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This Movie Doesn't End the Way We Want
A woman, haunted by the disappearance of her sister and best friend thirty years ago uncovers the terrifying urban legend behind the last film they watched together, in this chilling riff on the cursed film subgenre by the Bram Stoker award-winning author of Queen of Teeth.
Perfect for fans of Gretchen Felker-Martin and Andrew Joseph White.
In November 1994, three girls visit their local movie theater to see an obscure film. Only one of them is ever seen again.
Thirty years later, Val McQueen has never forgotten the day she lost her little sister and best friend, but she's closed the curtain on it, certain she's moved on despite her parents' resentment and hounding by true crime enthusiasts.
That is until a stranger's murder brings it all screaming back—a terror she's tried to tell herself is only a movie. Enlisting the help of cinephile and former classmate Roxie de la Fontaine to find the film, Val soon realizes that hers is not the only pursuit. Someone, or something involved with the movie is on the hunt, too…
… For the girl who got away all those years ago.
Perfect for fans of Gretchen Felker-Martin and Andrew Joseph White.
In November 1994, three girls visit their local movie theater to see an obscure film. Only one of them is ever seen again.
Thirty years later, Val McQueen has never forgotten the day she lost her little sister and best friend, but she's closed the curtain on it, certain she's moved on despite her parents' resentment and hounding by true crime enthusiasts.
That is until a stranger's murder brings it all screaming back—a terror she's tried to tell herself is only a movie. Enlisting the help of cinephile and former classmate Roxie de la Fontaine to find the film, Val soon realizes that hers is not the only pursuit. Someone, or something involved with the movie is on the hunt, too…
… For the girl who got away all those years ago.
320 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 15, 2026
About the author
Hailey Piper
107 books1,125 followersHailey Piper is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Queen of Teeth, A Game in Yellow, Teenage Girls Can Be Demons, A Light Most Hateful, The Worm and His Kings, No Gods for Drowning, and other books of dark fiction.
She is also the author of over 120 short stories appearing in Weird Tales, Pseudopod, The End of the World As We Know It, and many more publications. Her non-fiction appears in Writer's Digest, Tor Nightfire, CrimeReads, and Library Journal. Find her at www.haileypiper.com.
She is also the author of over 120 short stories appearing in Weird Tales, Pseudopod, The End of the World As We Know It, and many more publications. Her non-fiction appears in Writer's Digest, Tor Nightfire, CrimeReads, and Library Journal. Find her at www.haileypiper.com.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 175 reviews
September 9, 2026
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this eARC.
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If you're a cinephile, this is the book for you. The atmosphere of the movies is brilliant, and it's where the book really shines. The descriptions are often really well written, and I'm sure there are even more movie references that people will get that I managed to miss. I'm never too scared by horror in books, but the horror in this is definitely inventive and interesting to read about.
I liked our main character, Val, a lot, and I was rooting for her basically the entire time. Her life sucks so incredibly bad and I was waiting for her awful parents to get their comeuppance. I didn't find myself enjoying any of the other side characters too much, not even our joint POV character, so I was pretty singularly focused on Val the entire time.
PUBLICATION DATE: SEPTEMBER 15 2026
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If you're a cinephile, this is the book for you. The atmosphere of the movies is brilliant, and it's where the book really shines. The descriptions are often really well written, and I'm sure there are even more movie references that people will get that I managed to miss. I'm never too scared by horror in books, but the horror in this is definitely inventive and interesting to read about.
I liked our main character, Val, a lot, and I was rooting for her basically the entire time. Her life sucks so incredibly bad and I was waiting for her awful parents to get their comeuppance. I didn't find myself enjoying any of the other side characters too much, not even our joint POV character, so I was pretty singularly focused on Val the entire time.
PUBLICATION DATE: SEPTEMBER 15 2026
June 11, 2026
This is my first Hailey Piper book and it was immensely creative. I love all the LGBTQIA representation and appreciate the diverse characters. The haunted movie (there is no movie) premise always lures me in like a fish to water. This one was well beyond what I expected. I adore the creativity of the world of the film and toad man. I will say, I found the prose a bit difficult to get through. I’m not sure why, it just didn’t flow for me the way books typically do. The sentence structure was clunky for me and I found myself frequently re-reading passages to comprehend their meaning. Otherwise, I highly recommend!
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.
June 2, 2026
I fear the Toad Man and I were simply not meant to be.
The premise had me immediately. A book about a haunted movie is basically like catnip for me. However I spent most of this book waiting for something to happen. The pacing is tediously slow and there honestly wasn’t enough happening in between to keep me interested.
I also never really bought into some of the story’s logic. Val’s parents hating her so much after what happened felt strange to me, especially considering the circumstances, and Colette figuring out the Toad Man’s deal felt way too convenient. There were several moments where I just had to accept something because the book clearly wasn’t interested in explaining it further.
And then there’s the Toad Man himself. I’m sorry, like… 😭 I know horror can be weird and absurd and I’m usually very much here for that but something about this particular curse made the whole thing feel more silly than sinister.
A thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley for providing me a copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased and honest review.
The premise had me immediately. A book about a haunted movie is basically like catnip for me. However I spent most of this book waiting for something to happen. The pacing is tediously slow and there honestly wasn’t enough happening in between to keep me interested.
I also never really bought into some of the story’s logic. Val’s parents hating her so much after what happened felt strange to me, especially considering the circumstances, and Colette figuring out the Toad Man’s deal felt way too convenient. There were several moments where I just had to accept something because the book clearly wasn’t interested in explaining it further.
And then there’s the Toad Man himself. I’m sorry, like… 😭 I know horror can be weird and absurd and I’m usually very much here for that but something about this particular curse made the whole thing feel more silly than sinister.
A thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley for providing me a copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased and honest review.
September 25, 2026
Not Available on Betamax.
TL;DR: Hailey Piper has built a movie that isn’t there and made it the scariest thing in the building. The 1994 opening is the best forty pages of horror this year: a sticky floor, a licorice straw, a man in a coat one row closer each time you look. A cosmic-horror love letter to cinema that ruins the multiplex on purpose.
I read this in two nights with the box fan going and both mornings I got up and could not look at the television. That is a compliment. The set is a Zenith my wife left me in the divorce because it weighs more than she does, and I had never once been afraid of it before.
Here is what Piper has done. She has built a movie that isn’t there. Blood-Curse of the Toad Man, late seventies, a swamp, a detective with sideburns, a woman in a red dress, a rubber monster with plastic eyes, a song sung by women who sound like children and mean every word of it. No distributor. No VHS, no Betamax, no Anchor Bay disc, no Scream Factory reissue, no soundtrack on Varèse Sarabande, nothing in the ledgers of a Louisiana town where the cheap crews used to shoot before 1983. An IMDb page with nothing on it. And one night only, November 1994, it played Auditorium 4 of a four-screen brick pile in a strip mall called the Morrows Quadruplex, and three girls went in.
Valerie McQueen is fifteen. She has a twenty and some ones out of her mother’s purse. She has her sister Ash, ten, in a pink coat over a D.A.R.E. shirt, and her friend Colette, sixteen, who wants Interview with the Vampire and is not going to get it. The Lion King is back on the marquee because the manager needs a moneymaker and it’s too early for The Santa Clause. Sour Patch Kids. Root beer. Licorice for straws. A big man in a crushed hat and a coat with no shape to it comes in late and sits several rows back. Then fewer rows back. There’s a wet sound behind them, lips. The girls laugh at the Toad Man when he finally shows, and then they quit laughing, and the root beer tastes like a pond. Valerie goes to the bathroom. When she comes back there are two purses and two cups and nobody, and by the time her parents get done with the detectives the little gold lights by the door are lit around Tom Cruise instead. I sat in a theater like that in 1994. I know that floor. So does Piper. She knows the ice sliver that comes up the licorice and hits your teeth. Those forty pages are the best horror I’ve read this year and I have read the ones with the blurbs on them.
Thirty years. Val now, forty-five, two hundred and thirty pounds of woman with skulls and roses up both arms, inking strangers at a place called Black Vine Body Art an hour from Morrows, living in a basement outside Baltimore with one slot of window at the top. She hasn’t been in a theater since college. She has two prayers, only the moment and none of my business, and she says them the way a Baptist says grace, fast, to get to the food. On Christmas Eve she wrecks two men in a bar for a stranger in a pink winter coat and does not let herself know why the coat matters, and Piper does not know it for her, and that’s when I sat up. A true-crime podcaster books a tattoo and asks about 1994 with the needle still in her thigh, and Val gets up and leaves the roses half done. I loved this woman. I don’t say it about many people in books. She’s got a curtain in her head and something walking around behind it, and the author leaves the curtain shut a long time. That is discipline. Most of them can’t.
Then Roxie. Roxie de la Fontaine was the manager’s girl, fifteen the same night, and handed Val a bag of popcorn with no salt on it while the cops had her parents in the office. Now she’s outside D.C. with a wife who’s forever off to London on government business and a Rottweiler named Fella, and she hunts lost media for old men who want a candy jingle back from when they were six. She thinks she’s Denzel in Devil in a Blue Dress for about a page and tells herself to quit it. She knows things. Robert Shaye driving film cans around in his trunk before New Line was anything. A silent King in Yellow that might have burned. The spider pit they never shot for the ’33 Kong. I’d have listened to her all night on a porch. When she was nine, Halloween, in a Freddy Krueger costume with a pink coat over it, a man with a gun in a car window told her to get in, and she said I’m the wrong one, and said it again, and he drove off, and she has never in her life known what she meant. Piper puts that at a plastic table outside a closed frozen yogurt shop and walks away from it. I’ve said it twice myself since. It works.
The scare in this book is a sound. A slurp. A synthesizer keeping a pulse. That rhyme. Pond water in the soda. And a room at the Marriott on Woodland Drive, 313, torn to splinters one night, bed frame through the mattress, laptop and phone crushed, something dark on the other bed, and when Val knocks again a father opens up with his little girl behind him and there isn’t a scratch on the wall. Piper does that more than once. The first time, it stopped the beer halfway to my mouth.
Whether the movie exists is the question, and Roxie changes her mind about it, and that is all I’m telling you. Except this. The answer comes at a kitchen table at one in the morning over a black pepper ham sandwich with the pickles sliced flat, and it comes by way of a butterfly, and it is the truest page in the book, and I put the book down and went and stood in the yard. A real idea. Then she says it again. And again. There’s a four-word sentence in italics that comes around ten times by my count, and by the seventh I was saying it along with her like a hymn I’d gotten tired of. She’s got a pond and a fish and a sock puppet and a tongue all doing the work one butterfly already did. The middle is phone calls. Reddit, a Discord stakeout, a fellow named Barnaby who has read too many books about things from other dimensions and will tell you so. Kate the podcaster is drawn with a pencil and made to carry a piano. The similes get loose and run, a saffron bob turning into a tense sunrise, two detectives turning into an amoeba with a badge, and then she’ll hit one square, that ice sliver, and you forgive her the others. And the last act gets big. Very big. The most frightening thing this book owns is a man in a coat one row behind you, breathing, and for a stretch near the end it forgets that.
