Daphne is a coming of age.book the likes I've never read. The passages with Kit and her internal battle with anxiety are gripping. As someone who has dealt with strong anxiety, I can tell you this was a bit tough at times. I loved the myth that was Daphne, she took on a life of her own. It was also an interesting premise of 'how do you not think of something ' and 'can you escape a thought'. In only a way Josh Malerman can do, he slips you past reality and into another world without a clue it happened. This was one of my favorites and I'm glad I requested it.

Daphne by Josh Malerman
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

This is my second & favorite Malerman book. I usually don’t enjoy the books that are hyped, but once I started this books I found it difficult to put down. It is so well written, I was actually spooked through this one, I absolutely loved it. A wild ride from start to finish. Daphne is also just terrifying on her own, something that gives me chills thinking about. I highly recommend this book.

Daphne is a Thriller/Horror book with lots of edge of your seat scary parts. It has elements of old school horror movies like Nightmare On Elm Street and Candy Man. Josh Malerman, known for Netflix series Bird Box, brings something unique to the table with his love of both sports and horror films by adding a high school girl's basketball team component and a terrifyingly iconic female villain. Daphne was a total win for me and I found it to be both unsettling and nostalgic. I loved it.

Kit McLamb and her fellow basketball teammates are about to celebrate their last summer before college. The night before the big game one of the girls tells the story of Daphne, a girl who was a student at their school many years ago who died under mysterious circumstances. Rumors suggest she was murdered, but some believe she died at her own hand. The girls are told that if they think of Daphne then she will come and kill them. Kit becomes obsessed with Daphne, hearing her name wherever she goes. She can't stop thinking about her. Then one by one her friends are murdered and no suspect can be found. Is Daphne killing the girls when they think of her and if so will Kit be next?

A special thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House - Ballantine for the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to PRH Audio for my ALC. All thoughts are my own.

A story about the sports, about growing up, about ghosts, and things that haunt you. It is hard to describe what I liked and what I didn't like about this story. It focused a lot on basketball - that didn't bother me, but the rest is kind of forgettable. The story wasn't really scary, it didn't bother me much, it didn't disturb me. Yes, the ending twist is gruesome, but up to it it was kind meh.

Do I recommend it? as an audiobook, yes. It's almost like a monologue, with different POVs, and there's a little of a mystery. Though reading it, one long chapter with little breaks would be hard IMHO,

Wow! Wow! Wow! Josh Malerman blows me away with everything he writes! When I first started this book, I was curious about where it was going with the Bloody Mary like story and it took it exactly where I was hoping it would go! Malerman has a way of making my skin crawl and making me double check over my shoulder for things hiding in the shadows. As someone who could pretty much couldn't care less about basketball, that aspect of the story didn't put me off at all. Absolutely exciting to read everything Malerman writes (or republishes) in the future.

"It’s the last summer for Kit Lamb: The last summer before college. The last summer with her high school basketball team, and with Dana, her best friend. The last summer before her life begins."

The town of Samhattan has a spooky legend that no one wants to talk about. The legend is of Daphne, and the details are not quite clear. Was she murdered? Did she take her own life? Was she a murderer? The only clear part of the legend is that Daphne wants revenge......and the more you think about her the more likely she will come for you.

The night before Samhattan's big basketball game one of the players tells a ghost story about Daphne. After hearing the story the team members try to brush it from their minds and focus on the game. But how do you stop thinking about something that is now on your mind? While we do hear a few different perspectives in this story, it's mostly told through the voice of Kit Lamb. Kit is trying to understand what is happening as her teammates are murdered one by one.

This story is a slow burn. It definitely had some spooky moments when learning about Daphne and when she made an appearance on the page. However, the overall story focused more on Kit's anxiety, building a bridge between the monster of Daphne and anxiety. For Kit the more that she thinks about and focuses on her anxiety, the more likely she will experience an attack, and the same is true with the legend of Daphne. Josh Malerman did an excellent job writing the character of Kit as she realizes that focusing on controlling her thoughts could possibly help both her anxiety and ward off Daphne.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for this ARC.
On Sale Now.

