Can’t help but love the writing style, though the beginning kind of dragged on, and took me a while to get through.

Very cute, horror-lite comedy in the vein of Grady Hendrix's The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires. Charming, full of heart and humor geared more toward readers that prefer their horror on the not so scary side.

Obsessed with this tale of suburban mom friendships gone demonic. A camp classic of a book. Thanks to Putnam for the ARC.

A story of friendship and evil.

Four neighbors, Melissa, Jess, Liz, and Amy have become friends for the last few years. They meet monthly to hang out, watch a movie and have some drinks. Liz is excited about starting the construction of her She-Shed. A place where all of them can enjoy some alone time, away from their kids and husbands.

Unfortunately, it seems that more than dirt is unearthed when the building commences. Suddenly, Liz's personality changes. Looming darkness begins to surround their neighborhood. Accidents happened. The friends all can feel the danger they are in but how can they help Liz?

Suburban Hell was a good tale for this month of October. It was fun and entertaining. I liked that their friendship was the driving force to help Liz. Those were good friends!!

Cliffhanger: No

3.5/5 Fangs

A complimentary copy was provided by G.P. Putnam's Sons via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

3.5
This book was creepy, I had to check my corners in the dark before I went to sleep.
I liked the practical magic outcast group vibe. Friendship kept the women safer and stronger.
I do feel like it could have been a bit shorter and the last confrontation during the exorcism could have been harder to win.
Overall a fun drama in suburbia story.

this book was unexpectedly like pretty dark, but really intriguing! I went in a lil blind to this book because the synopsis of just a demonic spirit enters the neighborhood group chat pretty much like yes I'm in. there were a few graphic scenes that I was not expecting and I was definitely on edge after reading this book at night. I think that this would be perfect for anyone who enjoys like suburban mom drama but also a spooky vibe. that sounds fairly niche, but I think there is wide reaching appeal for this book! 3.5 stars rounded up!

This was a fun humorous thriller. I had a great time with it and definitely preferred it to some of the others floating around.

I thought it was funny and entertaining. It definitely kept me turning pages.

When Amy Foster moved out of Chicago to one of the nearby suburbs, she was pleasantly surprised at how quickly she settled in - especially after finding her friend group of Liz, Jess, and Melissa. The four women find solidarity in eschewing certain suburbia cliches and during their monthly wine night. On one of these wine nights, the friends go into Liz's backyard to christen their soon to be clubhouse, the She Shed. Only instead of bestowing blessings, the group starts to feel like they may have unearthed something sinister. This feeling is heightened when Liz starts acting strange and other strange occurrences start happening. Now Amy, Jess, and Melissa must fight to save Liz and the neighborhood they've come to love.

I really enjoyed the whole neighborhood/cul-de-sac setting and how much it added to the story. This was a really fun read and I can see this being a good vacation read. It takes place over summer vacation so we get lots of interactions with the neighbors through block parties, the neighborhood pool, and the annual ice cream social. Being able to see the characters and their families in this setting really helped strengthen the stakes of the story because we see first hand what these characters would lose. We also get some lore and background of how this neighborhood came to be, which was an interesting tangent to go down. I've felt with some other books set in suburbia that the setting was more of an afterthought, but in this case I really think the neighborhood shines and I can't really see this story unfolding in any other setting.

I loved the characters and their friend group dynamic. I found all 3 of our main-ish characters to be really well developed and distinct from one another. The story is told from Amy's POV, but she does spend a lot of time with Jess and Melissa. Kilmer did a fantastic job of giving concrete character traits and emotional layers to each character. I also loved how the group dynamic really hinged on each of the characters being themselves and how they each brought something unique to the friend group. Of course, when it comes to this type of setting, I think most readers would expect certain character types to live in this neighborhood. And while we do see those stereotypes in the story, Kilmer gave enough details to our main friend group to ensure they stood out from the crowd. I do wish we had gotten a bit more of the four friends together before the main plot kicked off because Liz was the one friend who I didn't feel had a lot of detail to her character. But that might be on purpose because we do hear throughout the story that they didn't realize how much they missed Liz since she was always sort of in the background, even in their small group.