None of it touches the November. Piper wrote 1994 as one long piece and Daniel Carpenter, her editor at Titan, made her chop it up and spread it through the present, and you can see the cuts, and he was right, because it lands the way the past lands on Val, in the middle of something else. Her mother’s hand on her shoulder at the back door. Her father at the kitchen table with one candle the night before she turns sixteen. Colette’s family at the curb on the first anniversary, holding hands, watching the building like it might apologize. Roxie gets the line I wrote on my hand: what kind of father isn’t relieved to see his little girl is alive.
Piper‘s from New York and lives in Maryland with her wife. She came up through the little presses, The Worm and His Kings, Benny Rose the Cannibal King, and then Queen of Teeth took the Bram Stoker for a first novel in 2021, and Titan has had her since: A Light Most Hateful, All the Hearts You Eat, the collection Teenage Girls Can Be Demons, a Stoker finalist this year. Saga put out her King in Yellow book, A Game in Yellow, last August. She has said Lovecraft was short on “consideration for the perspective of the other,” which I read as a note she left herself. This one started as “Toad Man, Toad Man,” a story she wrote in 2019 for a Kevin J. Anderson anthology called Monsters, Movies & Mayhem. She’s said she wanted horror out of joy this time instead of out of hurt: “I love going to the movies, so why not use horror to ruin that a little?” The book is dedicated to Stan Winston. In the acknowledgments she says that while she was drafting it in 2024 the monster picked up a real-world echo in the machine that pretends it’s art, and that she wrote every word herself. She says it the way Roxie would say it. Mad.
Colette wanted the vampires. If they’d gone to the vampires, something was playing in Auditorium 4 anyway, to an empty room or to somebody else’s little sister. Piper never says which. I sat on the steps with that until the streetlight came on. Then I went in and unplugged the Zenith.
TL;DR: Hailey Piper has built a movie that isn’t there and made it the scariest thing in the building. The 1994 opening is the best forty pages of horror this year: a sticky floor, a licorice straw, a man in a coat one row closer each time you look. A cosmic-horror love letter to cinema that ruins the multiplex on purpose.
I read this in two nights with the box fan going and both mornings I got up and could not look at the television. That is a compliment. The set is a Zenith my wife left me in the divorce because it weighs more than she does, and I had never once been afraid of it before.
Here is what Piper has done. She has built a movie that isn’t there. Blood-Curse of the Toad Man, late seventies, a swamp, a detective with sideburns, a woman in a red dress, a rubber monster with plastic eyes, a song sung by women who sound like children and mean every word of it. No distributor. No VHS, no Betamax, no Anchor Bay disc, no Scream Factory reissue, no soundtrack on Varèse Sarabande, nothing in the ledgers of a Louisiana town where the cheap crews used to shoot before 1983. An IMDb page with nothing on it. And one night only, November 1994, it played Auditorium 4 of a four-screen brick pile in a strip mall called the Morrows Quadruplex, and three girls went in.
Valerie McQueen is fifteen. She has a twenty and some ones out of her mother’s purse. She has her sister Ash, ten, in a pink coat over a D.A.R.E. shirt, and her friend Colette, sixteen, who wants Interview with the Vampire and is not going to get it. The Lion King is back on the marquee because the manager needs a moneymaker and it’s too early for The Santa Clause. Sour Patch Kids. Root beer. Licorice for straws. A big man in a crushed hat and a coat with no shape to it comes in late and sits several rows back. Then fewer rows back. There’s a wet sound behind them, lips. The girls laugh at the Toad Man when he finally shows, and then they quit laughing, and the root beer tastes like a pond. Valerie goes to the bathroom. When she comes back there are two purses and two cups and nobody, and by the time her parents get done with the detectives the little gold lights by the door are lit around Tom Cruise instead. I sat in a theater like that in 1994. I know that floor. So does Piper. She knows the ice sliver that comes up the licorice and hits your teeth. Those forty pages are the best horror I’ve read this year and I have read the ones with the blurbs on them.
Thirty years. Val now, forty-five, two hundred and thirty pounds of woman with skulls and roses up both arms, inking strangers at a place called Black Vine Body Art an hour from Morrows, living in a basement outside Baltimore with one slot of window at the top. She hasn’t been in a theater since college. She has two prayers, only the moment and none of my business, and she says them the way a Baptist says grace, fast, to get to the food. On Christmas Eve she wrecks two men in a bar for a stranger in a pink winter coat and does not let herself know why the coat matters, and Piper does not know it for her, and that’s when I sat up. A true-crime podcaster books a tattoo and asks about 1994 with the needle still in her thigh, and Val gets up and leaves the roses half done. I loved this woman. I don’t say it about many people in books. She’s got a curtain in her head and something walking around behind it, and the author leaves the curtain shut a long time. That is discipline. Most of them can’t.
Then Roxie. Roxie de la Fontaine was the manager’s girl, fifteen the same night, and handed Val a bag of popcorn with no salt on it while the cops had her parents in the office. Now she’s outside D.C. with a wife who’s forever off to London on government business and a Rottweiler named Fella, and she hunts lost media for old men who want a candy jingle back from when they were six. She thinks she’s Denzel in Devil in a Blue Dress for about a page and tells herself to quit it. She knows things. Robert Shaye driving film cans around in his trunk before New Line was anything. A silent King in Yellow that might have burned. The spider pit they never shot for the ’33 Kong. I’d have listened to her all night on a porch. When she was nine, Halloween, in a Freddy Krueger costume with a pink coat over it, a man with a gun in a car window told her to get in, and she said I’m the wrong one, and said it again, and he drove off, and she has never in her life known what she meant. Piper puts that at a plastic table outside a closed frozen yogurt shop and walks away from it. I’ve said it twice myself since. It works.
