Novella Mini-Review: The Murders Of Molly Southbourne – Tade Thompson

Verdict: Creepy, compulsively readable, unputdownable

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Date read: January 24th, 2018

Published by tor, 2017

Find it on goodreads.

Every time she bleeds a murderer is born. Experience the horror of Tade Thompson’s The Murders of Molly Southbourne.

The rule is simple: don’t bleed.

For as long as Molly Southbourne can remember, she’s been watching herself die. Whenever she bleeds, another molly is born, identical to her in every way and intent on her destruction.

Molly knows every way to kill herself, but she also knows that as long as she survives she’ll be hunted. No matter how well she follows the rules, eventually the mollys will find her. Can Molly find a way to stop the tide of blood, or will she meet her end at the hand of a girl who looks just like her?

I read this in two sittings. That might not sound impressive due to its shortness, but I hardly ever read books, however short, this quickly. But I could not put this down, I needed to keep reading, and I needed to see where Tade Thompson would take this story next. He takes an already brilliant premise and then manages to make the execution an allegory for growing up female in a way that I found surprising. He does not shy away from the most disturbing parts of his premise (like: what happens to the mollys born when Molly is very young?) and the phrase “a slow-growing molly” gave me actual chills.

I don’t read horror often (or at all) but this had me craving more which is quite possibly the highest praise I can think of. While not without its flaws (the novella format does limit the length), I cannot WAIT for the next book in this series to drop. I need to know more about this world and mostly about Molly’s mother, who I found highly interesting and not quite fleshed out enough.

This was a very good start for my forray into the world of novellas.

First sentence: “I wake into a universe defined by pain.”

 

PS: I did have nightmares because of this, make of that what you will.