Like all good YA horror, Cerilli weaves real poignant issues into the horror of what on the surface is an idyllic community. Mixing just enough violence and gore with strong character development this is a solid bit of horror. We get the ghost out for revenge, the attempt to stymie change, bullies who get what is coming, and a few different redemption plots.

Cerilli writes some really engaging real characters, many of which don’t really know who they are at the time of the story. Building out full characters when those characters don’t know themselves yet, is a feat. Allowing the reader to learn and figure out who the characters are, as they grow and make choices for themselves is really interesting. Multiple characters question and/or actively live their queer identities in what feels like well rounded and authentic ways. Often (and it seems especially in YA) some authors are so desperate for audiences to accept queer characters that it becomes almost unreadable. Cerilli doesn’t do this at all, these characters are kids and teens first their queerness is a part of them, so we get them when they are strong and weak, kind and assholes.

My only real complaint with this book is how Cerilli plays with a partial dual timeline. In the first half of the book I struggled to keep the timelines straight and when they merge to the present, everything becomes clear. I just wish that the differences were slightly less subtle, not enough to throw off the reveal, but just enough to keep the reader engaged and not actively confused. I’m also not a fan of Bird’s story line, but that is just me and dogs more than a critique of this book.

Lockjaw by Mateo L Cerilli, In the book we meet Paz and her friends the twins Ellie and Benny and last but not least Sammy. These are supposed to be the troublemakers in town and they’re 11 years old. Captain Riley runs a tight ship with almost no crime in the little town of Diddleington but when Chucky is found dead in the mill and Paz insist a monster ate him, the sheriff can’t help reminding her of when she “made up” the rumors about Ellie and Benny‘s foster parents and basically tells her she’s a troublemaker and to just stop lying. It’s when her and her friends decide to not only prove the monster is real but kill it it’s when everything changes. Paz there’s a twin sister named Marcella who is dating Captain Riley‘s son Caleb who is the star hockey player in the Apple of his daddy‘s eye. He would also do anything to make his daddy proud this is why Marcella and her sister couldn’t be more different.
This is also why when Paz gets bullied or made fun of she does her best to ignore it. Soon though the four best friends go to kill the monster and everything changes into town despite time moving on and the year changing but soon that night will come back to expose everyone’s dirty secrets in those who did nothing will get there come uppance. This was a really really good book I really love the message of this book and despite this being a horrible review it really is a great horror story I do want to say one thing however when Asser came into town and he was leaving the little convenient store and Braden said have a blessed day and Asher thought to himself what a Jesus freak that really made me so angry because it’s like except me for who I am but if you’re going to believe in something I don’t then you’re weird I mean how can you ask for acceptance if you’re not willing to give it whether you understand it or not that just infuriates me about people. We can’t expect equality and respect for everyone but… It should be all or nothing end up making fun of one group is fair game don’t don’t cry when you’re made fun of that’s just so not nice that’s not cool at all. Having said that this is still a really good book that I log in a few love great monster stories the new definitely love this one. I also want to say I’ve never read a book where I loved almost every character in it until lockjaw. This book was so freaking good! I want to thank Penguin Random House Canada for my free arc copy please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.

This is an immersive, wonderful small town horror novel! Love the moody atmosphere, descriptions, and REVEALS omg. Matteo L. Cerilli pulls off the different PoVs so well, making each chapter distinct and voice-y. I especially loved Bird (the dog named Bird!) Being vague to avoid spoilers--Paz is such a compelling and understandable character, and I was so happy/satisfied with how Asher ended up. Cerilli lands some awesome (aka chilling, gory) descriptions in this one!

"Lockjaw" by Matteo L. Cerilli is an electrifying sci-fi adventure that captivates readers with its imaginative world and intense action. Cerilli's storytelling is sharp and engaging, drawing readers into a dystopian future where survival hinges on strength and cunning. The protagonist's journey is both thrilling and thought-provoking, as the narrative explores themes of power, resistance, and humanity. With its well-crafted plot and vivid characters, "Lockjaw" is a must-read for fans of the genre, delivering a rollercoaster ride of suspense and excitement.

