This book was so gripping and such an emotional read. We are introduced to Mackenzie, a young Cree woman who has been having intense dreams that are causing her a lot of stress. The dreams are all centered on a specific night of her life before the passing of her older sister Sabrina, who is a twin. I appreciated being able to see how much love Mackenzie has for her friends and family, but how difficult it has become for her to express that and be there for them as she deals with the grief and loss of her sister. This book really centers on family and community and how isolating yourself can be detrimental to the healing process. Although this book was very emotional, it was also quite scary in its own way. The first person POV really places the reader directly into the terror and distress felt by Mackenzie as her dreams become more and more disturbing and begin to bleed into her reality. I felt myself frequently holding my breath or sitting on the edge of my seat while reading. Mackenzie is not the most likeable character in general, but I absolutely loved the complexity of her personality. She deals with a lot of anxiety and depression and grief throughout the story.
I cannot recommend this book enough. If you like thrillers/horrors and exploration of family and healing after loss, this could be the book for you!

When details of Mackenzie's nightmares start to remain in her hands when she wakes up, she has to face her family, their collective grief, and her own self.
Bad Cree built on themes of storytelling I love (dreams, grief, family, self-reflection) and created a beautiful narrative. Mackenzie was a lovely protagonist and I was SO invested in her journey. The character dynamics were so engaging and fun and real. The writing was gripping and kept me reading. The level of suspense was perfect. I can't wait to handsell this book! I've been talking it up already.
Thank you for the digital ARC!

I honestly don’t think I understand my own emotions enough to really explain my love for this book.

Right from the start, I was captivated. Mackenzie’s dreams are what we get as an introduction to this story and the tone, imagery, and very interesting themes keeps us in the book. I loved how this was a perfect mix of horror and suspense and emotion and culture.


I would go into this book without know any details because you get to feel the emotions that Mackenzie feels throughout her journey.

After an extremely-vivid dream involving a seemingly-evil murder of crows, Mackenzie wakes with a start to find that she has the severed head of a crow in her hand. Trying to shake off the fear from the dream, Mackenzie is shocked at what she is seeing. After a few breathless moments, the head is gone. Was it really there, and if so, what does it mean?

Rattled from the dream, Mackenzie is even more shaken the next day when she discovers crows seem to be watching and following her through the city streets. As if the dream itself weren't disturbing enough. She confides in her one close friend in the city, hoping they will be able to help her make some sense of what is happening to her. Unfortunately, the nightmares persist. Mackenzie is losing sleep and her health takes a blow. She needs to do something.

She needs to figure this out. She can't go on like this. She decides she needs to go home. Her gut tells her that the answers are there, but the idea of returning to her rural prairie town fills Mackenzie with apprehension. Having fled home after the death of her beloved kokum, Mackenzie now feels estranged from her close-knit family. It doesn't help that when her sister, Sabrina, passed away suddenly, Mackenzie, unable to face it, didn't even go home for the funeral. She carries a lot of guilt because of that.

Once home, she's enveloped quickly back into the fray. It's like a warm, though tentative hug. The reunion goes better than she expected. Mackenzie finds herself slowly gaining strength from her family, it's a physical reminder of who she is and where she came from. She has such loving, supportive and wise women in her life. Her Mom and Aunties, even her cousins, surround her with energy.

Her dreams do continue and seem to be escalating, however, she now has someone to share them with. She's confiding in her family and together it feels like they may be able to actually figure it out. Mackenzie spends a lot of time with her cousin, Kassidy, and sister, Tracey, trying to decipher the meaning behind the nightmares. It's clear they're connected to a night they shared at the lake, where the girls, along with the now deceased, Sabrina, took an ill-fated walk home from a party.

But how can that long-ago night possibly be connected?

Y'all, I fell completely in love with Jessica Johns' debut novel, Bad Cree. It's an exceptionally well-constructed, slow burn Supernatural Horror novel, full of inspired imagery and thought-provoking themes. There's no way I will be able to adequately explain my love for this, but I'll give it my best shot.

