Crater Girl

by Polly Schattel

Genres: Horror, Transgender, Fantasy

240 pages, Paperback

Published June 26, 2026

About the author

POLLY SCHATTEL is originally from Birmingham, AL but now lives in Western North Carolina. She likes pasta.

Reviews

[Ava]

Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC!

This is the weird lit that most BookTok "weird girl lit" promises but does not deliver. Schattel delivers a genuinely fresh concept and setting filled with complex (and extremely human) characters, creating a rich, detailed world and playing with tropes without relying on them. Reading about an average person going up against government conspiracies and cults and potential deities without any special skills both adds to the relatability and emphasizes the alien/eldritch nature of the horror elements, especially given Greta's moral dubiousness and often infuriating (but in-character) choices. The book's absurdist humor does not downplay the tragic reality of society's disinterest in the not-uncommon disappearances of Latina women and queer folks.

[Sarah Hillcrest]

Based on how fast I ripped through it, I really enjoyed this book. It's hard to pin down the genre. The protagonist is trans, and that is part of the book, but I definitely wouldn't classify it as LGBTQ. It has flavors of noir, crime, thriller, sci-fi and super natural. Greta could be equally at home narrating a hardboiled detective story, but she's a social worker. Once you've pinned down what kind of story you think you're reading it throws you a curve ball.


There are some things I didn't like. If I could I'd probably give it 4.5 stars. I think my biggest issue is the antagonist and their motivations. Also it might have been stronger if it was a bit more grounded. The concept of the Dead eye is vitally important but I cant' say I completely get it.


Still a fun read, especially if you want to read about a trans protagonist, in a book that doesn't have much at all to do with being trans.

[D Dyer]

Starts out as a mystery and slowly twist into a horror in a way that is incredibly gratifying. It is set in a poverty stricken small southern town that is neither as white nor as straight as we so often see depicted and as someone who grew up in and still mostly lives in small southern towns the author absolutely captures that setting. And we spend a lot of time there before first encountering strange beyond comprehension technologies, and then sliding further toward the unnameable.
We not on a cliffhanger, but with a door open to the possibility of something next, and I’d be interested to see what that was.

[Sam]

Disclaimer: I received an e-ARC from netgalley.

Greta's life, already not going that great, is completely thrown into chaos when a volunteer, Suhey, does not appear at a party Greta throws at her community center. Instead a creepy guy is scoping out the premises, rushing outside the second he is spotted, and Greta knows she's the only person that can help figure this out.
This is a book that unfortunately for my reading experience suffers from a It's Not You, It's Me in terms of mismatched premises. Labelled as horror, the transition from Noir Crime to Cult Horror to finally (in the last 20%) Supernatural Horror took too long for me to really get what I picked it up for. I am not a big fan of Crime novels and if you enjoy those more, you will certainly get more out of this book than I did. The horror aspects when they finally did appear were fun, but also short and not explored in enough depth for me to really enjoy it.
I did enjoy Greta as a character. She is quite flawed and knows it, judgy and superficial and stealing from her job to pay the rent. I also found her interactions with other people really interesting, from the stormy interactions with her spiteful ex after her transition, the tense one with her coworker at the community center, who isn't happy with the way she does her job, and the care she feels for Suhey. She's determined, smart and brave, sometimes a bit too foolhardy, but it makes her a very compelling protagonist. I did not always enjoy the way she talked about other people's bodies, veering into ableist and fatphobic descriptions that were hard for me to read about, but it felt like it was supposed to be a character flaw she kind of learned from a bit (if not enough to make me forgive her). So do be aware that she is certainly not the kindest of characters, however, that was fine by me, flawed MCs can be fun and she certainly is. I did also like how she described her life as a trans woman, whose transition is already in the past. It still matters to her and there are relationships that are influenced by it, but for the most part she just cares about finding Suhey and maybe unfucking her life along the way, which is something I enjoy in the trans lit I read.
Unfortunately the antagonists are not depicted in enough detail for me to say I enjoyed them. While some of them are quite offputting and function well as the cause of short moments of terror, the main billionaire cult leader and the interchangeable goons never really manifested as fully fleshed out characters for me in a way that made their actions compelling or terrifying. I wish there had been a bit more there.
The setting of the story was one of the strongest aspects. From descriptions of the life in a poverty stricken small town in Alabama, to the lush landscape of the forests and the various characters inhabiting those places I found myself able to picture the places vividly and I really enjoyed that.
All in all, I can recommend this book for fans of Crime novels with a supernatural horror twist at the end, with great depictions of setting, but some flaws especially with the antagonists and their motivations.

TW: ableism, fatphobia, gore, injury, kidnapping, murder, sexual assault (threats of), suicide (allusions to, no attempts), transmisogyny, transphobia, violence

[Destiny Cole]

THANK YOU TO NETGALLEY FOR THE ARC!

As someone who is from Alabama, this book really drew me in with that aspect. Seeing an accepting southern town of LGBTQIA+ and people of different ethnicities was so refreshing.
This starts out as a look into our main characters every day life but turns into an eldritch like horror tale.

