Mary: An Awakening of Terror

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How clever, (I thought) to take what is already a difficult transition in a woman's life and turn it into a horror novel. I thought this was a novel about a woman who had suffered some trauma or breakdown in her life, now trying to cope with menopause and further emotional and physical upset. Mary is about to have her 50th birthday, and she is going through some normal and not-so-normal experiences. Unfortunately, Mary is also an unreliable narrator and this book is full of unlikable characters. Born in North Carolina, raised in Arizona, and currently residing in New York City, Nat Cassidy in an award-winning horror playwright, horror novelist, actor, and musician. The audiobook, narrated by Susan Bennett, was fantastic! Without giving spoilers, this novel has some elements that would be challenging to pull off for many narrators, and Susan Bennett reads it beautifully. She really personifies Mary's character in an endearing, vulnerable, and powerful way. This is one audiobook that enhances the storytelling in a beautiful way. Brava!

Cassidy’s character-building is so incredibly complex that I can’t help but . . . make a comparison to Stephen King. . . . An extraordinary metaphor for women’s struggles, Mary is edgy as hell. A chilling compilation of horror with masterful storytelling.”— Cemetery Dance Mary Mudgett is your typical middle aged woman. Sort of. She's just about to turn 50 and perimenopausal. She's also been experiencing weird hallucinations and a fear of looking in the mirror. Her doctor just brushes her off that everything is normal. All these feelings are typical. It's menopause, now stop talking crazy and move along, I have another patient to see type of attitude. I’ve seen Mary: An Awakening Of Terror being raved about within the online horror community and can see why now! 💀🖤In my case it was pretty simple: I had a contract. I had a due date. And more than that, it was a two-book deal. Mary was a fantastic read. It was twisted, over-the-top gory, and so very bizarre. Prepare yourself for nightmares and creepy naked people to watch you shower. Nat Cassidy's Mary is a bravura journey into horror, cults, and the estrangement of middle age. It's one BANANAS ride, by a very talented writer.”—Sarah Langan E]very bit as brilliant as everyone's saying: a gory, body horror-soaked exploration of menopause, cults, self-worth, & true crime junkies. I can't recommend this book enough— even the afterword is revelatory.”—Ally Wilkes, author of All the White Spaces

Mary is experiencing changes within her body. Her doctor is telling her everything she is experiencing is expected due to her age, this is the peri-menopause. Her monthly cycles will soon stop. But why is she seeing her appearance rotting away in the mirror? What about the corpse she’s seeing in the bathtub? This book has been on my TBR for months—c’mon, once you see this cover, it’s impossible to not be intrigued, right?! The ominous cover only alludes to what may be one of the most bizarre and creepy reads I’ve read this year. Nat Cassidy’s highly commercial, debut horror novel Mary: An Awakening of Terror , blends Midsommar with elements of American Psycho and a pinch of I'll Be Gone in the Dark . Okay. So, you have this story that means something special to you. You’ve carried it around and worked on it for literal decades. You’re finally making it A Thing. That’s a huge accomplishment and I salute you.

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Women’s health, at best, has always been a compromise. Take this medicine to stop bleeding, but the tradeoff is fierce fits of sweating and heaving, mood changes (or “hysteria” in the old days), and the list goes on and on. This approach also does lead to the one negative in the work. Mary is a difficult character to empathize with at times as her immensely introverted nature gives the character a slightly nihilistic edge (at points). Right.” The sheriff clears his throat. He sees an ant on the floor and stomps on it. “Thank Christ. Where is he?”

In Mary’s case, because the work was initially going so slowly, and I was so overwhelmed and intimidated by how much there was to do, I wound up making each chapter its own separate Word document, so I could feel like I was only working on a bite-sized project at a time. Hallelujah, it worked. I found it was so much easier to think about just this one story beat than everything else that lay beyond it. The deputy obeys, and Brannigan watches him continue on past the stairs and through a doorway. “I think something’s wrong with Sheriff Brannigan!” the deputy is calling. There are a lot of men around—the whole countywide ad hoc task force Brannigan had assembled over the past few months showed up almost instantly when the call went out—but most of them are too focused on the task at hand to hear the deputy. This woman is actually the seventh body they’ve found in the mansion so far—six of them women, all stripped nude, all with something like a pillowcase pulled over their mutilated faces, matching the modus mortis of the dozens of other women they’ve been finding around town for the past several years, all unidentifiable. The seventh body was an exception on both counts: he was male and he was all-too-easily ID’d, despite the visual handicap of him missing most of his head. Even with my deadline, I bet I could’ve futzed with Mary until it was forcibly removed from my hands, because I was just so damn used to always having it around as something to work on. But now that I was actually writing the story for real, something about Eleanor wasn’t working. She didn’t fit, and the vibes she gave to the reader affected the supervibes of the book in ways I knew weren’t helpful.The sheriff angrily waves him away. Go do your job, the wave says. I’ll be okay, his expression tries—fails—to add. Nat Cassidy’s Mary: An Awakening of Terror reads like a riposte to King’s Carrie; Cassidy has the audacity (and the skill) to write convincingly about perimenopause.”— Esquire This tale of horror is a good read-alike for Stephen King’s Carrie and Paul Tremblay’s A Head Full of Ghosts.”— Booklist This release certainly takes some intense twists in the story, and while I would love to explore how the elements of horror transform to even switch from the early genre of supernatural horror into something deeply sinister, the narrative is best left to be discovered by the reader. Regardless, the book will certainly draw in readers of both horror and mystery with how it develops–that experience is definitely best left as unspoiled as possible. Im scared, Nadine. Somehow, I managed to forget everything. About my past. About my present. How can I know who I am if I dont know who I'we been?