From the very first pages I was pulled into this story. Johns goes dark and quickly. Mackenzie's dreams are at the forefront at the start of this novel and I was digging the tone. I really enjoyed Johns' style of storytelling. The writing is blunt, to the point and perfectly descriptive without beating it to death. I appreciated how incredible the imagery was without being so flowery that the plot got buried.

I also really enjoyed the mystery at the heart of the story. Trying to find out how the current situation was related to the past was so enthralling.

Additionally, I loved watching Mackenzie's journey as she reunited with her family and began opening up to them. She really needed to get to a place where she was okay asking for help and that touched me. I felt everything she was going through. I felt those feelings, hesitations, grief, guilt, etc. It was all so well done. It was super believable and relatable.

Another thing I really appreciated about this story is that there is no romance. This is a story of family and culture, of history and growth, and it didn't need a pointless romance shoved in to gain popularity points. It's also a very female-focused story, which was so refreshing. All the main characters in this story are either female, or nonbinary. To have an entire novel focused on familial relationships, and nothing else, is pretty rare and I loved how it was done here.

I highlighted so many passages in this book. I absolutely adored this from start-to-finish. The family in this story is total life goals. The Indigenous experience and lore weaved throughout made it captivating and eye-opening. I could seriously go on for many more paragraphs, but at this point, I think you probably get it: I LOVED THIS STORY. 10-out-of-10 recommend!!

Thank you so very much to the publisher, Doubleday Books, for providing me with a copy to read and review.
I am definitely buying a hard copy of this one for my shelves!! This should be on every Horror Lovers TBR!!

A dark, atmospheric thriller with a supernatural center. Mackenzie has been suffering from nightmares that take her to a snowy forest and the dead body of her sister. As the dreams progress she heads home to her Cree family hoping the women there can help her figure out and stop these dreams.

I don’t read a lot of horror so I wasn’t sure what to expect coming into this book. The concept was interesting and when I finally figured out what was going on I was surprised and the slow burn was perfect to create the feeling of dread. It had really good imagery and the aunties and mother had me laughing, which was a create way to break some tension. However, I did find myself becoming a little bored sometimes and skipping over some other parts and the climax needed to be drawn out a bit more.

Thank you to Net Galley and Doubleday Books for the ARC!

Bad Cree follows Mackenzie, a young Cree woman living on her own in Canada. When she begins to have dreams that feel too real and crows start following her wherever she goes, she finds she might have to return home to her family for help to defeat whatever is haunting her. A home she’s avoided after not returning after the sudden death of her sister, unsure how to deal with the grief and memories that still live there. I absolutely adored this book. I feel like the atmosphere and the family itself was so rich and dynamic and full of people who truly love one another, even when they fight there is so much love in this family. I think one of my favorite aspects of the book is when they’re trying to figure out what is haunting Mackenzie, they go out into the community and talk to neighbors and elders about what it could be, all the while the kids stay home baking and cooking so they can go to these other houses with food to trade for advice. I just loved that it was a community effort even though it seemed like a personal family issue. I loved the Native American folklore elements and the horror visuals were really stunning. It’s just a really creative family drama with supernatural elements that really nails the pathos of all its central characters. A truly stunning book!

Bad Cree is an incredible new addition to the supernatural horror genre. I have been so excited to see so much more indigenous horror being published lately as well, and Bad Cree is an excellent new addition there as well. Bad Cree follows protagonist Mackenzie as she begins to experience intense dreams where things in those dreams... don't always stay in the dreams.

This story opens up in one of Mackenzie's dreams where she happening to be dealing with some unruly crows. When she finally manages to wake up from her dream, she does so with a severed crow's head somehow in her hands. The weird part is that this isn't the first time something like this has happened to Mackenzie, and it isn't going to be the last. The story then continues to follow Mackenzie as she starts trying to figure out what these dreams mean. She finally decides it's time to ask her family and decides to travel back home fro the first time since her sister died a year ago, something she'd been putting off as long as she can.

