Creepy as hell! A fantastic cult horror with characters you can root for and fear. I generally do not scare easily from a book but there were moments while reading this that I felt genuinely uneasy and wanted to turn on all of the lights in the house. The author does a really good job of interweaving the supernatural evils with the negative history of the town creating the scene as an epicenter of evil. Thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to any horror reader, or any reader for that matter!

"Old lies above, new love below"

Welcome to the Lord's Church of Holy Voices where Jacob Masters preaches the word of a nameless god.

1983 - Stauford, Kentucky - The Lord's Church of Holy Voices burns to the ground after a mass suicide. Jacob's six children manage to survive referred to by the townsfolk as the Stauford Six. Being the bible belt and all they aren't embraced by their community but reviled. Each longing to get very far away from their hometown.

Now an adult, Jack, one of the Stauford six, has made a successful art career for himself in NYC but when he gets word that his grandmother has died he returns to Stauford to settle her affairs. However, what he is about to find out is that not all secrets stay buried and some just might return from the grave to settle the score.

I am so torn on this book. This is one of the best written horror novels I have read in quite some time. Kiesling can set tone and atmosphere perfectly. Stauford itself is as much as a character as any other in the book. Buuuuuutttttt.....this book is too long. There. I said it. This book was a solid 5 star reading experience until around 65% but then oh my nameless god it became so tedious. If this book shaved about 100 pages off it would have been so much better. Even the climactic grand finale I skimmed because it went on F-O-R-E-V-E-R. I have checked out other reviewers thoughts on this and they are singing it's praises so my complaint could very well be a "me" thing.

This is a solid horror story and one that I think is going have plenty of accolades thrown its way. And as with all good horror novels - the gore drips from the page! Yum! 3.5 stars!

Thank you to NetGalley and Silver Shamrock Publishing for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Oh, I loved this!

You’ve got the small town you really don’t want to live in, a dangerous cult, a creepy cult leader and simply epic horror.

This is my first book by Keisling, but it definitely won’t be my last.

The horror here is fast, furious and intelligent. And, yes, it’s graphic – in all the right ways.

I felt like I took an epic, terrifying adventure in this read. In the end, I just wanted more.

Seriously looking forward to his next offering!


*ARC Provided via Net Galley

Devil's Creek by Todd Keisling is not my first foray into cult horror (nor will it be my last), but I can honestly say it was one of the best pieces of horror I have ever read. Keisling draws you into his world and introduces you to a large cast of well-developed characters. It makes the horror more frightening, more real when you feel invested in the well being of these characters and you find yourself up all hours of the night on the edge of your seat hoping that they make it out unscathed.

Our story begins in 1983 just outside Stauford, KY in a remote area known as Devil's Creek. Here Jacob Masters leads his followers in the worship of the "true God" at the Lord's Church of the Holy Voices. The story begins with two perspectives, that of the worshipers and that of the "heretics" - the grandparents of some of the children who are coming to rescue the children from Masters and put an end to the crazy fanaticism of the church. I won't spoil the details of the scene because it was masterfully executed and terrifying, but the children escape Master's clutches, Masters and his followers perish and the church is burned to cinders. The surviving children, now known as the "Stauford Six" go on to live under the care of their grandparents, the horrors of the church behind them - only that's not entirely true...

The story picks up 30 years after the events at Devil's Creek, the "Stauford Six" are all grown up and many of them have gone on to find relative success. But none of them have forgotten the horrors and the trauma of their time at Devil's Creek. The book does an excellent job depicting the different roads people may take when trying to cope with trauma. Jack Trembly (our main protagonist) channels his pain and emotions into a highly successful art career, while others head towards more destructive paths such as self-harm and substance abuse. I enjoyed how flawed the characters were, it made them more real. Finding out that someone may not be what they always seemed to be, and the secrets they kept from even those closest to them is part of the heart of this novel and it made it just as compelling as the eldritch horrors lying beneath Devil's Creek.

