The Remaking by Clay McLeod Chapman

 

Ella Louise has lived in the woods surrounding Pilot’s Creek, Virginia, for nearly a decade. Publicly, she and her daughter Jessica are shunned by their upper-crust family and the Pilot’s Creek residents. Privately, desperate townspeople visit her apothecary for a cure to what ails them—until Ella Louise is blamed for the death of a prominent customer. Accused of witchcraft, both mother and daughter are burned at the stake in the middle of the night. Ella Louise’s burial site is never found, but the little girl has the most famous grave in the South: a steel-reinforced coffin surrounded by a fence of interconnected white crosses.

Their story will take the shape of an urban legend as it’s told around a campfire by a man forever marked by his boyhood encounters with Jessica. Decades later, a boy at that campfire will cast Amber Pendleton as Jessica in a ’70s horror movie inspired by the Witch Girl of Pilot’s Creek. Amber’s experiences on that set and its meta-remake in the ’90s will ripple through pop culture, ruining her life and career after she becomes the target of a witch hunt. Amber’s best chance to break the cycle of horror comes when a true-crime investigator tracks her down to interview her for his popular podcast. But will this final act of storytelling redeem her—or will it bring the story full circle, ready to be told once again? And again. And again…

Well this is awkward. Whisper Down The Lane by this author is going on my best horror of the year list. I thought I would love this book too but I didn't care for it much.

Ella Louise has been ostracized from her family and from the town. She keeps to herself and is rarely seen by anyone. On one of her rare trips for supplies when it is noticed that she is pregnant, the gossip mongers chitter away that it must be the devils child. As her daughter grows they are both shunned, except when people visit for potions and tinctures to cure their ails or get even with those who've offended them. When one such tincture leads to a death the mother and child are burned as witches.

Years later terrifying things happen to a child playing the part of the daughter in a movie filming in the graveyard...

I was all set to love this book. It's got the makings of absolutely everything I could want. However it was really difficult for me to connect with the writing style, which is all over the place, and unbearably repetitive. Words. so many of the same words. Words being typed on my keyboard. Words showing up on the page, on the review, in my head, words combining to create this review, the review that I will post here on the page, the page of the internet, the page you are reading...

Are you ready to tell me to shut up yet? Because for me this is what it was like reading this book.

2 out of 5 stars.