BAD CREE - Jessica Johns

5 stars

I loved everything about this debut. Generational bonds between the women in one family line tied into one horror-tinged speculative debut with Cree Canadian roots.

Bad Cree snuck up on me. I saw the cover a few times in the store and it caught my eye. But I kept passing it by, until eventually I heard someone mention that it was a story about sisters and horror-based dreaming. Those two hooks grabbed me and i knew I needed to read this story.

Mackenzie keeps waking up from the same dream. This in itself isn't that odd—but the fact that she wakes up with pieces of that dream in her hand, in the real world, is odd. From twigs to the decapitated head of a crow, Mackenzie knows that a) this isn't normal and b) things are getting worse. And she's getting scared.

Her Cree family, with its deep roots to the Alberta land, are far away from Mackenzie's sad apartment in Vancouver. And Mackenzie realizes that maybe its time to face the sadness and secrets awaiting her in her hometown...

Combining family secrets, Cree stories, and a persistent thread of endurance and love throughout, Bad Cree was a perfect read for me. I loved Mackenzie's journey. I was here for her pain, her grief, and her family's close bonds yet tangled relationships. Having such a strong novel about sisterhood tied to a speculative horror novel was a huge win for me.

Bad Cree's accessible writing and creeping sense of atmospheric dread catapulted this immediately into a new favorite read. Come for the intrigue of the "real" dreams, stay for the tension and family story. This isn't a slasher horror, or even a big bang reveal—it's a small story with deep roots.