I hate it when its ultra obvious that a man has written a woman character. It just ain't right. Also, when horror gets metaphysical. So not really a fan of this one.

You know what I love in a piece of fiction? Well, a lot of things, but when it comes to The Night That Finds Us All by John Hornor Jacobs, I love it’s sense of authenticity. Authenticity in place, in scene, in characters—Jacobs nails it all.

The Night That Finds Us All is set on a huge, hundred-year-old sailboat as it attempts to makes the journey from Seattle to London. Jacobs makes you feel the salt spray in your face, the wind singing in the ropes, the suffocating claustrophobia below deck. When his characters talk, it’s in the language of seasoned sailors, technical terms and jargon intermixed and lived-in. Like I said, authentic.

Samantha Vines is an alcoholic, world-weary sailor on the skids, broke and desperate. When she’s offered a job to tend the engines on The Blackwatch by an old crewmate, she takes the job. The ship is an ornately decorated wooden monstrosity, supposedly haunted, which Sam doesn’t take seriously, at least at first. Things soon turn south, however, and she finds herself doubting her sanity and facing challenges she could never have imagined.

This may not make sense, in fact it may sound downright silly, but when tragedies of both the human and supernatural variety begin to occur, those feel just as authentic as the sailing. Jacobs has done such a miraculous job of grounding his story, that he makes you believe the impossible as much as you believe in bilge pumps and mainsails.

Jacobs excels in creating nearly-overwhelming creeping dread punctuated with moments of sudden violence and terror. And because his characters are so genuine and fully-realized, it hurts that much more to see them suffering. Sam, in particular, is a winning narrator, fighting her demons with equal parts humor, obstinance, and gritty bravery.

The Night That Finds Us All is a bravura performance, a novel of horror on the high seas that will haunt you like The Blackwatch. The novel will be released on October 7, 2025, and is available for pre-order now.

Well, THIS was different! I love a great ghost story and you just don't see many of them on giant boats. This writing was tight, the pacing was quick, and the character development was A+. Couldn't ask for more!
Big thanks to #NetGalley for the ARC!

The pacing is relentless: just when you think you’ve got the curse figured out, Jacobs throws in another disappearing crewmate or ghostly wail. I tore through The Night That Finds Us All in a single, breathless sitting. John Hornor Jacobs hooks you with that first creak of the deck planks, and from there it’s an unstoppable wave of dark humor, spine-tingling suspense, and salty, sea-soaked dread. Sam Vines is the kind of badass captain you instantly root for, even as she battles phantom footsteps on deck and her own shaking hands from alcohol withdrawal.


Thank you very much to NetGalley and G.P. Putnam's Sons for this fun ARC!

The Night That Finds Us All by John Horner is a scary gothic novel about a haunted ship that has a questionable history. It’s a century old, large, ornate and very strangely built with winding hallways and oh so many little rooms. The ship has a reputation for emitting spooky sounds and giving the crew bad dreams and sleepless nights. This book will definitely appeal to readers who like stories about sailing ships or books about haunted houses. It certainly kept me up reading late into the night.

3.75 stars

I love all stories related to the ocean and sailing. Now add on that a bit of horror and you’ve completely won my heart!
This book while not outright scary was definitely uneasy and spooky. I loved everything about it.
John Horner Jacobs has been added to my watch list of authors. Can’t wait to read more by him!

#gifted from G.P Putnam's Sons and NetGalley
This novel doesn't publish til October, but it was a delicious read for June/July.

It's important to note this book is foul mouthed and contains explicit seggsual content--none of which I enjoy, but makes sense given the content. Could it have still been a great read without that? Absolutely. Hence a star removed.

The story follows a cast of characters crewing the ship Blackwatch which is a character in itself as well. The characters jump off the page while I felt totally immersed in the setting. I could see, touch, smell, and hear the journey.

It's first person POV in a conversational, informal style that you either love or hate. I LOVED it. There was a back and forth between beautiful prose and jerky inner thoughts that I thought worked really well.

Also important to note: it's FULL of technical nautical jargon. I love that so much: I love when a book challenges my intellect, has me pulling out wikipedia and maps, and feels real. Apparently the author actually made a sea voyage and conversed with sailors to write this!!!!! But some readers will tire of it.

