What and intense and creepy delight! There is a lot packed into this little novel, lots of suspense, lots of emotions. It's a very dramatic thriller though I don't know if I would fully call it horror. There is a fair amount of gore and body horror since the premise is that people get punished by having limbs removed and such. There is also a bit of a romantic subplot which I love in any book.

This book was the right amount of dark to draw me in and keep me without being too much. The dystopian aspects kept me guessing and I think the author did a great job creating the claustrophobic atmosphere. I think this book will leave readers breathless and tense with enough grit to keep the reader following the story and the main character.

This is a great debut! I would recommend it to those who like other dark dystopian worlds such as The Hunger Games!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my ARC!

In an isolated settlement, infractions are punished with maiming, and even the one carrying out the punishments is not exempt from the brutality. Lady Mae is the daughter of the Butcher, the woman responsible for carrying out the edicts of the Deputies, no matter how harsh. When Lady Mae's mother refuses to carry out the sentence against a young child, she is killed and Lady Mae is forced to take on the role of Butcher. A meditation on forgiveness, punishment, and cruelty, The Butcher has much in common with Shirley Jackson's The Lottery. The Butcher's character depth and world building are deeper, but the echoes remain. An excellent read, one no easily moved past.

This was a dark and rather depressing read, but it kept me pulled in enough to see it through to the end. It's a little slow for my taste, and quite repetitive. A decent read overall but not my favourite.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC of this book, in exchange for an honest review.

This was quite an interesting dystopian read. I didn’t know what I was expecting going in but I definitely enjoyed the plot and how dark the story went.

We follow Lady Mae who is destined to be the butcher, following in the footsteps of her mother and grandmother. The definition of the butcher meant something very different to reality. In Settlement Five where Lady Mae is staying, when someone does something wrong, they get punished through atonements. The atonements can be anything that the person chose and the punishment will be carried out by the butcher. An incident caused Lady Mae to question the cause of her destiny and whether she was doing the right thing.

I was pretty involved in Lady Mae’s development. A lot of different emotions are at play here and many decisions which question the moral grounds of what is right and wrong. There were the suspense and cruelty of having the prisoner make the choice of which atonements is the lesser evil for them and having the butcher carry out the punishments. We see how conflicted Lady Mae became later on and how she tried to beat the system but is also fearing for her life. That pretty much kept me at the edge of my seat.

Thank you Netgalley and Titan Books for the arc.

Alright, this one was just depressing. I went into it thinking it was going to be disturbing and super-gorey, and while it was disturbing, it wasn’t really the blood bath I was anticipating.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed it. Our MC Lady Mae is a sweet, young girl who is villanized by the town as her mother is the town butcher… as in, she butchers people. Depending on your “crime” and I say crime lightly as their laws are cruel and ridiculous, you’re looking at losing appendages and limbs, or even electrocution - pick your poison. Lady Mae assumes the job as butcher when her mom passes, which isolates her even more. Her only friend from her childhood is returning to town to take on his father’s job as his father has now also died, and romance ignites. When he starts asking (valid) questions, he finds himself in trouble with the law. I’m not one for happily ever afters, but with all the shit Lady Mae experiences, I was really rooting for her and Arbuckle to have a happily ever after.

I felt so sad for Lady Mae throughout the entirety of the book. I like dark and depressing, so I will say I enjoyed this one but I did feel at times like there wasn’t much of a plot to it. I’m not a huge fan of dystopian settings, but it worked for me with this one. Thanks to the author, NetGalley and Titan Books for my advanced copy.

Young presents readers with a world where questioning authority has deadly results. Lady Mae is set to inherit her mother's job as the town Butcher. The Butcher is required to settle atonements. When a citizen breaks the law, they are sentenced to a certain number of atonements. Each atonement equates to a body part being chopped off by the Butcher. As Lady Mae's time to take over grows closer, she is challenged to question the way the government is run. She is faced with a challenge. Should she follow the law of follow her conscious?

