Growing old is terrible. Growing old is scary.

This book isn't terrible but it is scary.
Highly recommended though.

Remember—ACK! ACK! Aliens are no one's savior.

The Sundowners Dance had everything I like in a horror book. It made me laugh out loud a few times; I was grossed out a lot and I cried at the end.

I really resonated with the chronic pain the characters were experiencing and the struggle with depression and anxiety. There was also a focus on introversion and how society expects introverted people to put on a facade of being someone who enjoys other people, whether at work or socially.

Loved the two main characters, Jerry and Katherine. Arthur was a villain straight off of Manson’s Spahn Ranch or a Stephen King book.

Great narration!

Davis once said "Old age ain't no place for sissies."

Jerry Campbell is recently widowed and just wants to be left alone. Being in the house where he lived with his life for so long proves to be too difficult and Jerry finds himself checking out Fairview Acres. A nice, quiet, community of retired folk in the Poconos. It all sounds perfect to Jerry and he decides to move in. He soon learns that not all is what it's cracked up to be. His neighbors have parties nearly every night, and there are strange noises from his rooftop every night as well. One night, one of Jerry's new neighbors Catherine comes to visit and tells him he needs to leave. Jerry is confused, but is later told that Catherine is "sundowning", (an awful form of dementia), and that he need not pay attention to the things she said. Things like "The worms. They dance at nightfall." Jerry is curious, though and he finds he cannot leave well enough alone. He begins to investigate and you're going to have to read this to discover what he finds out!

Evil in a small town is one of my favorite tropes. Shake that up with some cosmic, cult action and you have the recipe for the perfect book for me. I have loved Todd Keisling's work since I read Devil's Creek and until now, it's been my favorite book of his. This one, though, pushed all my personal buttons as if it knew they were there and where they all where.

All the scares here weren't of a culty or cosmic nature. Many of them were scares that people face every day. Sundowning, Alzheimer's, Dementia-if these things aren't freaking scary, I don't know what is. Add to that the daily indignities the sick and elderly face, forgetting things like your own children's names, losing the ability to physically take care of yourself or to recognize your surroundings. Lastly, what if you saw someone do something sneaky or nefarious? Who is going to believe you? That might be the most terrifying part of it all.

Grief also plays a big role here. Jerry, being an introvert and having had no children, has no support system whatsoever. No one to check in, make sure he's eating or not getting depressed-he has no one. That's one more scary thing to pile on right? Finding oneself alone at the end of life and discovering that you're the one who made it that way.

A note about the narrator Malcolm Hillgartner-his performance was top notch! At first I wasn't sure I was going to enjoy something with an elderly narrator, (I have no idea if the man himself is elderly), but his performance here was nothing short of incredible. Well done, sir!

I loved the constantly building sense of dread, confusion and paranoia. I enjoyed the constant questioning of the main character as to whether or not these things were really happening or were they all in his head? The atmosphere seemed to become denser and more dark with every page to the point where it almost felt suffocating. Then the denouement blew everything apart!

To sum up, we have grief based horror, cult horror, cosmic horror, and elderly horror all mashed-up into a beautiful ball of excellence titled: The Sundowner's Dance.

My highest recommendation.

*Audio ARC from publisher

READ IF YOU'RE INTERESTED IN OR LIKE- Cosmic horror- Mental health representation- Creature feature aspect- Fear of growing old/dementia/dying- HOAs- Retirement community setting- The Twilight Zone- Cults (personally I think these and HOAs are interchangeable especially in horror)

REVIEWThe Sundowner's Dance is one of those books that I knew within a few minutes of listening to the audiobook that I was going to love the story. An older man loses his wife and expresses interest in a retirement community and conveniently his home is able to sell for above asking price. What possible could go wrong? I haven't felt so connected to a main character in a long time. You really empathize with Jerry. Oh and there are super creepy worms. Don't ask just read.

