Heads will Roll
By: Josh Winning
Pub: July 30,2024
NO phones, NO feeds, NO way out.
This is the summer of slasher camp nostalgia and I am HERE.FOR.IT!!!! This book was FANTASTIC! I could not put it down! It read like an awesome summer sleep away camp slasher movie! Take today’s cancel culture, a long and creepy urban legend of the woods, something lurking at the camp. And you have the perfect blend of good old fashioned slasher horror, with the modern day need to escape the fast pace of life and connect with nature. This book was twisty & an absolute blast! The PERFECT summer read! Knock knock Nancy will forever be my new favorite urban legend.

While the first two-thirds of the book were great, I was left disappointed by the ending of this book. I found that the Nancy origin story was good, though to have the Preacher father return as the killer was unrealistic and felt sudden. I wish that somebody else had been the killer. The whole Preacher using Kurt thing fell flat.

I’m a sucker for a summer camp horror book. It was such a fun read. No complaints, no notes. Thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing! Thank you NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read this! :)

Heads Will Roll had me hooked until the last 70% or so. I appreciated that the slasher-ness of it all was a slow build, allowing the focus to be on the mystery for much of the book. However, the last 30% — when everything picked up — is when the story lost me. I don't want to reveal spoilers, so I'll just say that the action was hard to follow and as a result, I spent more time backtracking to understand what happened than reading what came next. I also think that the root of the mystery was undeveloped, underwritten, and underwhelming given everything the reader had to endure to get to it.

It you are a slasher movie fan like I am, this is a great read!
The book is about a sleep away camp for celebrities who need to get away from everything, They all come to Camp Castaway with secrets, baggage and a different name. Willow is the main character in this book. She is grateful for the reprieve and thinks everything is going well, until her fellow campers start to disappear.
She starts to investigate with a Dani, a fellow camper and what they start to find is only the beginning of the mystery.
Mystery, horror and Willow & Dani getting together - what more could you want?!
I would recommend.
I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I am a sucker for camp based stories. And this one was no exception. What a great read!!

Camp castaway. No cell phones, no internet. A place for adults that want to forget past mistakes.

Willow made some mistakes, and that lands her at camp castaway. There are some other pretty good people at camp, and her favorite actress.

Spooky stories are told. Some of which claim to be true. Campers start vanishing, and that’s when the truth starts to come out.

This was a fun slasher read. I would argue there were two unanswered questions for me at the end but it didn't take away from my enjoyment of the book. Also, other people may not even see those open-ended story lines.

Overall, it was a great read and one I would recommend to all horror lovers.

Willow McKenzie has a great life. Well, had a great life. She was the star of her own sit com, We Love Willow. She was beloved by fans. She was engaged to a great guy and had a big house in L.A.. And then she tweeted the wrong thing, and it all unraveled. Her fiancé left her and asked her to move out. Her show was canceled. And she was reviled on social media. When her agent found her after she fell in the pool drunk, she told Willow to go away. Specifically to Camp Castaway.

Camp Castaway is an old school camp in the woods in New York. It’s a place for the exhausted, burned out, and canceled to go to get far away from the public, from temptations, and from cell phones. No tablets, no computers, completely off the grid. And it’s just what Willow needs to get her out of her funk and to stay off of social media.

When Willow gets there, she feels alone and overwhelmed. But there is a lot of nature, and the few other campers seem okay. No one recognizes her from her show (or from her social media meltdown), but she recognizes someone. Juniper Brown acted in several action movies years ago, always playing a strong woman who put up a fight when she needed to. She was the one who had inspired Willow to give acting a shot.

The camp is run by Bebe, and it has a wellness chill about it. There is yoga in the mornings and times for them to get together and talk through their issues. Chef Jeff prepares all the meals for them, which Willow appreciates because her cabin doesn’t even have a refrigerator. And when the campers all sit around the campfire, they share some good old-fashioned ghost stories to make the camp experience complete.