I went into this book unsure of where the line would be drawn - this could have easily gone full horror but it stayed more in the fun, vacation read territory. It reminded me a lot of The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, because we're following Amy who is trying to convince her friends and husband that something potentially supernatural is going on but they don't take her seriously at first. We get some really great creepy moments that I absolutely loved - the robot vacuum scene will forever be a favorite - and I think there was some decent building of tension through these moments. However, I do think that the book missed the mark just a bit when it came to finding the right balance between the supernatural and the everyday. I get that Amy has other responsibilities and can't just sit around reading exorcism books all day but it felt like the scales were tipped toward making the mundane suburbia plot points feel more important. This balance might be tweaked a bit for the final copy (I read an ARC) or maybe other readers feel differently, but it just irked me a tiny bit.

I did feel like the pacing was a little uneven and I wished there was more escalation to the supernatural events that we get. My favorite part of these sort of 'is it supernatural or does a character have an over-active imagination' plots is having the reader question the reality of the story. I want to be reading along and sort of question the reality of the situation myself - or find myself agreeing with a point a character makes that I hadn't thought of before. This slow escalation and flip flopping is really fun for me and I think it builds to a really great, natural climax to the story. In this case, however, I felt like Kilmer tried to inject some of that dynamic but it didn't quite work for me. I found that there was such a drastic initial change to Liz that it was obvious something weird was going on. Now, the book description doesn't try to hide the fact that something supernatural is going on, so maybe it isn't fair for me to be looking for that type of slow build up in the first place. On the other hand, I didn't feel like the stakes were fully fleshed out past the small friend group. It felt very much like "if we don't do this, we'll lose Liz forever" but I was really expecting there to be more of a threat to their families or the neighborhood as a whole. Again, maybe this book was just too lighthearted to really double down on the stakes there and we do have a little bit of a "if we don't fix this, we'll have to move away and we'll never see each other again" moment, but I just wanted more.

Overall, this was a really fun read and I would recommend picking it up as a vacation read. I love the setting, characters, and where the book chose to draw the horror line. I did find the pacing and escalation pattern a little unsatisfying, but I might be asking for a little too much there.

Thanks to NetGalley and G.P. Putnam's Sons for the ARC

Publication date was August 30, 2022

Ever wonder what would happen if one of the Desperate Housewives got possessed?
Suburban Hell was a really fun book, while also managing to have moments that were utterly chilling. This is a story of friendships, community, the lives of women, and what we choose to put our faith in. It's a delightful read.

I have just finished Suburban Hell. I rated this book a 3.5 stars.

This is the story of a group of suburban moms who don't exactly fit the mold in their neighborhood, so they become instant friends. Then one night while construction is going on to erect a She Shed in one of their backyards, something changes. There's a sound and smell - then one of them "changes". I rather enjoyed this novel. It was tense and mysterious, yet hilarious.

Thanks so much for allowing me an e-arc!

Welp, this was, hands down, one of the biggest disappointments I've experienced in recent history.
Absolutely cannot recommend it 🤷
First of all, thank you to Penguin Random House International for sending me the arc for free, in exchange for an honest review.

Were my expectations too high? Fuck yes they were, but how could they not be when this was advertised as Desperate Housewives with a demonic twist?!
I refuse to blame myself because this book was genuinely badly done, like it had a fantastic premise but the execution was no bueno.

The characters:
Honestly, all of them felt like caricatures and not like fully formed human beings and that was incredibly disappointed.
We never really learned anything about them beyond the most basic information, especially the ladies not named Amy, so it was extremely hard to give a shit about any of them.
Even Amy, who was given a small amount of trauma so that her pov, the sole one we got which was a mistake, was more interesting.
Well, I'm sorry but it did not work for me.
Also Liz, like I gave no fucks about Liz since the start so how am I supposed to care when she got posessed by a demon?! We got all this talk about her being this fabulous friend and wonderful mother, but sis was posessed too early on and we never got to actually see her like that.
The husbands, as always, were useless and didn't believe their wives but at the same time who would believe in demonic posession in this day and age?
The characters being moms and all made it impossible for me to relate to any of them as well, which was yet another level of why this didn't work for me.

