Monroe’s thoughtful and atmospheric debut gets its name. The action takes place exclusively in the small coastal town of Cape Disappointment where Meredith Strand’s family have lived for generations, often being responsible for the local lighthouse. Cape Disappointment was a nicely drawn, down at heel, small town which has a powerful local legend at its heart. It was one of those locations where everybody knew everybody else, and if you wanted to make a go of your life you departed for the big city as soon as you finished high school.

When the novel opens, the local myth (or tragedy which developed into a ghost story) has sporadically fed the cape’s tourist industry but is as worn out as the town. However, it remains strongly connected to the main character Meredith, circling back to the tragedy from 1881 featured in the prologue. According to the old tale the women in the Strand family are cursed and at some point will be called to the sea where they will either drown or vanish. Since 1881 this has happened on several occasions, with the family being hit with repeated tragedy and the locals murmuring about witches and historically keeping the Strand’s at arm’s length.

They Drown Our Daughters is probably more of a dark thriller than horror novel, nicely blending in the complex drama which surrounds the Stroud family, in particular Meredith and her mother Judith who is beginning to suffer from Alzheimer’s. The story kicks off when Meredith and her young daughter Alice return to Cape Disappointment after she abandons her wife, with the story never making any particular big deal out of the fact that the lead character is gay. Upon her return Meredith is not in a great emotional state and is clear she has a very difficult and sometimes toxic relationship with her mother. Much of the strongest sequences in the book surround the female relationships, their failures, and Meredith’s attempts to not pass on the same broken emotions to her daughter.

Relationships dominate the book and the regular flashbacks to Judith when she was younger help provide context to the curse from an alternative perspective. Meredith did not have a normal upbringing and it is clear that the resentment she still harbours for her mother, and her unwavering belief in the curse, beats at the heart of the plot. Meredith is a rational woman, but still there is something about the coastline which nags, threatens, and gets under her skin with her fearing for the life of her daughter more than her own. For the most part They Drown Our Daughters makes a good job of shrouding whether something supernatural is going on or whether the family are deluded within their own fairy tales. There are lots of spooky (or should that be fishy moments?) along the way, most surrounding the irrational paranoia Meredith has for the water.

Just over the halfway mark when things were beginning to get a bit samey there was a much-needed upturn in pace with the plot carefully moving from drama into thriller as the family faces a new crisis. This was neither a bloody or fast-paced read and I found the family drama element of the story did begin to drag and rather go around in circles as Meredith stumbles from one personal crisis to another, with things deteriorating with her mother.

The novel is chaptered and whilst the majority present the story from Meredith’s point of view, there are plenty of others featured; Judith (present), Grace (1910), Judith (1971), Beth (1938), Diana (1948) and eventually Alice. The Judith points of view were the most effective as they showed both the broken relationship and the struggles the family has faced. However, the other jumps back in time were rather pointless with all the women coming across as too similar to each other with what was going to happen to them inevitable.

In the end this was a rather brooding novel where the malevolent force lurked in the background with the story exploring motherhood, family, regret, tradition and the lengths a woman will go to in protecting her family, whilst asking the question; can we ever truly escape our past? If you are a fan of slow-burner thrillers with supernatural overtones They Drown Our Daughters has much to offer, but others might find that the kitchen sink family drama overwhelms the horror.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy of this book!

There is not much more I can say about this book except how absolutely chilling it was! The plot had me hooked, I could viscerally feel the trauma and the hurt of various characters, and the haunting nuances of human behavior were thrilling if not terrible to unravel.

Wow! Haunting and atmospheric is right. Tw for this book: lots of death. Much of it rather graphic. Semi self inflicted. I really loved the fact that there was no underlying romance in this book and that the main charter was gay, but with that not being a major plot point it was just casually mentioned as she is going through a divorce. The characters are also well fleshed out in my opinion, I didn’t find anyone 2D at all, but instead they all had depth and sides to them

The book follows a “curse” placed on a family, which draws them to the water and their inevitable deaths. Throughout the novel you get flashbacks to things that happened in the past, granting depth to the curse and the storyline.

I really loved the paranormal aspects of this novel, and how well they were written! It definitely gives less of an OoooOoo spooky ghost vibe and more of a descent into insanity. It kept me hooked from the beginning and I stayed up WELL past my bedtime to finish reading and write this review

I received this book in exchange for review. It was actually a book on my netgalley wishlist and I was glad my wish was granted !

When salt water runs in their blood , her voice lives in their head how can they stay away?

Told through multi generational time lines we learn how "she" calls to an entire blood line drawing them into the deepest depths with her.
When Meredith's  relationship falls apart she moves back to her mom's house on the cape with her daughter Alice. When strange things start happening, and Alice's hears the voice as well what lengths will Meridith go to keep her daughter safe ? Will she solve the mystery and finally end her family's curse? Or will Meridith and Alice suffer the same fate as the rest of the women in her blood line ?
Although I did enjoy the book I found alot of the drowning stories very repetitive. However there were a couple of really good twists and the story line was great.

This ARC was provided to me via Kindle, Poisoned Pen Press and by #NetGalley. Opinions expressed are completely my own.


A unique twist on horror.