It has been a long time since a book has given me nightmares, and Devil's Creek did just that. I heard the children singing in my dreams, saw glowing blue eyes in the dark and I was afraid.

Todd Keisling has proven himself to be a master storyteller and I look forward to reading more of his work.
Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for giving me a free copy of the ebook in exchange for an honest review.

You can find this review on Net Galley, Goodreads, and Instagram.

In past reviews, I’ve mentioned how much I hate it when I don’t get a popular book everyone else loves. It seems that I am cursed because, once again, I have to put my thoughts together and explain why I don’t like a book everyone else has been praising again and again in social media everywhere. I feel a heavy disappointment even now because I really thought I would love this book. Nevertheless, since there aren’t any negative reviews out there and I’m going to have to be the one that breaks through, I will try my best to explain why this one didn’t work for me.

In order for readers to understand where I come from when I criticize the book, let me explain a few things.

Growing up, I was the victim of religious abuse. I first experienced this unique form of abuse under my Grandmother. My Grandmother believed in a virulent form of evangelical Protestant Christianity. So much so that everything thing I did was judged upon her interpretation of Scripture. As a seven-year-old, for example, I was literally told that drawing dinosaurs was a sin. Why? According to her, God judged dinosaurs to be evil when He destroyed them in a Flood. Studying and remembering them proved God wrong, in her mind, and thus constituted a sin.

This became my reality until I was sixteen years old, but it wasn’t the end. Thanks to the machinations of my Grandmother, my parents placed me in an ultra-fundamentalist school during my middle and high-school years. I received religious abuse not only from family, then, but from legitimate areas of authority like the school administration. This culminated into one of the worst puberties of all time, especially when I found out I liked boys and other girls.

These experiences make cult horror a very interesting avenue for me when consuming dark fiction. I know my own past doesn’t really feature a cult like you’d imagine from the headlines or the booms from the seventies, but it was still religious abuse. It still featured a heavily authoritarian space where my movements and even thoughts were controlled. Despite cult horror often focusing on pagan or Satanist sects, I find the best of its products brings me a catharsis very few other pieces of fiction can do. However, my own Evangelical trauma makes me very, very picky when it comes to how it’s executed.

Which brings me to Devil’s Creek.

Simply put, I think this book is really exploitative. Really, really exploitative. Not even all in the same way either.

Let me give you all an example. In this book, the cult leader and main human villain, Jacob Masters, is a pedophile. He rapes and molests his own children during rituals to the cosmic entity the cult worships. This is not a spoiler. The man literally sports a boner and reminisces about this in the first few chapters.

When I first read this, I felt cautious, but I thought back to the summary. It said that the main focus would be on these kids when they were adults. Okay. Maybe the book was going to deal with their trauma in a constructive way. Maybe we weren’t going to get shock value scenes, and we were going to get some slow burn. Maybe it was going to connect to the themes?

Nope. No, no, no. I was totally wrong about that.

The book portrays our Stauford Six remembering this trauma, but the book’s main focus is on the plot, the eldritch happenings, and just how many ways it can shock you. So we’re going to have one of these now-adults constantly wanting to fuck her own abusive Dad without a deep exploration into how her desires were formed and how her own personality developed. The book will just reveal how she molested another half-sibling when they were kids without giving us the point-of-view of the victimized sibling because he gets basically killed off early in the book.

By the way, the sibling she molested? That sibling is portrayed in the book as either a “junkie fuck-up” or a terrifying eldritch zombie. No nuance. Nothing.

I could just keep going in how the book keeps wasting the potential. Almost every time the plot and backstory presents a complicated issue that could be explored more for a deeper understanding of character and theme, the narrative choose to go for the cheapest possible execution.

Another example? Jack Tremly’s Mom. We learn in the book that she was just given away by Grandma Imogene Tremly to Jacob Masters as a young girl and now is fanatically devoted to the cult and its leader. Do we ever learn how that process happened? Are we ever given a sympathetic viewpoint into her psyche that isn’t just showing just how “scary” she is?

