As a girl, Sabrina’s summer camp experience took a dark turn when her friends were brutally murdered in front of her. Ever since, she’s been followed by strange voices and visions of a dark, twisted world, the Other Place. Her therapist thinks these visions are caused by PTSD, and Sabrina has done everything she can to put her experiences behind her to live a normal life. She has a boyfriend, hobbies, and friends, and even changed her name to hide her past. But the voices and visions still creep in if she’s not careful. When her boyfriend, Lucas, guilts her into going on a camping trip, the hallucinations get worse. But are they really hallucinations, or does something darker have its eye on Sabrina?

I really enjoyed The Mean Ones! It’s fast-paced, suspenseful, and engaging. I sped through this book in what felt like no time! It’s a summer camp slasher mixed with supernatural elements, which I found really fun. At the same time, the book explores identity and finding the strength to be your own authentic self instead of what everyone else (in this case, middle school girls and a toxic boyfriend) wants you to be.

The story is told across two timelines. One follows Sabrina as a child at summer camp, and the other follows her in the new life she’s built. I found both timelines equally enjoyable. I thought Sabrina was easy to relate to and I enjoyed her character, but the side characters in this book were kind of shallow. It was clear to me really quickly if I was supposed to like or not like a character, and they didn’t really have much more depth to them. I do think the side characters served their purpose in the story well, so the characters weren’t a huge issue for me, I just wish some of them had a little more substance to them.

The story is pretty bloody, so be warned if you’re not a fan of gore! It wasn’t that bad, but there are definitely some scenes that are gorey and gross.

Overall, I really enjoyed The Mean Ones! If you’re a fan of horror I recommend checking it out.

Thank you to Netgalley and Creature Publishing for providing me an e-arc in exchange for my unbiased review.

I absolutely loved the dual timelines that landed to the present. It worked so well to be able to see what happened in the past to make Sadie the way she is in the present. I could not get enough of the female rage. And I feel every girl that age has friends that aren’t so nice but hang around to try to fit in…I felt a bit of myself in this book and devoured this within a day!!

Mean Girls meets The Blood on Satan's Claw! Tatiana is the new Danielle Vega and you can't convince me otherwise.

Okay, we all know that I'm obsessed with Tatiana's first book, 'Such Lovely Skin' and that obsession will never stop. Now she's back with an even more twisted tale and a new obsession has taken over. And holy shit is it a good one!!

This is one of those books that slowly creeps on you and then hits you all at once. It was eerie, twisted, and devilishly delicious. The unhinged, the queasiness, and the female rage have my heart pounding in the most delightful of ways. Sadie is the character we all have living deep down inside of us and she has stolen my heart. I cannot stop thinking about this book.

'The Mean Ones' is my current new obsession. Every single time I out this book down, I was thinking about it. Don't tell my boss but I hid a few times just to read a few pages while I was at work. I could not nor did I want to put this down. ♥

𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕸𝖊𝖆𝖓 𝕺𝖓𝖊𝖘 - Tatiana Schlote Bonne
⭐⭐⭐⭐/5!

The perfect, quick, Summer horror book. Swimming, hiking, campfires, watching your friends get brutally murdered....check.✔️

✔️⛺ Summer camp thriller. ☀️
✔️⛺ Cult/demon. 𖤐
✔️⛺ Psychological vibes. 💉
✔️⛺ Plot twists you definitely didn't see coming. 🔪
✔️⛺ Bloody and gory. 🩸

Highly suggest this for a fun, quick, Summery horror book.
Thank you to NetGalley & the publisher for this e-arc in exchange for an honest review!

Are you KIDDING?!? This book is amazing. Jaw dropping, screaming out loud, amazing. Animals speaking to you in your head, dead ones at that?!? Feminine rage? In a SLASHER?!? Yes please!!!! Was stellar during my slasher summer months to read

This was a great Summer read- taking place in camp and in the woods going back and forth from the year 2006 and 2023. Sabrina can't determine if her thoughts are real or if she is delusional. This was a fast paced, edge of your seat read, and I am super excited to read more from this author! I was imagining what the atmosphere was like throughout the whole book- the cave, campgrounds, woods. I wasn't expecting the ending, but was pleasantly surprised!

Tatiana Schlote-Bonne has such a fun, fast-paced writing style that really lent itself to this bloody, creepy feminist horror story!

Sabrina experiences an unimaginable tragedy as a pre-teen that completely changes her life. When she gets older, she is still working through her PTSD but feels like, for the most part, she can have a somewhat normal life. That is, when she’s in reality and not The Other Place. Her and her boyfriend go on a camping trip with another couple and all hell breaks loose and brings back all the old trauma from her childhood.

I appreciated the evolution of Sabrina. We see her as a nerdy pre-teen who is gaining her confidence and self worth as her “friends” (bullies) show their true colors to her. As an adult, she’s become physically strong through weight lifting and mentally strong through therapy. She does gaslight herself about her toxic boyfriend a lot, but by the end of the book, she makes huge strides in that realm as well.

This book has great body horror, nature horror, a creepy cult, and is perfect for summer. It’s fast-paced, gory, legitimately creepy, and has fun early 2006s references that pre-teen girls in that era will relate too!

The Mean Ones by Tatiana Schlote-Bonne is a quick, layered read that dives into the unsettled, insecure psyche of Sadie, a girl who has spent years building a new life and identity for herself. But you can only pretend to be someone you’re not for so long. On the surface, Sadie has the perfect life — a boyfriend who loves her, supportive friends, and a job she enjoys. But as the pages turn, the fabric of her carefully curated reality begins to fray.

