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Roost
Every spring in small town Ohio, kids get a touch more daylight, wander a little farther from the front porch, and spend a bit more time off on their own, exploring.
One such spring, the Murphy twins were considered an Easter miracle. And now, almost 18 years later - Easter week, 1988 - the girls approach their birthday, and busybodies around town get a little anxious. Every time their birthday falls on Easter Sunday, bad things seem to happen, and the neighbors have noticed.
A babysitter goes missing. The little girl up the road meets a bad end. Maybe it's coincidence. Maybe living in a town dropped smack in the middle of farmland - with miles of corn in every direction - makes people feel isolated from the outside. Folks start to see evil where it isn't.
Or maybe this year, the devil's come home to roost.
One such spring, the Murphy twins were considered an Easter miracle. And now, almost 18 years later - Easter week, 1988 - the girls approach their birthday, and busybodies around town get a little anxious. Every time their birthday falls on Easter Sunday, bad things seem to happen, and the neighbors have noticed.
A babysitter goes missing. The little girl up the road meets a bad end. Maybe it's coincidence. Maybe living in a town dropped smack in the middle of farmland - with miles of corn in every direction - makes people feel isolated from the outside. Folks start to see evil where it isn't.
Or maybe this year, the devil's come home to roost.
206 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 15, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
March 22, 2022
Roost is set in the 70s and 80s in a small town in Ohio. The story is focused on twins Hope and Joy and how bad things keep happening around them when their birthday falls on Easter. It kind of gave me 7th Heaven vibes since it revolves around a large religious family. With the detailed descriptions I really felt as if I were a part of that household and the small-knit community.
Ultimately, Roost is a coming of age story with a supernatural element. It deals with the themes of satanic panic and the danger girls face around men. There are some really funny moments in this book too. My favorite was when Hope and Joy wrote and performed a play based on When A Stranger Calls. Suffice to say, it didn’t go well with the adults 😂
But the story began to drag for me in Part 4 and the ending felt a tad rushed. I also would have liked a little more development with a character that was introduced later on in the story. While I did like the unexpectedness of the ending, I wanted a bit more. I wanted more buildup and I wanted more of an explanation regarding why one particular character did a certain thing. I wanted to spend more time at the end after having spent so much time with the girls as they grew up. But overall, I enjoyed Roost. It’s a solid debut, I just would have liked for it to lean into its supernatural elements a bit more.
Ultimately, Roost is a coming of age story with a supernatural element. It deals with the themes of satanic panic and the danger girls face around men. There are some really funny moments in this book too. My favorite was when Hope and Joy wrote and performed a play based on When A Stranger Calls. Suffice to say, it didn’t go well with the adults 😂
But the story began to drag for me in Part 4 and the ending felt a tad rushed. I also would have liked a little more development with a character that was introduced later on in the story. While I did like the unexpectedness of the ending, I wanted a bit more. I wanted more buildup and I wanted more of an explanation regarding why one particular character did a certain thing. I wanted to spend more time at the end after having spent so much time with the girls as they grew up. But overall, I enjoyed Roost. It’s a solid debut, I just would have liked for it to lean into its supernatural elements a bit more.
December 20, 2022
Star Review in the January 2022 issue of Library Journal
Three Words That Describe This Book: Utterly original, intense unease, twist on the vampire trope
Easter Sunday, 1970, rural Ohio, the local witch goes to her front porch, a dark, winged shadow passes over, she collapses, and dies. At that exact moment, twins Joy and Hope are born. What follows is the story of those twins, framed in four chapters, each one set on the days leading up to their birthday, on the years it coincides with Easter. During each of those years, local youths are brutally murdered. The police chief finds a suspect every time, but the fact that it happens when the twins have a holiday birthday is not lost on anyone. Madden, an award winning film director, balances the mundane and supernatural perfectly with an intriguing frame propelling the pace and tension, while at the same time, she sets up a classic coming of age story with an omniscient narration from Hope’s perspective, as the girls grow up from birth to age 18. The chapters grow in length as Hope begins to put the chilling details of the town’s curse into place, leading what was once a deceptively quiet, atmospheric story to its terrifying conclusion.
