Old Wounds by Logan-Ashley Kisner was a really good debut title!
A well written LGBTQ+ ya horror story.
It was intriguing and very entertaining.

I just got my hands on an advanced copy of the book Old Wounds and let me tell you, it's a must-read! This young horror book follows two transgender teens, Max and Erin, on their journey to escape their small hometown for California. But things take a dark turn when they find themselves stranded in a creepy town in Kentucky, and to top it off, there's a murderous monster on the loose who only preys on female sacrifices. 😱 Talk about a wild and terrifying ride! But what I loved most about this book is how it delves into gender identity and the struggles faced by the LGBTQ+ community. I was hooked from the first chapter and couldn't stop listening to the audiobook, it had me on the edge of my seat the whole time. Trust me, this book would make for an epic movie. So do yourself a favor and add Old Wounds to your reading list. You won't regret it.

Underneath the small-town monster horror, the real horror of this book is transphobia. This is not simply a horror novel with “trans rep,” but an intimate ownvoices portrayal of the everyday horrors of existence and resilience needed to survive as a trans person in modern Western society.

Trans readers will find many familiar and distressing themes in this book, including suicide and anti-trans violence, so I recommend a comprehensive review of the content warnings before jumping in (see next slide). It’s heavy. The author’s grief, and indeed our collective community grief, for trans siblings lost is palpable. There’s an extended review of the plot of “Boy’s Don’t Cry.” One MC attempts suicide after being sent to conversion therapy and coerced back into the closet with threats of forced institutionalization. One of the most disturbing parts for me is when the adolescent MCs are forced to expose their bodies and “prove” their gender to a bunch of adult men. I personally would not classify this as Young Adult fiction.

Biological gender essentialism drives the book’s plot, perpetrated not only by the villains but also the trans MCs themselves. For example, Erin effectively escapes the girl-eating monster by proclaiming that she’s not a “real” girl. They also engage in casual misgendering, such Max’s internal thoughts about Erin, “She’s literally everything that Max wants to be and can’t achieve. A better man, a better woman.”

I repeatedly found the MCs actions very confusing and frustrating, beyond simple teenage recklessness. The premise of these two road-tripping together felt flimsy from the outset, and then they make silly decision after silly decision! My biggest gripe is that they concurrently demonstrate an intimate awareness of their relative vulnerability as two trans teens in the rural south, alongside a nonsensical propensity for putting themselves in explicitly dangerous situations. Why would they even leave the main roads and endanger themselves in this isolated rural town? Why do they keep separating and doing things alone at night in said town? Several things still felt unresolved to me at the end as well, including why the monster didn’t eat Erin & Max; that’s no redemption/ally arc after years of eating trafficked girls. And then, after ALL THIS, Erin just...goes back to Ohio. I don’t get it.

Overall, this was an engrossing but difficult read for me. The trans teen MCs are tough as nails - because they have to be to survive. As a trans person, I’m very much aware of the threats we face by simply existing. I was frustrated by the book’s overwhelming focus on trans grief, struggle, and resilience, without sufficient counterpoints of trans joy, beauty, and euphoria. For this reason, I wonder if this book would be educational and thus resonate more with a cis audience.

However, I’m certainly mindful not to speak on behalf of all trans readers! I highly, highly recommend reading several different reviews, because I can definitely see trans readers alternatively feeling represented and validated by the explicit naming of transphobia, discrimination, and violence. I do think it’s an important contribution to the trans horror genre, and still recommend checking it out if queer horror is your thing.

Content Warnings: transphobia, misgendering, slurs (f*ggot, tr*anny), sexism/misogyny, biological essentialism, conversion therapy & forced institutionalization, parental emotional abuse and abandonment, suicide attempt, gender dysphoria, extensive discussion of trans youth suicide and anti-trans violence, human-eating monster, blood, gore, murder, gun violence, kidnapping/abduction, police violence

4.5 stars. The premise, the execution, the characters - all so excellent. Erin and Max are transgender and are running away from home. Middle of nowhere scary small town. The perfect beginning of a horror story, right? And this is a horror story, but not just the monster kind. Their very transness IS both a source of strength AND horror. And so many different things take place - at one point I had to stop reading because I was afraid about what was going to happen next (fortunately I was wrong, but it was just a different awful). But somehow this horror story manages to end on SUCH a lovely hopeful positive note.

"Erin and Max are two trans kids who are just trying to get to California. Max is desperate to finally be able to transition, and Erin is longing to understand why she’s on this trip to begin with, after Max suddenly broke up with her two years earlier.

But when they find themselves stranded - and eventually separated - in the creepy woods of rural middle-America, they suddenly have much bigger problems.

First, there’s the creature that, according to legend, feeds on girls, hunting them through the shadows. And then there are the locals, who are searching for a female sacrifice. If either of them hope to survive to see the sunrise, Erin and Max will have to come together and stop running: from their attackers, from each other, and, ultimately, from themselves."

