I absolutely loved the premise of this book. I thought the storyline was original and kept me intrigued. This is a solid gothic thriller and I would absolutely recommend! I will definitely be checking out more of this authors writing.

Really enjoyed this hugely atmospheric novel, the first I've read by Emily Carpenter but it won't be the last. The main character is great, dynamic and empathetic and Carpenter doesn't fall into the trap of having her lead do completely stupid things in the. name of plot. I didn't find the story hugely surprising but that didn't bother me and maybe wasn't the point. Gothictown is a great contemporary piece of page turning Southern Gothic.

Gothictown is a southern gothic mystery/thriller. The story follows a woman and her family who decide to move to a quaint small town in Georgia from New York. The woman, Billie, receives an offer to buy a gigantic Victorian house in Georgia for $100. There has to be a catch right? Billie soon learns that nothing is as it seems in this small, seemingly idyllic town.

I thought this was an interesting book and I enjoyed following along with the main character as all these disturbing events started happening. I liked the small town Georgia setting and the creepy atmosphere. There are some supernatural elements in the story, but it is mainly a mystery/thriller. I did enjoy the ending, even though it did seem very far-fetched.

Overall, this was an enjoyable read that I would recommend to mystery/thriller lovers.

3.5⭐️

I was not sure if this was for me after I requested the arc so it say on my virtual shelf for quite a while. I really expect the scary elements to be more graphic but was very pleased to find that the horror was more creepy and psycholgical than gore.
A decent holiday read and something a bit different. I will be wary of small towns in future 😀

This was a slow burn but decently enjoyable book . Light on the horror aspect and somewhat predictable

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the chance to read and review this book

A dark and twisted tale of greed and the importance of family even if it means murder. The setting in Julianna, Georgia was a nice and slow pace and really set the tone for the story. The characters were interesting and kept me captivated. I really enjoyed the flashbacks of the town and local family history that explained the current events happening in the present. I look forward to more from Emily Carpenter!

The old saying ‘if something seems too good to be true, it probably is’ applies to the plot and the story itself (for me).

I was expecting a horror filled Gothic mystery thriller, but this read more like a cozy, which I found disappointing. I loved the setting but I despised the main character; add in “too long” and “predictable” and this one didn’t work well for me.

Other readers may find more to appreciate here.



Thank you to Kensington and NetGalley for the DRC

I have always enjoyed Southern Gothic literature. The spooky, small-town atmosphere, the cruelty lurking behind southern gentility, it all combines into a truly gripping read. So of course I jumped at the chance to read Gothictown by Emily Carpenter!

This book follows Billie, a restauranter who moves her family to a small idyllic town in Georgia after her successful but busy New York life is interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. On top of this, Billie is working through feeling abandoned by her mother who recently joined a cult which forbids any contact with the outside world. The move goes unbelievably smoothly, but when she and her husband begin experiencing night terrors, they start to think not everything in the town is as wonderful as it seems. Secrets from the town’s founding days begin coming to light, putting Billie and her family in grave danger.

The best part of this book is the atmosphere. Carpenter has expertly crafted a small town in which one feels constantly surveilled but still isolated. It’s a really interesting parallel to Billie’s mom’s self-imposed isolation. While the rules of this Georgia town are not explicitly isolationist, there is still only a handful of times that Billie actually makes contact with anyone outside the town. This lonely setting really allows the psychological suspense of this story to flourish, and before we know it we, too, have been sucked into this world of secrets, surveillance, and solitude.

The plot of this novel is also masterfully crafted. While many suspense or mystery novels have twist reveals that make sense in hindsight but are otherwise suspected, we can tell what’s probably coming at the end of the story. We get revelatory flashbacks that Billie is not privy to, and that creates a psychological tension as Billie gets deeper and deeper into this web of secrets. I found myself being successfully gaslit alongside Billie; I would be pretty sure I knew the twist was coming but kept second-guessing myself because of Carpenter’s expert use of tone and characterization.

Overall, this book was enthralling. Moderate pacing made it perfect for both bedtime and lunch reading. The atmosphere, tone, and plotting made this book nearly impossible to put down. I enjoyed every second of it.

Gothictown by Emily Carpenter will be available in March, 2025 from Kensington Books.

References

Carpenter, E. (2025). Gothictown. Kensington Books.

