How to Survive a Slasher / Justine Pucela Winans / Book Review

HOW TO SURVIVE A SLASHER

CJ Smith knows how quickly real life can turn to horror. Afer all, their hometown is Satterville (sometimes called Slasherville), the site of not one but two slasher-style massacres. CJ's dad survived the first attack. Only CJ and their little brother survived the second.

So CJ isn't exactly a stranger to survival skills. They've been drilled since childhood--since the second bloody massacre rocked the town. And thanks to reclusive local writer Moon Satter, CJ has to relive that massacre each and every year when the slasher festival sweeps through town to celebrate Moon Satter's bestselling novels.

But when an unpublished Moon Satter manuscript arrives on CJ's porch just before this year's festival is set to begin, CJ knows something is different. Because this manuscript isn't rehashing the past. No, this manuscript details murders that haven't happened yet... but will. This week, in fact. Unless somebody steps up to stop them.

THOUGHTS

Kapow, what a book! Well, for a very particular audience, anyway. This book is meta horror, and it does a lot of playing with genre, with conventions and stock characters and plot beats. And that's fun. It's a lot of fun. But it's not necessarily written for general audiences. I don't know that I can give a blanket recommendation for this one, but if this type of horror speaks to you, definitely snag this up when it hits the shelves!

PROS

Red Herring	This book had me constantly suspicious. Everybody was doing things and saying things that they shouldn't have. Everybody felt like they could have motive, even if I didn't know what those motives were. There was a lot of cause for pointing fingers and sideways glances. I loved the great misdirects in this book!
Meta Commentary	This book is meta. It is very, very meta. These characters know horror, and it isn't just CJ who knows what's happening next. They know the type of story they're living in, and they know the archetypes they're falling into--and what fate that might lead to. There are a lot of jokes for horror fans and for writers, too, tossed into this book. There's a lot of foreshadowing, very self-aware foreshadowing, and every little bit of way-too-aware groundwork here paid off in the end.
Inevitability	Even though this book is hyper aware of itself and sets its expectations up right at the beginning, it isn't boring to read. This book sets a trap for itself in its own meta-ness, because Winans could easily have written a book that was too on-the-nose, too foreshadowed, to make reading worthwhile. But even though these characters know (literally) what's happening next, in a lot of ways they are unable to stop these events from transpiring. That sort of fated inevitability in this book adds just the right note of despair to the overall plot structure. So the few times the characters manage to break free from their plot-prescribed roles and change fate, it is refreshing... and concerning. In other words, this book toes a fine line and absolutely sticks the landing!

CONS

As meta and self-aware as these characters are, there are still a lot of "traps" that CJ falls into all too easily. And I kind of wish that CJ would have been harder to trick, to lure away from safety and into the plot of a slasher. CJ knows the rules, right? So the rules should have changed, at least a little bit. And the rules do change for CJ... but not nearly as much as I would have expected or hoped.	Same Old, Same Old
Look, as much as I like meta horror, it can quickly veer into the "cringe" territory. And that definitely happens here. Not that everyone will dislike it. I didn't dislike it, even. But there were some lines of dialogue here and there that had me cringing. It was... unfortunate. But forgivable.	Cringe Fest
Maybe it's because this book had me primed to guess suspects all along, but I did guess the twist ending about halfway through. I guessed a lot of wrong directions this plot would take, too, though, so this criticism comes with more than a grain of salt. I did a lot of guessing, and the pieces started clicking too quickly for me. But I don't know that everybody would come into this book with such a suspicious mindset, so... This one might just be me.	Not-So-Twist

Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
8/10

Fans of Stephen Graham Jones's My Heart is a Chainsaw will like this new self-aware slasher. Those who enjoyed Adam Sass's Your Lonely Nights Are Over will love leaping to conclusions in this new small town horror.

Details Publisher: Bloomsbury YA Date: March 18, 2025 Series: N/A Add to Goodreads Buy it HERE

Note: I was provided with an ARC by the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions here are my own.