Danielle Vega

Maria Capello is a celebrity chef, cookbook author, TV personality, and supermarket sauce empire — basically the Italian-American Ina Garten of her era, if Ina Garten had allegedly murdered her husband and turned him into meatballs. Twenty years ago, Maria's famous chef husband Damien mysteriously disappeared. No body was ever found. The whispers have never stopped — did she kill him for his recipes? Is there a particularly grisly reason why the body was never recovered? Maria has show more maintained a stony silence for two decades. Now she's ready to tell all in a memoir — but she refuses seven-figure deals from major publishers, signs with a tiny press, and insists on one specific editor: Thea Woods, a woman on the verge of being fired after a career-destroying mistake who has never even met Maria. Thea, baffled but desperate, accepts. She's spirited away to the Capello family's remote upstate New York farm, has her phone confiscated, and is given one chapter of the memoir at a time. The book-within-a-book structure alternates between Thea's present-day chapters at the farm and excerpts from Maria's memoir — complete with actual recipes with names like "Tell Your Cheating Husband You're Still Thinking About It." Section titles include Antipasto, Meat, and Just Desserts. Described as Gone Girl meets The Bear with a dash of cannibalism horror. From the author of Delicate Condition.

[May contain spoilers]
The "secret ingredient" whispers are not unfounded — the Capellos have a very particular family tradition of dealing with men who abuse or betray their women, and Damien is not the only one who has gone missing over the years. The secret ingredient in Maria's famous meatballs is exactly what everyone has been whispering about for twenty years. Thea starts as a fan and an innocent but gradually becomes complicit — she's reshaped by the Capellos' world, absorbs their methods, and by the memoir launch she has become not a victim but a participant and successor. The ending suggests the cycle will continue through Maria's granddaughter Ava. It's feminine rage as culinary tradition, passed down through generations.
What I think: This has your name all over it — dark, propulsive, wildly original premise, sharp twists, unreliable narrators, and genuine horror underneath a glossy surface. The cannibalism reveal will either delight or repulse depending on the day, and the feminist revenge angle is handled with real bite. The format is clever and fun. show less

Fieldnotes:
Omaha, Nebraska, Contemporary (p.2022)
1 Horror Movie Aficionado
1 Final Girl Inspired Angel(?)
1 Mysterious Quirky Dude
1 Incel Manifesto

1 Flash Sideways
2 Rules:
1. Find Out What Really Happened
2. Don't Die

At Least 1 Murder in a Cornfield
1 Death of a Beloved Sister
OR So Many More Deaths
1 Family Torn Apart
1 Podcast in Truly Bad Taste

Surprise!PlotTwists!

The Short Version:
I am NOT a horror/slasher movie fan, but watching Alice try to apply the Final Girl rules to her actual life as she show more runs through a cornfield with someone panting at her heels...while also acknowledging that the audience would be shouting advice at her if she were in a movie - well that is subversive meta fun. And I love subversive meta fun.

Alice Lawrence's life is torn apart when a Halloween party turns into bloodsoaked horror in a corn maze and she sees her beloved sister's death. But all is not always as it seems and when her wish to have accompanied her sister into the corn maze is granted, Alice is transported back in time to a year ago with instructions to figure out what REALLY happened before midnight and she can keep the changes she makes - and Not to Die. But as Alice attempts to warn the others who were on the Kill List, bodies keep dropping and she uncovers a ton of unsavory secrets.

The plot twists kept on coming, and while I anticipated some of them from the outset, I was still kept guessing (and second-guessing myself). Not my usual genre (and this hasn't converted me to horror fandom), but I appreciated the narrative voice, the suspense and the twistiness. show less

What a wild ride this book was.

Generally my ratings don’t stray too far from the average on Goodreads, but while this is sitting at a 3.2 average rating and most of the reviews talk about how bad it was… I really enjoyed this. Maybe it’s because I’m a fan of old, cheesy horror movies and this book reads exactly like an old, cheesy horror movie, but I wasn’t disappointed with it. (A lot of people also didn’t like The Merciless and I thought it was awesome, too).

Our story starts show more out with our MC, Casey, ditching her nice, safe soccer pals to hang out with her wrong side of the tracks pals, including Shana… the girl who got her landed in rehab. Right away the reader can see the dysfunction between Casey and Shana. Half-way through the night, Shana drags Casey, their two friends, Casey’s ex-boyfriend Sam, and his best friend to an underground rave called Survive the Night. When I say underground, I mean they literally go through a manhole to get to it. What starts out as a fun night turns sour when Casey realizes that Shana has drugged her… and that there’s a killer in the tunnels.

While I think I would have enjoyed this one more if it had stuck to a serial killer theme, I really didn’t mind the paranormal/supernatural aspect of the story… and it’s Danielle Vega, at this point I should know to expect the unexpected.

I liked how a lot of things played out in terms of the friendships and relationships as they are trying to escape this thing that’s picking them off one by one. I think the deal between Sam and Casey felt real and the fact that we don’t get closure with the two of them kind of made me like the book more. Again, this could be because I love cheesy horror movies.

The end was a nice twist and it felt very authentic to Vega’s writing style. Honestly, I’d read a sequel to this one.

I recommend this for anyone who likes B-rate horror movies, underground shenanigans, and some pretty awesome death scenes. show less

This is a book with many clever twists and turns, but tying up everything with a bow at the end is ultimately unsatisfying. However, she does craft that bow nicely. The damage done to breastfeeding animals and people is symbolic of the spirit of the novel.