Malerman is hit or miss for me. Love GOBLIN and BIRD BOX, unfortunately, this one is a drawn-out piece for me that is weighed down with too much basketball. Daphne is a creepy character, but I would have preferred something different. Thanks to the publisher for this advanced copy. I look forward to Malerman's next romp.

Another home run for Malerman. You never know what to expect from him, besides excellent storytelling. He always finds some new path to terror that he hasn't trod previously. And each path is terrifying. I was surprised at how well the whole "Daphne won't appear unless you think about her or talk about her" premise worked and got under my skin. It's also a metaphor for how society chooses to "bury" or ignore the "sins of the father", but that never solves anything. Burying it just makes it fester and arise and damage people. Bravo, Malerman.

If you think About Daphne, it’s already too late. Daphne is a 7’ ghost who is violently haunting a girl’s HS basketball team. This one can be campy at times, but overall a good story that you’ll breeze through. I’m a fan of Malerman and he doesn’t disappoint here. Thank you to @delreybooks and @joshmalerman for my copy.
4⭐️

Daphne, the newest novel by Josh Malerman and the first novel after the reissues of Goblin and Pearl, starts with Kit Lamb at the free throw line to win the basketball championship. This is the beginning of the summer before she goes to college so this is the culmination of her high school basketball career. She has her routine and does a simple superstitious thing that all of her teammates do during free throw practice: ask the basketball goal a Yes or No question. In this case, Kit asks, “Is Daphne going to kill me?” The answer is a game winning free throw. Kit had only heard about Daphne the night before when the team was having a sleepover and trying to tell stories to scare one another. Daphne is a town haunt, supposed to be over 7 feet tall, smelling like smoke and whiskey, and killing anyone who thinks about her for revenge. This description has stuck in Kit Lamb's head, and the legend of Daphne comes to town after this game, after this winning shot, and Kit thinks Daphne's return has everything to do with her and her basketball team. 

The first half of this novel starts slow, setting up a much better second half. There are times when I was reading the first half and wondering how much setup we need to go into the second half. This novel seemed to be wandering around, trying to figure out where it wanted to go. The second half brings everything together, and honestly we are rewarded for our patience. Malerman uses Daphne as a metaphor for the changes in Kit Lamb’s life, which is filled with uncertainty, a large amount of anxiety and fear. We do not know if some of this anxiety is what manifests Daphne or if Daphne is what manifests the heightened anxiety.

Daphne is not a flawless novel. There are questions that are not answered and scenes that do not make much sense to the rest of the novel. I think about this like many classic horror films, because so many of them are not perfect but they are so beloved. Horror enthusiasts find so much merit in stories even if there are many stories that take much longer to develop than they should. Horror in general is not perfect. Whether it be Jason and Michael Myers always returning from the dead, to giallo movies as a whole, to the bloated novels of Stephen King, most is not perfect, there are things that do not make sense, things that do not add up, but horror fans love horror regardless. Daphne is one of those horror stories. Despite it's problems, Daphne is a great horror novel, and definitely worth reading. 

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

thinking about Daphne could be enough to summon her to you.

This boogiewoman is a perfect opportunity to subvert the slasher archetype. Bringing a feminist change, though often in horror the victims are female, it is rare to see a female killer. Further, the focus on Kit and her experience with anxiety is refreshing and fitting for the world we are in, with a growing knowledge of mental health struggles and the stigma that can still exist.

Malerman takes us through a few different, all-female perspectives, but we find out home base there with Kit, who is learning to handle the anxiety that’s found itself home in her brain. That anxiety gives way to intrusive thoughts of Daphne, the fear growing in Kit’s mind until the bodies of her friends start showing up. Daphne all but becomes a memetic Tulpa, seemingly created by the very unspoken fears and desires of Samhatten. The mystery is captivating, drawing you deeper into the world Malerman creates here. With threads linking this to his other work, Daphne proves Malerman is a growing talent in the horror field. Coming to widescale prominence with his first novel, Bird Box, he again proves willing to bring art to the genre, breathing new life into the skin of the slasher, of the horror novel

Special thanks to Random House Publishing and Ballantine Del Rey and Netgalley for the ARC of this book.

