I loved Susan Dennards previous fantasy series so I was excited to read and listen to this story and I was not disappointed. Aimed at a young adult audience, the executioner three is good for anyone that age range or older. Adults will also love the dark themes of this story. Freddie and her friends are written well and really bring the story to life. It was really hard to put down, which is why I also liked having the audiobook version as well so I could continue the story.

While I didn't love this quite as much as Dennard's historical fiction, there's something delightfully mysterious and a little goofy about this book, like Scooby-Doo by way of a 1990s teen movie or cheap paperback. The escalation of the inter-school prank war feels very real for a rural area, particularly one with an "us vs them" sentiment so deeply entrenched, but the most engaging part of the book is the fact that the characters act and sound like actual teenagers. That's not always easy for YA authors to pull off, and Dennard succeeds with flying colors. That grounds the rest of the story in a believable way, allowing the scary and supernatural elements space to shine. This is a must-have for school collections.

This is a GREAT teen book for spooky season! Set in a small town with an inquisitive main character and a mysterious tolling bell, I was hooked! There was a bit of murder, some pranks, rivalries, rivals to lovers, mystery and just enough paranormal elements that made for a perfect spooky season book! I mean, what else could scream spooky season like a small town in fall getting ready for their fall fete while also trying to uncover the mysterious curse in the town that no one believes in besides the teen girl?

The 90s vibes were immaculate and perfect, and I loved the haunted small town setting. The mix of mystery and romance, and the little bit of horror, was great. Plus there were some good twists, one that I guessed and was excited to see come true.

The Executioners Three by Susan Dennard was a wild and entertaining ride. It’s a mix of creepy moments, fun antics, and plenty of drama. Following the main character through her rivalry with the other school and their prank wars was a blast, and I couldn’t get enough of the lumberjacks with bad French accents at the end. So quirky and hilarious. That said, there was one moment that made me pause: the MC completely brushed off a creepy torture dungeon in a friend’s basement like it was totally normal. Kids these days, right? Aside from that odd encounter, I was happily entertained throughout.

I know this is YA but it felt so SO young that I couldn't get onboard with the high school hijinx. DNF @ 20%.

First Line:Theo Porter had just rounded the curve by City-on-the-Berme Park - that sharp turn with all the woods and the steep slope down to the lakeshore - when bam! Two baby raccoons came scuttling through the fog and into his headlights. (man, 17-18 no accent)

Reasons to Read:
Murder Meets Mayhem 🔍 — What starts as a prank war between rival schools spirals into a deadly game when bodies begin appearing in the woods.


Urban Legend Unleashed 📜 — A creepy, long-forgotten poem hints at a blood curse that may be more real—and dangerous—than anyone believes.


Sparks & Suspects ❤️ — Freddie’s hunt for a killer gets complicated when the charming leader of the rival prank squad turns his attention to her.



Rating: 4 bells + 1 tree

Thoughts: This book was one I was very much looking forward to and I was not disappointed. This book has a great fantasy but also kind of light horror vibe, alongside a mystery. Freddie is smart, although not about boys. But there are other characters as well that definitely make this book an enjoyable read. I appreciated the lore behind the mystery and how it all came together. Really hope there might possibly be another book in this universe!

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Teen for the eARC!

This book gives perfect autumn vibes. I'm probably going to re-read it when the leaves start to drop.

It's got small town, spooky, creepy cursed forest vibes with low tech (it's set in the 90s). There's a prank war rivalry between two high schools, many mentions of Lance Bass, and a swoon-worthy romance. You've got Nokias and libraries and archives and microfiche (oh my!)
[friends of mine might accuse me of liking Freddie and this book because she spends so much time doing research and going to the library. they would not be wrong]

Freddie is such a fun protagonist - she's quippy and sarcastic and can be found biking around town with her camera around her neck, poking her nose where she really should't be. She gets dubbed a prank master (totally by accident, but she rolls with it), and on multiple occastions maybe she gets distracted kissing someone she probably shouldn't be thinking about.....

I just got so much undiluted pure joy reading this story. It's a good old fashioned teenage sleuth story with a creepy, historical paranormal slant that just worked for me.

The Executioners Three by Susan Dennard
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
What a throwback in a book form! I got nostalgic reading and then a bit sad because this is YA so for the target audience this is almost historical fiction. And that’s funny 😭😂

I might be old, but this was a great book—even for us oldies. The horror was amazingly built. The characters were teenagers and a perfect mix of likeness and annoyance.

Recommended to YA horror thriller readers. This is perfect for the fall mood.

“Freddie Gellar didn't mean to get half the rival high school arrested. She’d simply heard shrieks coming from the woods, so she’d called the cops like any good human would do. How was she supposed to know it was just kids partying?”

Thank you publisher for providing this book for review consideration via @netgalley. All opinions are my own.