Rumors have it that a woman had her head cut off with an axe in the area back in the 1800s, and now she shows up to find other victims. She knocks first, three times, so she was named Knock, Knock Nancy. Willow loves a good slasher film, so she’s fascinated by the story of Nancy. But as the days go by, campers start to disappear, and they all have to wonder if there is some truth to the ghost story, or maybe someone is using the story just to toy with them.

Willow came to Camp Castaway knowing she’d have to fight for her life once she got back to L.A. But now she’s starting to think she may have to fight for her life while she’s still at camp.

Heads Will Roll is an old school horror story, as good as any classic camp horror movie. There are scary surprises along the way, and a genuine villain for the campers to fight against. As the story morphs into real life, and the danger grows, it becomes all about who will survive the night and who will get canceled permanently.

Generally, I am a wuss when it comes to horror, but there was something about this book that drew me in. I liked the premise of the canceled actor going away to a tech-free camp to reset and rethink her choices. And then I found I liked some of the other characters, and I got drawn into the story, and I had to know what was going to happen. I thought Heads Will Roll was masterfully written and not too gory (thanks for that!), so if you’re looking for a good read for spooky season (or as you’re waiting for spooky season to roll around again), then this one should be on your list.

Egalleys for Heads Will Roll were provided by GP Putnam’s Sons through NetGalley, with many thanks.

This was an action packed fast paced thriller from the very beginning. I loved the setting of the summer camp. This was a great read. Hard to put down!

Heads Will Roll by Josh Winning is a thrilling, fast-paced summer camp slasher that brilliantly blends horror with social commentary. Set in the remote Camp Castaway, a place where adults go to escape their public mistakes and disconnect from the digital world, the story focuses on Willow, a former sitcom star trying to recover from her social media-fueled fall from grace. However, instead of a peaceful retreat, she finds herself trapped in a terrifying game of survival as campers begin to disappear and lose their heads—quite literally.

The strength of this novel lies in its clever concept and atmosphere. Winning successfully captures the eerie, isolated feel of the camp, drawing readers into a place that feels both serene and dangerous. The cast of characters, all dealing with their own personal baggage, adds depth to the story, especially Willow's journey from a canceled actress to someone fighting for her life.

While the middle section of the book slows down slightly, focusing more on character drama, the last quarter more than makes up for it with twists, action, and gore. Fans of slasher films will enjoy the homage to classic tropes, with just enough modern flair to keep it fresh. The underlying commentary on cancel culture, accountability, and social media obsession gives the story an added layer of depth without overwhelming the slasher fun.

If you're looking for a mix of horror, humor, and a dash of social relevance, Heads Will Roll is a solid pick for your next summer read.

Perfect for spooky season. This book will keep you on the edge of your seat. Loved the pacing and horror elements.

First, this cover is everything.
I had so much fun with this campy slasher. A whole lot of thrill, everyone is a suspect. There were characters that had me chasing my mind about them every few chapters. The pacing starts off a little slow, but eventually picks up and chaos ensues. This touched hard on cancel culture, lgbtq rights, idk how I feel about the insta love thrown in there. One thing that brought the rating down for me, is that this very much reads like YA. Overall a fun time.
Photo and full review posted on my bookstagram page. @readbyjr

I was expecting this to be more horror-y than it was. It started off strong, with Willow on her way to Camp Castaway after being cancelled for something she posted online. At this point we don’t know what her comment was, but we do get our first impressions of the camp and how far away and isolated it is from regular civilization.

We get our first victim about 17% into the book, but at that point we hadn’t gotten to know any of the characters apart from Willow and no one at camp knew that anything crazy was going on, so it was hard to care that the character had been killed. We’re more than 50% into the book before the real action starts and the camp falls into chaos. Even when we get to that point the killings are quick and there’s no real sense of build-up or anxiety for what’s coming next.

The chaos kicks off two days into Willow’s retreat. We’ve basically just been introduced to the characters, which again makes it difficult to care about them. This doesn’t seem to be the case for Willow and her campmates though. She’s just met all of these people, yet when things start to go crazy she unreservedly trusts some of them. Most of them trust each other, even knowing that there’s someone killing them off one by one. Having known each other for such a short period of time some of the campers’ actions and decisions were questionable enough to be eye-roll worthy.

