Bad Cree

A Novel

By: Jessica Johns

Narrated by: Tanis Parenteau

In this gripping, horror-laced debut, a young Cree woman’s dreams lead her on a perilous journey of self-discovery that ultimately forces her to confront the toll of a legacy of violence on her family, her community and the land they call home.

"A mystery and a horror story about grief, but one with defiant hope in its beating heart." —Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Pallbearers Club

When Mackenzie wakes up with a severed crow's head in her hands, she panics. Only moments earlier she had been fending off masses of birds in a snow-covered forest. In bed, when she blinks, the head disappears.

Night after night, Mackenzie’s dreams return her to a memory from before her sister Sabrina’s untimely death: a weekend at the family’s lakefront campsite, long obscured by a fog of guilt. But when the waking world starts closing in, too—a murder of crows stalks her every move around the city, she wakes up from a dream of drowning throwing up water, and gets threatening text messages from someone claiming to be Sabrina—Mackenzie knows this is more than she can handle alone.

Traveling north to her rural hometown in Alberta, she finds her family still steeped in the same grief that she ran away to Vancouver to escape. They welcome her back, but their shaky reunion only seems to intensify her dreams—and make them more dangerous.

What really happened that night at the lake, and what did it have to do with Sabrina’s death? Only a bad Cree would put their family at risk, but what if whatever has been calling Mackenzie home was already inside?

Engaging story about grief and the supernatural

I enjoyed this book. The first person narrative was very engaging and the characters were relatable and likeable. This is really a story of grief and the family ties in many indigenous cultures. The supernatural undertones were creepy but didn’t go into full horror or gore for me - and I mean that in the best way.

Deeply Loved this Story

There are a lot of lessons in this story but the power of dreams and our relationships as sisters, aunties, nieces, and cousins really brought out a lot of feelings and emotions.

Gripping & emotional & terrifying

I would have finished it in one day, but it got dark outside and I was honestly too scared lol

This book was phenomenal in so many ways. If you're also Native, I hella recommend not listening to it when you're home alone at night tho

I actually really enjoyed it

I enjoyed this story a lot. It had a good mix of emotional and thriller

Bad Cree But Beautiful Writing!

4 well deserved stars for Bad Cree by Jessica Johns. I became 100% immersed in this story of a Native American young woman who is haunted by the loss of her sister and trying to escape her grief by moving as far away from the home where she grew up in rural Alberta and the family she grew up with to no avail. When her dreams begin to leak into her conscious hours like spilled ink on paper, she finds escape impossible. This book has a fantastic supernatural element to it that was so well played you throw your believability card right in the garbage in chapter one. And you don't care! I was into it. Indigenous folklore is a genre I just adore but Jessica Johns had some very big shoes to fill here. As someone who reads a good bit of Native American books with folklore as a sub theme- I was not expecting for Johns to just march in and so confidently step into the rink and throw down. This book was so beautifully told. And to me it was more about loss and sisters and grief and all the ways we cope and don't cope. The characters were written with such a perfectly messy pen that I wanted to give each of them a hug. Maybe it's that I just lost a sister two years ago, but I felt Mackenzie's pain. I felt her need for distance. The haunting aspects of the book are truly creepy AF, but the family aspect is what pulled at my heart and really elevated this book. Wholeheartedly recommend.