In The Sundowner’s Dance by Todd Keisling, Jerry Campbell moves into Fairview Acres, a retirement community, hoping for a change of scenery after the death of his wife, Abigail. He just wants to be left alone but soon finds out about the constant night parties and the strange noises he hears on his roof. To make things worse, Katherine Dunnally, a neighbor shows up at his door and says, "You need to leave. The worms...they dance at nightfall.” Other neighbors in the community, talk of Katherine’s dementia called Sundowner's Syndrome. I thought the themes of grief, dementia and growing old might be too depressing until the story veers off course with a surprising, unexpected and disturbing twist. I will never think of retirement communities the same way. ALC was provided by HighBridge Audio via NetGalley. I received an audiobook listening copy for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

4.5/5
Soo good. Better than I was expecting tbh. The Mc had my heart....I have a soft spot for older MCs. I love when an author delivers well developed characters.. On top of that the writing was great, the pacing was perfect. Would def recommend.

I loved this so, so much. I listened to it entirely on audio, which is a rarity for me, but oh goodness it was so good! I do enjoy an elderly protagonist and this book has the perfect one. It followed all the tropes I adore in horror fiction and yet managed to surprise me again and again! I cried a lot while reading it. Definitely reminded me of many people whom I have lost. The commentary on grief in this book is simply superb.

HOA Horror...

This book starts out quiet. Jerry Campbell just lost his wife. He’s retired, heartbroken, and looking to disappear into a peaceful place where no one bothers him. So he moves to Fairview Acres, a retirement community in the Poconos, thinking he’ll fade out quietly. He could not have been more wrong.

His neighbors are strange. There are too many parties. Too many smiles. Too much noise at night that no one wants to talk about. And then there’s Arthur Peterson, the head of the HOA, who keeps showing up to make sure Jerry is getting involved. Whether he wants to or not. Things stay off in a small way until Katherine Dunnally shows up at Jerry’s door and says this one sentence that flips the whole story on its head — you need to leave the worms they dance at nightfall. From there it gets wild. What starts out like a quiet slow-burn horror quickly turns into something bigger and weirder. We’re talking creature-feature chaos. Alien cult energy. Some real body snatcher horror. Potions. Magic. And the looming question of whether all this is supernatural or just part of the horror of growing old and being forgotten. Keisling blends all of that with real emotional weight. Jerry’s grief is heavy and believable. Katherine’s confusion feels real. And the horror is never just for show; it’s tied into aging, memory, and isolation in a way that hits harder than expected. The audiobook narration took a little getting used to. The voice felt a bit stiff at first but ended up fitting the tone pretty well once the strange stuff started unfolding.

This one caught me off guard. What started like a slow, familiar setup went completely sideways and I loved it. Weird, creepy, sad, and kind of beautiful underneath it all.

<b> 3.5 stars</b>

This book started off really strong, Gerry and Katharine are easy to like and root for and an unsettling vibe is quickly established. Unfortunatly I liked this book less an and less as it went along. I still enjoyed reading this book.

Free copy recieved from NetGalley.

Thank you to Todd Keisling and Shortwave Publishing for providing an early copy to review.

The story follows Jerry Campbell a retiree and widower who relocates to Fairview Acres. We learn quickly Fairview Acres isn’t quite what you expect from a typical retirement community. The residents seem to transcend at night with parties, weird sounds coming from the roof and rare occurrences on Jerry’s front lawn. But what’s causing all this to take place? This is where it all unfolds, as we meet the likes of Katherine Dunnally, Arthur Peterson and other members of the community.

Todd does an excellent job mixing grief horror, cosmic horror and a splash of occult horror in this exceptional novel.

I absolutely loved it! The character development of Jerry Campbell is top notch as well as the community building of Fairview Acres. Todd’s prose and pacing make for a fast paced read you won’t be able to put down.

I highly recommend this novel! “By the moon’s eye”

4.25

The Sundowner's Dance
Todd Keisling

A horror story that falls somewhere between Cocoon and Body Snatchers.
I had a fun time with this one.
Highly Recommended.