Lockjaw by Matteo L. Cerilli is an engaging YA horror debut!
I loved almost everything about this novel, from main to side characters, plot and the mystery, but what I liked the most was the creepy atmosphere that felt so real.
The writing style is excellent and I still can’t believe this is Cerilli’s debut novel. I now want to read everything he writes in the future, that’s how impressed I am with his voice.

This wonderful small-town ghost story, where monsters living and dead haunt the streets, the homes and the minds of the inhabitants. For readers of Wilder Girls and The Haunted, this trans YA horror book by an incredible debut author will grab you and never let you go.

Thank You NetGalley and Tundra Books for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

Lockjaw is a YA book that is being compared to stranger things as you can kinda tell by the cover. A group of kids who discover that there is a monster living under their town that actually kills people and of course, most of the town doesn’t believe. It’s a very diverse story, it’s traumatic, it’s small town vibes. It reminded me a lot of IT actually so if that’s something you’re looking for, definitely give this one a try and add it to your wishlist.

Small. Town. Horror. Anger simmering on the surface over the injustice of transphobic laws and society. A desperate cry for solidarity.

If you're a fan of YA books that does not pull back on heavy themes, acknowledging the harrowing challenges that kids are subjected to from being different without any sugarcoating, this one is for you. If you love Andrew Joseph White's brutal brand of YA, this is perfect.
This is a small town horror that messes with your mind and ticks off these themes:

Cookie cutter small town ideals: How long will we subject ourselves to nuclear family ideals, and children to insurmountable pressure trying to fulfill completely made-up ideals? People who successfully fulfill the ideals lose empathy for misfits and are trapped in the gilded cage they are forced into, crumbling slowly on the inside. Everyone else deemed too different can only live to escape, constantly looking behind their backs in the meantime or forever if escaping is not an option.

Loss of community: Small towns are where I would've expected strong community bonds, where most things are literally achieved by the "it takes a village" mindset. I will blame nuclear family ideals again for the loss of how rural or small communities used to look out for each other. Yes, it is vastly annoying when the hundredth auntie asks intrusive questions, but when did we also become people who look away when neighbours go missing or are in distress?

Sisterhood and friendships, by birth and found: Platonic kinships are something I find really difficult to sustain as people drift apart, have different priorities or clashing personalities, and so reading about loyalty among siblings or friends, and keeping each other in check makes me incredibly emotional. The classic found kinship among misfits, siblings reconnecting after falling out... oh stop making me cry!

An eye for an eye: Is revenge the only way to fix a deep-rooted, inter-generational issue? Sometimes people are too self-centred and bigoted to have their minds changed diplomatically, but what if revenge just feeds the violent cycle?

Queer and trans: I love how queer, and most predominatly trans people are represented in this story. They are flawed and face harrowing moral dilemmas from being downtrodden by our capitalist, queerphobic society, making them extremely real and multi-dimensional.

Thank you Penguin Random House Canada, Tundra books, the author and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy. I leave this review voluntarily.

Damn. I feel sad for being the outlier on this one.

I think my brain completely blanked, because I totally missed that time was gonna constantly be jumping back and forth throughout the story. I eventually did figure it out, but I still spent the first hundred pages or so very confused and distracted. The fluffing of descriptions didn't help, either (I get horror is primarily about scary imagery, but Cerilli made paragraphs way too blocky for me to get into the atmosphere he was building)

Even without the time jumps, I personally found the story boring. I kinda figured the monster was metaphorical (i.e., Bridlington's invisible rules of discrimination and the small town making pariahs out of anyone outside "the norm", which is perpetuated by people in power like the police captain and his son), and even though my suspension was confirmed, I still couldn't invest myself in the characters. There are so many POVs that feels like it's stretching out the plot; hell, even the dog gets a couple chapters. It's because of the numerous heads I was hopping through every chapter that it took me forever to figure out Paz wasn't the main character, really, but two guys, one of whom was directly associated with Paz and the other an outsider falling into the situation. It felt really disorientating without a clear-cut main character to ground me into the narrative.

Overall, I couldn't enjoy this as much as I wanted to. It's a shame, really because this had all the right ingredients for me, but it just wasn't prepared in a way I liked. I have no doubt this will be an underrated fav amongst the few who will read this, but I'm disheartened that I wasn't one of them.

