Playing with fire has never been more dangerous.
When family man Joe Crawford confronts a young mother abusing her toddler, he has no idea of the chain reaction he’s setting in motion. How could he suspect the young mother is part of an ancient fire cult, a sinister group of killers that will destroy anyone who threatens one of its members? When the little boy is placed in a foster home, the … foster home, the fanatics begin their mission of terror.
Soon the cult leaders will summon their deadliest hunters — and a ferocious supernatural evil — to make Joe pay for what he’s done. They want Joe’s blood and the blood of his family. And they want their child back.
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The thing I took away from this one is the love of “the family”. What a person will do to protect his family. Janz’s love of family came thru in this story. Throw in an ancient cult, sacrifices, curses, and self immolation and we get another great Janz horror!
Review 4.5*
THE NIGHTMARE GIRL begins with our main character, Joe Crawford, intervening when he witnesses a young mother physically abusing her infant son at a gas station. What he doesn’t count on, is the fact that the abuser and her psychotic mother are part of a long-time cult dealing with the power of fire. Now, Joe has an entire sect of zealots out for his blood–and that of his own family.
The pacing of this book was fantastic–page turning every step of the way. There was tangible sense of dread and foreboding that built up steadily throughout the novel’s progression, intensifying continuously. After several scenes. I found myself wanting to look out the windows to assure myself that nobody was out there, looking in!
Once more, Janz showcases his incredible knack for characterization. Our main character is so believable that he could practically walk off the pages and into reality. Joe’s love for his family, in particular his young daughter, Lily, gives him a sense of being so real and HUMAN, that you are able to suspend your belief regarding some of the more fantastic elements in the novel.
The only part that seemed slightly out of sync with the rest of the story was the extremely climatic ending–a little over-the-top when taken in conjunction with the entire story as a whole.
I’ve really been enjoying every story that I’ve read from Jonathan Janz lately, and THE NIGHTMARE GIRL is no exception.
Highly recommended.
Reading The Nightmare Girl, a few aphorism immediately sprung to mind. One being that no good deed goes unpunished, and the second being that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And on this last one in particular…brother, it’s getting awfully hot in here.
Joe’s got a good heart, and a good family to match in his wife, Michelle, and daughter Lily. So, when he stops to fill up the car with gas and overhears a heated confrontation brewing between a mother and her infant, the noise of the child screaming helplessly as he gets smacked around, Joe intervenes. He tries to diffuse the situation, and does to a certain extent, but opens up a whole new world of pain for both their families.
Little Stevie is taken away from his mother and placed into foster care. The mother kills herself. Grandma blames Joe and begins stalking him, turning up in his life in random and inconvenient moments. Grandma has allies, too, in a cult that soon seeks to put the hurt on Joe in various way, straining his marriage and leading him into danger.
All this, though, is just the tip of the iceberg. Jonathan Janz slowly unravels the mystery of Stevie’s family and the peril Joe has unwittingly found himself neck deep in. His good intentions, his plan to better both his life and Little Stevie’s, only fan the flames higher and higher.
Family dynamics and interpersonal relationships are at the core of The Nightmare Girl, and Janz knows how to build interesting characters that have a good bit of meat on their bones. Joe’s a common man, and all the more relatable for it. Reading Janz’s depictions of Joe with his daughter was something I could immediately latch onto, and Lilly, with her obsession of trains, was practically a reflection of my own toddler during his Thomas the Tank Engine phase. Joe and Sheriff Copeland have an earnest relationship, one that provides a lot of humor to some otherwise grim proceedings, and as they work together to get to the bottom of the occult happenings in Joe’s life it’s impossible not to root for them.
For the most part, The Nightmare Girl is a slow burn. Unlike the action-heavy Savage Species, Janz is more interested here in the human characters, their relationships and motivations, and the occasional strange occurrences, setting up plenty of questions and mysteries as he methodically builds tension and paranoia along the way. The final quarter of the book, though, is a full-fledged assault and that slow burn quickly shifts gears to a roiling boil as everything comes to a viscerally violent, action-packed head, Janz-style.
The Nightmare Girl was originally published a few years back by the now-defunct Samhain, but has been resurrected by Flame Tree Press. If you missed this book the first time around, it’s well worth checking out now that it’s back in print.
You could definitely feel all the character’s emotions in this one. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I felt connected to the characters and could imagine myself in the book. Good reading.
A suspenseful supernatural read. It centers around a cult and their sacrificial ritual. This was a whole new level of disturbing and I loved it!
I checked this one out from my library through Hoopla.
Joe and his family were having a normal day. However all of that changed when they decided to intervene in a situation involving a mother beating her toddler. The crazy family threatened Joe with revenge…but not just any old revenge. This family seems to believe in the power of fire and this cult has set their sights on Joe. Is this cult truly crazy or is there something real to their belief? Pick this up and find out!!!
This crazy cult story was a lot of fun! This was my first Jonathan Janz book, but it will not be my last.
This was a fast paced tale about Joe and his family, (wife Michelle and daughter Lily). I became a big fan of Joe throughout this story. Mostly because all of his problems started due to one good deed: stopping a woman from abusing her toddler at a gas station. Once he stops her and the police arrive, his whole life goes to hell.
I enjoy stories about cults and satanic worship and all that good stuff. (Rosemary’s Baby still gives me the creeps!) Mr. Janz put alI the elements together here in a perfect way. I LOVED how this story was told and there was one scene that freaked me the hell out, and it happened well before the denouement. I like that there were scary portions like this all throughout the story.
Speaking of the denouement though, I did feel that the story went a bit over the top towards the end, and as a result, lost some of its believability. Other than that, I have no complaints about this tale.
Overall, I enjoyed the hell out of his book! I will not be waiting very long to check out more of Jonathan’s work.
Highly recommended for fans of stories about cults and satanic worship!
I was provided a free eARC of this story by Net Galley in exchange for an honest review. This is it!
This novel started off differently than I thought it would. To be honest, I’m not sure exactly what I was thinking. Maybe something more mystical or supernatural. Something like a dream lover who turns bad and becomes a nightmare girl. Instead the first third, or maybe half, of the novel, the “nightmare girl” comes across with more of a “Fatal Attraction” vibe. Stalking and terrorizing is scary enough though. I had my own experiences with an ex-girlfriend who went more than a little off-her-rocker once we broke up. Anyway, I’m digressing; let’s get back to the novel.
Joe Crawford has a wife, a daughter, and his own business. Life is good for him. One day though he witnesses a young mother abusing her toddler son. Joe does the right thing by stepping in to stop her and then calling the cops. The ripple effects of his actions grow as the mother blames Joe for her son being taken away from her. Joe soon discovers that the mother was part of a cult that killed people and was planning to kill more.
As I mentioned, the supernatural elements really didn’t come into play until the second half of the book. The first half still provided enough creepy moments, especially when the young mother and her own mother started showing how crazy they were. Janz really got their logic and dialogue and crazy down accurately. They would be sweet and cajoling one moment and then scream and blaming Joe the next. Again, experience has shown me exactly how that goes and Janz nailed it. There were a couple moments in the story that didn’t seem quite right: for example, when Joe expressed interest in possibly fostering the abused boy. I live in a big city and I can’t imagine that happening. But then again, maybe it is normal especially in smaller cities with fewer people. Overall though nothing in the novel was strange enough to pull me out and turn me off. It was entertaining and I look forward to reading more Janz novels.