I started reading this book thinking it'd be a sort of combination of cult horror and small town thriller. Indeed, on that front it delivered aplenty, and the hints of a supernatural element's involvement were hugely appreciated as well. All these good things, however, exhaust themselves by the first half of the book. What followed was extremely frustrating, tiresome, even boring. I felt the author was continuously coming up with unnatural turns and twists just to fill space and extend the length of the story to make up a novel. First of all, the marriage and relationship troubles, the unfolding romance, and the problems of the female protagonist with her mom were absolutely forced into the story; admittedly, they ended up to be necessary for the realization of an interesting ending, but they did not grow naturally out of the plot. On the contrary, they often made me wonder why people were acting and talking so weird, and why their decisions were always plot- and never character-driven. The result was an utter failure in characterization: the female central character, especially, forced to think and act all over the place so that the plot goes forward, never sounded like a mom (though she was), never acted like a wife (though she was), and with the risks she was taking I had to remind myself she even had a family! It was ironic that when the author introduced a conjecture explaining the ridiculous and unmotivated behavior, it turned out to be wrong. This allowed space for the supernatural element to work, but it was just left there hanging, and, unfortunately, went absolutely nowhere. Second, the cult vibes never really gelled with the thriller aspect of the book. The ending shows this abundantly: you'd never expect James Bond to call on the IRS to take out the bad guy, yet this is exactly what provides closure to this 'adventure'. Such a disappointment. Finally, and perhaps more troubling, what the heck is going on with the little girl, the daughter of the central character? Sometimes she's acting like a baby, other times like a teenager, most often like a doll for the mom to throw around for the plot to get some tension. In sum, the book had potential, but a novella would have been a better format for this story. As a novel, it soon loses steam and tires the reader out.

eally wanted to love this, but I think it just wasn’t for me. I made it about 70% through before realizing I had no real desire to keep going—I just wasn’t enjoying it.

The atmosphere was unsettling in the best way, and the writing was strong, I found myself frustrated rather than intrigued half the time. Every choice the characters made had me screaming WHY.

I won’t be posting this review elsewhere because I don’t think my experience truly reflects the book’s potential—it just wasn’t the right fit for me.

After a tough couple of years, Billie learns about a seemingly charming Southern town offering gorgeous homes for a mere $100 and small business grants, which allow the former restaurateur to open a new place and start over. But once she, her daughter and husband arrive in Juliana, Peter, begins to act oddly, obsessing over small things and refusing to socialize with the neighbors. The town also begins to give Billie odd vibes. Is Billie just imagining things….or us the old saying true: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is…..

I have been waiting for Emily Carpenter’s next book to come out and let me tell you - it was sure worth the wait!

I was absolutely floored by this one, the creep factor ratcheted up to 11, as I read along to see what was happening in this small town, or at least, how long it would take Billie to figure it all out. And the ride along the way to the truth was a glorious Southern Gothic tale that gave me chills and kept me glued to the page. There were times I thought I knew what was happening, then I would question myself, then I began racing through the book, needing to know again if I had it all right.

The book concludes with a bang, and I enjoyed how it all wrapped up. I can’t give too much away, but there’s some nice twists in there, which is very on point for Emily Carpenter. It was a wild ride throughout the story and I loved every minute of it!

This book was unfortunately a frustrating disappointment.

The good : The author created a very creepy and disturbing setting that made me want to keep reading so I could witness the moment when the characters realize just how awful the idyllic town actually is.

The less good : The first 60%ish of the book are incredibly long and boring. Yes, there is tension, but tension for so long just fizzles out if it doesn't deliver anything new. Then, something big happens, and I was so excited for the story to finally turn, but alas, from that point on, the main character makes the most ridiculous decisions every single chance she gets, to the point I completely stopped believing her as a person and her motivations made no sense. I had a really hard time finishing this book and wanted to DNF, but I pushed through hoping the ending would be satisfying and a big reveal, but it fell flat by its predictability and 'easiness'? I don't know how else to explain it.

I had high hopes for this story based on the summary and I will give the author another chance because the writing was atmospheric and had potential had the plot itself not disappointed me.


Thank you NetGalley and Kensington Publishing for the opportunity to read this ARC.

I enjoyed this one! Excellent plot and thoughtfully developed characters. Once I hit a third of the way through, I could t put it down. I could already see this as a movie or series. Looking forward to checking out the author’s other work!

When restaurateur, Billie Hope, receives an email inviting her family to relocate to idyllic Juliana, GA, and purchase a home there for $100, it sounds too good to be true. Billie, her husband Peter, and their daughter Meredith have been living a different life than originally planned in NY, following the pandemic. Billie had to close her restaurant, her mother left to join a cultish group of relatives in Maine, and Billie has become a stay at home mom to Meredith. They decide that the incentive to move to Juliana might just be the thing their family needs to start over. While Juliana seems picture perfect from the outside, the town and its three original founding families are hiding dark secrets. After settling in, the Hope family starts to experience disturbing dreams and occurrences, that might be the key to unraveling the power the town’s founding families have held over the past 160 years.

Gothictown was definitely an intriguing read for me! I loved the southern setting, and Carpenter captured the feeling of a small southern town and its different stereotypes perfectly. I’ve been to many a small town in the southern states, that have this same vibe.

I think psychological thriller is a good way to categorize the book, because it doesn’t feel like mystery or Gothic Horror to me, because the founding families lay out their plan at the beginning of the book. I would say it does have a Southern Gothic vibe, because of some of the ominous experiences Billie’s family faces, once they get there. The horror aspect comes from the lengths the founding families’ descendants are still willing to go to, to follow the original plan set out to keep Juliana as a prosperous, idyllic town. There is also a historical fiction storyline included in the book, that Carpenter sets up with the original founding families, set during the time of the end of the Civil War. I really enjoyed the way she worked the historical fiction aspect into the psychological thriller storyline.