No. No, in fact, Imogene Tremly at one point notes how she used to be a good little girl before Jacob Master took her. Maybe, this woman we’re supposed to take heroically muses in a flashback, some people are born rotten.

Yes, that literally happens.

Perhaps one of the worst things in this book is when more townspeople are zombified, including children, and we have some of those children do things like unbuttoning their clothes in front of adults, saying, “God said I could fuck older men.” Those zombified children then fuck adults in a town-wide orgy.

I genuinely don’t even want to get started into how this book just glanced over issues of racism for its backstory without developing that further. Somehow, the plot focuses more on how the KKK targeted an old white woman for “being a witch” than in continuing to keep it white. And yes, there are no characters of color in this book.

Do I even want to discuss how it treats women? Because God, I feel like this book treats its women like shit. All the good women are good because they’re maternal and want to protect “their” kids while the evil women love “their God” so much more. This isn’t an oversimplification. Hell, the main heroine in the book does absolutely nothing in the final act, and her arc goes from owning her own business at a radio station and using music to rebel against the town’s hypocrisy to losing everything she owns and deciding her nephew’s her life now.

It made me want to scream.

There’s nothing I hate more than a book with so much potential, with genuine good prose, take a turn like this. There really isn’t.

This isn’t about me being a Puritan. Fuck, I’m writing my own personal demonic erotica in my free time. This is about a horror book reinforcing terrible tropes and using legitimate trauma to shock and gross out its audience.

When I first saw the summary and the reviews, I thought I would get this really gripping account of how humans can become monsters with an eldritch twist. Instead, I got a schlockfest of the most offensive order imaginable. I really don’t recommend this book. I really don’t know why people like it with characters so flat it’d make a pancake cry.

But it’s fine. They can like it. I just know that I won’t be giving this book a second glance.

This book was really good and this is coming from a horror fan.

I loved the characters and the story was so interesting that it definitely kept me enthralled reading it. It was definitely a good solid horror novel and I will be picking up more from this author.

Highly recommended.

“…….and the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, The worms play pinochle on your snout…” Who doesn’t remember that delightful little tune? You may find that tune stuck in your head while you read Devil’s Creek.
Rescued by their grandparents, six children are the only survivors after a mass suicide at Lord’s Church of Holy Voices—where Jacob Masters twisted minds, souls and the sacred relationship between mothers and their children. 30 years later the last of those grandparents has died and that is the time for Jacob Master to return and to reclaim his flock.
Imogene Tremly was that last living grandparent and before her death she put another plan into motion in the hopes that her grandson Jake, and the other “Stauford Six” could be saved from the evil of Jacob’s plan. Jake has returned to settle her affairs and now the Stauford Six are all together again, sort of, in the vicinity of Devil’s Creek. Stauford has no idea what torture and evil will be visited upon them, and the agony they all face…for with Jacob Masters as your God you must first suffer, and suffer you will, before you will be rewarded with becoming one of his “little lambs”.
Devil’s Creek is exceptionally well written. All of the characters are fully developed and genuine. The description of the grotto was so vivid that I actually dreamed that I was there last night. I could hear the waves lapping at the dark shore and see the stars watching me from the impossible sky. Hmmmm, I hope the fact that I, like the book’s characters, dreamed about the grotto isn’t a bad omen.
The process Jacob’s followers use to convert others is described in great, icky detail. The smells, the oily scum, the dirt, the spewing….and of course the worms. Here’s some advice, if you see ever see someone crying black tears and leaking black snot…. run.

Wow. This book was the definition of HORROR. Not just scary or spooky or creepy or atmospheric, it was truly horrific.

The story starts with a bang as a group of grandparents make a desperate attempt to save their grandchildren from the clutches of Jacob Masters, an evil cult leader who wants nothing more than to sacrifice his “little lambs” to the great god underground. The children are saved, the cult leader is killed, his followers commit suicide, their building is burned to the ground. End of story, right?

Oh, no. This book is just getting started.