Okay now that we have had what feels like a slasher book extravaganza, I'm stopping with this one. This book was so boring I felt myself skimming through it. Honestly surprised at Josh Malerman for following the trend.

I don't like high school, high school girls basketball, or this book. I am truly sorry I can't give this one a great rating I'd just be lying. If you are tired of slasher/horror with groups of teenagers, skip this one.

I was excited to pick this up because I loved Bird box and I was curious to see if I would like this one too. Unfortunately, I ended up not liking it as much as I thought I would have. The first part of the book talks mostly about basketball and I'm not a big fan of sports so I might not have been the best audience for this. The mc suffers from anxiety and it plays a huge part in the story, the depiction of anxiety was well written and spot on so A+ for that. Basketball and anxiety pretty much sum up the whole book. The part of an urban legend possibly terrorizing the girls basketball team was a fun concept but it wasn't enough to keep me interested. I had to skim through some paragraphs at times because I felt like it dragged on quite a bit, there weren't any chapters so that didn't help much either. In the author's note he mentioned that this was supposed to be a short story but was encouraged to make it into a full-length novel. Sadly, I think this should have stayed a short story.

Josh Mallerman really knows how to get under your skin. There were times I did want to give up on this story, mainly because I felt there was a lot of repetition in the telling of the urban legend of Daphne, a 7 foot woman who will come back if you think of her and kill. Her story is of course not what you expect, and she kinda of falls under the "Bloody Mary" trope modernized.
But overall it was a good scary book that sometimes got under my skin as one after another the members of a high school basketball team fell victim to Daphne. I was beginning to wonder if anyone would live to the end. A great choice for the halloween season if you like a ghot story for the chilly fall nights.
Thanks to @netglley, and Josh Mallerman for the chance to read this eArc in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.

I am so glad I read this book in October. How perfectly spooky.

I have a love hate relationship with Josh Malerman. I really liked Bird Box... who didn’t? But I read three more novels that he came out with, and I didn’t like any of them.

So, I didn’t actually rush to this one. But, it was really good.

It kind of has a Stephen King vibe to it. It also kind of put me in the same mindset as the latest Grady Hendricks, "how to sell a haunted house". It’s definitely that seem kind of gruesome horror mixed with emotional depth. Which is my favorite kind of horror.

But, this had elements in that I wasn’t expecting. I wasn’t expecting to care about women’s basketball. I really, really don’t. But the characters in this book are well drawn.

Also, this book totally surprised me by having a level of depth around the subject of living with an anxiety disorder that I just didn’t expect. I didn’t expect it to be touched on it all, and I didn’t expect it to be so clearly written by someone who struggles with anxiety. As I was reading it, I said to myself “Josh definitely has an anxiety disorder, as someone who lives with one, I know it when I read it.“ And in the acknowledgments, he does a lovely job of making that clear and describing why he wanted to write the book in this way.

Don’t fret, this also just has a straight up scary premise, and some really frightening scenes. definite triggers for body, core and trauma, including repressed memory.

But this is done in a really interesting way, and I was flipping pages in my Kindle like crazy. In fact, I ended up reading it in a single afternoon. I just inhaled it.

I am so glad that I like this book because I really like Josh Malerman and I’m glad that he is back on my auto-buy list.

This is such a great book for this time of year. If you love a book that is going to have your eyes wide and your spine tingling, choose this one.

Daphne actually scared me for real. Finally a spooky book that delivered. Also a surprisingly beautiful story about acknowledging anxiety and facing fears. Yes this book also talks about basketball but this book is not about basketball.