Verdict: Utterly original, bubbling over with unease, featuring a shocking twist that breathes new life into a popular Horror trope, Roost is quite simply, breathtaking. For fans who enjoyed Slade House by MItchell, The Rust Maidens by Kiste, or Fledgling by Butler.
Three Words That Describe This Book: Utterly original, intense unease, twist on the vampire trope
Easter Sunday, 1970, rural Ohio, the local witch goes to her front porch, a dark, winged shadow passes over, she collapses, and dies. At that exact moment, twins Joy and Hope are born. What follows is the story of those twins, framed in four chapters, each one set on the days leading up to their birthday, on the years it coincides with Easter. During each of those years, local youths are brutally murdered. The police chief finds a suspect every time, but the fact that it happens when the twins have a holiday birthday is not lost on anyone. Madden, an award winning film director, balances the mundane and supernatural perfectly with an intriguing frame propelling the pace and tension, while at the same time, she sets up a classic coming of age story with an omniscient narration from Hope’s perspective, as the girls grow up from birth to age 18. The chapters grow in length as Hope begins to put the chilling details of the town’s curse into place, leading what was once a deceptively quiet, atmospheric story to its terrifying conclusion.
Verdict: Utterly original, bubbling over with unease, featuring a shocking twist that breathes new life into a popular Horror trope, Roost is quite simply, breathtaking. For fans who enjoyed Slade House by MItchell, The Rust Maidens by Kiste, or Fledgling by Butler.
February 3, 2022
Born on Easter Sunday, 1970, twins Hope and Joy Murphy are welcomed into the world at the precise moment that tragedy strikes six blocks away. An old woman dies, terrified: a huge winged shadow the last thing she sees. Roost joins the Murphy twins at six year intervals – on and around the day their birthdays coincide again with Easter Sunday – revealing Hope’s own encounters with the winged shadow, and documenting the gruesome murders of the girls’ young friends and acquaintances. The new Bible-thumping sheriff hopes to pin the murders on a Satanic cult, but perhaps some other evil has come to roost in this small town.
Full review here: https://www.grimoireofhorror.com/the-...
Full review here: https://www.grimoireofhorror.com/the-...
January 21, 2023
Dreadful things come around once every six years….
Hope Madden’s Roost has a clever hook at the centre of its story with two twin girls (Hope and Joy) born on Easter Sunday in the start of the seventies. Whenever their birthday falls on Easter Sunday something unexpectedly horrible happens in the small Ohio town, with the girls never far away (but not necessarily seen as suspects). Why every six years you might ask? Well, the exact date of Easter is never the same and so it only falls on the Sunday every six years, with the story being presented in three sections by age, when the twins are six, twelve and almost eighteen. Each of the parts also includes the complexities of the events leading up to the Sunday as the girls grow up with the family members and friends around them.
The hook initially held my interest through the first two sections, when the girls were six and twelve, but Roost seemed to lose its way in an overlong and disjointed third part when the girls were approaching eighteen. Seeing these two characters at these distinct stages of their life was one of the stronger elements of the book and I did wonder whether it would have benefitted from a shorter ‘eighteen’ with a ‘twenty-four’ added! But that would have changed the plot arc somewhat. I was not a huge fan of how the book abruptly ended, even is this climax was vaguely foreshadowed in the initial stages, it did not seem to gel particularly well with what went before. I was unconvinced by the manner in which it was framed within the wider context of the concluding section and had to read it more than once to ensure I did not miss something. On the other hand, other readers might love the twist, out of the blue, like nature of the finish.
Although novels do not necessarily need to be lumped into genres or categories I felt Roost suffered from an identity crisis. As the twins got older it looked like it might morph into a coming-of-age family drama and in the early stages there was the initial hint of the supernatural, but neither were explored in any depth. The family of the twins, and various members of the local community, also played significant parts and drifted in and out of the story, but they lacked detail and by the time we reached the ‘eighteen’ section I found myself getting confused by who was who and whether ‘so-and-so’ had been previously mentioned.
