Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - Bad Cree

What a wonderful, raw exploration of grief, community, and guilt. How avoiding deep pain doesn't make it disappear. It just gets a chance to linger and fester. I loved how Mackenzie, the main character, was deeply flawed.

Anxious, avoidant, pushing people away because she feels like a burden. Unable to ask for help. Falling into the trap that pretending you're okay is the same as not making your loved ones worried. Yet still loved by her family and friends. Because we all have our flaws, the bad.

A five of cups book at its core. Definitely want to reread this late October, when I think the pages will speak even more than they did now, at the start of spring.

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spineofthesaurus's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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annemaries_shelves's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Bad Cree was a very anticipated book for me and it didn't disappoint. It's a solid debut that explores family, grief, and the importance of dreams. Johns spends a lot of time expanding on our main character's sense of her place within her family and the burden Mackenzie imagines she is to them at times. I loved the sister/cousin and auntie/niece dynamics and how they manage to reconcile and grow stronger and learn to rely on each other once more. There's a lot about grief here - and how one handles grief, that I thought was well done but could've gone deeper.

The dreams - and their power - were some of my favourite parts. Beyond exploring the importance of dreams to Cree people, Johns effectively used them to up the tension for the reader as she brought the plot to a climax and resolution.

I would classify this is a literary genre novel with horror elements, grounded in Cree worldviews.
For those interested in LGBTQIA+ rep, there a minor character who uses they/them pronouns (so I assume they're nonbinary) and one of the MC's close relatives is either bi/pan as they have dated men and women.

Overall, a solid debut and I'd love to read more of her future works.

I predicted that it would be a wendigo - or wheetigo per the book's spelling - but it was still a satisfying reveal and resolution.

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blacksphinx's review

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emotional hopeful mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Somehow this is the third horror novel I've read this year about grief and the second about the death of a family member, and it's my favorite handling of the subject. At its heart, this is a novel about how you can't outrun your grief no matter how much it pains you to feel it.

It was also wonderful to see the treatment of a piece of indigenous folklore that is often misused and cheapened by outsiders being handled by someone from that culture!

If you're looking for something that will chill you to the bone and keep you up at night, I don't think this will do it for you. It is eerie and disorienting, focusing more on untangling a mystery than being scared. A peak atmospheric read.

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mfieldshalva's review

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challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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readthesparrow's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

As you read this review, I want to give you a caveat. While I did not enjoy this book very much due to the issues I had with pacing, structure, and character, I don't think it's a bad book. It just didn't fulfill what I was looking for in an adult book, a horror book, or a mystery/thriller.

I'll start with the things I did like. The parts of the narrative that focused on familial relationships, memories, and the effects of death and grief were extremely well-written and memorable. My favorite part of the book is when Mackenzie describes

hearing the sound of her kokum shaking a can of coins after her death, and her memories of the adults playing card games with the kids in the next room over listening. In fact, everything to do with the memories of her kokum and the way Mackenzie's family handled her death

were beautifully done, with fantastic prose and good pacing.

Her relationships with her family were also the stand-out part of the book. Her having to navigate the complicated threads of being hurt, hurting others, and trying to heal were realistic, with miscommunications and mistakes from characters that felt natural. I loved that at the end of the book not everything had been wrapped up in a neat bow. Mackenzie acknowledges the mistakes she made with her family and wants to work on healing.

CHARACTER

When I started Bad Cree, I was confused. I avoid requesting YA titles on Netgalley because they are usually not for me, and I don't want to give a negative review of something I know I am not in the target audience for. The prose style, the character's maturity, and the structure of the book all came off as YA to me. When I finished the book, it wasn't until I was writing this review that I realized it was supposed to be an adult book, which surprised me. It felt like I was reading a YA.

It being adult fiction makes sense, to some extent; the main character is, I believe, in her 20s, and her cousin is a year younger, her sister older. While most of the time they act their age, there are moments that seem incredibly immature out of nowhere. For example, when Mackenzie begins to have her dreams, instead of turning to Google, she decides that the best course of action is to watch a bunch of Marvel movies, take notes on them, and then examine herself for bug bites. This was weird and distracting from the narrative--one of those things that took me completely out of immersion--and while I'd expect that kind of thing from a YA, I wouldn't expect it from an adult book. Maybe if it was an adult book about her being able to crawl around on walls, sure, but for supernatural dreams? Why not go with movies about dreams and dreaming instead?

Later in the book, when the three figure out what exactly is haunting Mackenzie, they decide to

try and bring it out of her dreams.