This stunning cast of characters reaches out of the page and captures the emotions of the reader. Lady Mae's mother Winona shows a deep devotion to her daughter, and their bond holds fast in a world that hates them. This mother-daughter relationship shows a tenderness in a world of harsh consequences. As the plot unravels, the characters are faced with moral dilemmas that test their bravery. Each y-in the road build tension and sucks the reader deeper into this tense and compelling premise. Some readers may even become teary eyed; the connection Young develops between reader and story is that strong. This dystopian emotional horror is perfect for those looking for a unique premise with heartfelt characters and high tension.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

Brutal, unflinching and completely original. The Butcher is a recommended first purchase for most collections.

I adored the idea behind this book. It was eerie and quite unsettling, but in an intriguing way. Due to the writing style, plot, and characters in this book, I really enjoyed reading it. I couldn't wait to find out how the story would conclude and was captivated the entire time. The book had some dull spots where it was difficult for me to follow, but generally it was thought-provoking and an interesting read that I would defintely recommend.

It's a sort of psychological horror, one of those book that makes you feel a sense of dread without showing gore or giving too much details.
We assume about the social structure, we know about the Butcher and what the mc will be.
I found it dark and quite disturbing.
This the author's debut and I'm curious about next books.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

The Butcher has been compared to The Lottery with good reason: it presents a stark, horrifying picture of the cruelty of humans. But unlike The Lottery, we know from the beginning - in fact, from the title - that the world of the butcher and co is not an idyllic one; that darkness and pain do not lurk beneath the veneer of a pastoral life - they stalk like a rabid dog.

I am not a horror fan, but folk-horror tends to draw me in. Call it morose perversion, masochism, or schadenfreude - whatever it is, it has a horrifying magnetism.

The complexity of the butcher-role created by author Laura Kat Young is commendable. The butcher (the person) is condemned to their lot. They must accept their lot, as all others in their world must, too. Their work is cruel, but they are not cruel. The butcher then becomes a confessional, as well as a repository for everything that the townspeople hate about their world. Because the townsfolk cannot rebel against those in power, they instead abuse the person who must execute the word of their superiors.

Because The Butcher is a full-length novel (as opposed to The Lottery) there is more room for character development. The butcher gets to question her life and her work. She gets to spend time feeling and thinking. She gets to have a turning point. We get to form an opinion: we get to decide if we like or dislike her; if we would do things differently in her situation.

What I miss in this novel is the metaphor: what is Young really comparing to the atonement of body parts? Her novel is surely about more than derision of punitive systems. She begins to address forgiveness, but does not delve deeply enough to form a picture of its importance, and what a world with forgiveness might look like. What is it, exactly, that the townspeople have forgotten? What is it that brought a kind of Marshall Law which never lifted? There is a hint of religious parallel, but it is never fully committed.

The Butcher, though it could actually be longer, is a stirring depiction of grief and growth. And, like The Lottery, I can’t quite get it out of my head.

"A suspenseful small-town horror novel of oppression, heartbreak and buried anguish - Shirley Jackson meets Never Let Me Go with the wild west setting of Westworld.

When Lady Mae turns 18, she'll inherit her mother's job as the Butcher: dismembering Settlement Five's guilty residents as payment for their petty crimes. An index finger taken for spreading salacious gossip, a foot for blasphemy, no one is exempt from punishment.

But one day Winona refuses to butcher a six-year-old boy. So their leaders, known as the Deputies, come to Lady Mae's house, and, right there in the living room, murder her mother for refusing her duties.

Within twenty-four hours, now alone in the world, Lady Mae begins her new job. But a chance meeting years later puts her face to face with the Deputy that murdered her mother. Now Lady Mae must choose: will she flee, and start another life in the desolate mountains, forever running? Or will she seek vengeance for her mother's death even if it kills her?

A devastating, alarming page-turner infused with melancholy, humanity - and society's maddening acceptance in the face of horror."

I totally am maddened by society's acceptance of horrors, which is why this book calls to me. Along with the fact that Shirley Jackson AND Westworld were namechecked.

