Information:
- Author: Rory Power
- Genre: Thriller
- Page Count: 269
- Year Published: 2025
Read This If You Like:
- Thrillers
- Morally gray main characters with something to hide
- Under 300 page books
- Dual Timelines
- Midwest settings (specifically Utah)
- Mysterious canyons and rivers
- Shocking endings
- Mysterious Prose
Synopsis:
It's been exactly a year since the incident at Devil's Eye. In a tiny town in Utah, three girls- Edie, Jane, and Luce- suddenly disappeared without a trace. Nan came with them and was the only one who came back, claiming she has no knowledge of what happened. And even if Nan truly enjoyed the girls' company, she's tired of everyone wishing for their return, which will be hard because tonight is the one year anniversary vigil mourning the disappearances. But things suddenly change when Luce returns, alive, but with no memory of the events of the year prior. And while Nan should be happy, she's also confused about what happened. Luce's return leads to Nan unearthing several secrets about the events of that night- all well Nan tries to bury her own.
Review/Opinions:
A few years ago, I read Rory Power's 2018 debut, Wilder Girls, which currently appears to be one of the most polarizing YA novels I've read , having a starred review on Kirkus but a 3.45 star average on Goodreads. I ended up really enjoying Wilder Girls, as it was one of the first YA horror novels I read where I actually felt the creepy atmosphere& and yet I haven't really thought about it since I read it. I wasn't really interested in reading Power's second YA, Burn our Bodies Down, mostly because the plot didn't stand out that much, but I was instantly intrigued by Kill Creatures when it was announced, both due to the super cool cover and the shocking plot summary. And after spending about 2 weeks reading the novel, I have mixed, but leaning more towards positive, feelings about it- there's aspects that were downgraded from Wilder Girls, and ones that were improved. But I think it was a pretty good, above average thriller, just with some technical issues.
The major aspect I believe the novel struggled with was pacing and structure. In fact, my immediate thoughts after finishing the story were, Wow, I just finished this novel that could've easily just been a novella. And I mean that in the most deadpan tone possible. Now, I think novellas are a specific niche that only a select amount of authors want to try out. In addition, they aren't as widespread or popular in YA as they are in Adult, with most YA novellas just being companions to an already popular series. But in Kill Creatures, it feels like barely anything happens except for Nan just wandering around and the twists unfolding over time. I will give points for the book's main event taking place before page 60, but even when it happened quite early into the book, it felt like everything before it was a slog to get through. The novel does pick up, especially in its climax, but the entire vibe just feels more atmosphere than plot focused (emphasized by several passages of description). And the novel is already weirdly short for YA (coming in at around 270 pages, much less than the YA average of 320-350 pages), so by cutting quite a bit of the slower parts or description, you'd get a decent 200ish page novella. However, Kill Creatures has one aspect that would get easily lost if the novel was shortened- the dual timelines. Alongside the larger focus on the present day events, there are also a few chapters that take place in the past, which appear periodically and slowly begin to explain Nan's relationship with the other girls and what led to their deaths. The only issue I had with these is that most of them were inserted smack dab in the middle of the climax, making the big present day confession feel super dragged out. So yeah, there could've been a lot of stuff that should've been improved with the pacing.
There was also a lot of details that could've been fixed with the characters. Nan's narration certainly was interesting- as stated above, the book focuses a lot on immersive, haunting description, which helped in many moments to emphasize Nan's confusion and vengeful feeling. But even though we were in Nan's head the entire novel, there weren't many layers to her character- just a bunch of stuff related to her past actions and trying to cover up said past actions. I do think we get a decent amount of characterization for everyone else, but it sucks that Nan, our main character, feels the lamest of them all. In addition, there's a bunch of moments or details mentioned that would really help to flesh out the characters, but they are ignored as soon as they are mentioned. Early on, we learn that Luce was supposedly the least popular of the friend group, while Jane's family was the one that became the main focus of the case and even featured on talk shows, but then that point is forgotten. There's some tension between two of the families, but it's not dealt with again after the main scene where we see it, or really explained why that tension exists. Finally, it's revealed that Nan had a crush on one of the girls, but we don't see any implication of chemistry before the crush is revealed, and once that's dealt with, it's not mentioned again. If these three elements were expanded on, there would be many more layers added to the characters, as we would see what led to these events and how the characters responded to them. But instead these moments are left behind in the dust, and we lose a fair bit of depth to it.
I will admit that even with the pacing and characterization issues, there was a decent amount of good thriller energy here. The official blurb for the book does reveal a moment that could've made for a really great twist, but I can't really complain about it because that was the main thing in the blurb that made me want to read the book. Moving on, I feel like a major part of the reason the twists worked well was because of the overall vibe of the novel- I already mentioned the prose, but the description, on top of another important element of it where we saw some of Nan's actions written as they were a set of instructions in the form of sentences, helped really create a constant atmosphere of anxiety and tension. And again, while it did feel like in some points that all we were doing was following Nan around and waiting for a twist, when the twists did come, they were pretty fun and unexpected. And many of them came from Nan actually trying to find out information, instead of it being handed to her by someone else. The ending/climax was definitely my favorite part- we got so many shocking revelations that brought everything together, and I couldn't guess many of them. Even the epilogue brought some good twists to end things. And yet, the climax felt like it dragged, because of the author's decision to put a bunch of the flashback chapters smack-dab in the middle of a big revelation monologue thingy, so it felt cut up into way too many parts. In addition, I feel like the main motive behind the girl's disappearance will easily be seen as cringy by some, but luckily the epilogue helps to fix some of that cringe. So even though some of the technical stuff relating to the twists could be better, the main thriller elements end up working out.
Overall, while there was a lot for me to appreciate about Kill Creatures, there was also a lot of technical elements that needed some changing to make this a perfect novel. In my opinion, the novel needed to either be shortened so faster pacing would be encouraged over heavy description and filler, or longer so we could get some more character development and expansion on some underdeveloped side plots. But as the base product, there's still plenty to enjoy, with unique prose and some great twists that are worth waiting for.