The author mentions in a brief introduction that she was told by a professor that no one wants to read about dreams in books, and since dreams are such a big part of her culture she felt that was simply wrong and dismissive of her culture, and she decided to write a book almost entirely centered on dreams to prove them wrong–and I'd say she was very successful in doing that! I'll admit, I don't always love dream sequences in books either, but that's probably because they weren't done nearly as well as they were in Bad Cree, nor were they as critical to the plot as they are in this book. Jessica Johns wove the dreams effortlessly into this narrative and made them utterly riveting and critical to the plot.

Bad Cree is a very character-driven and family relationship-driven story, though it certainly has some strong supernatural horror elements interwoven as well. This is very much a story about Mackenzie learning to come to terms with her sister's death and how it has not only affected her own life, but also her other sister's life and the rest of her family. Mackenzie seemingly did whatever she could to move away from her hometown in order to distance herself and start her own life, and this book really forces her to confront that choice and also confront her family after so much history has happened.

I really loved the family dynamics at play at this book and getting to see our protagonist go back to her hometown to reconnect with and make amends with her family, all while they learn to band together to deal with whatever is plaguing her. I felt a deep sense of family, community, and female connection in this story between all of the women family members, and I think the author did an incredible job creating that.

As for the supernatural/horror elements of Bad Cree, I felt that Johns created a strong atmosphere that was full of tension, unease, and tons of uncertainty. There's a very general overall eerie vibe in this story due to the weird dreams that start to have potentially dangerous consequences, the cultural stories that play into things, and the general sense of the unknown that's at play. I was excited by how spooky this story was and how Johns used the spookiness to tell both an entertaining story full of creepy moments and a story full of emotional depth and family elements. If you're looking for something that ties all of that together in a really cohesive way, and if you'd like to check out and support more of the awesome indigenous fiction that's been getting published lately, then Bad Cree is what you're looking for!

Overall, I've given Bad Cree four stars!

Well unfortunately Bad Cree was a swing and a miss. I expected it to be more horror that what it was. But Bad Cree didn't even come close to being a thriller let alone a horror story.

The pacing was slow and for me it was probably due to the Cree words and terminology. I have a tendency to "mouth" out foreign words and even go so far as to look them up. So that really made my reading a bit cumbersome.

I didn't quite get the pronoun usage of they/them until another reader commented on a non-binary character. It was a bit strange for me. But it turned out that Joli was my favorite character in the novel.

The storyline was a bit eerie, but not enough to keep me engaged. Perhaps if the narrative had been more horrific, I would have enjoyed it then. In the end, however, I gave up trying to slog through a book that I wasn't enjoying. So at 33% I was done. One unfortunate star.

I received a digital ARC from Doubleday Books through NetGalley. The review herein is completely my own and contains my honest thoughts and opinions.

Bad Cree by Jessica Johns (thank you @netgalley and @penguinrandomhouse for the eARC copy in exchange for an honest review)

I DEVOURED this one, even though there are no chapters. We follow Mackenzie, an Indigenous woman who has moved away from her family and is starting to have dreams around the year anniversary of her sister's death. But these aren't regular dreams, sometimes she brings things back with her from them. Crows begin following her, and she decides to head back home for family support through her dreams.

The title Bad Cree was used throughout the book, often asking, am I had at the traditions and knowledge of my family? This tale of grief shows how people handle it differently and how grief affects the family dynamic. Without getting into it, there are several aspects in here that I love in my horror novels, such as 🍄.

I really loved this look at family, because I come from a strenuous family situation, and left the "flock" just as Mackenzie had. It's a tale of identity vs the family unit, and how to process your own grief.

Highly recommend this haunting tale.

There is also bisexual and non-binary rep. I love to see it.

⭐⭐⭐⭐.5/5

Pub: Jan 10 2023

#bookstagram #badcree #jessicajohns #netgalley #penguinrandomhouse #bookrecs #booklover #lgbtbookstagram #bookish #bookworm #nonbinaryrecs #nonbinarycharacter #horrorbooks #horrorcommunity #horror #horroraddict
13s

"Bad Cree" by Jessica Johns is a coming-of-age story of a sort, filled with family and Cree legend. It's a horror novel, but it is also a story of love and grief, of family and generational trauma.