It’s rare to see a person in Settlement Five who has all their limbs still attached. Whether a finger is missing or an entire leg , these are the visual representation of their crimes and misdoings. Atonements for their evil ways.

Every settlement has a Butcher, an inherited title that doles out these punishments. When the current butcher, Winona, refuses to maim a child, she’s brutally disposed of her role. Forcing her daughter Lady Mae to take on the mantle of the most hated person in the settlement.

The world building in this novel is terrific. It cleverly folds you into this society where this extreme form of corporeal punishment is still not a deterrent to crimes of opportunity or lack of.

It balances themes of redemption and forgiveness and isolation so well.

Thank you to @titanbooks and @netgalley for an ARC of this title which comes out tomorrow, September 20th!

We all like to think that if we were in some kind of awful regime we'd do something to stand up against it, some kind of defiant act that says 'no, I will not comply'; and dystopia fiction often puts defiant young heroes into roles where they end up becoming key figures in some kind of resistance movement, where their defiance becomes a spark for a larger rebellion. But, I think we all know that in reality that just isn't how it works. Looking around my country right now there are no resistances to our corrupt government, no one leading the charge against rampant capitalism, and transphobia, racism, and homophobia are all on the rise, unchallenged. The reality is, people don't really stand up against stuff, and if they do it's often small acts that do do much.

The Butcher feels very much like a story like that, where terrible things are allowed to happen, often with the excuse of 'that's how it's always been', and very little is said and done to stop it. It's not a story where our protagonist rises up and leads a movement that will change the world forever, there's no fight for freedom. But you get small acts of defiance, small moments where people say 'no', and sometimes they inspire others, but sometimes they do nothing. And because of that The Butcher is a realistically bleak story.

The story takes readers to Settlement Five, a small town in the mountains. Here, we meet Lady Mae, the daughter of the town Butcher, the person whose job it is to administer the physical punishments on those charged with criminal offences. The Butcher takes pieces from the townspeople, sometimes just a finder, sometimes a whole hand, depending on their crimes; and Lady Mae is set to take over for her mother one day.

However, when Lady Mae's mother lets a child go, rather than removing several fingers, she's attacked by the Deputies, the town's law enforcement, and killed in front of Lady Mae in her own home. Over the next few years Lady Mae takes over for her mother, and becomes the new Butcher. But when her childhood love returns to town her life begins to forever change as she realises that perhaps she doesn't want to keep hurting people, and that the system they all live under is wrong.

The Butcher is a story that takes readers to a very different world to our own; yet isn't concerned with building much of that world. We know that we're in Settlement Five, and that it's in the mountains, but that's about all. We don't know what year it is, what country it's set in, or how the world became this harsh, authoritarian place. There's no indication whether or not this is a dark future, or a completely separate fantasy world that has no connection to our own. And at first I was left wondering all of these questions, hoping that Young would provide some answers. But, that stuff wasn't really important, and inn the end, it doesn't matter.

What does matter are the people, both the characters like Lady Mae and Arbuckle around whom the story centres, and the people in the background. There are a lot of people in the book who don't get a time in the spotlight, who don't even get names, but every person in Settlement Five matters, as it's the way they live, the way they obey the laws of the Deputies, and the way they rebel against them, that shapes the story. We don't know the details of this world, but its inhabitants build it for us through their words and actions.

As such, this very quickly becomes a story where you care for the characters. You start to worry for them, you start to hope for them, and fear for them. Young shows us early on that this is not a kind world, that anything can happen to the characters, as not long into the book a young girl who breaks the law is sentenced to be burnt to death for her crimes. The laws of this land are harsh, and those in power aren't afraid to enact the cruellest of punishments. As such, you begin to understand why Lady Mae is constantly in a state of fear and paranoia; and you start to feel that yourself. There's an oppressive quality to the writing that gets under your skin as you read it.

