All the Dead Lie Down

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All the Dead Lie Down, by Kyrie McCauley, is a wonderfully dark queer horror novel. The story follows Marin Blythe, who is moving into Lovelace House as a nanny following her mother’s tragic death. Lovelace House is a gorgeous old estate located off a peninsula in New England. The house is inhabited by famous horror novelist Alice Lovelace, her three daughters (Evie, Wren, and Thea Hallowell), and their caretaker, Neera. Alice invited Marin on as Wren and Thea’s nanny since she and Marin’s mother, Cordelia, were childhood best friends. After the girls’ father’s death the previous year, they became more unruly and drove every previous nanny away. The girls’ strange behavior starts almost immediately, escalating from harmless pranks to (almost) attempted murder. Soon, the eldest sister, Evie, arrives home, having received an urgent letter from Wren. The more Marin entwines herself in the Lovelace-Hallowell family, particularly Evie, the more she learns the true meaning of what Wren told her: “Everything stays at Lovelace, down to the bone.”

In the heat of the Texas summer, there are few cool places for the homeless to hide. Cow Lady guards her patch with grim ferocity, until one evening, when strange men arrive and talk of guns and gas. I do highly recommend this to fans of gothic horror and haunted houses. It was a fast read and I easily finished it in two days. I will be keeping my eye out for more books from this author.Molly’s also following the passage of a bill which will legalize the carrying of hidden weapons.The senators don’t know that a faction of extremist vigilantes believe that the bill will work against them, and that the right to bear arms is more important than any other, including the right to live...

I loved the whole plot for all its detailed descriptions and inter-relationships between the characters. Also, you might be thinking that there are not many twists, but I can assure you the second half is filled with them. What's more to adore? a secret fondness budding between two poles apart characters.

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Stanzas one and two explore what “Death” is not. This is followed by two stanzas that try to define death. The final stanza echoes the first two in attempting to make a definitive comparison — “But, most, like Chaos —” This was such a great read. The author does a great job of establishing this creepy house in the middle of nowhere where creepy things happen and there are creepy children trying to chase the main character away. It reminded me a little more of Turn of the Key instead of Turn of the Screw/Haunting of Bly Manor but since Key was inspired by Screw, close enough. The author did such a great job of establishing the gothic setting and immersing the reader in the world.

This story follows Marin, she is brought into the house of her mom's old childhood friend after she was unexpectedly passes away in a freak train crash. As part of her living in the house she is to be a nanny of the two young girls Wren and Theo. Of course one is a bit of a monster and plays some really cruel pranks on Marin. Trying to scare away from the house. The oldest daughter Evie shows up after dropping out of boarding school. This was such an interesting and spooky book! The first half of this book had this kind of dark gothic feel of a story. I was trying to figure out what was going on with the two young kids and was expecting at any moment they would turn into demon children. All women have a goth phase, we all need to mourn. Some of us just choose to show it on the outside.” McCauley skillfully wrangles haunting atmosphere, anticipatory tension, and macabre humor to cultivate a slow-boiling thriller couched in a decades-old mystery. The sweet connection between Marin and Evie is solid and affirming, providing levying contrast to occasional moments of gruesome imagery and outright horror." — Publishers WeeklyPitched as The Haunting of Bly Manor meets House of Salt and Shadows, All the Dead Lie Down is a title with a romantic gothic plot line that immediately grabbed my attention when I noticed it on NetGalley. However, this book unfortunately ended up not being for me. While the book feels quite slow overall, I appreciated its easy prose and enjoyed reading from the main character’s point of view. The atmosphere in this book was the perfect eerie setting for a spine chilling horror novel. I loved the way that everything slowly unraveled as Marin unfurled the mysteries of the Lovelace family. Her romance with Evie was soft and tender, and it was so sweet seeing the two girls band together to protect the younger sisters. The horror aspect slowly unfurled and was cleverly done. The ramifications of Evie's power slowly lead to escalating horror and gore. This was a great YA horror read! Since her mother’s recent tragic death, 17-year-old Marin Blythe is all alone in the world, without a place to live or any money to support herself. A lifeline comes through an invitation from famous horror writer Alice Lovelace, her mom’s old childhood friend, who offers Marin room and board in her remote house in Maine in exchange for taking care of her younger children, Thea and Wren, while she finishes her latest novel. But from the moment she arrives, Marin notices something is off at Lovelace House, from Alice’s strangely disconnected behavior and the kids’ increasingly unkind pranks to the house’s secret corners and the dead, mutilated animals that appear everywhere. It’s only when Evie, Alice’s beautiful teen daughter, comes home from school that Marin slowly finds the answers she is looking for and starts to fall in love—just as events spiral out of control. This gothic story merges horror and a lovely queer romance with a helping of the fantastical in what is ultimately a story about grieving, secrets, and belonging. Marin’s yearning for a place to belong informs most of the narrative, which starts off with her as the outsider looking in but shifts as she slowly but surely carves her way into becoming part of the family in unexpected ways. Main characters are cued White.