The Satanic Panic phenomenon also plays a part in the novel, but it was rather half-hearted and slightly shoehorned into the story and I struggled to take the way it was portrayed seriously. On more than one occasion the local sheriff pops up and instead of trying to solve the crimes at hand, is more intent on blaming Satanic cults for any wrongful deeds and there is antagonism with the religious family. There are numerous terrific novels which have looked seriously at the Satanic Panic, Clay McLeod Chapman’s Whisper Down the Lane or John Darnielle’s Devil House being two excellent examples, by comparison Roost lacks their depth. The sheriff in this book seemed to be beyond dumb (maybe that was the point) and I wondered whether this story needed the Satanic Panic angle at all. However, religion does play a more general theme to the book, with the family being Catholic and has various judgemental comments from neighbours (and small-town suspicion) about kids out playing on religious occasions such as Easter Sunday.
I enjoyed the build-up in the first two sections ‘six’ and ‘twelve’ with the events leading up to the tragedy nicely painting a wider picture about what was going on in the family. Although she was not a major character I thought the much elder sister was great fun, who was perhaps underused, and
had serious sass and dismissive distain for her younger siblings. As they were born in 1970 and the book ends in 1988 it attempts to provide snapshots of smalltown life via the lives of the twins. We are told their neighbours found them strange and odd, but was this true or were they just other rumours? Roost seemed to sit on the fence (until the very end) and although some locals started seeing evil where it was not, I just did not find this convincing. Even though the book revolved around the twins by the end of it I did not feel I knew them particularly well and found their presentation rather blandish.
Roost also had a thriller element surrounding the mysterious events which occurred when the twins were six and twelve, also the wider rumour mill and suspicions. I found parts of this convincing but when you struggle with the manner in which a story is framed the reader begins to look for holes and this book had its fair share. I also love American novels with a small-town vibe, but this rural town in Ohio just never came alight and was blandly described, by comparison check out Richard Chizmar’s Chasing the Boogieman or Adam Cesare’s Clown in a Cornfield as two recent excellent examples where that does not happen and the setting helps bring the books to life.
At its core Roost has a great idea and might have worked better being trimmed slightly to a novella as the third section seriously rambled. Twist ending, whatever you think of them, generally work better with short stories and novellas and the lead up to what we are presented with just did not convince. Some readers will undoubtedly be scratching their heads and I do not blame them.
Hope Madden’s Roost has a clever hook at the centre of its story with two twin girls (Hope and Joy) born on Easter Sunday in the start of the seventies. Whenever their birthday falls on Easter Sunday something unexpectedly horrible happens in the small Ohio town, with the girls never far away (but not necessarily seen as suspects). Why every six years you might ask? Well, the exact date of Easter is never the same and so it only falls on the Sunday every six years, with the story being presented in three sections by age, when the twins are six, twelve and almost eighteen. Each of the parts also includes the complexities of the events leading up to the Sunday as the girls grow up with the family members and friends around them.
The hook initially held my interest through the first two sections, when the girls were six and twelve, but Roost seemed to lose its way in an overlong and disjointed third part when the girls were approaching eighteen. Seeing these two characters at these distinct stages of their life was one of the stronger elements of the book and I did wonder whether it would have benefitted from a shorter ‘eighteen’ with a ‘twenty-four’ added! But that would have changed the plot arc somewhat. I was not a huge fan of how the book abruptly ended, even is this climax was vaguely foreshadowed in the initial stages, it did not seem to gel particularly well with what went before. I was unconvinced by the manner in which it was framed within the wider context of the concluding section and had to read it more than once to ensure I did not miss something. On the other hand, other readers might love the twist, out of the blue, like nature of the finish.
Although novels do not necessarily need to be lumped into genres or categories I felt Roost suffered from an identity crisis. As the twins got older it looked like it might morph into a coming-of-age family drama and in the early stages there was the initial hint of the supernatural, but neither were explored in any depth. The family of the twins, and various members of the local community, also played significant parts and drifted in and out of the story, but they lacked detail and by the time we reached the ‘eighteen’ section I found myself getting confused by who was who and whether ‘so-and-so’ had been previously mentioned.