The short timeframe also doesn’t help other aspects of the story. We get some insta-love thrown in along the way, which is another relationship we don’t have enough time to care about. It’s also difficult to take this relationship seriously considering the backstories of the people involved. After two days at camp Willow is also supposed to have had these big breakthroughs, finding her authentic self. Even with a slasher after her, she would probably need more than two days to find herself.

Although the start of this one had me excited for a good slasher story, it ultimately missed the mark.

Thanks NetGally and Penguin Group Putnam for the advanced copy.

3.5 ⭐️

Rebecca was the star on a Netflix show but was canceled after a social media post she made was misconstrued. She attends an adult summer camp to disconnect from the world. It was meant to be technology free, relaxing but what she didn’t know was she’d be fighting for her life.

Pretty early on in the book things started getting creepy. I enjoyed the twists and turns and who was responsible for it all was a bit of a shock! Overall if you’re into summer camp slashers, definitely check this one out!

Thanks PENGUIN GROUP Putnam and NetGalley for the ARC!

I love a good summer camp thriller and this definitely hit the mark for that. I was hooked from the start with it and with the short chapters I flew through this one. I really enjoyed the mixed media sprinkled throughout the book and the other campers’ POV’s that added a little something to the story. This definitely left me guessing until the end on who the killer was. I do feel like there were some loose ends that didn’t get answered and that aspect felt a little lacking.

Overall, this was a fun summer camp thriller and I really enjoyed it. The creep factor was there which made this story spooky for story time around the campfire.

This book is like watching a great slasher film in your head while reading. There are a number of suspects, red herrings, and plenty of good ol' slashery goodness mixed with dark humor at times.

If you love slashers with heart, this is the book for you! Willow is a disgraced sitcom star who has been "canceled" online for a tweet gone wrong. Her fiancee has dumped her and she has lost her job on the long-running series. Desperate to escape, her agent secures her a spot at Camp Castaway, a healing adult summer camp in the woods of upstate New York. There, Willow meets other folks who came to the camp to disconnect from their phones, their social media and the rest of the world. For the first time, Willow feels like she can be herself and let go of her anger, guilt and fear of all she has lost. She evens starts to make new friends, including a surprising connection with her favorite horror movie actress Juniper and a camper named Dani, which awakens feeling in Willow she hasn't felt in a long time.

There's also a creepy legend about the camp and a mysterious figure called Knock Knock Nancy who was beheaded by a zealot preacher and now searches for her head by taking the heads of others. At first, the campers laugh off the stories, but as they begin to disappear and weird symbols and doll heads appear around the camp, Willow realizes that there is a killer at camp, and they're after their heads!

I love a good slasher, but this book also delivered a refreshing story and take on slasher tropes that kept me guessing until the very end. I liked the emphasis on the emotional story too, Willow's arch, the connections she makes with the other campers, and her fight for survival. Some slashers can be so focused on the violence that they forget about the human toll of all the kills, and this didn't feel that way, though it didn't shy away from the gore. There were a few times I felt confused by the text messages and notes between chapters and the mystery reveal at the end felt a little rushed, but over this was a bloody good read.

I am nothing if not a sucker for the summer camp horror genre — give me a bunch of unsuspecting youths making shockingly bad decisions while on the run from a masked killer, and you might say I’m a happy . . . camper (*ba dum tss*). Last August I scratched that itch with the (mostly) excellent You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight by Kalynn Bayron, and this year the nightmarish honor goes to Josh Winning’s Heads Will Roll, a new, solid queer slasher featuring cancel culture, a vengeful ghost, bad wigs, and spooky religious imagery, among many, many other creepy things.

The usual set-up of teens being ripped limb-from-limb in the great outdoors gets a fun, gruesome twist when a remote, upstate New York summer camp is converted to an adults-only oasis for people looking to escape technology addiction, social media cancelation, and other First World Problems by toasting marshmallows, swimming in the lake, and “healing” through yoga. Oh, and getting chased by an axe-wielding maniac. That, too.

