Mary: An Awakening of Terror

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he adds that he aimed at closing a certain circle - Carrie being on the opening side of reproductive/cycle horror, while Mary representing the middle age/closure. Also, he clearly has a lot of love for “Carrie”, as in his author’s note he explains that Mary is a reimagining of a woman like Carrie who does make it past the night of Prom, and what that would look like. With an acidic sense of humor more barbed than any cactus, Nat Cassidy’s fast-paced Mary is a perfect blend of Stephen King’s Dolores Claiborne and Frank De Felitta’s Audrey Rose.

I relate to or at least respect everything Cassidy brought to the table about how hard and unfair it is to be a woman and an aging woman at that. It's a good time for Mary to leave New York since she just got fired, and found out her rent is going to be so high she won't be able to afford it. So I ran to NetGalley and grabbed the titles I wanted that way, which works out just as well (and far more compact in terms of storage, really).On the flip side, it is brought up far too often and with such depth that it did get a bit boring after a while. This was gory and horrifying and had some images/scenes that will surely stick with me for a very long time.

The cover and the description really sucked me in, and will likely do the same to other women of a certain age (yes that is me!Our main character Mary Mudgett is a middle aged woman who feels invisible, who is experiencing perimenopause, and who is pretty alone in the world. My final recommendation: This is an original, quirky, fun book that no two readers will experience quite the same. Bottom line is, Cassidy's debut horror novel absolutely struck a chord with me and is definitely worth your time; lots of patriarchal anxiety smashed, tons of gore and blood, epic confrontations and ants! Nat played the character of Lloyd in the podcast and also wrote the novelization of Mac Roger's audio scripts, which was published by Tor Books in November 2017 and named one of the best books of the year by NPR.