The Satanic Panic phenomenon also plays a part in the novel, but it was rather half-hearted and slightly shoehorned into the story and I struggled to take the way it was portrayed seriously. On more than one occasion the local sheriff pops up and instead of trying to solve the crimes at hand, is more intent on blaming Satanic cults for any wrongful deeds and there is antagonism with the religious family. There are numerous terrific novels which have looked seriously at the Satanic Panic, Clay McLeod Chapman’s Whisper Down the Lane or John Darnielle’s Devil House being two excellent examples, by comparison Roost lacks their depth. The sheriff in this book seemed to be beyond dumb (maybe that was the point) and I wondered whether this story needed the Satanic Panic angle at all. However, religion does play a more general theme to the book, with the family being Catholic and has various judgemental comments from neighbours (and small-town suspicion) about kids out playing on religious occasions such as Easter Sunday.
I enjoyed the build-up in the first two sections ‘six’ and ‘twelve’ with the events leading up to the tragedy nicely painting a wider picture about what was going on in the family. Although she was not a major character I thought the much elder sister was great fun, who was perhaps underused, and
had serious sass and dismissive distain for her younger siblings. As they were born in 1970 and the book ends in 1988 it attempts to provide snapshots of smalltown life via the lives of the twins. We are told their neighbours found them strange and odd, but was this true or were they just other rumours? Roost seemed to sit on the fence (until the very end) and although some locals started seeing evil where it was not, I just did not find this convincing. Even though the book revolved around the twins by the end of it I did not feel I knew them particularly well and found their presentation rather blandish.
Roost also had a thriller element surrounding the mysterious events which occurred when the twins were six and twelve, also the wider rumour mill and suspicions. I found parts of this convincing but when you struggle with the manner in which a story is framed the reader begins to look for holes and this book had its fair share. I also love American novels with a small-town vibe, but this rural town in Ohio just never came alight and was blandly described, by comparison check out Richard Chizmar’s Chasing the Boogieman or Adam Cesare’s Clown in a Cornfield as two recent excellent examples where that does not happen and the setting helps bring the books to life.
At its core Roost has a great idea and might have worked better being trimmed slightly to a novella as the third section seriously rambled. Twist ending, whatever you think of them, generally work better with short stories and novellas and the lead up to what we are presented with just did not convince. Some readers will undoubtedly be scratching their heads and I do not blame them.
June 11, 2022
Creepy & Engaging Debut!
Roost is the story of Hope & Joy, twin sisters growing up in rural Ohio, and strange things happen when their birthday falls on Easter.
This book is absolutely dripping with atmosphere. Debut author Hope Madden perfectly captures the way small-town residents find their lives woven together. As terrible events mount, small details are magnified and refocused through a lens of paranoia and fear. The sense of dread builds unrelentingly, propelling the girls to a devastating revelation on their eighteenth birthday.
That alone makes for a great read. But even more impressive is the stylistic trick that Madden pulls off: The story is told in present tense 3rd person, with the characters’ interiority held at arm’s length. It's a bit like a script treatment, with prose that observes the characters from a remove rather than inhabiting their heads. I often find stories told this way difficult to slide into, but in Roost it TOTALLY works. By the end, I couldn’t imagine it being told any other way.
Roost is an engaging debut from an author who clearly loves horror and storytelling. It’s prefect for readers who love Stephen King-style small town horror with a dash of satanic panic.
Roost is the story of Hope & Joy, twin sisters growing up in rural Ohio, and strange things happen when their birthday falls on Easter.
This book is absolutely dripping with atmosphere. Debut author Hope Madden perfectly captures the way small-town residents find their lives woven together. As terrible events mount, small details are magnified and refocused through a lens of paranoia and fear. The sense of dread builds unrelentingly, propelling the girls to a devastating revelation on their eighteenth birthday.
