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The Butcher
A suspenseful small-town horror novel of oppression, heartbreak and buried anguish – Shirley Jackson meets Never Let Me Go with the wild west setting of Westworld.
When Lady Mae turns 18, she'll inherit her mother's job as the Butcher: dismembering Settlement Five’s guilty residents as payment for their petty crimes. An index finger taken for spreading salacious gossip, a foot for blasphemy, no one is exempt from punishment.
But one day Winona refuses to butcher a six-year-old boy. So their leaders, known as the Deputies, come to Lady Mae’s house, and, right there in the living room, murder her mother for refusing her duties.
Within twenty-four hours, now alone in the world, Lady Mae begins her new 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?
A devastating, alarming page-turner infused with melancholy, humanity – and society’s maddening acceptance in the face of horror.
When Lady Mae turns 18, she'll inherit her mother's job as the Butcher: dismembering Settlement Five’s guilty residents as payment for their petty crimes. An index finger taken for spreading salacious gossip, a foot for blasphemy, no one is exempt from punishment.
But one day Winona refuses to butcher a six-year-old boy. So their leaders, known as the Deputies, come to Lady Mae’s house, and, right there in the living room, murder her mother for refusing her duties.
Within twenty-four hours, now alone in the world, Lady Mae begins her new 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?
A devastating, alarming page-turner infused with melancholy, humanity – and society’s maddening acceptance in the face of horror.
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Community Reviews
While you think you might know everything with the different POVs, this book still keeps you on your toes and has a few surprises left in the tank!
Normally I wouldn't review a book I didn't finish but I'm making an exception for this one. There are a few reasons for this. First, right before I started this book, I read and loved Jennifer Hillier's new book, [b:Jar of Hearts|36315374|Jar of Hearts|Jennifer Hillier|https:images.gr-assets.com/books/1508949170s/36315374.jpg|57988547], and I don't want readers to miss out on that one because of this one. Second, I was given the book by the publisher and NetGalley for an honest review and I feel that I've read enough of this to do that. Third, there are things that were done with this book that the author either got better at or had a better, stronger editor so didn't show up in her new work. This book is a few years old and a writer can grow a lot in that amount of time.
I really liked the premise: very bad cop who everyone thinks is a hero is really a monster and has been discovered by a few people. Unfortunately, that's really all I can say that I liked.
The writing is very clunky with the same phrases being used over and over again - one of my pet peeves. The whole "if X noticed/saw/heard/etc, they didn't show it" thing. Once or twice, maybe ok but to use that phrase every time to show that a non-POV character may or may not have noticed/saw/heard/etc is not cool. And, please, for the love of all that's holy, stop using characteristics in dialogue tags or in action descriptions. "The older woman" shouldn't be used at least ten times in a single scene to describe a woman whose name is known. It's crazy annoying.
Between the stuff that shouldn't have made it out of editing and my absolute rage with anything Matt related because he was so over the top, I had to stop. I didn't find anything enjoyable about this book.
Instead of reading the provided ebook, I listened to the audio book but that only made the bad experience worse. I didn't care for the narrator's character voices, his intonation, anything. It was honestly just a bad experience for me.
But don't let this review stop you from reading Jar of Hearts because that book rocks. I'm very happy that the author has grown so much and look forward to reading her future books.
I really liked the premise: very bad cop who everyone thinks is a hero is really a monster and has been discovered by a few people. Unfortunately, that's really all I can say that I liked.
The writing is very clunky with the same phrases being used over and over again - one of my pet peeves. The whole "if X noticed/saw/heard/etc, they didn't show it" thing. Once or twice, maybe ok but to use that phrase every time to show that a non-POV character may or may not have noticed/saw/heard/etc is not cool. And, please, for the love of all that's holy, stop using characteristics in dialogue tags or in action descriptions. "The older woman" shouldn't be used at least ten times in a single scene to describe a woman whose name is known. It's crazy annoying.
Between the stuff that shouldn't have made it out of editing and my absolute rage with anything Matt related because he was so over the top, I had to stop. I didn't find anything enjoyable about this book.
Instead of reading the provided ebook, I listened to the audio book but that only made the bad experience worse. I didn't care for the narrator's character voices, his intonation, anything. It was honestly just a bad experience for me.
But don't let this review stop you from reading Jar of Hearts because that book rocks. I'm very happy that the author has grown so much and look forward to reading her future books.
I’ve heard so many things about this book and I had to read it for myself. I really loved this!! It was a thriller that kept me on my toes majority of the time.
Finding out the Chief was also the father of Matt just blew my mind! It makes sense why he kept saying “you’re a lot like me” multiple times. Also for the Chief of police to be a serial killer??!? There’s no way he “made up a serial killer for a promotion”!!! That’s some really messed up way of getting a promotion! 🤯🤯
Phew … unexpected twists that I was so scared to see unfold. Slightly hate how things ended for Matt, however they completely deserved it. Worth the binge!
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