I really, really enjoyed Heads Will Roll. It hits pretty much every beat of a good old-fashioned slasher, with the addition of modern-day twists. The characters fall into familiar genre archetypes — the Stoner, the Cool Girl, the Peace-Maker, the Bad Ass, the Jerk, the Good Girl, etc. — but still manage to be unique and layered. I desperately wanted to spend another few nights around the campfire with them.

Winning’s narrative structure is another element I liked — Willow’s first-person observations of the Camp Castaway experience are interspersed with solo chapters for the other campers as they get picked off one-by-one, which gives Willow’s story some (freaky) breathing room and solidifies the book’s genuine slasher movie feel. (Also helping that horror movie feel? The descriptions of the deaths-by-axe, y i k e s.) The dialogue was occasionally cringey — nothing takes the wind out of a tense, gory action scene’s sails more than eye roll-inducing internet-speak like “Not today Satan” — but for the most part, the author has a good handle on how these characters interact with each other.

As far as main characters go, we could do a lot worse than Willow. She, like most horror movie protagonists, seems colorblind to the giant, bright red flags everywhere, and a lot of her behavior seems paradoxical (for instance, why spend so much time hemming and hawing over whether or not anyone recognizes you, after you’ve already chosen the name of your famous sitcom character to go by at camp?! Make it make sense.) Still, she’s tough, smart, and has plenty of familial trauma to unpack — what more could we want in a Final Girl?

When it comes to the local legend of Knock Knock Nancy (who is blamed for the murders, at first), the story feels well thought-out, especially as the mystery surrounding Nancy evolves throughout the novel. However that’s where all the good things involving the Big Bad at Camp Castaway end, because I had some issues with how things wrap up.

I obviously don’t want to spoil things for you so I’ll refrain from diving into specifics (please message me if you’ve read it and you want to chat, though, because I’m dying to unpack this with someone 😩), but I will say the plot holes at the end drove me lightly insane. While I can handle how remarkably chill the campers are about seeing/handling the decapitated corpses of their friends, there were glaring inconsistencies that I couldn’t ignore: Had people at Camp Castaway died before? If so, was it all just covered up? Why did [REDACTED] choose now to start the rampage? How did [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] even come into contact with each other? Did I miss a key paragraph that explained all of this?! Help.

Annoyances about the last few chapters aside, Heads Will Roll is a thrill ride. Anyone who’s a fan of the Friday the 13th franchise needs to add this to their TBR pile with haste.

Shout out to NetGalley and Putnam books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

An adult summer camp horror - what more could you want? Heads Will Roll was such a fun read! A young sitcom star who's seen her fair share of awful tabloid headlines heads off to Camp Castaway, which promises no phones, no social media, and no real names - what could go wrong? What starts as a relaxing summer getaway soon turns to chaos in classic summer camp fashion.

I cannot recommend this enough to anyone looking for a fun summer camp horror, this genre is a classic for a reason. Tension is high and the stakes are even higher.

Heads Will Roll kept me entertained and on the edge of my seat from beginning to end!
Nestled in the middle of the woods with no phones allowed.. no technology allowed is Camp Castaway. Where you can go to unplug from the world and get back to the basics. Group therapy, yoga, new friends, what more could you ask for? Surely not the campfire ghost story which could be based in reality, strange things happening, and people going missing with no phones to call for help..
The makings of a great horror story are all there and Josh Winning wrote another winner with this one.

I loved Willow from the first time we met her, and I loved the others we met once she arrived at the camp. So much so that I was actively rooting for none of them to be the killer and keeping my fingers crossed that hopefully, my favorites would survive the massacre I knew would be coming.
I thought the pacing was perfect, the little things easily explained away to the bigger things that let our main character know that something isn't right, all to get us to this climactic moment when the bodies begin to drop in earnest and the killer is finally revealed.. And I was totally surprised by who it turned out to be.

I had a great time reading this just like I had with the other books this author has written, and I can't wait to see what he's going to come out with next!