But like I said before, this is a story about defiance, and Lady Mae, her lover, and her mother, all harbour the desire to rebel, to buck against the system. There are no big moments in this story, no grand gestures or big speeches. This isn't a story like that. Instead, it keeps its focus on the characters, on how they come to the tough decision to stand up and refuse to boy down, and how that effects them personally. And because of that it feels different to other stories about defiance in the face of oppression.

There are times where The Butcher is hard to read. It doesn't shy away from awful things, and goes to some very dark and disturbing places; but it never feels like it's completely without hope. It has a good message, and has a small seed of hope that I think we can all learn to try to have in real life. This isn't a light or fun read at all, but it is a damn good one, and one that speaks volumes.

The Butcher follows Lady Mae who takes over her mothers job of being the butcher. The job of the butcher is to dismember the guilty criminals of Settlement five. The deputies of the town murder Lady Mae's mother. Years later Lady Mae is faced with the person who murdered her mother. And now she has to choose if she wants to flee or seek vengeance for her mothers death. 

This book is way different from the books that I normally read. And I really enjoyed it. I think this book is the perfect book to read for spooky season. I don't think this book is going to be for everyone. This book was super dark. But if you are looking for something a little different than your normal read I would suggest this one. It does have a lot of gore so if that is not your thing don't read this. But overall, I thought this was a really interesting book. 

Thank you NetGalley, Laura Kat Young, and Titan Books for this ARC.

This general fiction/horror follows Lady Mae as her 18th birthday approaches. On that day, she'll take over from her mother as the Butcher of Settlement Five and be responsible for dismembering people as punishment for their crimes. But when her mother refuses to butcher a child, the settlement leaders - the Deputies - come to their home and murder her mother. Six years later, Lady Mae has become the Butcher and generally accepts her role in the settlement with little pushback. But when a new Deputy comes to town, the one that murdered her mother, Lady Mae must choose if she continues on the path chosen for her or if she'll choose something new.

TW/CW: blood/gore, medical procedure, death of a loved one, law enforcement corruption

I think I went into this read with a little bit of a misconception about the genre. From the title, cover, and description I was expecting this to be a bloody revenge story. However, this is much more of a story about people and community. The About the Author at the end of the book says that Young's "works seek to explore a deeper understanding of human behavior" and I think this is an accurate description of the focus of this story. That isn't to say the story isn't bloody at times - it certainly is - however it does feel like the main focus is a character/community study. I still really enjoyed this read but I was a little confused at first before I readjusted my mental expectations. We absolutely do get into a bit of a revenge story in the last 30% or so but I was expecting that to be the majority of the story.

I really loved the setting of this settlement and how almost timeless it was. There isn't any explanation of what time this is set - it could be an alternate past or it could be a dystopian future - and I really enjoyed that choice. We don't get much history of this place other than that certain roles, like the Butcher, are passed down generation to generation. Despite the lack of history, Young does a fantastic job of giving the reader enough details of the ins and outs of the settlement that I felt really grounded in this setting. Since we are focused on Lady Mae, we get details on the job of the Butcher as well as a bit of the court system since that's how people get sentenced to the Butcher. However, we don't see a whole lot of how the rest of the settlement is run or what the other people who live here are doing. But since we got all the details for Lady Mae's story, these extra details would have just been extra ways to flesh out the setting.

I loved the characters and I wasn't expecting to get so attached. Again, I think due to me going into this read expecting it to be horror/revenge heavy I was expecting a certain type of read and this ended up being much more emotional than I was prepared for. I didn't expect to cry reading a book called The Butcher but I sure did cry. I also thought the character development was well done. There's a pretty significant time jump in the middle of the book and all the characters read very differently after that jump. I do wish we had gotten some scenes during that time jump because certain events are then mentioned and I think those events would have been more impactful if we had seen them on page instead of just being told about them years afterward. I enjoyed the way the characters were developed and there were numerous times where we're told X or shown X about a character only to have some other details added on after or shown a slightly different side of that character. When the story opens, there are very clear lines drawn in this society that separate certain types of people and by the end, those lines get blurred.

