The Butcher

By: Laura Kat Young

Narrated by: Amanda Dolan

A debut small-town horror novel that is a chilling blend of Shirley Jackson meets Devil’s Day by way of Westworld

When Lady Mae turns eighteen, she’ll inherit her mother’s ghastly job as the Butcher: dismembering Settlement Five’s guilty criminals as payment for their petty crimes. But then their leaders, known as the Deputies, come to Lady Mae’s house, and there in the living room they murder her mother for refusing to butcher a child.

Within twenty-four hours, now alone in the world, Lady Mae begins her gruesome job. But a chance meeting years later puts her face to face with the Deputy that murdered her mother. Now Lady Mae must choose: Will she flee and start another life in the desolate mountains, forever running? Or will she seek vengeance for her mother’s death even if it kills her?

©2022 Laura Kat Young (P)2022 Blackstone Publishing

The Narrator was Great! Everything else…idk

This book was hard to get through, not because it was morbid or difficult to follow, simply because it was so redundant. The author treats the reader as if they are dumb and really pounds the “message” into the readers head. The message is very surface level and the ideas behind it aren’t developed much. The book feels very repetitive with the main character giving basically the same monologue over and over again. There are also a lot of things that aren’t explained or shown surrounding the world building which lead to some plot holes. This whole book seemed very surface level and is not very descriptive. The main character is likable but underdeveloped, I think the author did do a good job portraying the loneliness feeling through the main characters monologues.

Overall, I didn’t hate it, however it felt like it was trying to be deep and thought provoking while not leaving anything up to the audience to actually think about. I don’t know much about the author, however this novel feels like it came from lack of experience rather than lack of talent. The ideas are there, just severely lacking in development and craft. I think the narrator was magnificent it felt like a performance rather just someone reading to me.