The scare in this book is a sound. A slurp. A synthesizer keeping a pulse. That rhyme. Pond water in the soda. And a room at the Marriott on Woodland Drive, 313, torn to splinters one night, bed frame through the mattress, laptop and phone crushed, something dark on the other bed, and when Val knocks again a father opens up with his little girl behind him and there isn’t a scratch on the wall. Piper does that more than once. The first time, it stopped the beer halfway to my mouth.
Whether the movie exists is the question, and Roxie changes her mind about it, and that is all I’m telling you. Except this. The answer comes at a kitchen table at one in the morning over a black pepper ham sandwich with the pickles sliced flat, and it comes by way of a butterfly, and it is the truest page in the book, and I put the book down and went and stood in the yard. A real idea. Then she says it again. And again. There’s a four-word sentence in italics that comes around ten times by my count, and by the seventh I was saying it along with her like a hymn I’d gotten tired of. She’s got a pond and a fish and a sock puppet and a tongue all doing the work one butterfly already did. The middle is phone calls. Reddit, a Discord stakeout, a fellow named Barnaby who has read too many books about things from other dimensions and will tell you so. Kate the podcaster is drawn with a pencil and made to carry a piano. The similes get loose and run, a saffron bob turning into a tense sunrise, two detectives turning into an amoeba with a badge, and then she’ll hit one square, that ice sliver, and you forgive her the others. And the last act gets big. Very big. The most frightening thing this book owns is a man in a coat one row behind you, breathing, and for a stretch near the end it forgets that.
None of it touches the November. Piper wrote 1994 as one long piece and Daniel Carpenter, her editor at Titan, made her chop it up and spread it through the present, and you can see the cuts, and he was right, because it lands the way the past lands on Val, in the middle of something else. Her mother’s hand on her shoulder at the back door. Her father at the kitchen table with one candle the night before she turns sixteen. Colette’s family at the curb on the first anniversary, holding hands, watching the building like it might apologize. Roxie gets the line I wrote on my hand: what kind of father isn’t relieved to see his little girl is alive.
Piper‘s from New York and lives in Maryland with her wife. She came up through the little presses, The Worm and His Kings, Benny Rose the Cannibal King, and then Queen of Teeth took the Bram Stoker for a first novel in 2021, and Titan has had her since: A Light Most Hateful, All the Hearts You Eat, the collection Teenage Girls Can Be Demons, a Stoker finalist this year. Saga put out her King in Yellow book, A Game in Yellow, last August. She has said Lovecraft was short on “consideration for the perspective of the other,” which I read as a note she left herself. This one started as “Toad Man, Toad Man,” a story she wrote in 2019 for a Kevin J. Anderson anthology called Monsters, Movies & Mayhem. She’s said she wanted horror out of joy this time instead of out of hurt: “I love going to the movies, so why not use horror to ruin that a little?” The book is dedicated to Stan Winston. In the acknowledgments she says that while she was drafting it in 2024 the monster picked up a real-world echo in the machine that pretends it’s art, and that she wrote every word herself. She says it the way Roxie would say it. Mad.
Colette wanted the vampires. If they’d gone to the vampires, something was playing in Auditorium 4 anyway, to an empty room or to somebody else’s little sister. Piper never says which. I sat on the steps with that until the streetlight came on. Then I went in and unplugged the Zenith.
September 17, 2026
When she’s a teen, Val’s younger sister and best friend both vanish from a movie theater while watching an obscure horror film. Thirty years later, people start disappearing again and Val joins up with a woman she went to high school with to find out what exactly happened thirty years ago, and why it’s happening still. I liked the atmosphere of this - Piper does such a great job centering the story on movies and the experience of theaters. Even though most of the novel is set in 2024, there’s a nostalgic feel to Piper’s descriptions of watching movies as a kid, which felt true to my own experiences, at least. I also enjoyed the creaturous villain and thought the lore was well-developed, if a little strong on the “tell vs. show” explanations between our two leads. What I didn’t like is what I haven’t liked about Piper’s past work I’ve read : her writing’s a bit too ponderous, and it causes the story to get bogged down in endless over-description. This is horror, yes, and there are some great scenes of tension and grossness, but overall it’s very slow. I also find her dialogue quite stilted, which makes connecting with the characters frustrating. People don’t monologue at one another like this! They don’t speak in weird aphorisms that are always on the tip of their tongue, either. It just makes the story feel less lived-in, I think. (Thank you to Titan Books & NetGalley for the e-arc)
May 25, 2026
Thanks to Titan Books and Net galley for a copy of this arc!
There have been a slew of cursed media books to come out in the past decade and This Movie Doesn't End the Way we Want is my favorite.
Maybe it’s because this premise, the killing hook, would trap me 100% of the time. My favorite way to consume horror is by going in completely blind, so a limited run of a horror movie with a silly name that I’ve never heard of? Sign me UP.
This concept is a little silly, but that silliness is in itself a lure that pulls you into a complicated family dynamic and nuanced take on survivors guilt and childhood trauma.
Piper seems more in touch with the changing technology trends of the time. Both the film projectors and talk of tiktok feel natural. There are some references that I think ultimately will date this book but I got all of them so it even more made this feel like horror built for ME.
I’m really liking Hailey Piper and I have concrete plans to read as much as I can this year.
Pick this one up if you like cursed media, serious books pretending to be silly and horror that feels like screaming in a cornfield at a sky that only looks like a sky.
Most importantly. Remember. Somehow? Heartbreak feels good in a place like this.
There have been a slew of cursed media books to come out in the past decade and This Movie Doesn't End the Way we Want is my favorite.
Maybe it’s because this premise, the killing hook, would trap me 100% of the time. My favorite way to consume horror is by going in completely blind, so a limited run of a horror movie with a silly name that I’ve never heard of? Sign me UP.