The ending was absolutely fantastic and I think really hit home that Young's focus was more of a character/community study rather than a bloody horror story. It is a little bit of a bittersweet ending, but I liked how it generally ends on a positive note and ends up being a bit of an uplifting read. Sure, there's a lot of death and dismemberment that we had to read to get here, but I liked Young's choice to have this end on a high note. This same premise could have been a super bloody and dark read with a few changes (and I think that would have been a fun, but very different reading experience). I also like how the ending is just a bit open and reminds the reader that while this one situation might be finished, there's always the chance of something else bad could happen later. It isn't so open ended that I would consider it a cliffhanger or anything, just a gentle nudge to the reader to remember that this settlement is not alone and there could be outside threats coming in at a later time.

Overall, I really enjoyed this read. While it wasn't the bloodbath revenge story I was expecting, I still enjoyed the ride and was surprised at how emotionally invested I became.

Thanks to NetGalley and Titan Books for the ARC.

Expected publication date is September 27, 2022

The Butcher has a great premise, and blurbs from lots of writers I love. Hailey Piper! Rachel Harrison! However, it fell flat in my opinion, and I was disappointed that it didn’t live up to its promise. (It was also weirdly light on the horror for such a violent society.)

Part of the issue was that the work building itself was so lightly sketched. We are supposed to understand that this is a dystopia where everyone lives in fear and willingly submits to dismemberment as punishment. However, there is no explanation given except that “this is just the way things are.” There are a lot of interesting things that could be done with gender and with belief/religion in this novel, but the author never really explains why the butchers are women (especially in such a patriarchal society).

The book’s eventual climax does nothing to explain the society further—it doesn’t seem to be religion or belief that holds the characters together. The world outside the settlement isn’t really explained either—there is a cannery, and there are printed books—what other technology is there?

In a way, if this book is read as a kind of dark fairy tale (light on the world building and heavy on the symbolism) then it almost works—but I still found the emotional depth of the characters to be too shallow to have any heft. One of the main (and most tragic deaths) in the novel was honestly a little absurd/

I am sad this one didn’t work for me because I loved the premise, but it just remained a three star read.

Thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for an early copy of this book.

Like many young people I am on TikTok. No, no, I am not young per se, but do enjoy ruining my attention span just as much as the next guy. Anyway, I came across mention of this book on something that the kids are calling ‘booktok’ and was pretty charmed by the plot. I then spoke to my friend Netgalley, who spoke to Titan Books, and all agreed that I could read this ahead of its September 20th release.

Like her mother and grandmother before her, Lady Mae will become a butcher when it comes time to inherit the job(?) For her settlement, it will fall to Lady Mae to dole out ‘atonements’—a fiendish punishment in which residents give bits of themselves to make up for some slight against others or against the sanctimonious and corrupt Deputies. After Lady Mae’s mother refuses to butcher a child, she is murdered by the Deputies in front of her daughter, and this act becomes Lady Mae’s obsession—a fixation that will put herself and those she loves in danger.

This book about an ostensibly feudal, patriarchal world got me thinking about justice. Is forgiveness the best policy, and if so, upon whom does the burden fall on most heavily? I also found it compelling that women were butchers, especially given the nature of this patriarchal society. I wondered what happened that caused residents to live in this kind of hellish theocracy. Then I looked outside and remembered that such societies are built slowly. Aside from my philosophizing, I found this novel to be heavy on the dystopia and a bit light on the horror elements. I would still very much recommend however, especially for fans of Kafka’s work, as well as Westworld, and The Hunger Games.

How the heck is this is Laura Kat Young’s debut novel!? This story really held me interest from beginning to end. It was very dark and gritty, pretty unsettling over all. It was a really thought provoking read, which I love.

If you love dark dystopian novels I recommend picking this one up!

Thanks to Netgalley and Titan Books for providing me with a free ARC of this book in exchange for an honest opinion

his book fell short on what I expected.

The horror elements/dystopian setting were there but just barely. The details of this world and the ways this new form of government work were very vague and it felt confusing and frustrating at times being kept on the outside.