#netgalley #bookreview #TheExecutionersThree

This is a lighthearted homage to the 1990s: from X Files to Buffy to Twilight. It can easily be described as a cozy contemporary gothic thriller that is more Scooby Doo than Rebecca. Honestly, it is all a bit silly and far too cartoony to be engrossing. The easiest way to describe it is as a YA thriller by-the-numbers that the 1990s milieu doesn't rescue.

Story: Freddie lives in her North Eastern US small town without too many worries. But there have been weird happenings lately and when she reports something mysterious in the woods, she gets drunken rival school teenagers arrested. Then the murders begin happening and the town's history dating back to the 1600s begins to haunt its current residents. Is there a curse on the town? Can she survive the revenge the other students will have on her high school?

So yes, X-Files meets Buffy The Vampire Slayer with the usual gothic twists. Our protagonist, Freddie Gellar (likely named after Buffy star Sarah Michelle Gellar) is a Bella Swan - unthreatening, not very bright, and along for the ride. There's even a love triangle - we're only missing sparkling vampires here. If this makes it sound fun, unfortunately, it wasn't. I was bored through most of the book since the characters were dumb, over-the-top, and uninteresting. Love interest Theo just kind of walks around and smirks occasionally (it wouldn't be a YA book without a smirking love interest, now would it?) without really giving us a reason to want to follow him. The plot is just silly and on the level of a Scooby Doo mystery.

Part of what made the X-Files and Buffy so much fun are the witty dialogue, cultural references and cleverness. That was missing here - we needed more snark and better cultural references to really make this an interesting read. That said, it wasn't terrible and certainly there are worse ways to spend an afternoon reading if you want mindless entertainment. But we needed more Buffy than Twilight Bella and a much more interesting plot.

Of note, I listened to the audio version and the narrator did an excellent job. This is a good candidate for audio since it is easy to follow and simple. Reviewed from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher.

Okay I LOVED this!! I think this would make a perfect read for spooky season. I loved how smart the FMC but it was balanced with “dumb” mistakes because at the end of the day she’s still just a teen! It takes place in the 90s, and this Lance Bass obsessed teen liked popular boy Kyle, but realized she actually meshes really well with rival boy, Theo. Oh and that haunting poem from forever ago might be real?
It seems like there’s a serial killer on the loose but the deaths and accidents seem to eerily be following the poems predictions. So is it more supernatural? I love that we got to see her sleuthing, being a typical teen and trying to fit in with the popular crowd (who suddenly like her after they think she purposely pranked the rival school), deal with her crushes, AND try to save the town from a possible curse.
This book was so fun and good and I highly recommend it!

Thank you MacMillan Audio for the read!

I was so excited to receive an arc/alc of The Executioners Three! I really enjoyed Susan’s last series and she has such a unique ya fantasy voice.

I jumped into The Executioners Three believing it was the start of a series, and am so pleasantly surprised by how wrapped up and contained the story was. The writing was effortless to listen to and so so compelling! This book was so creepy, mysterious and well written many parts had me at the edge of my seat figuratively (or stopping what I was doing while listening to the audio to just listen intently). It would make a perfect story for Halloween/ spooky season!

I listened to the book on audiobook.
Caitlin Davies did an incredible job narrating all of the characters and both POV and I loved the enthusiasm and styling she brought to Freddie’s voice and inner thoughts. It was easy to understand and follow all that was happening and her intonation, pausing and pacing was spot on.

Thanks so much to Tor Teen, Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for the arc and alc copies - all thoughts are mine.

This was a great mystery steeped in forgotten lore. Freddie has made it her mission to figure out what really happened in the woods that night, but unfortunately she's brought the entire school and their rivals into it as well.

The Executioner Three was pure chaos in the best possible way. Susan Dennard knows exactly how to keep you on edge—every chapter had me holding my breath, wondering who I could trust (spoiler: basically no one 😅). The stakes are higher, the action sharper, and the character dynamics? Chef’s kiss.

I LOVED this! It gave me all the '90s vibes it promised, with the Nokia phones, riding bikes, and the love for N'Sync and Backstreet Boys being all-consuming.
I loved Freddie as our main character; she is fun, determined, and has a knack for knowing when something is about to happen, and OMG, her love for the X-Files... She is a girl after my own heart for that alone. When she accidentally became popular after getting half the rival prep school arrested, she and Divya end up invited along with the popular kids into the prank war. Which I thought was so much fun.
The horror elements were so well done, it was creepy, and along with the atmosphere, I was drawn in from the first page. This story had the perfect amount of humor, friendship, and an adorable enemies-turned-romance that I was totally rooting for, especially after Freddy spied him doing something totally and adorably embarrassing.
I can't wait to get my physical copy of this, and this is one I'll definitely be reading again.

Susan Dennard really hooked me with her last series, The Luminaries, so I enthusiastically added The Executioners Three to my TBR. This latest book is a standalone mystery set in 1999 with some seriously scary vibes and it happens to release just in time for spooky season. Immaculate fall vibes for sure. 

