Maureen Kilmer’s debut horror novel was a winner for me. While I don’t read many horror novels, this one is lite horror with plenty of suspense, some humor, and relatable main characters. When Amy Foster and her family left Chicago for the suburb of Winchester, Illinois, she soon found friends in neighbors Liz, Jess, and Melissa. None of them fit in with the “in” crowd of school moms, but they bonded. During a monthly get-together, the four planned a clubhouse for Liz’s backyard. It would be a space just for them. No spouses or children allowed. However, the home-improvement project doesn’t go well, and a demonic force is released. Burn marks, dying grass, self-moving objects, and horrible smells are only the beginning. Fighting the evil spirit becomes a necessity. But who is stronger?

The story is told from Amy’s point of view. The main characters are well-rounded with traits that develop and change as the story progresses. The author was able to show how each brought something unique to their relationship. They felt like typical suburban moms with typical problems including arranging play dates for the kids, planning community and school events, dealing with neighborhood politics, trying to find some time for themselves, and balancing work, housework, looking for a job, dealing with the homeowner’s association, cleaning house, etc. However, when one of them is in trouble, who will be there for them?

Initially, the story is interesting but a little slow-paced. However, this changes as readers approach the fourth chapter. By then, we’re familiar with the four main families, and have a good sense of the relationships between them and with others in the neighborhood. I felt the emphasis on how a group’s dynamics changes when one person is missing or changes personality was especially understandable. It mixes the mundane with the important and throws in the supernatural to create suspense, danger, and drama. Themes include friendship, isolation, good versus evil, work/life balance, community support, and much more.

Overall, this was a well-plotted, moving, and clever story that built momentum, moved well, created a few startling moments, and built suspense as it moved to its dynamic conclusion and an epilogue that makes one think there will possibly be a second book. I recommend the novel to those that enjoy lite horror, realistic and relatable characters, some suspense, and a side order of snarkiness. It was an amusing and fun read and I can’t wait to see what the author pens next.

PENGUIN GROUP Putnam – G.P. Putnam’s Sons and Maureen Kilmer provided complimentary a digital ARC of this novel via NetGalley as well as a paperback copy. This is my honest review. Opinions are mine alone and are not biased in any way. Publication date is currently set for August 30, 2022. This review was originally posted at Mystery and Suspense Magazine.

Suburban Hell visits in the form of this novel. Superficially, it best fits into horror because of the supernatural content and the demonic possession theme that drives the plot. However, it might be best to describe this as women’s fiction for readers that like a touch of woo-woo.

The characters are superficially interesting. You have your stereotypical aloof PTA moms who can’t get their noses high enough into the air. You have the hot stepmom resented by the women loyal to her predecessor, despite the fact that Jess had nothing to do with her partner’s divorce and met him long after the dust had settled. You had a cluster of neighbors only too happy to stick their noses into your affairs.

Which accurately describes hell on earth, so the title fits.

Before I get deeper into this, I want to state that this story moves at a steady pace and it isn’t a long book, so it’s a decent beach read if you’re looking for something light and breezy. Anyone that loves neighborhood drama sprinkled with a little horror may find this book appealing, and it was the right kind of read for me when I picked it up, so I give it. 3.25 stars.

Within the core four women, there are some common character types. Melissa is the Type A personality who’s a professional married to a stay-at-home dad, and is happy to work in the business world. She’s efficient, impersonal, and capable of making the toughest opponents wither with a single glance. Jess is the stepmom with a heart of gold who loves to parade around nude.

Amy, our protagonist, is a bit of a mess. She never seems to have it together, as a parent, partner, or professional. She’s been looking for work for months after taking time off to have her children. She’s supposed to be a social worker, but she’s more of the talker and pusher within her group, trying to get her friends on board with her plans, and one of her growth points in this book is actually discovering she’s taken her friends for granted.

Amy at times felt very real because she’s messy, but at other times her arc felt forced. There were some conversations between the friends that felt like characters had words stuck in their mouths because the author wanted the objection on the page, rather than because it’s what the character would really say. For such a smart, business-savvy woman, Melissa flip flops on her religious position and doesn’t really have a firm anchor for her views. The resistance to the mega-church money grab stuff makes sense, but to outright dismiss any spiritual explanations or activities needed to save their friend is puzzling and reactionary, not logical. Her default is that her friends are asking her to go against her beliefs … yet she wears a cross as a protection item and does say she believes some things she was taught. She doesn’t come across as religiously confused but rather contradictory, and as someone driven by logic who takes a business approach to life, it wasn’t convincing.