The horror is delicious. Super creepy voices, ominous journals, mysterious disappearances, claustrophobic and uncanny changes of their reality, monsters in the deep, sudden storms....I. Loved. Every. Bit of it.

Really enjoyed this book. A well-written, creepy eerie slow burn set at sea. Loved all of the details about the boat and sailing. I also thought the character development was good. I will say some people who like a happy ending and everything wrapped up in a nice little bow, may not love the ending of this book. However, while I do at times like that type of ending, I'm also totally ok with ending that aren't like that. And the ending of this book totally worked. And lingered with me (in a good way).

This is sea horror at its finest. Reminded me a lot of the Demeter sequence in Dracula (the book) and the movie called the Last Voyage of Demeter. This was simply amazing. I love how our MC is so messy and that doesn't deter her from being a very likable (at least according to me) person. I loved reading from her point of view. It was intense and the downward spiral was darkly delicious. Love it!

’s a slow burn.

A GLACIAL burn.

And yet.

I couldn’t put it down. So I found myself asking “am I into this because I’m discovering a love of sailing stories? Should I start reading Patrick O’Brian books?”

Because let me tell you - I wasn’t into this one because it was scary (it’s really not), but it does have a brooding sense of uneasiness that I was into. Plus the characters were an interesting hang. It’s an abstract horror - never really explained all that much, just shadows and visions and whispers - until you get to the VERY COOL ENDING.

I absolutely loved the last 20% of the story. So the slow journey is absolutely worth it. No spoilers, but it definitely goes in a direction that you will not expect, and that earns big kudos from me. It was fun.

John Horner Jacobs’ The Night That Finds Us All is a gripping horror thriller packed with eerie tension and unease at sea. The story follows Sam Vines, who's stuck in life when her old friend Loick invites her to join the crew of a 100 year old sailing ship called the Blackwatch. They’re moving it from Seattle to England, and Sam’s in charge of keeping its ancient engine going in spite of how worn it is.
The crew is rough around the edges, the ship has a creepy backstory, and things start going sideways fast. Rumors of ghosts don’t feel like just stories anymore, and the deeper they get into the trip, the more unnerving things Sam experiences.
The oppressive mood that built throughout the story was even more intense by the claustrophobic setting at sea. When Sam finds an old diary hidden onboard, it opens a door to the ship’s dark past and revelations of the ghostly presence.
This book totally pulled me in. The twists were smart, the atmosphere was deliciously creepy, and I couldn’t wait to see how it would all unfold.

Thank you NetGalley and Putnam for the advanced reader copy. This is my honest review.

It might have helped if I liked books on sailing, this one did sound interesting and the publisher compared it to one of my fav horror authors, Chuck Wendig. It was't close to anything Chuck has written! I found it confusing, unclear and not very good, and I always try to find the best in everything I read. Writing is difficult and I give the authors so many benefits of the doubt. But this one? Not so much. Perhaps if the author had brought in the evil entity earlier, it might have been more interesting....this book just isn't for me.

Think a haunted house is scary? At least if you can get out, you have a chance to run for help. Imagine being a crewmember on a ship, the Blackwatch. The job is to sail from Seattle to England. Sounds easy for an experienced crew, but factor in severe weather, temperamental parts, and at least one crewmember battling an addiction, and you have set sale on a trip you will not forget. That is, if you live to tell the tale.
The story is told by Sam, someone remarkably close to the edge. But is her sobriety, causing her to see things that aren’t there, or is there something very very wrong on the ship? When Sam finds an incredibly old diary, we start to get a glimpse into what else inhabit this haunted ship.
This was a treadmill read for me, and I just had to find out if Sam was an unreliable narrator (which I really did not think), or if there was something very very wrong with the ship. I am not gonna going to sail into spoiler territory, but the creepy atmosphere, the diary Sam found, a very strange woman she met when they were restocking, disappearing crew, and horrendous accidents convinced me that the ship was haunted.

The best kind of haunted story! A hundred-year-old sailboat sailing with a ragtag mystery crew far off the coast of the Americas.