The Executioners Three follows Freddie Gellar, a high school student with a passion for investigation, photography, and Lance Bass from *Nsync. There was a genuinely alarming number of references to song lyrics and fan rivalry with the Backstreet Boys. Even though I grew up in the 90s I was too young to really be a fan of either band, so what is probably a fun nostalgic reference for many fell a bit flat for me. Musical references aside, The Executioners Three was a great young adult mystery with more than enough horror elements to make me think twice about reading it before bed. 

Freddie’s father was the police chief before he passed many years before and Freddie has begun to follow in his steps. When Freddie thinks she hears the sounds of murder in the woods she calls the police, inadvertently getting much of the student body of the private school nearby in trouble. It turns out Freddie may have actually heard the sounds of a struggle because later while taking a shortcut through the woods with her best friend, Divya, they actually stumble across a body hanging from a tree. Freddie decides to do some investigation of her own despite it being ruled a suicide. When another body turns up and Freddie also discovers a creepy old poem called The Executioners Three, it starts to look like something sinister and supernatural is occurring in her little town.

Freddie and Divya are a wonderful BFF duo and I love that Susan Dennard seems to always feature strong female friendship as a main theme in her stories. While there may be a love interest, the main characters don’t abandon their friends and that remains true in this story as well. For anyone hoping for a cute romantic element, The Executioners Three has that as well and a love triangle no less! Freddie is rather fond of the handsome, popular boy from her school, but then there’s the even more handsome and forbidden Theo from the private school who can’t seem to stop running into Freddie. Theo is a pleasantly well-rounded love interest as well, especially since he's given a decent amount of page time and his own hobbies, hopes, and dreams!

This was an exciting story that was unexpectedly scary and even a bit gory at times, what with the manner of the deaths. I loved that it blended mystery and horror and the high school experience so well AND that it’s wonderfully evocative of the fall season. I could picture myself in my cozy fleece sitting at the Quick-Bis with my friends getting breakfast or stomping around the historical village, jumping at shadows! The Executioners Three was a fantastic standalone young adult novel that I think has solid appeal for adults (especially folks who grew up in the 90s!).

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for for accepting my request for an ACR of this book!
⅕
“There were some truths that were just too big to contain in a single person's mind.”
I will admit, I saw my review of this book being quite different before I started reading it. I hate to say but I didn’t enjoy this book a lot. I had read Dennards other works and found them to be entertaining but with this one.. the writing style to me felt almost middle school, which on top of that, because of how the characters were written I thought they were in 8th grade for a majority of the book. There were certain scenes that made me want to dnf the book, just based on certain characters' reactions, but I told myself I would finish the book. Besides that I also thought the mystery aspect was going to have a bigger part in this book, from how the story started to the actual cover of the book. Instead, I was met with a plot on a rival school's prank wars and romance, which wasn’t what I was anticipating. My favorite part about this book though, was the cover, it was very beautiful and is what initially drew me in.

Between that cover and Sooz's name, I knew I was going to read this one, so I didn't even look at the synopsis.

I loved Freddie. She's smart and unwavering and it was so much fun being in her head. Theo is a bit mysterious and absolutely smitten. Together these two have banter for days and I loved reading every exchange. Oh and BFF Divya is a scene stealer.

Plot wise, it was a fantastic mix of 90s throwbacks, creepy atmosphere, and gore. The mystery unfolded at a delicious pace and kept me guessing and while I could have done with a million more pages at the end, I'm satisfied.

Overall, this is exactly the sort of book I'll be reading again when fall hits.

**Huge thanks to the publisher for providing the arc free of charge**

**3.5 STARS**

Content Warning: violence, murder, death

+ This was a really interesting book and one I wasn’t quite expecting. This book is set in the 1990’s and the clues was definitely how Freddie loved the X-Files and NSYNC (she LOATHES The Backstreet Boys and hi, I was a BSB fan, not NSYNC 😅). This story gave me Stranger Things vibes minus the demi-gorgon, it was the time period that was similar and the way the characters talked and acted.

+ Freddie is a fun character. She’s trying to investigate something that has been happening in town but also, she’s a prankster. Her and her best-friend Divya are literally hanging with a group of kids at school who does pranks at their rival school. These kids are in high school, so it’s very young adult.

+ Freddie and Theo’s romance is too cute! I loved it.

+ The murder mystery was interesting and I liked how it built. The ending reveal was full of suspense and thrills.

~ I wasn’t sure what I was reading at first and how I felt about it but I’m glad I pushed through because things get dark. But for all it’s darkness because of the murders I felt like there was enough humor to keep things light.


Final Thoughts:

Here is another book you should pick up for the fall season! It’s dark (but fun) with a murder mystery and it has Stranger Things vibes. I thought it was cool it was set in the 1990’s, Freddie and her friends are fun and pranksters, and the romance is really cute.

I loved the Luminaries series, so I was excited to pick up this. There's mystery, teenage drama, and weirdness. I didnt however really enjoy the main character and that made it difficult to get into.