There's something rotten in the town of Bridlington...and you're going to be confused about what it is until about three quarters of the way through the book, at which point things will become too clear and you'll want to go back. There's a lot going on. There's about a dozen different perspectives. There's two timelines, that aren't split in any obvious way. There's one thousand mysteries. There's a dog named Bird. There's a lot. Here's what's important. Paz Espino is eleven and she knows that the town is broken and needs to avenge the death of her friend, with the help of the rest of the crew. Asher is trans and so stealth that he's in the stealth version of Narnia and he's on the run and has decided (against literally every piece of evidence that proves otherwise; but he's seventeen, his brain isn't fully developed) Bridlington is where he ought to settle down. Even though Bridlington doesn't really want him there. Marcela Espino wants to distance herself from her sister Paz, the troublemaker, by proving herself as a Good and Normal citizen of Bridlington who deserves to live there. And that's just three of our characters.
Like I said, it's really confusing, until the pieces fall together, and then it's just satisfying. Well, that, and incredibly alarming. Once things become clear you learn what you need to be afraid of. But it's a really fun YA horror.

Thank you to NetGalley for my ARC and my tour group for my finished copy in exchange for my honest review!!

“Girls are not dogs”

I loved this book so much. Like it brought out so many different emotions in me. This is a story for the weirdos. For people who small towns try to push away. For the underdogs. The unloved & unlistened to.

The way the story weaved into the different plot points was amazing. I felt myself wanting to be friends with these characters and to protect them from their awful town.

Poor Paz broke my heart. Honestly they all did, but I sympathized with her so much. She didn’t have anyone but her crew. Her soulmates. I kept wanting to cry but didn’t.

This book spoke to my soul and had some great messages about forgiveness. And revenge. Both are good. I’ll be excited for more from this author.

Wow, just wow!
Loved this book from the start!

A group of kids tackle a monster in a small town, not unlike Stephen King's "IT" with more diversity. The majority of the characters are all likable with major character growth for everyone...who lives. And even some that don't.

What a stellar first work!

Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for the advanced copy of this title in exchange for my honest review.

Enjoyable! Unfortunately found the POV jumps and lack of clarity in the first half to be distracting and detrimental to my understanding of the story (I love 3rd person POV, I just think it was stretched between a few too many heads here), but once the threat and timeline is established, I found the book a really solid debut! Very excited to see the author grow from this, he's extremely talented at writing horror and writing unique voices.

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Lockjaw by Matteo L. Cerilli is a multi-POV trans YA horror about monsters in small towns. When Chuck is killed by a monster roaming the town of Bridlington, Paz and her friends are determined to find and destroy it. Asher comes to Bridlington and gets involved in the hunt for the monster as does Beetle, a young resident of the town who is desperate to get out and is the only other person who seems to know the monster exists.

Matteo L. Cerilli is masterful when it comes to knowing how to convey information and then flipping your perceptions later on. I had a strong image of Marcela and Paz’s relationship early on and it got completely changed halfway through with just a few words. Instead of feeling cheap or annoying, it feels like an examination of identity and how we perceive others and the ways in which language can be used to convey certain ideas without outright stating them.

The small town aspect is really strong and gets conveyed through the police captain, how the town views Paz, who is viewed as a troublemaker, and the way everyone seems to know everyone else. When Asher comes to town, everyone knows that Asher is a visitor and everyone knows that Beetle is looking to get out of Bridlington. The captain and his son, Caleb, run the town and everyone looks the other way regarding Caleb’s worst behaviors because the captain looks the other way.

Marcela’s POV chapters were my absolute favorite. There’s a maturity to them and also a reflective quality that is melancholic and regretful beyond her years but she also makes decisions to fit in and not get caught up in Paz’s actions. I probably could have read an entire book from Marcela’s POV, honestly, but I think that her chapters are all utilized well and showcase exactly what they’re supposed to.

I would recommend this to fans of Stranger Things, readers looking for a YA horror with transgender characters, and those looking for a small town horror with gorgeous prose.

DRC provided via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Debut author Matteo L. Cerilli weaved an incredible tale that perpetually kept me on the edge of my seat, and it was fantastic.