This concept is a little silly, but that silliness is in itself a lure that pulls you into a complicated family dynamic and nuanced take on survivors guilt and childhood trauma.
Piper seems more in touch with the changing technology trends of the time. Both the film projectors and talk of tiktok feel natural. There are some references that I think ultimately will date this book but I got all of them so it even more made this feel like horror built for ME.
I’m really liking Hailey Piper and I have concrete plans to read as much as I can this year.
Pick this one up if you like cursed media, serious books pretending to be silly and horror that feels like screaming in a cornfield at a sky that only looks like a sky.
Most importantly. Remember. Somehow? Heartbreak feels good in a place like this.
September 15, 2026
Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of
This Movie Doesn't End the Way We Want.
This is my first book by the author, and I loved the premise.
It’s a fresh take on the cursed-film trope: a movie that may not exist in our reality but lives on another plane, feeding on its viewers.
** Minor our reality non-spoilers ahead **
Two women, Val and Roxie become personally invested in discovering if this film truly exists; the former because the film disappeared her little sister and BFF and the latter is tasked with locating the obscure film.
Roxie soon becomes obsessed with finding this not-quite-film — the Blood-Curse of the Toad Man — and I understand why she can’t let it go once she starts down that path.
I can't let go of certain things too, especially a mystery.
The narrative builds a creeping sense of dread mixed with unreality and an unsettling atmosphere that kept me engaged as people around her begin disappearing, just as they did decades earlier.
The novel is a good blend of horror, mystery, and urban-legend, raising new questions and building suspense.
I also appreciated the book’s commentary on how the theater-going experience is changing—how streaming dominates, how audience demographics and viewing habits have shifted, and which genres now draw crowds.
My main issue was Val: she’s wracked by survivor’s guilt and periodically lashes out in violence.
Her parents are losers and a couple of the worst parents ever; unsupportive, insensitive and they blame Val for her sister's disappearance.
Their appearance at the end was an unpleasant surprise but I was happy they got their comeuppance.
My other issue was I wasn’t frightened by the Toad Man — I’m just not scared of toads (Freddy Krueger, yes; Toad Man, no).
I was really intrigued by the film’s backstory and wanted more exposition: who created it and why, where and when did it originate, how far back do the disappearances go, and what patterns, if any—locations, victim profiles, or rituals—connect the incidents.
But I just love a good mystery with my horror.
This is my first book by the author, and I loved the premise.
It’s a fresh take on the cursed-film trope: a movie that may not exist in our reality but lives on another plane, feeding on its viewers.
** Minor our reality non-spoilers ahead **
Two women, Val and Roxie become personally invested in discovering if this film truly exists; the former because the film disappeared her little sister and BFF and the latter is tasked with locating the obscure film.
Roxie soon becomes obsessed with finding this not-quite-film — the Blood-Curse of the Toad Man — and I understand why she can’t let it go once she starts down that path.
I can't let go of certain things too, especially a mystery.
The narrative builds a creeping sense of dread mixed with unreality and an unsettling atmosphere that kept me engaged as people around her begin disappearing, just as they did decades earlier.
The novel is a good blend of horror, mystery, and urban-legend, raising new questions and building suspense.
I also appreciated the book’s commentary on how the theater-going experience is changing—how streaming dominates, how audience demographics and viewing habits have shifted, and which genres now draw crowds.
My main issue was Val: she’s wracked by survivor’s guilt and periodically lashes out in violence.
Her parents are losers and a couple of the worst parents ever; unsupportive, insensitive and they blame Val for her sister's disappearance.
Their appearance at the end was an unpleasant surprise but I was happy they got their comeuppance.
My other issue was I wasn’t frightened by the Toad Man — I’m just not scared of toads (Freddy Krueger, yes; Toad Man, no).
I was really intrigued by the film’s backstory and wanted more exposition: who created it and why, where and when did it originate, how far back do the disappearances go, and what patterns, if any—locations, victim profiles, or rituals—connect the incidents.
But I just love a good mystery with my horror.
August 25, 2026
Hailey Piper’s books are always imaginative and interesting and this book is no different! I was immediately pulled into the story when it opens up in 1994 and two girls have gone missing from a movie theater….and one got away. But got away from what exactly? The following pages lead us up to the 2024 as we follow the girl who got away as an adult and all that she gone through since that fateful day at the movies. Cursed films have a certain draw to them, it’s the mysterious urban legend-ness of it all. This book really feeds into that mystery and what keeps them alive. I so enjoyed the journey with the characters as we figure out what is going on. It was rich with emotion and feeling for the characters with some genuine spookiness (hello the Toad Man song??). I didn’t want to put it down while reading! I highly recommend!
*thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this for review
*thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this for review
September 15, 2026
I am finding this book incredibly hard to review. I don’t have anything necessarily bad to say about it, but at the same time, I don’t have anything I absolutely loved about it either.
There were definitely moments when I enjoyed reading it, but they were usually followed by stretches where the storyline dragged. The plot itself was unlike anything I’ve ever read. However, I went into this one with pretty high hopes because the whole haunted movie concept sounded like it could be such a fun time, and it didn’t go in the direction I was hoping for.
There were parts that were really well written, while other aspects felt like they were bordering on a little too cheesy for me. So I found myself constantly going back and forth on how I felt about it.
Overall, it was a fun and somewhat entertaining read. I think the right person could really enjoy this one. Who that person is? I honestly couldn’t tell you but I don’t think that person is me.
Ultimately, I’m giving this 3 stars because the actual writing kept me engaged enough to keep going and made me want to see the story through to the end, even when I wasn’t completely sold on where it was going.
Definitely an interesting one, just not one I think was quite for me.