I loved the supernatural elements of the book and how they tied into Cree tradition. I liked the slow build; it really created a feeling of dread. The plot was entertaining and imaginative and I loved the strong women characters. I am excited to see a book by an indigenous writer, who are so underrepresented in publishing.

That said, I just couldn't love this book because the writing style wasn't for me. In particular, I couldn't get past some of the grammar. However, it wasn't the use of the plural pronoun for a nonbinary character that bothered me; I understand and encourage this. It was the author's repeated us of phrases like "me and Tracey went" or " "me, Tracey, and Kassidy walk..." that really grated on me. This is first grade grammar and it really distracted me from enjoying the story. It must have been a conscious choice of the author to use this language because it occurred over and over, but it really detracted from the quality of the writing. I cringed and was distracted every time the author chose to use this wording.

I also would have liked to get to know the family better. There wasn't much depth beyond them touching each other (a lot), cooking (so much), and playing card games. Their conversations, even the deeply serious ones, still seemed a bit superficial to me. None of the characters ever really came alive to me; this book would have been so much better if it had delved more deeply into family traditions and grief instead of just seeming to skim the surface. It's not enough to tell me the family is loving-make me feel that closeness and love! And I know the author focused on the women members of the family, but I found it odd that Mackenzie's father was almost nonexistent in the plot even though he hadn't seen her in ages.

Overall, this book is worth a read, if only to immerse yourself into an underrepresented community and culture. However, I think it could have been so much better. Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for the opportunity to read an advanced digital galley of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I really love discovering new authors, and I was very eager and interested in reading BAD CREE by Jessica Johns because of how darn fascinating the premise was. A Cree woman named Mackenzie has left her family behind for Vancouver in the wake of her sister Sabrina's death, but when she starts having dreams about her and can bring things out from the dreams into the real world, she realizes she needs to find answers that only her female relatives back home can provide. Johns has a nice build up of quiet but unrelenting dread as Mackenzie, her other sister Tracey, and her cousin Kassidy try to figure out what happened to Sabrina, and if they are in danger as well (spoiler alert: they are). I really enjoyed the way that Johns wove in family interactions and cultural beliefs with the horror story, and how she also brings in metaphors and themes of grief, trauma, and oppression. These all combine into a well done horror novel that has a lot of emotional weight to it.

BAD CREE is very enjoyable! It has both scares and moments of sadness, and it makes fro a winning combination.

I requested a digital copy in order to sample the prose on my phone (since I don't have a eReader) before requesting a physical copy for review. My review will be based on the physical ARC I read (if I qualify)

A murder of crows.......

What could possibly go wrong?

A cluster of black-feathered creatures with their shrieking high-pitched sounds. Scavengers perched near battlefields and cemeteries.......never a comforting sign.

Mackenzie feels their presence outside her window. They seem to follow her along the streets of Vancouver where she works as a cashier at the local Whole Foods. Mackenzie resorts to putting her head down and following her familiar footsteps back to her sub par apartment. But it's the intense dreams that she can't escape from. Sleep never comes.......only the nightmares.

Mackenzie considers herself a "bad" Cree. She left her family and her home in Alberta after her sister, Sabrina, died suddenly. She never even went back for the funeral. Disconnect became her middle name. But the guilt is seeping powerfully, especially after she finds a black crow feather on her nightstand. It's time to deal with it all.

Jessica Johns presents her debut novel lined with unresolved grief alongside the intense grip of family and culture. She carves Mackenzie into that one element of humanity that sets the heaviness and burdens of life's situations somewhere on a shelf to be dealt with later or not at all. Mackenzie, moreover, dismisses what is at the heart of the Cree......family. And she'll pay the price for that.

Bad Cree leveled out at a 3 to a 3.5 Stars for me. It lingered far too long in some areas with repetition and treading water. The pacing definitely needs some fine-tuning. Johns' strength came in her characterizations.....so very human and raw. And as we approached the conclusion, there were solid elements taking place and the beauty of the Cree began to shine through. That's when the 4 Stars began to twinkle for a gem in the making now and in the future for this author. I want that voice to be captured, once again, in her next offering. Jessica Johns is one to watch.

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to Doubleday Books and to Jessica Johns for the opportunity.