At the same time, Amy is also uneven. It’s hard to really buy into imminent danger and possibility of death when that tension’s interrupted for date night or festivities with friends. It was also troubling that Amy knew she needed help and could have received guidance from her mother-in-law, who she seemed to get along with well, but refused to turn to a trusted source for help. Instead, they trusted in the advice of a stranger in a bookstore and read one book about how to handle their situation and, despite Amy’s belief that the situation posed a real risk to her daughter and all three women had suffered unexplained physical injuries, Amy trudged off with a single author’s guidance and didn’t do additional research to back it up. It was hard to take it seriously, and although she meant well, it’s hard to believe Amy’s a capable leader ready to help women fix their problems when she’s barely managing to hold it together during summer vacation with her kids, which raises another point about Amy. She could have removed her children from the community and sent them to her in-laws to ensure their safety. She didn’t, yet was concerned about the safety of Liz’s kids. Given some of the things her daughter was saying and experiencing, it’s hard to believe in someone who thinks there’s a huge threat to her friend, but doesn’t take the threat to her kids seriously.

All in all, a breezy read if you don’t think about it too much and just go with the flow.

What a fun book to read!!

I loved that this pretty dark book is disguised as suburban humor.

The housewives of the neighborhood become exorcists when they realize their friend has been possessed by a demon.

The book is very well-paced and doesn’t try to do too much at once. I like how the demon makes them all realize their own special forms of evil and their weaknesses.

The ending was kind of anti-climactic. I really expected it to be a grander exorcism… it just wasn’t.

Overall, it was a good read!

Set in an all too familiar mundane suburb where the scariest thing one usually has to contend with is an overzealous HOA comes real evil. When Amy's friend Liz is possessed by a demon unearthed after breaking ground on her backyard She Shed she bands together with other friends from her neighborhood to banish this entity back where it belongs all while coordinating volunteers for the upcoming school carnival

Suburban Hell is a FUN read! There's obvious overlap Grady Hendrix, but while his books lean more towards horror Suburban Hell is like Liane Moriarty decided to dip her toe into horror, this is women's fiction domestic drama meets demonic forces and it doesn't take itself too seriously. It's campy and absurd and kind of horrifically funny, one scene involving a rogue robot vacuum had me chuckling out loud, and it has an admirable undercurrent of themes like the pressures of modern motherhood, the pitfalls of isolation, the importance of community, and the power of female friendships.

Suburban Hell is a fantastic addition for your Spooky Season reading!

Suburban Hell was quite the story!! 4 best friends, Amy, Jess, Melissa and Liz, have idyllic lives in a wealthy suburb of Chicago. They decide to build a She Shed, a place to get together without the unending interruptions from their husbands and kids. But once they break ground in Liz's backyard, she's somehow becomes someone else entirely. Amy takes the lead in figuring out what's going on with Liz and recruits Jess and Melissa to help her out. This was a laugh out loud horror/thriller story that had me glued to the pages! Demons, ghost and exorcisms, oh my!! Loved it all!!!

“What’s a little demon possession among friends?” It’s the perfect tagline for “Suburban Hell,” a story about a group of four moms who bond over playdates and disliking most of the other women in the neighborhood. After a girls night at Liz’s house, Liz’s husband gives in and allows her to build a SheShed in the backyard for the groups’s extracurricular activities. With plans in hand, a construction crew begins to break ground, only to open up something unexplainable… and smelly.

Amy, her next-door neighbor and self-proclaimed bestie, notices something’s off with Liz, which is confirmed once Liz tries to kill her. From there, peculiar things begin to happen and tests the strength of the group’s bond. The chain of events that take place post-possession are creepy-yet-funny, making this dark-comedy an easy read and something that you’ll want to speed through pretty quickly.

I thoroughly enjoyed it and hope the author writes more horror-like stories in the future!

Suburban Hell was a fun read and a great way to kick start fall reading! It reminded me of The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires meets The Change.
I loved the friend group of Amy, Jess, and Melissa and had fun rooting for them as they tried to save their friend Liz and their neighborhood from a demon. It was a good mix of spooky scenes and funny, relatable moments!
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

A great summer read for those who are into summer thrillers. I enjoyed the fact that I can easily get the women since they are in my age range and they are mothers. We need more of this books. Worth the read and it was good!

Ahh I absolutely adored this gem of a book!! A mix of horror/thriller/humor, what a fun time! I love how there seems to be a trend of horror/thrillers with a mix of humor, it is quickly becoming my favorite thing to read. Pick this up you won’t be disappointed!!!

Oh man I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. I started reading it and I was just not vibing with the whole mommy stay at home holding down the household thing but then it got interesting. Such a good mix of neighborhood drama, horrific history, supernatural elements, and above all else the strength of friendship. I thought the 4 main characters were a delightful group; sarcastic and funny. I thought it had a very Grady Hendrix vibe and a Real Housewives vibe, though toned down quite a bit. Ended up loving this!

Thank you to NetGalley and G.P. Putnam's Sons for the free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Think life in suburbia is always dull and monotonous? Think again, because for Amy, Liz, Jess and Melissa, life on their suburban street becomes anything but. After breaking ground in Liz’s backyard one night for their new she shed, Liz becomes someone they no longer recognize, and someone they fear. And to save their friend, their families and the neighborhood only they can confront and deal with the new Liz, because after all, aren’t suburban moms always called upon to do everything anyway?