I wasn’t always sure how I felt about Billie as the main character, but I think Carpenter wrote her that way, to add to the tension in the story. She doesn’t have it all together and makes a lot of mistakes, but I think if her character had been too perfect, it wouldn’t have felt right in the story. I did enjoy the fact that she was a female chef and restaurateur, since I love watching celebrity chefs, so much, on Food Network.

I loved the way that Carpenter wrapped up the story at the end, with an unexpected twist being the undoing of the founding families’ perverted sense of town devotion. Gothictown is definitely an engaging read if you love southern charm, haunted small towns, and unhinged townspeople willing to go to unfathomable lengths to protect their home town.

Gothictown by Emily Carpenter is a suspenseful thriller. The story follows Billie, a restauranteur who receives an email that completely changes her life. She ends up moving her whole family from New York to Julianna, Georgia, in order to start fresh in the town's initiative. She has the opportunity to open a new restaurant, and they purchase a house for $100! Yes, 100, that's it. Seems sketchy, I know!

I absolutely enjoyed this read. It was one of those books where you just want to yell at the fmc the whole way through it. But honestly, this town seems amazing with great opportunities and the nicest people. But things just start to seem off the longer they stay. The fmc's husband is acting weird. The town seems to run off of just bartering with each other and just weird creepy things happening.

If you like creepy house vibes, new towns, secrets, and mystery vibes, then check this one out!

Gothictown is a blend of thriller, gothic horror and somewhat cozy mystery vibes.

When Billie Hope receives an email from the town of Juliana, GA explaining that they are incentivizing people to move to their quaint town after the pandemic, she sees an opportunity for her daughter to grow up in nature and for herself to open a new restaurant after her swanky NYC restaurant closed. She convinces her husband it's a good idea, and they move to Juliana. As Billie begins building her new life, the towns elders grow increasingly involved, to the point it feels suffocating. And when she starts having nightmares, she starts to wonder if she will ever leave Juliana.

Fans of popcorn thrillers, off-kilter small towns and creepy suspense will love this one!

Gothic Town by Emily Carpenter is NOT to be missed!

I have read several of this author's books, and this one is unlike any I have read of hers, and it hits ALL the marks!!!

A family lured to a dream opportunity, once in a lifetime.
Billie Hope has had a hard time after the pandemic and has to close her restaurant in NYC.
They are headed to the southern town of Juliana, Georgia.

Not only do they get this amazing opportunity of buying a home for $100, but comes with it a grant to open a new restaurant.

Well, you know what they say, when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

Nightmares begin, and the secrets of this old town start coming to light.

This story weaves the perfect balance of a mystery with gothic creepy vibes.

The characters are complex, flawed, and well fleshed out.

Southern mystery with a gothic small town feel and some incredible twists kept me flipping the pages on this incredible novel.

Highly recommend!

I have read all of Emily Carpenter's books and this one is completely different but oh so good! Lots of twists and turns and pure creepiness, kept me reading this book far past my bedtime. I cannot wait for the next Emily Carpenter book!!! I received an advanced readers copy and all opinions are my own.

This is probably my top read of the year so far!

Creepy small town with creepy small town people. Billie accepts an offer that is clearly too good to be true and is surprised by the results.
While I did feel that this was a bit predictable at times, I was still so caught up in the story that I could not put it down until I found out exactly what happened.

Thoroughly enjoyed and will definitely be checking out the author's other works.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

Gothictown is a mystery/thriller, set in a small town in Georgia, where an unsuspecting family is lured into what they think to be paradise, but soon find out to be something very, very strange.

Post pandemic, Billie Hope is trying to re-discover herself and find the next great thing for her family. She receives an email from a town called Juliana, Georgia, offering a deal so great, she is sure it is spam. Billie decides to pursue this offering, calls Juliana, and finds out the offer seems to be legit. After Billie and her husband go check out the town, they make the decision to move their family to this beautiful small town of Juliana. Billie finds a good spot to open her restaurant and gets that up and running pretty quickly. But, everyday that the family is in Juliana, there are weirder things happening, and things that just seem a little off, is it just new town new people, or is there something sinister going on?

I absolutely loved this book. and what I really enjoyed about this story, is the big secret that the town holds,. While we get to follow Billie anxiously as she slowly discovers this secret, the reader actually already knows! The beginning of the story starts in the past, and explains the sinister secrets behind Juliana and its original families. So while we as the reader are aware of what the main character is getting into, the character has NO idea, and I find this way of telling a thriller story really fun. You cannot wait for Billie to discover the truth, all the while knowing the horrors, and suspecting the reason why her family has been lured to Juliana. I have to admit I did have a different idea of why Billie and her family were brought to Juliana at first, but as the story evolved realize it is something else.

Even knowing the big secret that Billie was trying to figure out herself, there were still a lot of completely unexpected things in this book that I did not see coming! I loved that.

I am just this year delving more into mystery/thriller books, and I have to say this one made me excited to read more!

Thank you to netgalley and Kensington and the author for a review copy of this book!