They do this with no solid idea of what it can do or how to kill it. The thing is, they have access to Google. They Googled to try to figure out what the creature was! All they had to do was add another keyword to the search! It's basic common sense! But they didn't do that for some reason completely unfathomable to me, even after Mackenzie asks how they're going to kill it.

Look. Adult characters can be immature, I understand that. In fact, adult characters should be immature at times. There are other moments in Bad Cree where they are immature, struggle with feelings, or make bad decisions in a way that was natural and made sense. But there are moments where the immaturity are so jarring that it takes me completely out of the narrative and feels out of place with previous characterization.

STRUCTURE/PROSE

This was another thing that led me to think Bad Cree was a YA book. Not to say the prose is bad, but more so that it echoes elements of YA horror I've read before; exposition dumping, skipping over/summarizing important dialogue scenes, and a lack of intense or tense horror elements consistantly being built up throughout the narrative in favor of most of the horrific elements being sprinkled in then rushed through in the last two or so chapters.

There were several places where exposition could have been handled differently and, in my opinion, far more effectively. For example, there is a moment at the beginning after Mackenzie wakes from a dream. After she wakes, the narrative backtracks and summarizes all the dreams before this one. She then calls her friend, Joli, and they talk about the situation. Instead of having the exposition dumped into the narrative, why not have it naturally explored in conversation? As a reader, reading Mackenzie explain it to another person would be far more engaging and understandable, and what she tells and what she keeps private would show a lot about not only Mackenzie or the situation but also her relationship with Joli.

Another spot this happens is with the plan to

pull the monster out of Mackenzie's dreams.

Kassidy and Tracey suggest the plan mid-chapter, Mackenzie agrees to consider it, and at the beginning of the next chapter she has agreed to it. As a reader, I want to see her thought process. I want to see her weigh the options, consider

the danger the monster could pose to her family in the house, try to come up with a plan. Instead she just agrees to it withou doing any of that. Halfway through that chapter she asks what they're going to do if it works. The plan is, and I quote, that they'll just "jump it." Mackenzie asks if it's that simple, her sister is like "maybe," and Mackenzie just accepts that as an answer. They've confirmed at this point it's dangerous, and they believe it is responsible for Sabrina's death. They know Mackinzie can be harmed in her dreams. They don't even grab weapons or try to arm themselves. They don't google "how to kill monster."

It just seems bizarre that they don't do any of the obvious, basic things that this kind of plan would naturally lead to, which takes me out of narrative immersion.

HORROR

While I certainly loved the imagery in places, and liked the final confrontation with the monster, the overall use and effectiveness of horror elements in Bad Cree left something to be desired. I didn't get the intensity of feeling--of being stalked, of being watched,

by something wearing your sister's face

--from the narrative. Especially when

the creature claims it has already been stalking Tracey, from which we only get the mushroom scene and then the flannel is burned and that element is solved immediately. It would have been far more interesting had its influence on Tracey been more gradual, more tense. For example, if had it been impossible or harder to burn the flannel (as that would have put extra pressure on in the final confrontation).

The only moments of horror we get are usually restricted to the dreams, save for at the very end. While her dreams are certainly interesting, the ways in which they encroach upon and prophysy the real world are more interesting, and I would have loved to see the boundaries between dream and reality played with more.

The monster's presence is not a terribly strong one, which I felt was a little disappointing. The monster is, obviously, connected heavily with grief and greed and misery. The descriptions of grief hanging in the halls of the house, of running under the surface, are wonderful. So why doesn't the monster do the same? Why does it not influence anything besides her dreams? I feel that the horror elements could have used a lot more development and intensity. The novel is described as "gripping" and "horror-laced," neither of which I found particularly accurate to my reading experience. I never felt as though any of the characters were actually in any danger from the monster, whether that be physical, mental, or emotional, not in the same way I was convinced of the pain they had in their relationships and the loss they felt.

From pretty early on in the book, I didn't think the narrative would end unhappily. Part of that was because I thought it was YA. When they

went to confront the monster, I didn't doubt that they would succeed without losing or hurting anyone in the process. For me, there was no feeling of tension because the tension and threat had been kept so solidly in the dream world up until that time I sincerely doubted the monster's ability to actually pose a threat. And I was right; Mackenzie killed it, without a scratch on her, her cousin, or her sister. Yes, two of them got hypnotized, but not in a way that was actually terrifying.

Were there horror elements in the novel? Yes. Is this novel a horrifying novel? No, not really.

If this book's premise sounds interesting and you want an excellent book exploring grief, family, and loss, Bad Cree might be for you. But I can't say this book will ever be one I'll recommend as a horror, thriller, or mystery novel. It just doesn't quite tick those boxes for me. Maybe it will for you.

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