Where there’s a wall there’s a way through a gate or door. There’s even a ladder perhaps and a sentinel who sometimes sleeps. There are secret passwords you can overhear. There are methods of torture for extracting clues to maps of underground passages. There are zeppelins, helicopters, rockets, bombs, battering rams, armies with trumpets whose all at once blast shatters the foundations.
Where there’s a wall there are words to whisper by loose bricks, wailing prayers to utter, birds to carry messages taped to their feet. There are letters to be written — poems even.
Faint as in a dream is the voice that calls from the belly of the wall.
“No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat’s cradle is nothing but a bunch of Xs between somebody’s hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those Xs . . .”
The gist: Four-book series. Various high school girls deal with a demon possession.
The background: If it’s not clear already, I’m a horror fan. So the first book in this series, with its simple, bold cover design of a pentagram on a hot pink background, caught my eye on Goodreads in 2017. And after I read the description—that Vega’s story is Stephen King meets Mean Girls—I was instantly on board.
The tea: These books are like candy: what they lack in substance they make up for in fun.
Vega doles out sharply written, suspenseful, and scary scenes straight out of a horror film, even if she might not fully deliver on the backstory for the evil present in her series’ world. And if a book merely describing a character suddenly standing in a doorway makes me compulsively flick my eyes to my own doorway—just to make sure—I know picked the right book. That’s what I signed up for.
Deeper, psychological horror, this series is not. And while, at the end of the day, I prefer the kind of horror that sticks with me when I go to bed at night, I also appreciate a good, truly creepy moment, one that might be forgotten hours later but makes your heart beat a little faster as you read it. (Though a grotesque scene from the series with a spoon comes to mind that I actually wish I could forget.) And the Merciless books deliver in spades on that front.
Another thing I like about this series is that it places horror in a contemporary, suburban world. Vega is far from the first to do this, but I love stories that plop the extraordinary right into the middle of the ordinary. In the Merciless series, it’s a demon hiding in Anytown, USA—in the local high school, the local church group, even in an empty model suburban tract home.
I devoured this series pretty quickly and didn’t end up much wiser for it, but I had a damn good time. Like I said: horror candy.
The wrap-up: Does what it says on the tin; no more, no less. If you’re a horror fan and go into it without too many expectations, there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy the series as much as I did.
The rating: ⭐⭐⭐.5 / 5
I’m allowed to be afraid, I remind myself, taking a deep breath of the hot, stale hallway air. I’m just not allowed to run away.
That Book Broad 