[Horror Reads]

Rarely does a book come along which truly defines multi-genre. I'm talking about elements which makes it decidedly difficult to categorize into a neat little box. This is one of those books, however, and it's always a delightful surprise when it happens.

A trans woman named Greta is our main character. She's a messy kind of protagonist. Divorced, broke, running a community center that's a safe space for everyone who needs one, and absolutely self destructive to a certain extent. When one of her volunteers from the center goes missing, she decides to check out a few things for herself. This is going to lead to a trippy, southern noir, modern day fantasy narrative in which she finds herself embroiled in something she is definitely not prepared for. And things will keep getting worse as the story goes along. But, even more than that, the revelation of exactly what she finds will leave the reader mind blown.

The story is centered in Alabama and we get a first person account of what living in a small southern town consists of. It's gritty and dirty while also being beautiful and charming. In other words, it's complicated and that's what most towns are. And it's in these complications that the story takes place and uses them as a backdrop of an action filled odyssey mixed with a John Waters type of fever dream noir.

While never truly being any of these things, the book could easily fit within the boundaries of all of them. There are several characters who could be dangerous or could be helpful and we, as the reader, go along blind for the most part right alongside Greta as the first person narrator. It keeps you reading and on your literary toes as the focus shifts from really horrible (human trafficking, drug cartels, etc) to covert government organizations, to supernatural horror rituals and things not from this earth.

It's about some missing girls in rural Alabama but it's not really just about that, if that makes sense. It's a tremendously well paced read and hits all the high notes of several genres without dipping its toes into one particular pool. And it does it well. I highly recommend it.

[emmivilous]

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for the ARC!

Some notes I took while reading:

-Very wordy, a lot of unnecessary and irrelevant details and descriptions (not everything needs a quirky point of view)

-This could have been much shorter. It seemed to drag on because the plot was stretched so thin across the book

-By the time it got sort of interesting at the end, it was difficult to stay interested

-Main character not especially likeable, I found her sense of humor annoying

-Her behavior often makes little sense for the situation, for example, the constant clever quips

-She commits an awful crime and the story treats it like it's not a big deal, and accuses the person who has a problem with it of being unempathetic

-For how serious the plot gets sometimes, I don't feel much emotion or depth coming from the writing

The idea was good, and is a meaningful story to tell about marginalized communities. I thought the beginning was very well done, and perhaps it set my expectations too high. I think if a chunk of the text in this book was cut, keeping only the core of the story, I would have liked this a lot more

[Amanita Reading]

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for the ARC.

I appreciated how this book explored marginalised communities in the current US political climate. The first half follows Greta as she searches for her undocumented friend who has gone missing, before taking a sharp turn into Lovecraftian horror.

I enjoyed the second half much more than the first, as I found the opening section dragged. However, the abrupt shift in genre felt jarring. There was very little foreshadowing to prepare for the transition, so it didn't feel entirely cohesive.

Much of the book felt disjointed to me—not just the plot, but Greta's characterisation and the overall tone. Greta frequently refers to the "dead eye" as a form of self-sabotage, but I never felt the concept was explained clearly enough for the symbolism to land.

In the end, I struggled to finish the book. For me, the pacing, characterisation, and tonal inconsistencies made it feel less polished than I had hoped. 2.5 stars. I'm rounding up to 3 because I appreciated the book's engagement with important contemporary issues, even though the execution didn't work for me.

[En]

A girl goes missing, and Greta finds herself strung into a complex web of deception and exploitation.

I was drawn to Crater Girl by its promise of a mystery and a struggling protagonist. While the pretext was captivating, the execution didn't deliver.

Greta is a complex character with many layers to unpack. While that makes for an interesting protagonist, unfortunately Greta keeps getting in the way of the plot. The result? A poorly paced story where the stakes do not feel realistic.

Parts about the Dead Eye felt overdone, especially toward the end where the plot seemed to finally pick up. Yet little about the missing girl, Suhey, was actually shared.

That said, I think Crater Girl did a good job in its attempt to depict the lived experiences of minority groups. While the novel is filled with spite and angst for where the world is going, it delivered an insight into vulnerabilities that overlooked communities face.

[Chris]

An interesting book with a dual noir/fantastical premise. The funny thing is, the author gets both halves right. There is an authenticity about it that found convincing, and despite some minor quibbles here and there (it gets quite dark, darker than some may like)), I found the book incredibly entertaining. It won't work for everyone--the book is full of surprises--but when it works, it really works. one of my favorite reads of the summer, and maybe of the year.

[Emily]

Funny, smart and interesting. As a straight, white woman, I particularly liked the LGBT perspective of the lead. The world is well-described--the author spent a lot of time setting up these characters and how they interacted. It seems to be playing with noir vibes inside a horror context but despite all the hundreds of books like that it till felt pretty fresh for me. This is a tale told from a perspective you don't often see. I wouldn't mind reading more of Greta and her adventures.