This is a book for all the mystery/ horror lovers out there. I was sold when it started with writers having to solve riddles and mysteries to go till the end. I liked it very much, thank you for the ARC

I loved this book. It kept me reading from beginning to end to the point where it was hard to put down, which says a lot. I would def recommend

Thank you Poisoned Pen Press & Netgalley for this ARC.

In this book, we really do find that the worst monsters are real. Set in a haunted, demonic escape house, the story explores how far we’ll go to keep our hate and pain buried beneath the surface.

A group of writers find themselves at the estate of a former horror author. Not everyone knows him well, but they’ve all shown up to claim his fortune. The catch? Solve the riddles—or be devoured. This concept had me hooked.

The story is packed with detail—everything gets explained, maybe a little too much. Personally, I prefer to be left guessing, and in this case, the reader always knows more than the characters. It lost a bit of suspense for me.

The setting was a wonderful—I kept picturing the 1999 film adaptation of The Haunting. Creepy, playful, and maybe with a little bit of Heretic sprinkled in. And the characters? One word: DRAMATIC. They really leaned into those classic book tropes.

Overall, I was satisfied, but not blown away. Still, I’d recommend it to friends who enjoy this kind of horror. A solid 3.5 stars from me.

Debut author Mallory Arnold takes a house of horrors to a new level. This wickedly good story catches your attention immediately. 7 authors enter Mortimer Queen’s Manor thinking they get a cut of his wealth after his passing. Little do they know they have to face the truth of who they really are or end up facing deadly consequences.
I admit I had to take notes with how many characters were introduced at once. I needed a way to keep them all separate. After a while it became easier especially with how the chapters are written, each one is very distinct in their own ways. The characters were flawed and even when it came to life or death they couldn't admit what they had done. It was perfect, it kept you hooked with information being sprinkled throughout. I didn't see the ending coming at all but it was perfection!
Such a great read with halloween just around the corner and it already being summerween.
It felt like all the good mystery parts of “Knives Out” with a dash of Witches Road on “Agatha All Along" and the cherry on top is “Monster House”. Add it to your TBR now!!
* My copy of How to Survive a Horror Story was provided by NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for review purposes. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

✧₊‧˚⁀➷ 1.94/5 .ᐟ

➺ forgettable writing style. tropey characters. tropey plot. relationships formed way too fast for you to be actually invested in how they end—unfortunate bc this is 90% about the characters' dynamics with each other and 10% mystery. reveals that are only surprising/compelling if you've never read a thriller in your life. but i guess no one’s expecting clue knockoff #386 to be revolutionary, so what you get is what you came for. and it did manage to be entertaining as hell.

3.5 Stars.

A "Glass Onion" meets "Big Little Lies" thriller that had me on the edge of my seat! How to Survive a Horror Story was a bit slow to start, but ended with a bang that makes you question everything and everyone around you. I loved how each individual character's deception weaves into the plot and ultimately leads to their undoing, overall a fun read!

⭐️3.25⭐️

Seven horror writers are summoned to a legendary horror author’s creepy estate to claim their slice of his fortune, only to find themselves trapped in a deadly, riddle-filled game orchestrated by a house with a very real hunger.

This was such a fun read and once it got going, I inhaled this book. I am a sucker for books that have riddles/puzzles or have chapters that feel like little games, and this entire book felt like that to me, so I loved reading these parts! I enjoyed how Arnold took the typical horror tropes of movies and books and played them up in a fun way to almost poke fun at the genre’s clichés. There are a lot of fun jabs in this book that I think horror lovers will enjoy.

I was expecting this story to be more of a horror story and less of a locked-room mystery, and this was a bit of a letdown. Also, the deaths seemed cartoonish and almost too comical. While the story progressed, things felt very repetitive and the formula never really changed, so I started to lose interest toward the end of the book.

Overall, this was just an okay read for me. I was really hoping it would have been more of a horror story, and the overall concept wasn’t particularly original or groundbreaking for the genre. It was still a fun read though, and I look forward to seeing what Mallory Arnold writes next!