The plot:
The plot was... Not good.
Concept wise, it's ridiculously good and sounds like a shitton of fun, but the execution was truly bad.
The humor you'd expect from this type of ridiculous story was nonexistent.
The supernatural element was very, very badly done and badly explained, so much so that it felt mega disjointed.
It felt as if I was watching one of those parody horror movies, and that's not what I expected from this.
Like I'm sorry but I genuinely gave zero fucks about anything that happened in this book.

Third act:
I didn't care?
Everything they came up with about said demon was hypothetical, and the solution came out of library and occult books?
I'm sorry, but that makes absolutely no sense to me, like idk what else to say.

I didn't like it.
I honestly should have DNFed it but clearly it is way too late for that so the only thing I could do is to share my honest thoughts about it and maybe save y'all from spending your hard earned money on it.
Peace out!

Desperate Housewives/Stepford Wives vibes with a touch of Exorcism (more along the lines of My Best Friend's Exorcism)
interesting - def kept my attention wanted to keep reading
she-shed lol loved that this was in the book
Fun.Creepy.Funny
5 stars LOVED IT!!!!

I would like to thank NetGalley for the ARC of this book, so I got to read this great book.
My review is my own honest opinions and is voluntary.

I had such a blast reading this book! This was a fun, witty tale of suburban mom life. It follows our main character, Amy, who gets together with her girlfriends for a monthly ladies night. The group of friends is a tight knit one, of likeminded women, who help each other out with their children, and avoid any uppity mom cliques.
One night, they have a little gathering to christen a new “she shed”, where they can hang out without any interruptions from their husbands or children- and a demonic energy is released from the build site. A few days later, things start getting a little crazy and it becomes apparent that there is a possession within the group.
We follow along as this group of friends bands together to overcome the demonic possession, really pushing the limits of how far you’d go for your best friends.
I absolutely loved the friendship aspect of this book, and kept forgetting that it was a horror story! I really enjoyed this and would highly recommend!

The quartet of moms who star in this book aren't the usual Stepford wives in their neighborhood. They don't live for the PTA and compete for the most recently remodeled kitchen. They found each other and became a bonded irreverant close knit group, supporting each other and having mom movie nights. But did an off handed comment let in a little bit of evil and possess one of them? How can they stay safe and save their friend? I have to say, I loved the language and humor in this book. It is a very specific kind of mom-lit made for women who don't care about impressing the neighbors. This book was funny and an easy read, and had me laughing several times.

I felt like this book gave me a bit of everything, comedy, tragedy, Drama, mystery, and thrills. At first I really started to get The Southern Bookclubs Guide to Slaying Vampires vibes. I just thought that at times the book was trying too hard. Whether it be mysterious or funny.

I really enjoyed following Liz, Amy, Jess, and Melissa’s friendship throughout the book. I felt like they were each very strong characters in their own way and brought just enough to the story. Amy frustrated me a bit, but I think that it was good for the story what she was doing that did frustrate me. Jess was a cute character. I loved learning about Melissa’s background, it was very interesting. What we got to see about Liz was also very intriguing.

Overall I highly recommend this book. I had a great time reading it and felt like I was on a roller coaster most of the time. I think if you enjoyed the book I mentioned earlier there is a chance that you will highly enjoy this book as well.

I absolutely adored this book! The humor of the suburban moms made this book lighter and funnier. Then you get the horror/thriller aspect of murder added to the story and it was everything I didn't know that I needed!

this was so much fun & the perfect fall/Halloween read! for fans of My Best Friends Exorcism and The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires.
my only complaint is that I wish we got more page time with Liz and got to see more of her acting strangely, being possessed, etc.

I LOVED this book!!! Seriously!! The friendships, the typical wealthy suburban neighborhood drama, the paranormal/demon activity!! Everything about this was perfectly executed. I loved that Liz was the glue that held them together and that there was a place for everyone in their group. I am glad to see the happy ending for Liz, Amy, Melissa, and Jess. I need to know asap if that was the final one or if the 4 women are going to conquer this demon once and for all.

3 for neutral, was unable to access my netgalley account for months, until today. Because of this, I was unable to see which books I needed to read. I apologize for the inconvenience and hopefully will not have any more issues in future.

Ehhhh this one was just not for me. I did not feel connected to any characters, I felt like there was no character building and therefore I wasn’t rooting for anyone, the entire book was building up to a big fight scene that fell flat, and it was overall just meh for me.