That alone makes for a great read. But even more impressive is the stylistic trick that Madden pulls off: The story is told in present tense 3rd person, with the characters’ interiority held at arm’s length. It's a bit like a script treatment, with prose that observes the characters from a remove rather than inhabiting their heads. I often find stories told this way difficult to slide into, but in Roost it TOTALLY works. By the end, I couldn’t imagine it being told any other way.
Roost is an engaging debut from an author who clearly loves horror and storytelling. It’s prefect for readers who love Stephen King-style small town horror with a dash of satanic panic.
July 24, 2023
Twins Hope and Joy are believed by some of the townsfolk to have an evil about them. When their birthday falls around Easter, bad things tend to happen, but that's just coincidence, right?
This story takes place in the 80s with kids roaming freely, walking here and there both together and on their own. I love Hope and Joy's banter and laughed aloud more than once. I also appreciate their style of dealing with authority that oversteps or behaves illogically. There are funny moments sprinkled through the story as well and the dialogue overall is great. The writing is visual and imaginative and I really liked this story. Characters did seem a bit casual about all the death, though, and the ending felt rushed with an intensity that didn't match the rest of the book. Still, I liked it.
Rating: 3.5
This story takes place in the 80s with kids roaming freely, walking here and there both together and on their own. I love Hope and Joy's banter and laughed aloud more than once. I also appreciate their style of dealing with authority that oversteps or behaves illogically. There are funny moments sprinkled through the story as well and the dialogue overall is great. The writing is visual and imaginative and I really liked this story. Characters did seem a bit casual about all the death, though, and the ending felt rushed with an intensity that didn't match the rest of the book. Still, I liked it.
Rating: 3.5
July 22, 2022
2.75/5⭐️
This story was brilliant.
-There are a lot of characters introduced very quick and the time jumps (which I thought I were great) make it lot harder to keep up with the rotating cast.
-The absolutely insane cop I wish would have gotten more time, he popped up just enough to piss me off with his Satanist bullshit.
-Same with Victor, by the time he popped up at the end for the climax I had to try to figure out who he was because he was barely a character passing through earlier.
-LOVED the end! Usually the end is what kills a lot of horror books but Victor being this supernatural immortal(ish) being takes the cake.
Amazon recommended this to me based on other books I've ordered and I'm glad. I'll have to keep an eye out for what else she publishes.
This story was brilliant.
-There are a lot of characters introduced very quick and the time jumps (which I thought I were great) make it lot harder to keep up with the rotating cast.
-The absolutely insane cop I wish would have gotten more time, he popped up just enough to piss me off with his Satanist bullshit.
-Same with Victor, by the time he popped up at the end for the climax I had to try to figure out who he was because he was barely a character passing through earlier.
-LOVED the end! Usually the end is what kills a lot of horror books but Victor being this supernatural immortal(ish) being takes the cake.
Amazon recommended this to me based on other books I've ordered and I'm glad. I'll have to keep an eye out for what else she publishes.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 8, 2022
This is a tough book to rate. I enjoyed the beginning, but then it started to read more like a screenplay than a novel. I think the story itself was great and had a lot of cool elements; I haven't read Easter horror before! I liked how the chapters were laid out and how we jumped forward in time with the Murphys. But the story is told almost entirely through dialogue which made it hard to make sense of the world in my head. Omniscient POV is extremely hard to pull off and I felt it was a downside in this novel, I think it would have been stronger had we been in the twins heads. I will still continue to read this author if they put anything else out because I can feel the love of horror.
July 24, 2022
This book felt like a slow walk with the last couple pages turning into a run. I literally had to ask myself what did I just read?
November 1, 2022
2.75/5 stars
October 16, 2024
Twins are scary. Don't get me wrong - my best friends growing up were twins. But Kubrick knew it when he cast those girls in The Shining, and Hope Madden knows it, too! Twins are creepy and perfect fodder for small-town gossip, which Madden captures in fine detail. The book will keep you guessing right until the very end!
April 6, 2025
A dark tale that kept me guessing where the story would go next!
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews