Oh what a haunted tale this is! Halloween with a vengeance.

A small town that is celebrating its last Halloween with a family and their haunted woods attraction. Sinister children, unknown to the townspeople, appear for some trick or treating fun. A patch of woods bent on revenge and the accumulation of new souls. What possibly could go wrong?

This was an amazing read. Fun, fast, and interest keeping at its best. This is one I’ll be recommending to everyone who loves a spooky story, curses, haunts and chills.

Thank you so much to #NetGalley, the publishers and author for extending me an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Be sure to grab this one and start your new year right in preparation for Halloween 2023! You can’t go wrong.

My full review will be posted on all my social media accounts, blogs and retail on publication day.

Wow! This book!

It was very well-written and the pacing and the tension was spot-on!

I wanted to be walking through their haunted woods, at least until the creepy halloween costumed 80's kids showed up!

I really loved the father daughter dynamic, their relationship made me smile.

The book is spooky and creepy and then gets gory.

I am surprised it is releasing in January and not around Halloween. Luckily I was able to read this digital ARC during the Halloween season!

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for this ARC!

I look forward to more from Christopher Golden!

A suburban horror story - 1984 and a small neighborhood is going to pieces during Halloween night. The Cunning man is coming for them all - of course there is a creepy woods! Engaging and scary - I give all books I like 3 stars

Creeped me right out, but way too many characters to keep track of. Were they all necessary?
Glad I didn't read it before Halloween or I would never have let my child go trick or treating.

Yikes of all Yikes. How is this a New Year book?! This is prime Halloween material, better than most horror stories I've ever read. The depth of the monsters, the variety of the players, the sheer horror (ha) of it - astonishing. My only critique is that the first third or so could use some more spookiness. It's hinted lightly, but I was not drawn to keep reading until about the 40% mark when things started to ramp up. I would love to hear this in audio format for sure, but the casting would be insane! If you take this book on, be ready for some seriously gross gore, "creepy kids" horror, and some renewed hope in the human condition - no cowards to be found among the mass of characters! I would 100% recommend this as a spooky October/fall read though, so I'm bummed it's publication is in January of all times. Hopefully it makes some top-charts for 2023 Halloween so it can be truly appreciated.

**Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the eARC**

This book was well-written, but it wasn’t very tense or scary, and it kind of struggled with pacing. The plot didn’t pick up until the last 30% or so...however when the plot picked up, it PICKED UP in the bloodiest of ways. There are lots of chapters (I think 50+?) that all switch off between the POV of about 15 different characters, which lent an interesting perspective to the story, and I really liked the Halloween vibes and the 80s nostalgia.

All Hallows is a fun read. It takes place on Halloween night in the 80’s (my favorite time period).

So is domestic horror a thing? This book is part domestic suspense and part horror.

It’s got several povs and it gets confusing at times. So much neighborhood domestic drama and it’s hard to keep up with whose kid is whose etc.

There is a lot happening here and it gets muddled a bit towards the end. Super creepy and a pretty good read. 3.5 ⭐️

I had high hopes for this one because of the Stranger Things/80’s vibes and while it delivered that pretty well, I wouldn’t say this book blew me away. There were way too many characters and POV to keep up with easily and their storylines were just meh. The real fun began toward the end but at that point I was ready for the book to be over.

3.5 rounded up
Thank you to St. Martin's Press for my ARC copy.
What a wicked wild ride.
I'm reminded of that same feeling I got when I first watched Stranger Things. You know, that feeling of-these kids are in way over their heads, where are the parents?! But loved it just the same.
This is Halloween, 1984 and we're following neighborhood kids as they begin trick or treating for the night. Things feel simple and fun, but this isn't a normal night and not all of these kids belong.
There's something in the woods hunting the strange kids, the kids whose costumes are faded and who seem more terrified than the rest, for completely different reasons.
This book flew by for me because I'm such a fan of the-kids-against-evil trope that I just couldn't wait to see what happened next. Readers get a glimpse into the lives of the characters, their families, and friends thought the plot moves quickly and I never felt too invested in any one character, which I don't know that I really needed in this story.
Overall, it's the perfect spooky/horror read if you're craving some Stranger Things vibes. But be warned, this is not just a spooky story, things do get very horror-story very quickly so look up trigger warnings if you need them.

Let's just dive on in.... This book could have been a so much better. The amount of characters was too much. This book jumps between so many characters, I couldn't keep track of who was who and what was going on for most of the book. Every time I figured out who was who and what was what in each chapter, the chapter would change.

The whole who was good and who was bad had me wondering who I was rooting for. When I was able to follow some of the characters, I was fully invested with their storyline.

This book took me back to the good ole days of growing up in the late 80'/early 90s. I felt very nostalgic of the days when kids could go out in the dark and play in their neighborhoods without much worry. (Maybe except for the boogeyman, but I digress.)

Overall, this was a good book. It was slow moving because it had too much going on. It could've been told all the same minus the amount of characters.

I have loved Christopher Golden since I was a teenager and "All Hallows" proves why he's one of the best horror authors out there.

Thank you NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Christopher Golden for the advanced copy of All Hallows in exchange for my honest review.

I unfortunately decided to DNF this one around 30%. The story just wasn't progressing enough for my liking and it felt more like a series of family dramas than the creepy read I was expecting.

As always, I will not rate this book on any platform aside from Goodreads since I did not finish it.

This is a great Halloween spooky read. It definitely has a Stranger Things feel and 80’s nostalgia. I really enjoyed the haunted woods set up and Halloween night as a setting. It made the book feel even creepier, especially with the mysterious children wearing vintage costumes and makeup.

This wasn’t just a spooky slasher read. It has a small town feel with family drama and coming of age side plots. I did find that these side parts made the story a bit slower and the switching multiple POV’s sometimes made things a bit confusing.

The ending wrapped up decently scary and the last 30% really picked up. It felt like the Halloween and Friday the 13th kind of movies but in a book. Overall it was a good scary book full of creepy kids and a sinister entity. I definitely recommend reading this around Halloween or fall.

Thanks to St. Martins Press and Netgalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

What a deliciously creepy book! I really enjoyed almost all of it. The ending kind of went a little sideways for me but only because of one minor detail which of course I can't say because it would spoil so much.

This book is a great option for a Halloween read or even just something to tie you over until Halloween comes back around.

Just a warning, if you have an issue with gory books involving children don't even bother with this one. On the flip side, if you like horror involving family (especially children), drama and a pretty good amount of gore then read this one!

I do enjoy a good horror novel, so I was looking forward to reading All Hallows by Christopher Golden. This is the first of his books I've read, but he's a prolific writer! In the end, this was a quick and easy read, and I had some fun with this Halloween scare-fest.

It’s a horror that takes place on Halloween night 1984, and it did deliver on some of the 1980s aesthetic. I was picturing the Halloween scenes from E.T., which came out in 1982. No cell phones anywhere! And one teen dresses up as Siouxsie Sioux, which is cool. Then, weird kids show up dressed in old fashioned costumes for trick or treating, all asking for help to escape the evil they call the Cunning Man.

This is an ensemble piece. The characters are easy to get to know, and they grew on me. It took about half the novel for the horror to really start, but believe me, there were plenty of shenanigans afoot in this neighbourhood to keep me entertained. The adults in this subdivision all seemed to be more poorly behaved than their kids. One of the teens, Vanessa, is at a party thrown by her friend’s parents, and observes:

“Neighbours she had known all her life behaved like high school kids, and the high school kids observed them with the brand of horror usually reserved for girls overhearing the private conversations of boys for the first time…Seeing these people, in this state, felt like one long ongoing car accident.”

Yes, that made me chuckle.

It was fun and light (and a bit gory to be sure!), and the writing was seamless and skilled for the genre. Honestly, I have trouble rating books these days because different genres should really be compared to their “peers'' in class. I’d tend to rate All Hallows on the higher side because the plot took a direction that I didn’t see coming, and I really came to like some of the characters, which is always a huge plus for me. It kept me invested in the action as the book progressed.

I'd recommend All Hallows, but it does have an unseasonal January 2023 pub date. Maybe pick it up and keep it on your shelf for next Spooky Season!

Thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for a digital ARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

Thank you to Netgalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review. This review is wholly my own.

I was so excited to be approved for All Hallows mainly because everyone has been talking about it. The description didn't really reel me in, but because of the hype, I wanted to read it.

This was my first Christopher Golden read and I have to say that I will not be running out to grab more. This book was just a bit much. I'm not a huge fan of multiple POVs, but as long is it is not overboard, I am game. This was overboard. Way too many characters and trying to keep up with everything from everyone's POV.

This read more like a YA than an adult thriller. It was too all over the place, didn't have any great twists or reveals and was entirely forgettable.

Sadly, I will not be recommending this one.

Golden’s newest takes place on Halloween in a small New England town that embraces the day with haunted forest tours, parties, and trick or treating. However, among the trick or treaters this year, four spooky children appear out of nowhere to signal something worse is coming. I loved the premise but I felt that there were too many characters with the same backstories/sidelines that really didn’t contribute to the overall plot but just seemed more like gossipy filler. On more than one occasion I was confused on who was who, and to flip back through for clarification. Thank you to NetGalley for a chance to read and review this book!

I expected a lot more scares out of this read based on reading Road of Bones and it being one of the scariest horror books I've ever read. All Hallows is not that - - HOWEVER. While it's basically a completely different style aside from the genre, this was an interesting and captivating read that brought a folklore/mythology element into that I hadn't expected. CG is great at taking a folklore/historical element that not many people know about and is not written about much and turning it into a really good story.
This time it was the story of 4 children wandering around looking for shelter from The Cunning Man on Halloween 1984. They are terrified for their lives, so they are asking for help. What they don't know is that Parmenter Road, where they are lost, is falling apart. Multiple families' dramas are being aired, every secret coming to the surface.
There were A LOT of characters narrating which got very confusing but ultimately worked because of all the drama that was occurring amongst the neighbors. This also sort of helped the story because it's not your traditional novel and was more like a reality show in that everyone was freaking out about their own stuff and now there are little kids running around in terror that they will be caught by The Cunning Man.
Nothing is what it seems this Halloween on Parmenter Road.

Picture it. Coventry, Massachusetts. Halloween night, 1984. One family prepares it’s legendary Haunted Woods for the final time, and the children and teens of Coventry prepare for a night of trick or treating and creepy fun, but something’s off. Four children who do not belong are walking door to door, merging with the kids of Parmenter Road. Children in vintage costumes with faded, eerie makeup. They seem terrified, and beg the neighborhood kids to hide them away, to keep them safe from The Cunning Man. But nothing is ever as it seems and the children are hiding something about themselves and about The Cunning Man, and the residents of Coventry will have to figure out the mystery before Halloween’s end.

I really enjoyed this one. There was a lot going on, and the story shifted between all of the characters on the block, which was great for building tension and getting me to read “just one more chapter,” when I thought I’d take a break. I enjoyed the twists and turns, and I read the majority of this one while my power was out, so it was a nice way to spend the time disconnected from all my normal distractions. Definitely a solid addition to my Spooktober reads.

This wasn't my favorite, but I am a picky reader. I think other readers will enjoy it, and this is an obvious addition to the collection.