They Drown Our Daughters is a story about a curse that is passed down from mother to daughters that fans of Netflix’s The Haunting of Bly Manor may enjoy.
While reading this I really enjoyed the setting of a foggy, small, east coast fishing town and I thought the concept of a curse that could be a more literal manifestation of the difficult relationship between mothers and their daughters and the experience of women was very interesting. The idea that only the daughters were impacted by this and not the sons felt very familiar in the way that daughters in real life often have to shoulder a lot that sons never will.

Unfortunately though, the story didn’t delve into this idea very deeply which I found disappointing because that was the main thing I found interesting. The focus was more on the characters and the different timelines which for me just didn’t work. I found that all the generations of mothers and daughters felt very similar and therefore had the unfortunate effect of being very repetitive and blended together. None of the women seemed to have any distinct personality to distinguish one from the other and I often would forget which timeline I was reading from because of this. I found it very difficult to continue due to me not being able to care about any of the characters. Not only were they all very similar, but I felt that they were all very flat and did not feel real to me at all, often the dialogue felt forced and robotic.

Despite this, I still was interested to find out the mystery of what was really happening and so I continued on. I found it dragged quite a bit and was extremely slow paced and could definitely do with being cut down a bit. Many of the timelines because the same thing was happening over and over again just got very repetitive and just felt like I was rereading the same thing with only slight variations. I found it slow and there were many parts that didn’t work for me but it was still okay until I got to the climax of the story. This part just came out of nowhere, to me it just felt like a completely different book all of a sudden. There wasn’t really any foreshadowing to explain or anything that made this make any sense. It just didn’t work for me at all, which was really disappointing. I had hoped the ending would bring everything together and make me like it but it just didn’t do that at all.

I can’t say I’d recommend this but if you’re interested in a horror book that is not really scary and more atmospheric then you might enjoy this.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC. This is my honest review.

This book managed to be a intriguing and creepy, and did so with a minimum of gore.

It is a carefully crafted story about a curse that haunts the women of a family. While it's essentially a horror story, it delves into the psyche and relationships of mothers and daughters.

This was a delightfully creepy, generation-spanning novel that I couldn't put down. I loved the setting of Cape Disappointment, and I loved the time jumps between chapters that focused on different women in Meredith's family. Being able to see each woman as a child or young adult and then as a mother really added to my understanding of the character and why they acted the way they did. I disliked Judith in present-day, but she was probably my favorite character once I read the chapters dealing with her childhood and backstory.

Cape Disappointment is cursed, a long line of woman drowned and disappeared in the quiet waters. It used to drawn tourists in, but it’s been years since then. In the midst of her divorce, Meredith returns home to the Cape with her young daughter, Alice. Meredith never believed the ghost stories, but her mother Judith does and will do anything she can to keep the dark figure in the water and the voices in the wind from coming for her granddaughter.

I’m always intrigued by horror novels that aren’t all blood, gore and sleep with the lights on kind of scary and this book knocked it out of the park. I was immediately pulled in by the cover and story won me over very quickly. Meredith as a main character was beautifully written, but having the side voices of her generation line was such a great idea to show the evolution of the family’s ghost story from origin on.

The world the author established was atmospheric, spooky, creepy and fantastic. I was hooked by the first page and devoured it in one sitting.

I literally devoured this book in less than a day.
The characters, magic system, and storytelling was so well done and after that ending, I desperately needed more!
They Drown Our Daughters is everything I love about an epic, character-driven fantasy, with phenomenal characters and brilliant writing.
Meredith, our main character is very driven. I loved her relentless force. And her drive is something fierce.
This is a fantastic novel, I thought the pace was very good and kept me glued to the pages.
It's just the most unique book I've read in a long time.

Poisoned Pen Press,
I can't thank you enough for this eARC!
I will post to my blog and platforms close to pub date!

They say a family in this town is cursed, that the women always find their end in a tragical way, that there is a shadow lurking in the ocean, calling them to their doom.
Meredith does not believe in ghost stories, and she needs a place to stay now that her marriage is tumbling over. Her mother Judith is not happy with her back home; she thought maybe her daughter could be safe from all of this. And now seashells are coming back to shore, and there is this voice coming out of them…
I am always intrigued by new voices in horror literature. I read a lot of excerpts, look at a lot of covers, and They Drown Our Daughters by Katrina Monroe, had it all to be the perfect fit for me: a remarkable cover, a captivating title, curses, a gothic vibe… and it did not disappoint at all.
The story is fascinating, and the way it is told, with the use of flashbacks and different generations, made it a puzzle I could not put down. The characters are also very well fleshed: the reader will understand what they are going through, the dread, the confusion, the sadness. Meredith is a great main character, but she is surrounded by other complex women as well. All their actions feel genuine, even if crazy, and the ones that maybe does not at the beginning are very well explained later on.
And, personally, I really appreciate that it doesn’t shy away when it needs to be eery and creepy. It is a horror story after all! The shadow lurking Cape Disappointment feels real from its very first entrance and it makes the reader constantly aware of how close the waters are.
I suppose there would be some discussion about the ending, some people loving it, some people feeling down… Count me among the first, because, in my opinion, the story is so well built that there was no other way it could all come together.
An amazing reading throughout. And a new voice I am going to follow closely, which is always fantastic news.

An engrossing thriller that left me spellbound. I highly recommend this book, the story is fantastic. Highly recommend!