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Poison Pen Press for the eARC of this book in exchange for my honest review!

I'm giving this 3 stars and admitting that I DNF'd it at 25%. I don't often DNF books, but I unfortunately just could not get in to this. The premise is a very common one - a group of authors are thrown together in a locked-room scenario, are picked off one-by-one, and have to figure out why. Had the characters been more interesting, I perhaps could have made it through another one of these books, but I found them to be caricatures. I really wish I had liked this. Sorry!

How to Survive a Horror Movie doesn’t pretend to reinvent the wheel,but as someone who loves a slasher, it was pretty fun. It’s comfort food for horror aficionados, but as someone who loves YA novels do for me, felt repetitive and predictable. However, I also think the teen years can be that way - caught up agonizing on the same issues.

It lovingly name-checks classics from Halloween to The Ring, which was enjoyable. The family dynamics and love of her mother was wonderful.

Does it cover new ground? Not really. For seasoned readers and horror fans, this is more affirmation than education, and that’s just fine.

Unfortunately, this one didn’t quite work for me.

Despite its premise—a high-stakes, race-against-time thriller—I found myself surprisingly detached throughout. The tension never fully landed, and I often felt like I was waiting for the story to truly begin. What should have felt urgent and fast-paced came across as flat, and at times, laborious.

Character-wise, I struggled to connect with anyone. Perhaps Winnie earned a touch of sympathy by the final act, but overall, the narrative felt emotionally distant. For a story that leans so heavily into genre-savvy tropes and horror-laced meta-commentary, I was expecting something a bit more dynamic and engaging.

I appreciate what the author set out to do, and I know many readers may connect with the humor and concept more than I did. But for me, the execution didn’t quite meet the potential of the premise. As a point of comparison, readers who enjoy locked-room, escape room–style thrillers with a darkly playful edge might fare better with You Are Fatally Invited.

How do I scrub this from my. memory and be able to read it again for the first time?! I am excited to recommend this book to everyone so I can relive the experience with them. This is a great thriller in a world of mediocre thriller/horrors. I enjoyed the different perspectives and found them decently easy to follow. It took a moment but then I got in a good groove. It does start a little slow and I feel like some readers might not give it a fair chance cause it takes about 20% to really get moving! And once it does, it doesn't let up! How to Survive a Horror Story is the ultimate "one more chapter" book.

Rating: 🤗/4.25
Source: #netgalley
Review: This book was a banger! It had a slow start but at about 20% it paid off. Unique writing structure with different POVs and short stories inside the main story. It read like a horror roller coaster - calm, then tense, then horror and then back to calm.
Format: 👩🏻‍💻

Thank you netgalley for the chance to read this!
I REALLY enjoyed this. I'm not normally a big horror person, but this was so up my alley. 6 relative strangers are invited to a home for a will reading from a super successful author, when they learn they are intended to be the house's meal unless they can solve riddles meant to uncover their deepest secrets.
It's got multiple POVs, its decidedly creepy, the riddles are fun, each room is its own little escape room journey. The reasons each person are pretty terrible people is pretty interesting, and each chapter where someone dies you learn just a little bit about their real 'story'. I love that its set in the horror writing space and you get a glimpse into the publishing industry and this genre.
Is this a bit campy? Absolutely. Is it a bit tropey? Yup. But I don't care at all. I was sucked in from the very first page and wanted to solve the riddles and then learn the true story for each person. It really is this great viewpoint into what makes someone 'good' and what moralistic behavior we should be judged for.
The ending completely caught me off guard and I thought it was really well done.

Thank you to the author, publisher and Net Galley for providing a free Ebook ARC of this book in exchange for my review.

I'll admit, I really enjoyed this book. I don't usually go for multiple POVs in books or multi timelines, but in this case I really enjoyed the way the stories all weaved together. The story we tell others vs the story others remember vs what really happened - so interesting! I did not see the ending coming, and really enjoyed this version of a locked room mystery. Any time you have a haunted house that is also alive, I'm there for it!