The children saved from the cult, dubbed the Stauford Six, all fathered by Masters and thus technically all half-siblings, are raised to adulthood by their loving (and wary) grandparents. The storyline skips over about thirty years between the first few chapters and the rest of the book, when Jack Tremly, one of the Six, returns to Stauford at the death of his grandmother to pay his respects and set her affairs in order.

But that evil cult leader they put in the ground thirty years earlier? Not exactly dead. Not exactly alive either. But definitely on a mission. What follows is four hundred pages of nightmares, haunted memories, family strife, shadows that move in the woods, voices in the heads of everyone in town, kinky sex, bloodshed, people oozing black sludge and worms from every possible orifice, all leading up to the ultimate battle when Jacob Masters is resurrected by his old god and together with some old and new followers really starts wreaking hell on the small town of Stauford.

Jack, a few of his siblings, his teenage nephew Riley, an old college professor, and a little help from beyond the grave must fight the evil that has slumbered beneath the town for generations, a fight that will ultimately lead them back under the ground, across the killing floor, through the tunnel of sapphire eyes, and into the impossible ocean where their father intended to sacrifice them all as children. Who will win in this battle of good vs evil, and what will be the cost to the town of Stauford?

Well written, no-nonsense story written from multiple viewpoints but still easy to follow (once you stop confusing Susan and Stephanie, ahem), this story at times had a King-esque feel to me. The town of Stauford, Kentucky reminded me of Derry, Maine – both small towns where evil sleeps beneath the ground, children are at risk, and a group of adults must come back and confront their childhood fears to defeat the bad guys.

This book is the very definition of occult horror. If you like the idea of laying in bed at night questioning if the voice in your head is your own or….something else….then this book is a great choice.

Devil’s Creek by Todd Keisling released June 16, 2020 and is published by Silver Shamrock Publishing. I was given a free electronic copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This review was posted to NetGalley, Amazon, Goodreads, Instagram, and my personal blog.

If I'm grateful for anything on social media, it's the wonderful book recommendations I take from the horror community. Silver Shamrock puts out some excellent titles (if you haven't read Jeremy Hepler's Cricket Hunters, I highly recommend fixing that) and after seeing some of my favorite humans on Twitter rave about Devil's Creek, I couldn't wait to dive in.

Told in alternating POVs and timelines, Devil's Creek follows the Stauford Six, six children who survived an abusive, suicidal religious colony (with some demonic, supernatural tendencies) led by Jacob Masters, as they unexpectedly reunite following the death of Imogene, Jack's grandmother and protector of the children. But things in Stauford can never be simple, and a malevolent force begins infecting the town, reigniting Jacob's plan, hell-bent on finishing the ceremony interrupted all those years ago.

Phew, where to start other than to say I loved this book. Sometimes, I'm wary of texts focusing on religion, not because I find the subject matter offensive, but because they can get preachy, condemning, or revert to stereotypes. It's impossible to read Devil's Creek, however, without embracing the religious fervor. Keisling did an excellent job portraying the nuanced emotions involved in religious worship. On the surface, you have the symbolic nature of the infection, for lack of a better word, people running on "blind faith," unable to question morality or righteousness beyond their devotion to the "lord." This is evident even before the climactic series of events bringing our Six together, where people are compelled to send death threats to a radio DJ playing rock music (because where Slayer and Alice in Chains are played, is obviously breeding grounds for the devil, dontcha know) and appearances matter just as much as fact when it comes to religious piety.

Keisling's character arcs are masterfully executed, as complex as they are authentic. I particularly enjoyed the fact that this book isn't restrained to a typical demographic, with important characters spanning generations. Imogene was one of my favorites, as were Jack, Riley, and Stephanie. I appreciated the hometown dynamics; those childhood grudges helped to ground the narrative in the wake of some pretty spiritual and horrific happenings, and the brief foray into humorous quips was welcome. This book definitely touches on some sensitive, even taboo subjects, including hate crimes, rape, pedophilia, incest, and domestic abuse, so be forewarned that there might be some triggering events.

