This review comes to us from horror author and freelance writer Jena Brown. She's provided a quick synopsis of Memorials below for those who have not read it; you'll find her full review after the block.
When Billy Anderson, Troy Carpenter, and Melody Wide — three students with tragic pasts — are grouped together in their 1983 American Studies class, they feel the hand of fate at play. They decide to film a documentary on roadside memorials for their class project. At first, the road trip promises to be an adventure… one that might even help heal their trauma along the way.
But the deeper they travel into the backwoods of Appalachia, the darker the trip becomes. From minor accidents to strange interactions with locals, the group feels increasingly wary, and soon starts to suspect they’re being followed. Even stranger are the memorials themselves. Is it possible that all these random roadside deaths are more than random accidents? And if so — could they be next?
One of Memorials’s strongest elements is the camaraderie amongst the classmates, which you can feel from the very beginning. Billy narrates most of the story, but that doesn’t make Troy or Melody feel any less “alive” than he does. As a result, you can’t help but root for these three despite knowing things are likely to turn out badly. It’s a horror novel, after all; even if they make it out alive, the odds of them being totally unscathed are low.
Still, it’s easy to fall into the same hope that the kids have at the start. Their personalities shine, and the addition of “video footage chapters” gives the story an added layer, with other minor characters occasionally taking the spotlight but not detracting from the characterization of the main trio.
Another high point of Memorials is Chizmar’s nostalgic writing. He captures the landscape of 1980s Americana in a way that feels vibrant and alive, despite it being decades ago. Within the pages of this novel, you’re transported to that era in a way that’s easy to visualize — even for younger readers who can barely imagine a world before cell phones and the internet.
We spend a lot of time in the beginning steeped in these descriptions. This isn’t a novel where you’re thrown into the plot headfirst. On the contrary, Chizmar takes his time introducing the three protagonists. He wants us to know them as intimately as our closest friends. He wants us to care.
For readers looking for that connection, it’s no wonder Chizmar’s novels are as popular as they are — because, by the time the horror hits, Billy, Troy, and Melody are no longer strangers. This cuts on a deeper level, hurts even more, and makes us terrified in a completely different way than simply being afraid of the monster. We’re afraid for them; we’re devastated by what happens to them.
Unfortunately, giving readers so much detail in character backstory and small-town descriptions does bog down the first half of the book. I don’t think a horror novel necessarily has to be all jump scares and gore — but there should be some tension, and it should commence well before the book’s fifty percent mark.
I never felt the dread building in the first half, even when the narration told me I should. In fact, the book starts by telling us things will go badly. That we should watch for signs. But the signs don’t arrive for quite some time… and this kind of foreboding omen doesn’t hit nearly as hard when I’ve forgotten it was ever hinted at.
When those delicious moments of uncertainty did hit, they were often undermined in the next scene. Billy dismisses each ominous warning, and though Troy and Melody remain uneasy, it’s not difficult to explain their concerns away. Consequently, there was never any real lingering tension, never any unsettling doubt. It was all swept away in too many descriptions of towns that leaned into nostalgia instead of highlighting the undercurrent of danger. That made it hard for me to stay engaged with the book.
This may be a “me” issue, as the first half of Memorials reads similarly to Chizmar’s 2021 smash hit, Chasing the Boogeyman. Perhaps I would have had a different experience if I’d gone into Memorials blind, not expecting the horror to manifest in any particular way. I will say that once I passed the halfway mark, I couldn’t put the book down — this was where Chizmar finally added enough consistent tension to keep me on the hook.
And of course, the slow build will work better for some readers than others. At the core of Memorials is an emotional journey, one mired in folk horror traditions: the rural setting, the superstitions, the local lore. Billy, Troy, and Melody are the outsiders, coming in and asking questions that many people don’t like. It’s easy to see how this dynamic would make for good real-life tension even without a supernatural twist.
Indeed, combined with the slower start and the fact that we’re immediately invested in these characters’ personalities and camaraderie, the book makes the halcyon haze of small-town life feel even quainter, safer. It feels like these dark, terrible things shouldn’t happen here. But they can and they do — perhaps that’s the point.
It’s a style I can appreciate, even if it doesn’t entirely work for me. Again, I don’t need my horror novels drenched in blood; however, I did crave that itch of dread, the tingles crawling up my neck screaming that even though things appear placid on the surface, everything was wrong.
When that feeling finally arrived, though, I was 100% in it. The horrors of Memorials aren’t too “out there” in a that-could-never-happen kind of way — on the contrary, they are mired in realism. I loved the frenetic climax, the shattering of illusion where you can’t trust anyone and have no idea how anyone is going to make it out alive. For that, hanging in through the slower start was largely worth it.
In that sense, Memorials hits most of the right notes: lulling you into an intriguing adventure, only to reveal the true horrors when it’s too late to turn back. This is exactly what Billy, Troy, and Melody experience — and because you’re right there in the van with them, it’s how you feel too.
I think fans of horror on the “lighter” side will enjoy this book. That’s not to say that it doesn’t come with plenty of darkness; it does. The nightmarish ending plays on all the things you bury, the oddities you attribute to an overactive imagination. I only wish that Chiznar had woven more of that feeling throughout the entire story — without that steady atmosphere, I fear that Memorials doesn’t pack quite as much of a punch as it should have.
About the author
Jena Brown grew up playing make-believe in the Nevada desert, where her love for skeletons and harsh landscapes solidified. In addition to freelance writing, Jena blogs at www.jenabrownwrites.com. When she isn’t imagining deadly worlds, she and her husband keep busy being bossed around the Las Vegas desert by their two chihuahuas.