There were definitely moments when I enjoyed reading it, but they were usually followed by stretches where the storyline dragged. The plot itself was unlike anything I’ve ever read. However, I went into this one with pretty high hopes because the whole haunted movie concept sounded like it could be such a fun time, and it didn’t go in the direction I was hoping for.
There were parts that were really well written, while other aspects felt like they were bordering on a little too cheesy for me. So I found myself constantly going back and forth on how I felt about it.
Overall, it was a fun and somewhat entertaining read. I think the right person could really enjoy this one. Who that person is? I honestly couldn’t tell you but I don’t think that person is me.
Ultimately, I’m giving this 3 stars because the actual writing kept me engaged enough to keep going and made me want to see the story through to the end, even when I wasn’t completely sold on where it was going.
Definitely an interesting one, just not one I think was quite for me.
Want to Read
August 12, 2026ARC received! Thank you, Titan Books!!!
October 28, 2026
Just okay. I love the cursed film trope and I think this was an interesting take on it, but the book just wasn’t as engaging or as good as I hoped.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
3.5 stars
The cursed film concept is such a compelling one. I love the idea of a limited horror film that disappears and is only mentioned in back channels. Of how this story that begins with a teenager hiding from her home life and finds something impossible and disturbing that steals her best friend and younger sister.
Val spends the next several decades doing everything she can to avoid thinking about what happened. Until she can’t anymore. She was an unconventional character - prickly, fists first, desperate to stay in the moment so that the memories can’t touch her - and whilst I liked her I didn’t connect as much as I wanted to.
The haunted movie was interesting, a great concept and well delivered. I wish it was a little more scary, it had more of a mystery feel until the end. Though the cinema scenes were delightfully creepy and tense with the Toad man. The lore behind him and what he actually was cool and the whole book just felt like an appreciation of cinema and movies. The whole production and the feeling and magic movies can make, a reminder that fast content consumption on streaming has lost something.
I will say I found the writing slightly harder to digest but I couldn’t say why. It should have read normally but it was slower to work through for me.
Overall a cool concept and interesting story, and the love, care and inevitable twisting of the movie and how that felt was definitely a highlight. I just wish I’d been able to connect a bit more
Thank you Titan books for the proof copy. All thoughts are my own.
The cursed film concept is such a compelling one. I love the idea of a limited horror film that disappears and is only mentioned in back channels. Of how this story that begins with a teenager hiding from her home life and finds something impossible and disturbing that steals her best friend and younger sister.
Val spends the next several decades doing everything she can to avoid thinking about what happened. Until she can’t anymore. She was an unconventional character - prickly, fists first, desperate to stay in the moment so that the memories can’t touch her - and whilst I liked her I didn’t connect as much as I wanted to.
The haunted movie was interesting, a great concept and well delivered. I wish it was a little more scary, it had more of a mystery feel until the end. Though the cinema scenes were delightfully creepy and tense with the Toad man. The lore behind him and what he actually was cool and the whole book just felt like an appreciation of cinema and movies. The whole production and the feeling and magic movies can make, a reminder that fast content consumption on streaming has lost something.
I will say I found the writing slightly harder to digest but I couldn’t say why. It should have read normally but it was slower to work through for me.
Overall a cool concept and interesting story, and the love, care and inevitable twisting of the movie and how that felt was definitely a highlight. I just wish I’d been able to connect a bit more
Thank you Titan books for the proof copy. All thoughts are my own.
June 22, 2026
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!
I am huge fan of lost media horror when it’s done right. There’s something about a sense of seeing something and being one of the few witnesses or indeed the only witness that we have a fascination with. It’s definitely an eerie setting, and I loved the preamble for this novel.
The concept of the ‘Toad Man’ is not so much scary as it’s a very direct homage to a very specific brand of horror film. I think that it could have been scarier, but I also totally get what the author was going for. The scene in the cinema was done in the most lurking way that it possibly could have been done.
I think where this book fell over for me was with the characterisation of the main characters. Once we got past the cinema, while I found it interesting, I just think that there could have been more motivation. There was something that just felt a bit two-dimensional about them, and I didn’t feel I enjoyed reading about them too much.
The plot was definitely well done, but I think there could have been better people who could have drawn it through as characters. There’s a lot of potential here, and I just wish I liked those who were playing it out a little bit more.
I am huge fan of lost media horror when it’s done right. There’s something about a sense of seeing something and being one of the few witnesses or indeed the only witness that we have a fascination with. It’s definitely an eerie setting, and I loved the preamble for this novel.
The concept of the ‘Toad Man’ is not so much scary as it’s a very direct homage to a very specific brand of horror film. I think that it could have been scarier, but I also totally get what the author was going for. The scene in the cinema was done in the most lurking way that it possibly could have been done.
I think where this book fell over for me was with the characterisation of the main characters. Once we got past the cinema, while I found it interesting, I just think that there could have been more motivation. There was something that just felt a bit two-dimensional about them, and I didn’t feel I enjoyed reading about them too much.
The plot was definitely well done, but I think there could have been better people who could have drawn it through as characters. There’s a lot of potential here, and I just wish I liked those who were playing it out a little bit more.
October 7, 2026
3.5 stars.
The narrator for this book did an amazing job. There were a couple of times when he was doing the "chant" that I got properly chilled.
Here we meet Val McQueen, our protagonist who lost her little sister back in 1994 at a movie theater. Flash forward to thirty years later, another murder occurs and brings the crime of the past back into her orbit. Was it only a movie or something more sinister? Is the movie even a movie?!
Love love the atmosphere of this read. If you're a cinephile, pay attention and you'll find a lot of tid bits to your liking. The relationship between Val and her parents is crazy and I feel for Val so much. And then, of course, we have the Toad Man. A very unique take on a "villain" and I went back and forth on how I felt about it overall. LIke i said, I did get creeped out a couple of times and I always love that.
