Daphne

June 1, 2022

Key author Malerman (A House at the Bottom of a Lake) delivers another winner. Kit is on the heralded Samhattan High School girls basketball team, but before the biggest game of summer league, the girls heard a terrible story from a teammate--a myth from Samhattan history about Daphne, who comes back from the dead and murders anyone who thinks about her too much. It is a story everyone in town knows but have been trained to forget for self-preservation. Readers watch on the edge of their seats as Kit's teammates are gruesomely picked off, while an outsider cop is desperate to understand and stop the violence. But how can anyone be saved if no one will talk about the undead killer, who is never more than a thought away? Maybe Kit, who has openly battled with her own anxiety, can rise to be the final girl they need. VERDICT A thought provoking and honest conversation about anxiety wrapped around a Freddy Krueger-esque slasher. For fans of cursed small towns like in Thomas Olde Heuvelt's Hex, or other fresh takes on the teen slasher like Jessica Guess's Cirque Berserk.

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June 13, 2022
The inventive plotting, plausible characterizations, and atmospheric prose that marked bestseller Malerman’s Bird Box are wholly absent in this dull horror yarn centered on an urban legend from the unlikely named town of Samhattan. Supposedly, Daphne was a seven-foot-tall local teen decked out daily in “KISS makeup” who was continually taunted about her height during high school in the ’90s; those torments ended when jocks, angered that Daphne never joined the school basketball team, knocked her out with a baseball bat and left her to die in the toxic fumes of her garage. According to local lore, Daphne periodically returns from beyond the grave to kill dozens of teen athletes. This story gets new life when Kit Lamb, a member of the girls’ hoop squad, follows a tradition of asking a question while shooting a free throw, with a successful shot signaling an affirmative answer. She asks, “Will Daphne kill me?” just before sinking a game-winning shot—and the team victory is quickly followed by the gory murders of several teammates, forcing all to wonder how much of the legend is true. Few, if any readers, will feel remotely scared by the setup, and Malerman offers little reason to invest in Kit or the other characters. This time, the gifted author shoots an air ball.

June 15, 2022
After a member of the girls' high school basketball team in fictional Samhattan, Michigan, is gruesomely murdered, her surviving teammates fear an avenging ghost of local legend--a 7-foot woman named Daphne--is responsible--and is coming for the rest of them. When Natasha Manksa relates the myth of Daphne to the rest of the team at a sleepover the night before a big game, no one is more freaked out than star player Kit Lamb, who is immediately overwhelmed with fear. Even as she wins the contest with a clutch free throw, Kit is consumed by the threat of Daphne, a one-time Samhattan baller who died a mysterious death many years ago. Then freshman-to-be Tammy Jones is found dead in her bedroom with "trauma to her face. To her head." Could it have been Daphne? Kit suffers from intense anxiety, which she closely documents in her diary, and believes she is somehow responsible for Daphne's return because she's been thinking about her. As Daphne--who can be seen only by her victims but leaves behind the smells of smoke and whiskey--continues her murder spree, secrets from the town's past begin to emerge. Daphne has inspired a cult following, perhaps because she's covered in KISS makeup. Malerman, whose thrillers--including Bird Box (2014)--are uncommonly varied, now ventures into the teen sports territory owned by novelist Megan Abbott and the Showtime series Yellowjackets. Though he effectively captures the team's group chemistry, this is one of his spottier efforts. Too much is invested in the theme of making a thing true "just by thinking about it"--and, ultimately, reversing that process--and the climax is convoluted. The book may well have fared better as the novella Malerman says he initially wrote. Hoop dreams with too much explaining to do.

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Starred review from August 1, 2022
Years ago, or so the story goes, there was a seven-foot-tall woman named Daphne who lived in Samhattan, Michigan. She died, or so the locals hope. She might have been a serial killer who was murdered herself, or possibly she committed suicide. Or, perhaps, she didn't really die at all. Maybe she's out there, and she wants to kill. Teenage basketball player Kit Lamb should be enjoying her last summer before going to college, but then her friends and teammates begin dying in macabre ways, prompting Kit to wonder whether the legend of Daphne could be true, and whether Kit could be the next name on the otherworldly killer's list. Others think what's happening now in Samhattan isn't supernatural: it's just the work of a very sick but quite mortal psychopath. Malerman, whose first published novel, 2014's Bird Box, immediately established him as a horror voice to be reckoned with, outdoes himself here. A palpable feeling of evil permeates the book; like Kit, we are in a constant state of unease, wondering what is about to happen and whether Daphne really has returned, all these years later, to wreak havoc on the community. Genius at work.

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