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House/Delacorte Press for the free ARC in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed herein are my own.

When the world already wants you dead, surviving the impossible is almost instinct.

Max & Erin run from their town in Ohio, with their eyes set for Berkeley CA, a place they can finally be free to be trans. A great plan until they end up stranded in a strange town, with a monster roaming the woods and scary men trying to sacrifice them to the beast. Will they be able to survive the night?

This was such a page turner for me! While the pacing felt a little off at the beginning I really loved that Logan took the time to let us get to know both Max and Erin and what led to their decision to leave. This also helps explain every decision they make later on in the book!
The horror aspect of this book was also done so perfectly! The monster of the woods is absolutely terrifying but not nearly as scary as the humans. Logan does an incredible job of giving such an eerie feeling for each new human we meet and if really added to the discomfort of the story!

I’ve already seen a couple reviews about Max and how much people disliked him, but he was such a sympathetic character for me! He is forced to detransition by his parents and emotionally and physically abused by them. This leads to him comparing his own trans experience to Erin’s and there’s a lot of bitterness there. While this makes Max seem like an asshole in the way he sometimes lashes out, I fully understood where he was coming from. It also really helped make him seem like a realistic teenager. He’s trying his best to survive as his real self and it’s not always pretty.

Erin is an absolute badass whom I adore. She really takes matters into her own hands and literally saves the day! At first she was just very much going along with everything Max wanted but when she finally started standing up for what she wanted, my love for her skyrocketed. Logan did an incredible job writing both her and Max in such a realistic teenage way and also captioning two different Trans experiences which I really loved reading!

All in all this was an amazing read! I can’t wait to see what else @transhorrors is gonna do, but I’ll definitely be reading anything he writes!

This was a great debut! I really enjoyed the centering of trans stories and characters within some common horror tropes. It feels like it would also make for an excellent movie.

Two things I will add though. Absolutely pay attention to the trigger warnings on this one. The transphobia is very prevalent but also very important to the story. Proceed with caution.

My only other comment is a little bit of a spoiler. While I’m glad to see that there was a happy ending for the two main characters, the epilogue felt like it dragged a little.

I will admit, I requested this book because the cover was fire. Definitely did an awesome job giving off the spooky vibes. I stayed with the book because of the characters and the story. I would definitely recommend this to others.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I’m so excited this book exists. There aren’t enough books in the world that look at the trans experience realistically and also acknowledge there is no such thing as a “singular” trans experience and there are so many different possible paths. Yes the horror of constantly being hunted and on guard is a little obvious made manifest in a beast in a horror book but isn’t that what all good horror stories capture? Some real experienced horror made manifest into an external creature so it can be dealt with?

Now the book wasn’t perfect. As a horror lover I was left with a lot of loose ends that feel left behind. (SPOILERS FOLLOW….) why didn’t the monster truly attack Max or Erin? Did the monster truly never attack just women and it was only misogyny of the local men that they justified by making up a story for the beast? What ever did it mean that they didn’t have to die- was there some other sort of like voluntary blood offering that would have worked too? Is there any purpose or moral or backstory to this beast that will result in its satisfactory “slaying” or taking eventually? Did literally anyone else live in this town besides the four guys and the cop that might notice oh I dunno all the blood and dead bodies and crashed cars the next morning? Why the hell did the house have two floors but only sometimes? Did the cop sacrifice his wife or was she an accident? What happened to Charlie’s twin???? The author’s mentioning of how reality “warped” and not everything made sense was kind of a cop out to wipe away any plot holes or questions but it was decently well done. But I still just feel a little unfulfilled.

So overall, I’m so glad I read this and I’m so grateful it exists so hopefully a young adult in the future who needs to see representation and needs to read about their pain in a horror book will feel seen and understood. It was enjoyable and worth my time. Just… so many questions.

I love how much more LGBTQ horror we're getting these days, especially ones that involve trans characters! This was a worthy addition to the genre. I liked how real Erin and Max's struggles felt, with their genders and with normal teenage relationship bullshit. While the pacing is a little skewed, I overall thought it was a very well-written book!

I got an ARC of this book.

This was wild. I love horror. I love trans characters (and trans authors). What could be a better combination? Kisner does state very clearly that this is trans horror. This is not a book where being trans is just part of the characters. It is a large motivation and a large part of the story. It is a trans horror. Not a horror featuring trans characters. There is a place for both types, but I am glad that a trans author is telling trans horror. It didn’t feel exploitive.

The trans horror elements were exactly what you would expect. There was misgendering, dysphoria, threat of violence, actual violence, outing, and more. It was never comfortable. The misgendering hit hard, but it was not from the narration. It was clearly not the author. It was something the characters experienced. There is a clear difference of the author misgendering the characters, because the author can’t handle trans characters and a villain doing it to be a villain. It works when it makes sense and it fits the story, instead of just being thrown in for flavor.