I’ve read a fair amount of horror novels work grief is the monster that hunts its prey. Bad Cree is such a book.
Told from the perspective of Mackenzie, this is about a self appointed “bad Cree”, because she abandoned her family when they needed her the most. Now she must return home to find out why she is being haunted by her dead sister, in painfully real nightmares. I found this book to be written with entirely gorgeous passages, so much that even the gore involved was nearly lyrical.
This is the perfect blend of terror and sadness.

"Auntie, how could Sabrina message me? That can’t be real.” She scoffs into the phone. “Our ancestors and spirits have been speaking to us in a million different ways for thousands of years. You think they would have a hard time figuring out texting?”
I truly enjoyed this novel. Although it is listed
as a horror/ thriller I found it a little comedic at
times and also touching. It is the story of
Mackenzie a young nehiyaw iskwew woman
dealing with the death or her kokum and sister
Sabrina. It begins with a horrific dream and so it
is captivating from the onset. The reader is then
led on a journey into the exploration of these
"lucid" dreams and is introduced to a lot of the
elements of the Cree Culture. Mackenzie further
encounters a dark entity and a real struggle
ensues. This is a gripping tale filled with magical realism, horror, loss, grief and ultimately self-discovery.
I look forward to more of the author’s work. I truly believe representation is so important! The novel was also inclusive to the LGBTQ+ community. In the end for this reader it was good medicine.

Bad Cree hooks you from the first sentence and keeps you reading until the last word. While it is a bit of a slow burn, this eerie, atmospheric book is entirely worth the journey.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a free copy in exchange for an honest and fair review.

Although Bad Cree by Jessica Johns has some drawbacks that I couldn't overlook, it's an eye-opening — and eerie — journey into grief, the bonds of family, and sisterhood that really ramps up in its second half.

The story begins with Mackenzie, a young Cree woman living a solitary life in Vancouver. In between her shifts at Whole Foods and dinners with her only friend, Joli, Mack is plagued by increasingly lifelike dreams about her late sister Sabrina that begin to transform into vivid nightmares, culminating in her waking up in bed clutching a severed crow’s head in her hands that she seems to have dragged into the real world from her dream. Although she was driven to move away from her hometown and her family by grief and shame following the deaths of both her kokum (grandmother) and older sister, Mack's troubling dreams force her to return to High Prairie and face what they might mean alongside her remaining female relatives.

For me the novel is at its best when it's in full supernatural horror mode. The author creates such visceral, creepy imagery for the dream and hallucination sequences involving Mack's dead sister. Nightmares on nightmares. Because of that, the question of what really, TRULY happened to Sabrina becomes more and more urgent as Mackenzie and her family race to discover the truth before whoever — or whatever — took her life comes for theirs, as well. (Also FWIW, the way Johns approaches all the different facets of grief makes for some really excellent, emotional writing.)

Otherwise, my main issue with <strong>Bad Cree</strong> is just how slow it is. Johns takes her sweet time laying the groundwork for the novel in the first half, and though that doesn't entirely gel with my own preferences as a reader, something tells me the back half of the book wouldn't have been nearly as successful without first laying that sturdy, detailed foundation of what Mack's world entails.

Thank you to NetGalley and Doubleday Books for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Mackenzie was a deeply frustrating protagonist to view this otherwise engaging horror novel through. The Cree culture and the setting were interesting, the supernatural villain who I won't spoil was a cool concept. But Mackenzie is just so resistant to engaging with her family (even though they want to help and it's literally critical to the story that they do) that I feel like we never really get to know them beyond sketchy outlines. For a book about generational trauma and the importance of familial ties, it keeps all the other characters at arms length because the protagonist is so cagey so I never felt fully invested. I'm definitely interested to see what Jessica Johns does next -- there's a lot to like here.

The forward indicates her professor put her down and discouraged her from writing a book about dreams, she would've been better served if that professor had given her some feedback about fleshing out secondary characters that are integral to the plot.

I really wanted to love this story but the writing style was just not for me. It doesn't hold my interest when a lot of what happens is in dreams. I didn't finish reading it.