Somehow both gross as hell, and heartbreaking. It’s early, but this is definitely going to be one of my favorite books of the year.

Thanks to HighBridge Audio, Shortwave Books, and NetGalley for an early audiobook copy.

I went into this complete blind and really enjoyed it! I had no idea it was a cosmic/sci fi horror. It was entertaining and the audiobook was really good. I liked that the characters were all older. The description of everything was easy to imagine and grossed me out at some points.

This was such a fun story! Loved that most of our characters were middle aged or older. The cultish vibes were great - I always knew those gates communities were sus. And Hillgartner is a great narrator choice.

I don't know if I can say enough about how good Todd Keisling's The Sundowners Dance is.

The Sundowners Dance follows Jerry, a grieving elderly man moving into a retirement community after his wife passed. This community isn't all it seems though... especially the sundown activities...

Todd takes this book to levels only he can achieve and yet... this story is devastatingly sad and full of heart in the absolute best way. Look... grief horror is on the rise (or has it always been?) and Todd gave us a prime example here. We like to feel pain and be freaked out - Keisling did both to perfection.

I loved every second of this book; the characters, the setting, the pace, the emotion, the scares, the absolute craziness and the scope (big and small) — this book kicks so much ass and I need each and every one of you to read it. Please and thank you.

By the Moon's eye!

I would be remiss to say I didn't get MAJOR @stephenking's Insomnia vibes while reading this one. It's probably just the elderly characters, but it's also the loss and new friends/love as well as trying to handle new situations in the twilight of life.

Anyway, this is about Todd, not King. Todd Keisling has given us a book of the year candidate in The Sundowners Dance. This book is an incredible experience full of Todd's classic dark wackiness but also an unbelievable amount of heart. The end had me sobbing. I loved every page and I can't wait for more people to experience this brilliance. The Sundowners Dance is an easy 5/5 for me, and I can't recommend it enough.

Please, for the love of all things holy and unholy, preorder it. The Sundowners Dance comes out April 22nd! We can all commune with the goddess together.

"They danced, swaying to the rhythm of the cosmos beneath a diamond canopy of the infinite."

The Sundowner’s Dance cannot be reduced to being called a “horror novel” - not that it isn’t because it is: part psychological thriller, part Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but it’s also a story of grief: grieving the loss of loved ones and of self and of fear: the fear of death and of losing oneself both physically and mentally. In The Sundowner’s Dance, Keisling has created a small town populated with characters that rival some of the best of Stephen King, with lives we are invested in and care for and with more than a little folk horror vibe.

Ahhh, where do I even begin? Jerry Campbell has my heart! What an absolute cutie.

A widower named Jerry moves into a retirement community where the residents are worshipping an ancient entity that keeps them young, but there are consequences if you don’t agree.

This story was beautiful yet horrifyingly tragic. It felt very much like Stephen King's Insomnia. It explores the loss of a loved one and the friendship found in grief. Todd did a fantastic job with this, and his writing was so easy to get into! His vivid descriptions were easy to visualise, and the characters were perfectly crafted; you get very attached to them easily. That ending will get you in your heart!

The narrator Malcolm Hillgartner did a fantastic job! His voice was pretty smooth to listen to. Cosmic horror has become my new favourite and I can’t wait to read more of Todd Keisling’s work!

Thank you to Netgalley and Alan at Shortwave for my audio ARC.

When Jerry Campbell's better half dies, he drift back into his curmudgeonly ways, despite his best efforts. He just wants his old life back, but now as an elderly retired windower, a change of pace feels like the worst idea he could have had. His reluctance to moving forward with his life is warranted as his new home in a retirement community proves to be nothing but trouble.

With a fun cast of characters, I wanted to see the protagonists persevere and would like to know what Jerry's life was like before and after this novel. He was an endearing and miserable old bastard, but he had a good heart.