I've never read a book by Josh Malerman. I know who he is because of the huge success of Birdbox, but I've actually never seen that either. I didn't really know what to expect going into this and I was so pleasantly surprised. I think the best way I can describe how I felt reading this is that it gave me the same vibes I used to get when I was a preteen reading Fear Street books- but this is obviously much better written as it is intended for adults and not young adults. This was an engaging story about horror and coming of age in a small town where everyone knows everyone else. Anxiety and Panic attacks were the soul of the story. Kit was a wonderful character and had a tortured young life with her crippling anxiety which she just couldn't understand or get a grip on and her parents were lovely people but they weren't any help to her at all. The last summer before college should be a happy, carefree time. Time to spend with friends and family before venturing off into one's future. This book begins that way. As mentioned above, the main character Kit is a basketball player who suffers from anxiety.The night before a really big game the girl's basketball team has a sleepover and one girl tells the spooky (supposedly true, but kinda just an urban legend) story of a girl in town from the 80's and 90's named Daphne. Supposedly she was frightening in appearance and attitude, drove and more or less lived in her muscle car while always having the windows down playing the loudest, heavy metal music everywhere she went even parked in her garage til all hours of the night not caring what others thought about her. The story ends that she died in her car. Some say murdered some say natural causes but no-one knows the real story surrounding this strange, fearsome creature named "Daphne". The story goes that you must not think or say her name because she will know and then. If you think her name often enough, she says, it draws her to you to seek revenge for her murder. Of course the girls cannot STOP thinking about Daphne, and soon the first team member dies...
I enjoyed the horror aspect of the story--very creepy--and the police investigation too with the rogue detective. I'm glad I read this now. I'll definitely read more by Malerman.

Thank you to Random House, Josh Malerman, and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review

Previously published at https://www.mysteryandsuspense.com/daphne/

“I had neither proof nor explanation, only that mad inner surety that I suspect is characteristic of all those who hear voices in an empty room, whether those voices be spectral or merely delusional.”
― Sarah Monette, The Bone Key: The Necromantic Mysteries of Kyle Murchison Booth

Daphne is seven feet tall. She likes to wear denim with patches of her favorite bands all over her clothing. She has no friends or family and she likes to give creepy looks to anyone who comes near her. Daphne wears Kiss makeup, all eyes and long tongues. She has also been dead since the 90s, a former resident of Samhattan, found inside her car in her garage. She is a teenage girl who died while listening to music in her running car. Daphne had returned home, fell asleep, and then the garage door shut, killing her with carbon monoxide poisoning. Was it a suicide, or was it murder?. All you have to do is think about her, and she comes back from the dead, still wearing Kiss makeup, to kill you with her bare hands. She is a legend in the small town in Michigan; a legend no one dares to talk about. Don’t think about her. Don’t even say her name. She will come for you.

Our protagonist, Kit Lamb, has anxiety. So severe she once called 911 on herself. Malerman has wrapped so much into this little book; anxiety, mental health, friendship, acceptance and the all important relationship these teens have with their parents. Kit, who fights hard every day against her anxiety, her best friend Dana who is so supportive of her and Natasha, the teller of the Daphne story, who is dealing with severe depression. And Tammy, the star basketball player of the team they are on at Samhattan high school. The reader sees everything through Kit, though it bounces around to her friend’s perspectives as well. She is the one who works so hard to tackle her mental health through her JollyJournal. It is a book that we read through a book that helps with the book we are reading.

Is this book scary? No. It is terrifying. One of the scariest books I have ever read, and that is saying a lot. Josh Malerman says this ‘is a love letter of sorts to the game of basketball and the horror genre, both.’ Daphne will scare the living daylights out of you. This is not a horror book but an unputdownable, psychological thriller that will make you hide under the covers while reading it.

Remember: Don’t think about her or say her name! She will come for you!

A gloriously riotous riff on teen horror. DAPHNE pays homage to classic slasher tropes while joyfully setting them on fire. The storytelling here is magnificent!

“Daphne”, by Josh Malerman, is a coming of age horror story that centered on a group of girls. The novel is set in the same fictional universe as “Goblin.” The characters refer to that town.

“Daphne” is a slow burn psychological horror story. In this book, we meet Daphne. She is a 7-foot, vengeful ghost who haunts Samhattan.

Who is Daphne? Malerman slowly reveals details about her, which satiates the reader's curiosity. In addition to revealing Daphne, Malerman places the reader in the minds of her future victims. These are living humans with anxieties. They know Daphne is coming. A real psychological horror story.

Unfortunately, the ending was a little inconclusive for me. It also felt a bit rushed. It is jarring for me to read a story that unfolds so carefully and then abruptly ends.