I'm honestly surprised at the lower ratings from other readers. But I seldom agree with the majority with books! Luckily, this time I got a book that I really enjoyed. So much so that after it was published, I purchased the audio to review the book before my rating. While I didn't love Buck's 'voice' in the audio, I also enjoyed the audiobook version.

5 stars - anyone who enjoys horror, haunted houses, good locked room mysteries should give this one a try!

“How to Survive a Horror Story” by Mallory Arnold reads like a horror movie with a wink, think Knives Out meets Ready or Not. Yes, there’s a haunted house and some gruesome fates, but the tone is more playful than terrifying, almost like a popcorn flick in book form.

I really enjoyed the exaggerated, over-the-top characters and the classic “survive the haunted house” premise, it’s always a fun setup. That said, the story leaned a bit too far into satire for my taste. I was hoping for more chills and suspense, and it ended up feeling a little tame.

Still, it’s an entertaining read and definitely worth picking up if you’re in the mood for something horror-themed but not too heavy.

If a horror author invites you to his house, you should expect the unexpected. Although whether any of Mortimer Queen's guests could have dreamt up exactly what lay in wait for them, despite their own horror bona fides, is open to questions. In How to Survive a Horror Story Mallory Arnold has a whole lot of fun with the genre and I was, mostly, along for the ride. Thanks to Poisoned Pen Press and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Horror literature is a great genre for intertextual fun, especially if we sneak in some books more usually categorised as mysteries and thrillers. Because the genre encourages its readers to always be looking for clues, for ways out, for any information that might help resolve a situation, connecting your story to others increases the fun. With intertextuality, you help shape your text's meaning, but also form and content, through that of other texts. This is not the same as borrowing ideas or motifs from texts, but rather, knowledge of other stories deepens your enjoyment and understanding of the text you're reading. For example, How to Survive a Horror Story is set in a rather odd manor house, which seems to have a life of its own. For readers of the horror and mystery genre, this most likely immediately brings other such houses to mind. For me, strong resonances to Hill House, in Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, became immediately apparent. A house that isn't right, a house that is hungry, a house that offers both a home and a threat. Knowing what Jackson has done with this idea makes me more curious and eager to see what Arnold will do with it. This kind of intertextuality is especially fun when a book is somewhat self aware. In the case of How to Survive, we have this kind of self-awareness because it is a horror book populated by horror writers. They know how these stories go, they have written them themselves, and so their own knowledge should, technically, help them out. In this way, the books can comment upon themselves, upon the development of their genre, and for readers interested in this kind of puzzling, it is a lot of fun.

Melanie is on her way to the Mortimer Queen Manor, the decrepit-looking, Gothic house where famed horror author Mortimer Queen used to live. Upon his death, he invited Melanie there for the reading of his will, as he had, to her surprise, apparently left her something. Alongside Melanie, we meet Scott, Crystal, Winnie, Petey, and Buck, all horror authors who share some kind of connection to Mortimer. (Gia, the housekeeper, is my favourite character, alongside the house itself!) As we get to hear from each of them, it becomes clear that no one is entirely sure why Mortimer would want to leave them something, but all hope for some inspiration for their next book. What they find is not your traditional will reading, however. Rather, a game has been prepared for them and the price of failure is death. From room to room, secrets are revealed and delightfully gore-y horror ensues. I don't read a whole lot of horror but I found the descriptions etc. in How to Survive quite matter of fact. It was horrid, what happened, but there was such mix of directness and fantasticality to it, that I wasn't, necessarily, horrified. (What does this say about me?!) I knew, pretty much from page one, not just who would survive the house, but also why and to what end. That doesn't have to be a bad thing, it can in fact heighten anticipation to be on someone's side and to follow them through danger. To a certain extent, it did that, but here it also meant that I didn't fully connect to the other characters and found them all a little bit of a cliche. I gloried in the house, however, and did very much enjoy the clear pleasure Arnold herself had in coming up with its various tests and rooms.