I was reminded of The Twilight Zone a few times while reading The Sundowner's Dance. This book could have been an episode that asked what happens when dementia is caused by something sinister? How can people believe your accounts of odd happenings when your mind really is going?

A good read for anyone who was afraid of visiting their grandparents as a kid. Especially if they lived in a retirement home/community. You never know what those elderly folks get up to.

Narrator's voice was a perfect fit for Jerry's personality. Great voice work.

Thanks to NetGalley and RBmedia for an audio ARC of The Sundowner's Dance in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: 3/5

It started strong. It was a perfect mix of humour, creepiness and also sadness. However, at least for me, as the story progressed, it didn't resonate with me how I was hoping it would.

As I like authors who are Bram Stoker finalists, I will be reading their other works. This book didn't quite work for me.

Fans of Iain Reid’s We Spread will delight in this cosmic horror story about the terrors of growing old… Highly recommended!

Following the death of his wife Jerry Campbel isn’t so much looking for a new start, as a place to spend his final years in peace. Elderly, aching (physically and mentally) and grief-stricken, he expects to be among likeminded people when he moves into a retirement community in the Poconos. But life at Fairview Acres isn’t what he’d imagined it to be. What begins with strange noises at night and the homeowners-associations chairman’s almost cultlike obsession with forcing Jerry to join in with their neighbourhood-parties, soon turns into something far darker.
Some neighbours exhibit strange behaviour at night, which the others chalk up to “sundowning”, a form of dementia. But Jerry suspects there may be more at play; something that goes beyond these individual cases and affects the community as a whole…

What I loved
Five-star horror novels are rare for me, but The Sundowners Dance fully deserves the distinction! This had so many of my favourite things balanced and blended into the perfect concoction. Cosmic horror, cult-like-vibes in American suburbia, and that age-old universal fear that gets me every time: the fear of growing old and all that comes with it. The Sundowners Dance wraps all of that up in a tight suspenseful narrative with some genuine moments of terror, sparks of levity and a whole lot of emotional core. At its heart, the story explores themes of the grief of outliving your spouse that you can barely remember living without, the fear of losing yourself and your dearest memories to dementia, and the relentless cosmic horror of ever-progressing time and aging. It (incredibly!) wraps all that in a supernatural story without ever cheapening the emotional weight of its themes ánd without using dementia as a cheap plot-device for memory-loss. I genuinely didn’t expect this story to have the emotional impact on me that it had, yet there I was near the end, silently grieving (with) our protagonist…
A story this emotionally impactful couldn’t happen without well-written characters. I always appreciate a little variation on the ‘dumb-teenage-protagonist” cliché in horror. Jerry wasn’t born yesterday (literally); he has enough life-experience and baggage to know when things don’t add up, and acts accordingly. He’s emotionally and literally mature enough to carry the book on his shoulders, and does so brilliantly.
If all of this talk of the stories “emotional core” made you worry whether you’ll be having a good time along the way; Todd Keisling has got you there too. Thanks to the tight pacing and the occasional moment of levity, friendship and humor, I flew through this book in 2 sittings and wished I could’ve started it all over again by the end.

What I didn’t love
If you’ve somehow avoided the Goodreads description and are interested in this book based off my synopsis, or the tagline alone, please don’t go back to read it before you delve into this book. The synopsis gives away two spoiler-y elements about the direction of the plot that I would’ve loved to discover organically through the story.
To the publisher: please consider taking out the mention of worms and the rock in the park and allow us to draw those connections for ourselves.

About the audio:
The narrator does a fantastic job of bringing to life Jerry as a slightly grumpy elderly man with a heart of gold. He balances the hardhitting moments of emotion with suspense and levity brilliantly in his voice acting. I just wish he wouldn’t have pronounced the “ugh, ugh” so literally, and would’ve instead given the creatures a more authentic sounding sound…

Overall, this was one of my favourite horror-reads of the year so far, the ideas of which will linger in my mind for quite a while after flipping the last page.
Many thanks to Shortwave Media and Highbridge Audio for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.