My Two Cents: THE SUFFERING by M.J. Mars

What could be spookier than conducting a seance on Halloween? Better yet, recreating one of your hometown's most infamous and tragic seances, one in which its participants wound up gruesomely slaughtered? Even better, recreating that horrific seance in the actual house where it happened, and having a direct descendent of the original medium for whom things went so terribly awry in the hotseat yet again? Sounds like a blast, right? I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

This is the setup for "The Suffering" by M.J. Mars, and the group of happy-go-lucky college friends residing in the notorious Brackenby House soon learn the answers to these very questions, much to their horror and dismay.

Kyle, the aforementioned descendent, manages to disturb a collection of malevolent spirits that have remained dormant in the home since their grisly, murderous rampage in 1876. Worst of all, they set their sites on the home's current residents: Kyle and his friends Cassie, Pete, Lance, and Tad. These ghosts are pissed at having been kept cloistered and bound for far too long, and hellbent on revenge. As one by one, they latch themselves onto Kyle and the gang, what starts off as ghoulish taunts and mischievous torment quickly escalates, and as the danger mounts, so, too, does the body count.

Kyle realizes way too late that maybe poking the proverbial bear by recreating the seance was not such a bright idea. He and his friends are left scrambling to try and rectify the mess by tracking down an old book his psychic ancestor hid somewhere within the Brackenby House, one that holds the key to expelling the evil spirits once and for all.

Along the way, the group must contend with more ordinary youthful problems, like hangovers, homework, unrequited crushes, backstabbing classmates, and cheating significant others. And while Mars does a great job with the horror plotlines, it's in these smaller, more nuanced moments of character development that she really shines. By inviting the reader to get to know each of the housemates to some intimate degree, she makes sure we are invested emotionally in them, and genuinely fear for their safety, dreading whatever horrific fate awaits them should Kyle not succeed in exorcising the entities plaguing them.

"The Suffering" was Mars's debut novel, published in 2023. She's gone on to follow it up with last year's gripping "The Fovea Experiments," her Pestilent Perils series: "Flea" and "Rat" (both equally phenomenal) and the award-winning short story collection "We've Already Gone Too Far." In "The Suffering," it's clear to see why she's established such a strong foothold for herself as an indie horror powerhouse. She knows how to skillfully build tension and dread, add just the right amount of gore in all the right places, and develop relatable, realistic characters.

"The Suffering" is tense, taut, and scary as hell. I can't believe I waited this long to read it. It's available here.