Hailey writes with a prose that draws you in and I think that the slow (at times) atmosphere worked for me via audio. You want the multiplex ruined for you? Perhaps this is the book to read. Cosmic horror is a bit of a jambalaya for me - some things I really love, and others get me lost in the sauce. But nothing can take away from Hailey's talent and bringing a story to life.
The narrator for this book did an amazing job. There were a couple of times when he was doing the "chant" that I got properly chilled.
Here we meet Val McQueen, our protagonist who lost her little sister back in 1994 at a movie theater. Flash forward to thirty years later, another murder occurs and brings the crime of the past back into her orbit. Was it only a movie or something more sinister? Is the movie even a movie?!
Love love the atmosphere of this read. If you're a cinephile, pay attention and you'll find a lot of tid bits to your liking. The relationship between Val and her parents is crazy and I feel for Val so much. And then, of course, we have the Toad Man. A very unique take on a "villain" and I went back and forth on how I felt about it overall. LIke i said, I did get creeped out a couple of times and I always love that.
Hailey writes with a prose that draws you in and I think that the slow (at times) atmosphere worked for me via audio. You want the multiplex ruined for you? Perhaps this is the book to read. Cosmic horror is a bit of a jambalaya for me - some things I really love, and others get me lost in the sauce. But nothing can take away from Hailey's talent and bringing a story to life.
August 31, 2026
Did I have to stop reading at night while my fiancé was gone because I was so creeped out? Yes. Did I have to force myself to not skim the unnecessarily dense climax that lost my interest almost entirely? Also yes.
I love Hailey Piper and am certain she is going to blow up one day, but this didn’t do it for me like her previous works.
The first half had me riveted despite my initial disappointment in a toad man villain. Protagonist Val, her best friend, and her sister wander into a B-movie about a road man stalking a small town. Two of the girls mysteriously disappear, and we carry on to follow the shell of a person Val has grown into. With the arrival of a pretty stranger at a bar, Val is forced to face the curse from her teenage years.
There are a lot of creepy scenes with vivid descriptions of swamp sounds and tension as unknown supernatural villains commence stalking Val and her close friends. Once the cursed media is found again, the book lost me. I struggled with the long winded character explanations of what was happening, not ever feeling completely satisfied with my understanding of events.
I will read everything Piper puts out, but this wasn’t quite for me.
September 13, 2026
A haunted movie that kills people? Count me the fuck in. I really enjoyed the lore in this book, set up so well in the opener and imagining yourself in that cinema, the visceral tension and growing unease was expertly done. I was captivated and itching to know more, and it was a fun ride for the majority. Unfortunately, the last 20%, until like the very end showdown lost me, and I did expect a bit more overt horror, or for it to be more gruesome? It was more of a mystery than anything in the end. The Toad Man was creative, and there were many evocative scenes, but as it was a slower pace that deflated some of the tension. I do think it would've benefited from being an audiobook, especially for the frequent use of song.
I did enjoy the characterisation, with them compelling enough for the story and balanced the themes well; some I liked, some I hated. The impact of a loss, and trauma for an unexplainable event, alongside blame and survivors guilt carry us through the modern day plot in a realistic way.
Overall, this was enjoyable but more a slower mystery than overt horror. Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.
I did enjoy the characterisation, with them compelling enough for the story and balanced the themes well; some I liked, some I hated. The impact of a loss, and trauma for an unexplainable event, alongside blame and survivors guilt carry us through the modern day plot in a realistic way.
Overall, this was enjoyable but more a slower mystery than overt horror. Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.
October 17, 2026
If you love movies, you'll love this. An evil, haunted movie that may or may not exist, missing children, traumatised adults, plenty of queer representation, plenty of film references, a nostalgic nod to horror movies of the 70s and, if you listen to this on audio, a little film ditty that is now stuck in my head forever: I can't not hear, "Toad Man, Toad Man...".
I really loved Val and thought she was a brilliant and well developed character. The writing was generally very good and the start of the book - set in the 90s - was such a great intro and was really very well done. Occasionally I didn't always follow what was being said though and felt a bit confused.
This is my second book by Hailey and I really do love how much she loves film and cinema, especially the old skool stuff, and the creative ways she brings this into her novels.
I really loved Val and thought she was a brilliant and well developed character. The writing was generally very good and the start of the book - set in the 90s - was such a great intro and was really very well done. Occasionally I didn't always follow what was being said though and felt a bit confused.
This is my second book by Hailey and I really do love how much she loves film and cinema, especially the old skool stuff, and the creative ways she brings this into her novels.
July 22, 2026
ARC review
I don’t enjoy this as much as I had hoped. I do think it would be a really good film noir in black and white. I’m a big fan of Hitchcock-esq things and this seemed like it was that style.
An old movie, haunting rhymes that brings forth a creepy man and people disappear. Yes please! However, I just didn’t connect with the characters and found myself struggling with the writing style.
It is very reminiscent of old time black and whites to begin with, and when we get to “now” time and our protagonist is grown up, she just doesn’t seem like a trusted narrator. I don’t know. It just didn’t connect with me
I don’t enjoy this as much as I had hoped. I do think it would be a really good film noir in black and white. I’m a big fan of Hitchcock-esq things and this seemed like it was that style.
An old movie, haunting rhymes that brings forth a creepy man and people disappear. Yes please! However, I just didn’t connect with the characters and found myself struggling with the writing style.