The horror aspects were fun and not completely explored. It didn’t feel like anything was left out, but more like the characters just didn’t get to get all the information. It didn’t fully make sense, but that is pretty standard for creature feature sort of horror. Creature feature is not my favorite genre and might be why I had some issues with the story. It never felt like it dragged, but at points I was just annoyed at the pacing. I wanted more scare.

Top trans horror book without a doubt. It ranks top ten for queer horror.

Small detail, as a trans guy who moved to Berkeley I noticed, why didn’t the characters go to Lyon Martin? Getting T in San Francisco is top tier level queerness.

Please, like I was going to walk away from that cover.

I love LGBTQ horror, and I’ve read a lot of fantastic LGBTQ and/or trans horror already this year, but Old Wounds just didn’t do it for me.

I suspect it had a lot to do with the pacing of the novel, how slow the wind-up was, and the fact it felt skewed a little younger in demographic than I expected.

I do offer up the caveat that while I have transgender family members and I am queer myself, I am not transgender and so I don’t have any idea how this book reads to members of that community. My opinions are coming purely from the POV as an ARC reader reviewing a book in a genre she usually enjoys.

I love the idea of taking a well-worn horror plot (the road trip gone wrong) and asking a fantastic question like, “Do monsters even know about things like binary genders?” That’s a fantastic idea and it’s a notion I wish more authors would play around with in the horror genre. The pacing in this book was just truly too clunky and I think I the vibes of this book and I were meant to be.

I was provided a copy of this title by the publishers and the author via Netgalley. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. All reviews rated three stars or below will not be posted to my social media. Thank you.

File Under: Cult Horror/LGBTQ Horror/OwnVoices/Road Trip/YA Fiction/YA Horror

WOld Wounds by Logan Ashley Kisner is a horror story about two transgender teens who wants dated in high school but after Max came out he abruptly broke up with Aaron and totally stopped speaking to her but because of a promise to run away with him after their graduation they do just that. After stopping at a gas station six hours out things become strange and only get stranger. From a monster in the woods to backcountry yokels in a crooked town Sheriff things aren’t looking good for the two teens. It seems the local monster Has to eat a female to keep the town safe and dry and tag Max is it but how could he be it? I really wish the storyline would’ve had more of the Bullet Beast in it, not to be mistaken with the bullet County beast. I have never read a book that a character in my mind had a theme song until Aaron because it while reading it and ever since finishing every time I think of her I think of Christina Aguilera song fighter because OMG Aaron is a bad ass. I really loved her, her personality and it almost seemed she could be a real person as far as Max goes I really could take him or leave him I found him to be moody and unlikable it’s a what Aaron season him IDK? I also found Max just assume people were staring at them because they were transgendered not because they were strangers in a small town his assumptions kept irritating me because who cares what these people you will never see again think of you. Do I recommend the book… Yes will I read it again… Probably not but I do think it is a great example of what transgender teens go through minus the monsters of course but having said that I still enjoyed it. #NetGalley,#RandomHouse, #LoganAshleyKisner, #OldWounds,

Thank you NetGalley for this book ARC!
This is such a chilling horror book and utterly fantastic in how original it is. The characters were compelling and full of mischief and power. It was a story that I breezed right through, and I’m looking forward to reading other things from this author.

Two trans kids heading for the legal safety of the coast become trapped in a small town where they immediately and predictively learn about the local monster that eats young women, but they're here to mess with the gender binary for man and beast alike. The horror beast is a combination otherworldly/eldritch creature and just big ol' scary beast monster in the woods, though of course the real horror is society—in macrocosm, the legal devolution and undervaluing of the safety and wellbeing of trans kids across the U.S., and in microcosm, this one, specific, terrifying small town where people think it's reasonable and maybe a little fun to sacrifice young women to their local cryptid. Maybe there are some allegories in there, but there's also just a lot of scary times in the woods—a very effective and satisfyingly scary YA horror novel.

This was an interesting book and one worth the read. The struggles that trans people face is real, and this book highlighted just a few of them. I don’t think that any book anywhere will ever be able to do justice to the injustices that they face, but this book sure tries. The part that didn’t work so well for me was the pacing in the beginning. I felt like I was reading a slow paced, gothic horror, and couldn’t understand why everyone was raving about how fast paced and amazing it was. But I was determined to keep going, so I set it down and picked it back up later, what do you know about 10% later in the book, it was almost as if a switch had been flicked and I was reading a whole new book. Things took off and I was hooked! This was about the 50% mark of the book, and at this point I didn’t want to put it down. I loved reading about the monster, and everything Max and Erin were faced with. The ending was also great and I just loved it. I wish that the beginning would have been reduced by about 25% or more so it wouldn’t have felt like such a slog. I wanted the whole book to have the pacing that the second half did, had it been that way this would have been a knockout of the park for me.