We get glimpses of the horrible things that Lady Mae has to do to people but IMO it’s just not enough. Maybe that’s messed up to want more gore, but it just fell flat when I expected more.

The first half of the book almost nothing happens. We get bare bones information about how the settlements work and what Lady Mae’s mother does as the Butcher. We are meant to feel curious and scared like Lady Mae but I didn’t feel any urgency. I just wanted to know what was happening.

The romantic elements with Arbuckle were sweet but I’m the end the tragic end of that was so anticlimactic I was just bored. The way the story was wrapped up felt abrupt after so much nothing plot wise. It was just a lot of dialogue and the author used this way of describing Lady Mae’s thoughts in this was that annoyed the heck out of me because of how it was so repetitive.

Overall pretty disappointed. Not what I was expecting.

If I’m not mistaken, this is the debut novel from Laura Kat Young. I wasn’t sure what I was going to read when jumping into this, or even if it was going to hold my attention.

Did it hold my attention? Yes. Yes it did. And there are elements in here that don’t normally hold my attention. For example, there is a romantic sub-plot happening, with suspense.

We can get to that a little later. Here we travel to a town named Settlement Five. This town gave me sort of a dystopian feel. I didn’t sense too much happy in this town. And really the motto for this town could very well be “An Eye for an Eye.”

When the people of Settlement Five do the wrong thing, they get punished. We’re not talking about jail time. We are talking about atonements. Atonements that involve maybe losing a finger, or a hand, or being shocked, or other sorts of punishment, carried out by “The Butcher.”

No one by the way is exempt from punishment. And that little tidbit is crucial to the story.

Our main character, Lady Mae knows she will take over being The Butcher eventually. Right now her mother Winona is The Butcher. And the whole town knows this, and they hate this family because of her mothers “job.”

We run into a situation where The Butcher refuses to carry out a certain atonement, and we find Lady Mae now taking over the job, if you can call it a job, or maybe being The Butcher is an actual punishment. We have Lady Mae constantly fighting with the stress and inner turmoil that comes along with the job. And at parts her conscience catches up to her. We have an encounter where she has to make a big decision. We will keep it there to not give too much away.

This story kept me pretty involved, and I don’t think I expected that to happen. This is one of those chances I took and it paid off. There is a lot packed in this novel. A lot of different emotions. It has the drama. It has the suspense. It has the thrills. It has the cruelty and viciousness in the form of people’s body parts being butchered. With some pretty graphic descriptions, and I know a lot of you like that. And yes Like I said earlier, it has a romantic sub-plot that isn’t too in-your-face being all kissy kissy. Its there, and subtle at times. That part also carries a lot of suspense in it.

I’m a fan of dark things, so I think that is why I got wrapped up in this story so easily. It’s the right amount of oddness and weirdness. All of the broken rules and broken laws go to trial automatically. And every time we go to trial, you get a feeling someone committed murder.

The writer did a magnificent job creating this town. I think it felt a little dystopian. I got the feeling it was always cloudy, and damp. I didn’t however care too much for the speech. The way the characters talk. I’m not sure if this was just a language the writer made up. But the characters used short sentences, and talked in ways we would normally correct a young person who doesn’t know the right grammar. I could have missed the meaning or reason behind this. It doesn’t take anything away from the story though.

This one will have you holding your breath at times in anticipation of what’s next. It has the right amount of edginess and grittiness to keep you glued. And expect to be uncomfortable at times.
I probably would have liked a little more character development, but still if this is a debut from Laura Kat Young, it’s pretty remarkable.

The Butcher is a journey into a psychologically disturbing dystopian world, full of different smells of blood and different sounds of bones cracking and breaking. It’s a battle between love and commitment for our main protagonist. It’s a coming-of-age story for someone who knows their future is bleak because of the job they are required to do. It has a great mix of rawness and love and despair and survival. The Butcher is a fast-paced page turner that will have you cheering for Lady Mae until the very end.