3.75/5

This review is for the audio version of the book, narrated by:
Charlie Thurston
Helen Laser
Eva Kaminsky

This was kind of fun.

This story follows 2 different timelines.

2009: Rachel Galloway is a punky teenager trying to make it through high school with all of your typical teenager issues, cliques, boys, friends stealing boys.

There's also the curse that's been hanging over the town for nearly 100 years causing strange things to happen.

2019: Rachel Durwood is looking into the disappearance of fellow a Renfield County Guard, a private group tasked with keeping the unexplained contained and put down. As she follows his trail it leads back to a small town that's been sealed off, from the modern world, in a remote part of the valley for 10 years.

As each story unfolds they slowly (seriously there were some pacing issues throughout the 1st 40%-ish of the book) start to weave together as Rachel Galloway and her group of friends made decisions that had repercussions that are still felt in Renfield county, 10 years later.

This really was kind of fun. There was a lot of body horror, and the plot was clever and unique. The characters, while not completely likable, were at least interesting.

As I mentioned above, there were definitely some pacing issues (for me at least), and it really made the book feel like it was dragging on in places. Like seriously dragging.

I am hoping the author decides to expand on this world, it really was a fascinating place they created. Worth the time to read.

Galloway’s Gospel by Sam Rebelein is clever, funny, sweet, sad, strange, and, most of all, scary, in both the immediate visceral and existential horrific senses.
Set in Rebelein’s fictional Renfield County where everyone knows weird things happen (like his previous books - also great reads), Galloway’s Gospel primarily takes place across two timelines and with two Rachels at the heart.
In 2009, Rachel Galloway lives in Burnskidde which has only one access road, through a tunnel which connects it to the rest of Renfield County and the world. She works at the Pancake Planet with her best friend, has a solid family life, and gets really bored in history class. Through a combination of bored classroom doodling and the supernatural weirdness of Renfield County, things spun out of control when she accidentally creates a cult and all its associated gods, creatures, and rituals are made real as even the adults start believing the stories about the made-up religion that arose from her pig and bat drawings.
Just ten years later, in 2019, Rachel Durwood is recovering from the trauma of her parents’ death and her own car accident, out of which came her new life with the County Guard which involves investigating the strange occurrences of Renfield County. When she is given a copy of the “The Gray Book, as Retold by Rachel Galloway” left for her by fellow guard Mark, she finds herself making her way through the now mostly collapsed Burnskidde Tunnel in search of him - or at least to discover his fate.
On its own, each Rachel’s story would make a solid novella, and by weaving the two narratives, Rebelein loses none of the impact of each woman’s story but does successfully heighten the tension, while at the same time giving us clues to the upcoming events of each timeline making us want to read that much faster.
Galloway’s Gospel is my favorite of Rebelein’s works to date; the characters are complex and imperfect - one or two are downright abhorrent, the storytelling is the strongest I’ve seen from him with how he addresses faith and grief while not letting up on the horror - it has basically put him on my “auto buy” author’s list, especially as long as he continues to bring us to Renfield County.
I listened to this on audio as well as read the ebook, the production quality and the narrators Charlie Thurston, Helen Laser, and Eva Kaminsky were excellent.
Thank you to NetGalley, William Morrow, and HarperAudio Adult for the advance copies for my honest review.

A cult started by a 16 year old girl gets way out of control and ends up destroying the town of Burnskidde. Although it's chock full of horror, (flesh bats and man-eating pigs), there was no real explanation of how the town could even fall for something this kid made up. And with a villain called "the Botanist", I'll chalk this one up to more plant horror which kind of bores me, TBH. Props, tho, for a creative story.

*Special thanks to Harper Audio and Net Galley for this digital audio e-arc.*

Ahhhh this was so much fun!! Absolutely adored everything about this book, narrators did an amazing job! Thank you NetGalley and publisher for early arc

I should have listened to the reviews but I was looking forward to a weird read. This was just too weird for me to complete

I like weird and this just wasn’t for me. I could not understand what was happening in the 2019 timeline and I didn’t care enough to continue