It is very reminiscent of old time black and whites to begin with, and when we get to “now” time and our protagonist is grown up, she just doesn’t seem like a trusted narrator. I don’t know. It just didn’t connect with me
July 23, 2026
An incredible story about our relationship to fiction, this book does everything I love about Hailey Piper books. The characters are painted so well and with an edge that bites on every page. The plot is woven to be both scary and moving. The horror does not miss (c’mon, a movie that eats people? You know I like that). And the main theme works on a level that made me think about it for a long time each time I put the book down. If you don’t like Hailey Piper, you don’t like contemporary horror fiction.
September 18, 2026
I read a lot of horror. 80% of my reading for the month is horror and this was not it.
The main “villain” of this was a 🐸 and I could not even take that seriously.
I hated the main character Val. If I took a shot Everytime she talked about how much she worked out, how strong she was or how she looked because she worked out, I’d have alcohol poisoning….
The plot overall was ok but by the end there was not really any resolution.
Genre: Horror
APK: Ebook
Pages: 320
Rating: ⭐️⭐️
Series or Standalone: Standalone
The main “villain” of this was a 🐸 and I could not even take that seriously.
I hated the main character Val. If I took a shot Everytime she talked about how much she worked out, how strong she was or how she looked because she worked out, I’d have alcohol poisoning….
The plot overall was ok but by the end there was not really any resolution.
Genre: Horror
APK: Ebook
Pages: 320
Rating: ⭐️⭐️
Series or Standalone: Standalone
September 20, 2026
What a bingeable intense read!
This Movie Doesn’t End the Way We Want may not be the most well written horror/thriller I’ve read, it is engaging, entertaining, and heart pumping. I really liked the dynamic between the two main characters as they go up against the Toad Man (read to learn more about him - ahh)!
It’s a wild ride with a lot of action that kept me wanting to listen and on the edge of my seat truly until the last minute.
This Movie Doesn’t End the Way We Want may not be the most well written horror/thriller I’ve read, it is engaging, entertaining, and heart pumping. I really liked the dynamic between the two main characters as they go up against the Toad Man (read to learn more about him - ahh)!
It’s a wild ride with a lot of action that kept me wanting to listen and on the edge of my seat truly until the last minute.
October 8, 2026
This was one of those books that felt like it was written for me. Haunted films, obscure and lost films, the unreliability of memory, liminal spaces and shifting realities, well realized characters and relationships, and some great, cinematic scenes that perfectly captured the tension of a good horror movie. Definitely my top book this year, and likely an all-time favorite.
October 20, 2026
(2.5 Stars)
So, I did like this more than the previous book I read by this author, but I wouldn't say I loved it. I really though the premise sounded excellent, but it just didn't really play out the way I want (much like the book title). It is weird, I liked the story around the main character, but felt like it needed more work. I didn't like the changing POV, because it was clumsy and somewhat confusing. The "Horror" was ... well, when things didn't really make sense, it took you out of the story and that either made it so you weren't afraid, or maybe it was just not scary or suspenseful enough?
I'll probably read another book by this author, but I will look for the highest rated one to see if I like it, or if this particular author's style just doesn't mesh with my taste.
So, I did like this more than the previous book I read by this author, but I wouldn't say I loved it. I really though the premise sounded excellent, but it just didn't really play out the way I want (much like the book title). It is weird, I liked the story around the main character, but felt like it needed more work. I didn't like the changing POV, because it was clumsy and somewhat confusing. The "Horror" was ... well, when things didn't really make sense, it took you out of the story and that either made it so you weren't afraid, or maybe it was just not scary or suspenseful enough?
I'll probably read another book by this author, but I will look for the highest rated one to see if I like it, or if this particular author's style just doesn't mesh with my taste.
October 30, 2026
I really like the premise of this one...it was an interesting and fresh take on the haunted film concept. Unfortunately it was a but too slow paced for my liking and somewhere in the middle i kind of lost interest. Might just be my mood...but i never felt fully pulled into the story and invested in the character. Liked it well enough but not a new favorite for me.
November 1, 2026
If the book is about cursed media, I want to read it. So, I knew I was gonna like This Movie Doesn't End the Way We Want. Even though cursed media has been a popular theme recently, Hailey Piper gave this mystery horror a fun, nostalgic, creepy twist.
September 21, 2026
Loved it. Finished it in one sitting
October 28, 2026
Fun creepy sinister reality bending ride.
Toad man, toad man…
Toad man, toad man…
September 7, 2026
I loved this book. One of my favorite reads from Hailey Piper.
Val McQueen is taking it day by day, just trying to survive and live with all of her past trauma. Her sister and best friend disappeared at the movies when she was a teen. She was there that night and what she saw must have been a hallucination. Her parents blamed her, she blames herself. The cold case and wounds are reopened by a true crime podcaster. Val starts to starts to see and feel all those strange things again and people start dying.
Go into this one cold! So much better. I loved Val. Extremely guilt ridden but also one of the strongest characters I’ve read. Lots of cosmic horror, existential dread and a sense of something otherworldly stalking you as the reader. Definitely recommend!
Val McQueen is taking it day by day, just trying to survive and live with all of her past trauma. Her sister and best friend disappeared at the movies when she was a teen. She was there that night and what she saw must have been a hallucination. Her parents blamed her, she blames herself. The cold case and wounds are reopened by a true crime podcaster. Val starts to starts to see and feel all those strange things again and people start dying.
Go into this one cold! So much better. I loved Val. Extremely guilt ridden but also one of the strongest characters I’ve read. Lots of cosmic horror, existential dread and a sense of something otherworldly stalking you as the reader. Definitely recommend!
September 30, 2026
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
A complex, surreal take on the cursed film trope that ultimately gets bogged down in its own mythology.
A complex, surreal take on the cursed film trope that ultimately gets bogged down in its own mythology.
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
3.5 RTC!
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