Sam Vines takes the job as the engine crew to support her mored boat and hopefully dr y out and get her life back on track. The Blackwatch is an eerie old sailboat and the crew is only partially up to snuff. But the money is very very good and she needs a quick infusion of cash.

When crewmembers begin disappearing and ghosts seem to appear Sam wishes she hadn't taken the job - but it is far too late and far scarier than she ever could have imagined.

Great horror story for all the ghost, curse and monster lovers out there! #penguin #gpputnum #thenightthatfindsusall #johnhornorjacobs

Thank you to netgalley, the publisher and the author for providing me a copy to review with my honest thoughts. I was so excited for this, I was absolutely enthralled by the author's previous work "A Lush and Seething Hell' and had high hopes for this. While I was not disappointed, I did not enjoy this nearly as much.
Sam "Vines" Vineyard is a sassy, foul-mouthed alcoholic sailor that has accepted a job as boat engineer on a "haunted", massive wooden ship. We follow her while she sobers up but meets even bigger problems aboard this boat. My main problem with this (which was probably a very personal issue) was every time I'd start getting sucked into the story, the author would start throwing around a bunch of nautical terminology (which again, definitely a me issue as I don't have a sea-faring bone in my body). I either was just passing over these terms or taking the time to google what the words meant which took away from the story telling experience for me.
There was a lot of good though, I especially enjoyed the peeks into Abigail Roystons diary entries. The ghosts/cosmic horror elements hit very nicely in the most unsettling, look over your shoulder, "damn, im stuck in the middle of an ocean on a haunted boat, this is awful" kind of way. I don't want to give too much away, but I enjoyed the prominent aspects of the story unfortunately the terms kept me tripping over "speed bumps".
Overall, I'd recommend this book if horror is your thing.

A really excellent, enjoyable horror novel. The haunted boat is akin to a haunted house (which is one of my favorite tropes), but with extra claustrophobia and mortal dread thrown in - you can't just leave the boat when it's in the middle of the ocean! The build up of dread, the slow unraveling of the mysteries, and the descent into full-blown cosmic horror was so fun. I wish the book had been a bit longer and spent just a tiny bit more time on some of the backstory but this was overall a great read.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC !

A totally different kind of horror. I enjoyed a haunted boat, out on the water. A different kind of scary. Writing style is different.

The Night That Finds Us All is a fantastic, well-written voyage into cosmic horror. Samantha “Sam” Vines is a self-described profane, alcoholic asshole. Struggling to make ends meet as a captain after COVID and expensive ship repairs ground her, she accepts an offer from an old friend to join him on a lucrative job. They’re supposed to deliver the Blackwatch, a massive and old sailboat, from Seattle to England for some wealthy clients. Immediately, there are snags in their plan: Sam has bad blood with the captain and some of the other crew members, her drinking problem is out of control, and the ship seems like it might be haunted. What ensues is a deliciously unwinding and horrific journey that you know won’t end well. The isolation of the ocean setting means that the Blackwatch effectively serves as a haunted house that the characters literally can’t escape, and half the fun is knowing what’s coming and wondering how they will deal with it.

I loved this book, and after reading it I immediately bought John Hornor Jacobs’ back catalogue—it was that good. Sam is a delightful narrator—she’s not a nice person and she makes bad decisions, but I still found myself rooting for her. I know very little about sailing, but Jacobs clearly does, and the terminology felt authentic and not overwhelming. What could have been a straightforward or even cheesy ghost story also veers into cosmic horror, complete with occult rituals and an interesting historical backstory. In some ways, it reminded me of Laird Barron’s work, especially The Fisherman (and to be clear, that is a compliment). I did have some questions about one of the novel’s final reveals, but it didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the book. I know I will be re-reading this one again soon. If you’re into messy heroines, cosmic or nautical horror, and excellent prose, add this to your list.

Thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for an early copy of this book.

This one was not my cup of tea. The writing felt all over the place and it also felt like there was a whole lot of nothing going on. The main character Sam was snarky so that was funny at times. The idea of the old boat having a supernatural and creepy past was an excellent idea it just wasn't delivered well. I was not creeped out at all unfortunately.

To be honest I did not get passed the first page. The writing style was not for me and I couldn’t relate