I had to stop after a few chapters for my mental health, but the writing is REALLY good! I’ll be looking into picking it up again at a later date when I’m feeling better. It was very haunting from the jump, very moody, and super intriguing, I just was not in the right place for some of the heavier stuff.

An intriguing, wonderfully constructed book with a twist I didn't see coming! I haven't read a lot of horror and I haven't read a lot of YA so I wasn't sure how I would feel about this but I really enjoyed! I think I'm mostly, but not quite, the target audience which may account for me giving 4 stars instead of 5. But I think if I had fit more into the YA age bracket and read it at that age I would have been obsessed!
I'm a character person and I think the characters drive horror more than anything and this book definitely fills that quota. The characters are real, dynamic, and compelling and I felt connected to them all. I didn't grow up in a small American town, but a tiny UK village and I felt that outsider status, and I felt that deep connection with the friends you make who are "like you" even if you all don't know what the full extent of "like you" means yet.
I think if you grow up that way you're well versed in the 'monster' and the construction of that monster in this novel was perfect. I for one was fully in it with Paz and the rest of the kids thinking it was real, thinking it was lurking and physical and had tangible teeth and in a way, as the book shows, it does, it did. It didn't need to be corporeal to kill, to stalk and terrorise.
The moment the twist happened I spent a good few minutes thinking back through the whole book and trying to figure out if I had just read the whole thing wrong, if maybe there had been chapter titles with dates and we were going back and forth in time and I hadn't realised, but then how could they be twins, how could Marcela and Caleb be 11 years old and dating and getting drunk?? Then it all unravelled and I was amazed by how well it had all been built to create the unravelling that it did.
It's a nuanced exploration of small town small minded-ness and very real small town threat. Beetle and Asher's stories were wonderful and I was so scared for a while there that Asher wouldn't get the ending I hoped he would, that he'd never get to grow through all that internalised hatred. I loved Asher's introduction too, and the little flips into the mindset of Bird. We won't talk about needing to visit doesthedogdie.com..........
A great exploration of gender and sexuality and power, both the misuse of it and the thought of a righteous gain of it. Plus that feeling of aggravation toward people who 'mind their own business' to the horrors happening around them all the time (and Caleb's moment of realisation of that was infuriating and bittersweet to witness).
I really enjoyed this book and think I'll definitely read more in the genre and definitely more by Matteo L. Cerilli!

I enjoyed this book. The writing style was different from what I’m used to reading, but I had a great time. The themes of being a bystander/disengaging from “bad things” felt especially relevant.

I was a little confused for about 50% of the book before the big twist. This felt intentional, but I personally prefer horror books that feel like you know what’s going on and then the twist makes you reevaluate everything rather than a jumble of puzzle pieces that are finally put together.

That being said, I would recommend this book. It was an engaging, entertaining read.

This is a great, albeit harrowing and intense, YA horror book about the toxicity and bigotry of small towns and the resilience of queer teens (and pre-teens). The horror is real in both supernatural and all-too-natural ways, and this book will haunt you long after you finish it, if you're anything like me.

Lockjaw begs to be read aloud--the rhythm of the writing is so lush and wonderful! What begins as small town weirdness and what we think is something dark happening in the underbelly of the town evolves into not just a ghost story that sneaks up on you in the most delicious of ways. The differentiation between monsters and creatures, juxtaposed against the small town setting, is particularly interesting to me as someone who grew up in a small town feeling Othered (for a very different reason than Paz and Asher, in particular)--and the examination of whether revenge is worth it or justified is very well done. The trans plot is at once integral yet NOT the main focus of the story. I also love that Asher's dog Bird has a critical voice (and place) in the story (which reminded me of Patrick Ness' Chaos Walking series in the best possible way). A really excellent debut!

Anyone a fan of IT or Stranger Things will love this diverse horror debut! It has all the magic of young people uncovering the supernatural, the coming of age tales of teenagers, the frustration of not being listened to and the insidiousness of small town secrets. Paz was my favourite character and I deeply related to her sense of justice and her feelings of isolation. Her arc was the best to follow but I can't say enough about the rest of the plot. Bustling with POVs, you'd expect it to be jarring, but the book ties all the characters together seamlessly and the ending is efficient and rewarding! Thoroughly enjoyed this book!