This is, if I'm right, Mallory Arnold's debut novel and it shows a great deal of promise, especially on the level of concept and imagination. The set-up of How to Survive, while not brand new, is given an interesting spin here and Arnold clearly enjoyed plotting out the rooms and challenges, the intertwining of the POVs, and the use of storytelling to question storytelling. In its execution, all of this could have used a tighter hand, I think, be it characterisation or pace. There are also a few elements of the story which didn't entirely work for me, and one of the twists towards the end, which kind of counteracted an earlier twist, actually didn't work for me because I enjoyed the idea of the original twist and what it suggested about the power of storytelling. Something that threw me off and took a little getting used to was that How to Survive was written in the present tense. I do think that it work well for the story told here, as it keeps you a little more "in the moment", so to say, but it's still not my favourite. I really enjoyed switching perspectives between the different guests and thereby getting to see the characters through each other's eyes. I enjoyed this recently about Stacie Grey's She Left, where the protagonist's POV would get interrupted by brief chapters from the other characters in the role they were playing within the mystery. Here, the narration is largely shared equally, even if there is a clear protagonist, but their tone doesn't really differ all that much. The nice thing about these switches in How to Survive is that eventually they begin to reveal one of the novel's main themes/questions, which is who is telling the truth, who gets to write the story, and whether it truly matters at the end. I liked paying attention to those little details. In that way, How to Survive also reminded me of The Labyrinth House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji, which I recently read and adored. There too, we find a group of people, connected to a famous author of mysteries, locked in his odd house, trying to complete a game of storytelling and revelations. I do have to say Ayatsuji's approach was the more masterful, carefully planned and executed down to phrasing and word choice. The stakes felt real, despite the absurdity of the situation, and there was a real cleverness to figuring things out. I think that for a debut, however, How to Survive is promising and I definitely look forward to reading more by Mallory Arnold!

How to Survive a Horror Story is a fun ride, with a lot of great ideas that show Arnold's imaginative abilities. While a little underdeveloped here and there, I did have good fun with this book and would recommend it to readers who love a creepy house as much as I do.

Thank you Poisoned Pen Press & Mallory Arnold for this read!

Part thriller part horror, this book packs a suspenseful and action packed punch! I loved the idea of the whole group of strangers sharing connections to the recently passed horror writer as I was eager to find out how they all knew him. The game / puzzle solving style was so addictive and fans that enjoy escape room and the likes will eat this up! The sinister aspect of the house made this even better & the ending was just perfect and unexpected.

Some gory scenes, a deep look into each characters background through multiple POVs and a twisted ending, really took this to the next level!

I loved this book and feel this is one that escape room style thriller and horror lovers need to add to their list asap!

3.75 stars
How to Survive a Horror Story was more than I thought it would be. I have read some horror and put it down for another time or just straight up DNF'd it. This book had me wanting to do this at times, but I was too far into it to give up.
Mallory Arnold has a very creative mind to come up with this concept of a monster house and the mystery surrounding how will be left, if any. The flashback short stories were an interesting way to do the reveal of what lead up to everyone being in this one house. However, it took a while to get to the end and 'plot twist;' and I feel that the build up lead to a ho-hum finale. Surprisingly I actually think this concept could lead to a very interesting and gruesome TV series, and I think it would be better than the book.
I will say that I am not opposed to see was the author comes up with in the future. While the punch wasn't there for me, the creativity was.
Thank you Poisoned Pen Press and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

How to Survive a Horror Story
by Mallory Arnold
Poisoned Pen Press
7/8/2025

Unfortunately this book was way to slow and I ended up dnfing it 20% into the book. It was difficult to keep all the characters straight and it took to long to get the back story to try and keep them straight.

Seven authors get invited to a will reading of Mortimer Queen, a famed horror author. They quickly discover there is more than meets the eye when it comes to his house. I love a locked room mystery book and this one did not let me down!

The characters are all pretty unlikeable - in the best way! You know quickly who you are going to root for and seeing everything unfold is pretty awesome. There are definitely some horror elements, but more so very much a mystery. There is some suspension of belief required, of course, and there is always an over arching "who's telling the truth" vibe.

Thank you to Netgalley, Mallory Arnold, SourceBooks, and Poisoned Pen Press for the advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.