Old Wounds came straight out the gate with a plot that hooked me and kept me reading. It was one of those books I was thinking about when I wasn’t reading it (high praise for me). But honestly, the part that really engaged me as a reader was the character development. Kisner does such a good job fleshing out Erin and Max, you are devoted and angry and full of righteous indignation as the plot moves forward. Top. Notch.

This story takes you on a journey with Erin and Max, two trans kids from a middle-of-nowhere town hoping for a new beginning on the west coast. But as they leave their past behind (hopefully) and head toward new beginnings, the worst kind of adventure awaits. The plot thickens… constantly. The mayhem that occurs is simultaneously intriguing and maddening. Kisner does a beautiful job balancing some horror/sci-fi-feeling aspects with cultural issues that deeply need to be addressed.


I would definitely recommend this one.

Old Wounds does so much incredibly well. It joins a number of trans horror narratives where the societal pressures of trans life are the real monster, and the supernatural elements are either representative of cultural violence against trans people (as in titles like Alison Rumfit's Tell Me I'm Worthless and Brainwyrms) or in this case, the pressures that trans people face from the world are scarier than the monster is.

Old Wounds is about Erin and Max, two trans teens who set out to travel from Ohio to California so Max can safely transition away from his abusive family, who are determined to force him to live as a girl. When they pull off for a pit stop, they are corralled into a fight for their lives as sacrifices to a small town's cryptid monster. Erin has been able to both socially and medically transition with a supportive single mother, while Max began to socially transition, but abuse and the threat of being institutionalized as mentally ill have forced him to detransition completely under the enforcement of his terrified mother and her physically abusive partner. Max and Erin used to date, but Max suddenly disappeared from Erin's life completely before asking her to come with him on the road trip.

Some spoilers follow in discussing issues I had with this book:

As a trans person myself, I love a lot of this book. The character motivations are clear, they are flawed but make sense and emotionally they read as teens struggling with hard issues who are able to overcome those issues which overshadow (and in fact make it possible to counter) the threat of the monster. However, the mid-book revelation that Max hates Erin for what he perceives as her perfect life and easy transition feels mishandled to me; not in his feelings but in the way that Erin reacts. Erin's transition, especially, is presented in a way that seems unrealistically perfect and free from the general societal pressures that trans women face, especially the constant pervasive threat of violence and necessary hypervigilance to avoid violence. Other than that, I loved it.

Even with how I felt this was mishandled, the book still sides with Erin, clearly, and Max knows that these feelings are displaced anger that shouldn't be directed at her. In fact, Erin is also particularly badass during the falling action of the book, which puts her in some real classic horror movie survivor territory, and Max is not far behind in the cool-horror-protagonist department. The resulting takedown of the town's misogynistic cultist/monster wranglers (they only feed women to the monsters based on some toxic assumptions about gender roles) is especially satisfying, as is Erin and Max's ultimate reconciliation.

I do recommend this book. The characters are well drawn and the story is fun. However, I wish it had been more balanced in its representation of different trans identities.

Views are my own and do not represent my institution.

I was a huge Supernatural fan growing up, and this book reminded me one of the episodes in the first season called the scarecrow. It's one of my favorite episodes so naturally I really enjoyed this book! I also loved how much we get to learn about the two protagonists. Great read, and I've already bought it for my collection!

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an ARC for this story.
SPOILERS TO FOLLOW

WOW. WOW. WOW. This was both terrifying and incredible. I love how Max and Erin fended for themselves against all those people and how Erin's goal from the beginning was to stop this from happening to any more innocent people. The Beast was also a very interesting entity in how it didn't go after Max and Erin because they're the only ones who didn't run. the way that it also seemed to like Erin's company was really funny to me too. Although there was a lot of blood and murder and transphobic remarks from parents and other people in their lives in this story the journey that Max and Erin had was worth the read. I'd highly recommend this everyone. Make sure you check TW's!

I loved finding out in the acknowledgements that this was originally conceived as a screenplay, because it absolutely comes across as a love letter to horror movies/final girls and has such a cinematic aspect to it. However, it manages to accomplish what so many books-that-began-as-screenplays cannot and actually makes literary sense. The sense of place and character are extremely well-established and there are moments of truly lovely writing. Most importantly, this is totally and firmly in the YA category and yet it isn't teachy or preachy at ALL-- in fact I would say both the monster metaphors and the discussions of gender have multiple layers of complexity. I absolutely loved Erin and kind of hated Max (which feels built into the story) but it made his journey all the more compelling. Logan-Ashley Kisner, you're a king and I hope you continue to write books forever.