Additionally, this is a visually gripping text. Keisling's descriptions are visceral and disturbing. At times, I was reminded of my favorite parts of Stephen King's It and the Losers Club and Insidious. There's no shortage of shocking horror, but there are also several quietly-terrifying moments, scares that sneak up on you or images that are just plain unsettling. I did find some parts to read a little dense and repetitive, and I wish there was a clearer connection between the town's sordid history and the "present day" happenings, but this didn't hinder the conclusion for me in any way.

Overall, Devil's Creek is a taut, creepy read with plenty of things to keep you up at night. I also recommend checking out Keisling's interview on Ink Heist Podcast.

Big thanks to Silver Shamrock Publishing for providing an eARC in exchange for honest review consideration.

Wow! 5 stars is not enough for this review. This is classic small-town horror at its best. I was hooked by the end of the first chapter. At a little more than halfway through, all Hell broke loose and the action ratcheted up and the book just got better and better. This is what a GREAT horror novel looks like. Todd Keisling just jumped to the top of my must read list. The only drawback to reading horror this good is, whatever I read next is sure to pale in comparison.

Horror book is an understatement to say the least. Just wow! I would definitely recommend you read this ! For fans of King and Koontz - you will love it. I’ve always been fascinated with cults but this story just blew me away. But remember - it is classified as horror . Hooked me right from the start and up to the end. Fantastic character development. Made it impossible not to feel a connection to each of them and become attached . One of the best books I’ve read this year so Far.

Great horror story - creepy, engaging, tense and engrossing. Years after the rescue of 6 siblings whose father was leader in Satanic cult, the evil is on its rise again. Jack and his half-siblings must do battle for their very souls.

Hard to put down.

This book which I received from Netgalley in exchange for a review, was creepy, engaging, tense and engrossing. Hard to put down.

405 pages

4 and 1 / 2 stars

Thirty years ago some brave adults managed to rescue six half-siblings from certain death at the hands of their murderous father, Jacob Masters. Jacob is both evil and depraved. He worships the “Old God.” His fifty-seven followers are enthralled and completely subordinate to Jacob's will.

In 1983, the fifty-seven died along with their master in a raging fire that destroyed the Lord's Church of the Holy Voices in Devil's Creek. (The clue is in the title...) Or did it?

Some years later Jack Tremly one of the six surviving children and now a famous artist in New York returns to Stauford Falls and nearby Devil's Creek to settle his beloved grandmother's estate. He'll have it sorted and be out of town in a day. Right?

But something has awakened and Jack and his half-siblings must do battle for their very souls.

This is a remarkable horror novel. The characters are wonderfully drawn and are all shaped by their childhood experiences at the hands of the “followers” and Jacob Masters. They are flawed and all too human. As they all move forward toward their individual fates, they must find within themselves that something which will help them survive...or not. Mr. Keisling's novel ranks right up there with the best of this genre. His words are carefully considered and evoke colorful and horrible scenes. But the horror is not overdone. All in all, a wonderful job of evoking pictures on pages. Well done, Mr. Keisling!

I want to thank NetGalley and Silver Shamrock Publishing/IBPA for forwarding to me a copy of this very good thriller for me to read, enjoy and review.

Devil's Creek is the book that should make Todd Keisling a household name for horror fans. I fully expect it to see mentioned in the same breath as Stephen King's Salem's Lot, with Keisling's Stauford, KY standing alongside those east coast terror towns of Derry and Castle Rock, ME. Stauford's a special place to visit, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to live there!

Thirty years ago, a group of children were born and raised to serve as sacrificial pawns in Jacob Masters' death cult. Masters, their father, was stopped and the children were saved, but they've carried the memories and scars of that violent night with them ever since. Some, like Zeke, have gone on to become drug dealers, while others, like Stephanie have found a modicum of success, building their own hard rock radio station that has earned the ire of the town's most devout worshipers. For Jack Tremly, he's turned his decades worth of nightmares into lucrative pieces of art. After his grandmother's death, he returns to the town he left behind years ago -- just in time for everything to go south after two children go missing.