This was a fun horror novel about a suburban mom group and what happens when one of its members becomes possessed and all sorts of creepy things start happening in the neighborhood. I really enjoyed Amy’s first person POV and seeing her band the group together to help try and save their friend and their neighborhood. Normally short chapters are my jam…but in this book for some reason they felt a little choppy or rushed to me and somehow made the book feel longer than it was. Despite that it was still a fun read and one I’d highly recommend for fans of Grady Hendrix! I would definitely read more from this author in the future.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Group Putnam for an advanced digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I always enjoy horror that has its tongue planted firmly in cheek, and I also like seeing horror explore territories that it may not otherwise. Therefore, SUBURBAN HELL by Maureen Kilmer was a fun and goofy horror read that spoke to me on a personal level as a presently stay at home Mom living in suburbia. Sure the possession storyline was perfectly servicable with a taut and unsettling backstory, as well as some genuine tweaks to the subgenre to make it more accessible, which is great. But I really liked how Kilmer addressed the sheer isolation and stress that modern day parents, particularly mothers, can feel in our current culture and society. I really related to Amy, who never imagined that she would leave her job and her city life, but has found herself in a quiet and somewhat dull suburb, raising two children and pining for her days as a social worker, and important her friendships with other women in her cul du sac are. This made for deeply relatable at at times melancholy reading, and also perfectly explained by Amy would be SO DETERMINED to salvage her friendship and friend group beyond the 'that's just what you do in a horror story' motive. It isn's too deep, and the scares are pretty mild, and a fair amount of the other characters are pretty two dimensional, but overall I thought that SUBURBAN HELL was a fun quick read that horror averse people may enjoy this Halloween season.

4.5 stars rounded up to 5!

I absolutely loved this horrifying spin on the rich housewife premise. Living not super far from the Chicago suburbs, I really enjoyed all of the references and felt like they really made the characters and overall story that much more relatable.

I loved the summer vibes of this one and was immediately reminded of My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix, which I also really loved. This reminded me SO much of a grown up version of that story set in the Chicago suburbs.

Definitely read this one if you enjoy:
• rich housewife friend groups
• paranormal possession stories
• confirmation that men can be the worst

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Putnam Books for my review copy. Publishes August 30th!

Interesting and entertaining but not as scary as I’d hoped it would be. The trio of friends were fun to read about and I feel like its sort of rare to read about a group of PTA moms. I liked them despite not being a mom myself.

Fun considering it's horror. Even better if you are in the Chicago suburbs as I am now.
Would make a delightful horror comedy film.

I received this as an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Yes, this book has demon possession in the heart of midwest suburbia. It's terrifying, right? Something so idyllic could have evil lurking under the surface. But the truth of this story is community & friendship.

It's not super gorey, imo. If you're looking for something to make you scream, this ain't it. But as I generally read cozies & romcoms, it did manage to give me anxiety, lol.

In the vein of Grady Hendrix, Maureen Kilmer's Suburban Hell is a quirky take on horror that slowly reeled me in with it's deceptive normality of day to day life in suburbia. The creepy/horror really sneaks up on you and it's a bit unnerving, but I loved it!

Four women. One Neighborhood. One crazy summer of demonic possession?

Suburban Hell completely had me fooled into thinking it would be your typical demon possession story. But throw in quirky moms, relentless gossip, endless humor, and a nail biting stand between the 3 women & their possessed friend? Outstanding! I was on the edge of my bed, enthralled til the very end! I loved the perspective of Amy, a mom of two- who perhaps wants more from her suburban life. She was funny, and relatable with today’s hardships & societal issues.

Jess was my absolute favorite! Her quirky one liners, and light hearted attitude kept me smiling constantly! While also enjoying the resident “mean girl/woman”, and their interactions with her.


I wasn’t going to continue reading, at first. It was slower in the start for me. But! I love spooky novels & this definitely hit the spot! Beware of Roombas & Barbie’s y’all!


Thank you to Putnam Group, Netgalley, and the author Maureen Kilmer for this book in exchange for my honest review!

This is a very unique and entertaining horror story set in suburban Chicago. Four very good friends who live in the same neighborhood decide they need a She Shed to escape husbands and children. When the foundation hole is dug in Liz's backyard, she undergoes changes in personality and behavior that lead Amy to believe that evil demons are to blame. The story moves back and forth between a normal suburban summer and a terrifying evil presence. Very strongly drawn characters, lots of action, and realistic family and community scenes make this an excellent read. It is both a hoot and a serious horror story, just begging to be a feature-length movie! Thanks to NetGalley, Penguin Group Putnam, and G.P. Putnam's Sons for providing an ARC.