Devil's Creek is freaking nuts, and Keisling kicks the action off in grand fashion, opening the book with a high octane set piece that feels more like a gung-ho climax than a proper starting point. And in some ways, it is just that -- it's a climax to Master's legacy as leader of the Lord's Church of Holy Voices, and the upsetting of his plans to kill half a dozen kids on behalf of his nameless god and in service to The Old Ways. It's violent and kinetic, and, good lord, it's only just the beginning! Instead of serving up an "and they lived happily ever after," Keisling instead charts a course for the aftermath, jumping ahead 30 years and into the present-day to show us what became of those children, the Stauford Six.

Jack Tremly is our central character here, but we also become acquainted with his brothers and sisters along the way, all of whom are the offspring of the deranged Jacob Masters. Some have continued their father's work in secret, while others live each day in disavowal of the man's memory. In Jack, we see just how much damage Masters has caused to these children's bodies and psyches. As Jack uncovers more of his grandmother's secrets, though, we also learn of darker, more arcane rites and although Masters's church and many of his followers may have been destroyed decades previously, remnants still persist. In the woods where Masters used to conduct his sermons, something evil is lurking and growing hungry, and demanding fresh followers.

Keisling crafts several moments over the course of Devil's Creek that are legitimately scary, and the work as a whole is a masterful blend of the occult, creature, and cosmic horror, with a few dashes of body horror thrown in for good, disquieting measure. I will admit, I have thing for horror scenes involving eyes, and it always, always, always makes me twitchy when a book or movie starts forecasting some kind of violent damage being done to a person's eyes. Well, Keisling freaked me out good a few times with some of his more ocular-focused descriptions, and the sort of creepy-crawly terrors that set their sights on Stauford are absolutely brilliant in their awful and bloody depictions.

While the supernatural elements are top-tier, the human elements of Devil's Creek are just as salient and help ground the work in a much-too-relateable fashion. Stauford is right in the heart of the Bible Belt and it's a town built firmly on the typical foundations expected of such locales, namely hypocrisy and bullying. Despite being Bible thumpers, the people of Stauford aren't exactly quick to turn the other cheek, preferring to mock, attack, and attempt to censor whoever has ruffled their feathers of late. It's the type of town that wants to see Stephanie's radio station, Z105.1 The Goat, shut down but no doubt listens to Rush Limbaugh and prays for his good health because he's such a decent, upstanding human, votes Trump, and has banned Harry Potter books from the local library if they haven't already burned them all. The good people in Stauford have either left town, like Jack, have died, like the vilified Mawmaw Tremly, or are social outcasts, like Stephanie and her goth nephew, Riley. This isn't all to say that Devil's Creek is overly political, for those of you who gnash teeth over such things -- it's certainly less "political" than the preceding sentence here! -- but it does capture a very specific culture and belief system of a modern-day, small Bible Belt town, and it feels all the more realistic for it.

It is, in short, the perfect place for evil to brew.

If you love cult horror you won’t go wrong with Devil’s Creek! The writing is engaging and the setting of a small town stuck in the past is perfectly rendered. Jacob is a charismatic and terrifying villain as the head of a death cult intent on spreading his influence. This is a no holds barred, super dark read! The characters engage in the occult and Satanic rituals. Child abuse, sexual depravity, and incest all make an appearance. But the story has humour and heart as well.

The theme of fatherhood hangs like a shadow over the characters. The Stauford Six share the same father in Jacob but different mothers. Their struggle to reconcile where they come from with who they are is illustrated every time we spend time with them. I was rooting for Jack and the good guys to make it out alive!

I found the history behind the founding of the Lord’s Church interesting as the book touches on the racist past of the town and how it’s hidden like a dirty secret. However, I wish we get a clearer correlation to how it affected Jacob. I also found the book repetitive at times, and I wanted the ending to go all out. But overall, I really enjoyed this and it affirms my decision to not join any cults in the future!