At first, I wasn’t sure if I was going to like this book. The way people treated Sadie, the undercurrent of fake friends and casual cruelty, rubbed me the wrong way. But then I realized: I disliked it because it felt real.

Sadie has to not only combat the antagonists of flesh and bone, but also those inside of her own mind. With all of these things coming against her, her struggle is real and visceral, and she doesn’t know another way to live, which makes the ending that much more satisfying.

Although marketed for adults, this book reads more like YA with the dialogue and pop culture references. The group dynamics feel distinctly high-school, with “mean girl” energy that doesn’t flatten into clichés. Each character has layers, making the conflicts and microaggressions all the more believable.

The Mean Ones is a reminder that standing up for yourself isn’t always loud. Sometimes, it’s a quiet choice.

4.5 ⭐s! I read this a few weeks ago and my brain is still trying to process everything 🤯 There was so much intense mystery, suspense, and a palpable sense of evil from the first page to the last. The author crafts such a spooky, unsettling vibe, you'll feel it in your bones. Think dark corners and whispers in the night, but in book form. And enough gore to really call it a horror 🩸🔪

And Sadie, our main character is just phenomenal. She's got a seriously dark past, and the dual timeline reveals it in the most captivating way. It's like peeling back layers, each one more intriguing than the last. I was hooked, constantly needing to know what twist was coming next.

This isn't just a book you read; it's an experience that pulls you into its shadows. It absolutely lives up to its title, and while I won't give anything away, let's just say it left me with a delightfully twisted feeling 😈😆 If you're brave enough for a genuinely dark and captivating read, this one's for you.
Thank you for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review!

I could have read this in one sitting if I had the attention span that allowed me to do such a thing, but alas. I still devoured it. The only time I willingly stopped was last night when I got too tense to continue and had to wait until morning.

Sadie / Sabrina was frustrating at times, in both timelines, but that's truly my only major complaint here. Really nasty and descriptive gory visuals, but I say that as a compliment. At risk of spoiling anything too much, I'll just say I am very happy with the supernatural elements here and the route this took. It had every chance to go another, more psychological way and while I think that could have been fine, that aspect is what really made this a winner for me.

4 Stars.

Writing wise is great but there were a few times I cringed a little. The book goes by super fast and it's one of those ones where I kept finding myself on the next chapter wanting to know what happened.

My complaint on the story's length is that it doesn't feel fleshed out enough on certain aspects of the storyline and the lore. I would have loved more!

Also, being in Sadie's head was a nightmare. Wanted to shake her so bad, and I say this as a girly with ocd and massive anxiety. I don't want to twin right now damn :/

The ending was so much fun though. Truly made the choice to go with four stars easy.

Thank you to netgalley and publishers!

I could not put this down!!! This instantly sucked me in. It was gripping and creepy, but also somehow such a moving look at things like trauma and mental health and female relationships. This gave me slasher movie vibes with a little Mean Girls and Yellowjackets thrown in!

thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the arc!

this is more like a 3.25/3.5 for me. it's certainly a captivating premise, that i do think for the most part it delivers on - the pacing of this book is breakneck and i found it hard to put down, and i think alternating chapters between the past and present was the best way to execute a story like this. the character work for sadie/sabrina is complex and heartbreaking, and the gore is gross yet hard to look away from. i initially thought i'd predicted a "twist" and was a little disappointed at how cliché it was, but it turns out i was being DOUBLE-twisted, so i've gotta give the author props for that.
unfortunately, it didn't super work for me. i'm not really sure what it is - though i imagine my previous struggles to enjoy horror works due to not being able to visualise what i'm reading in my head clearly certainly doesn't help, as while a lot of fucked up stuff does happen, it didn't really hit for me. after finishing the book (and saying "good for her" about the ending, but otherwise didn't feel 100% satisfied with), i found out that this is the author's first foray into more adult fiction from YA, and i do think that shows in the writing style, and is probably why it didn't captivate me. i'm not sure! it's a little frustrating to review a book when i don't know if I'M the problem or the book is, lol.
if it interests you, then i'd recommend trying it out for yourself! it's rather short and, again, the pacing is fast and unputdownable, so it's a quick read that gives you a lot to chew on. i actually think this would be really compelling if adapted into a film!

Sabrina is sooooo frustrating as a character but she makes sense for what she’s been through. I so badly need this to be made in to a teen slasher it’s not even funny

Thank you to Netgalley for the review copy of this book!

It’s like a mix of mean girls with all of those 80s summer camp horror movies.
Sadie is a truly likable character that really has you rooting for her whenever it seems like someone is being mean and condescending to her.
The child timeline and the present timeline flowed perfectly to tell this story.
The deer with the hands for horns, chefs kiss imagery!

3.5 ⭐️

This was a lightly gruesome and very enthralling story! I couldn’t have predicted where it would end, and I finished it in a day because I didn’t want to put it down.

I won’t spoil anything, but I found the ending to be very satisfying and I completely enjoyed the story.

I stayed up late last night to finish this book as I simply could not put it down. This Mean Ones is the perfect mix of supernatural, cult, and girlhood. I ate this book up.

Sadie, who has kept her last hidden from her boyfriend Lucas, is invited to spend the weekend with two of their friends in a cabin in the woods. But Sadie’s past and her identity, are catching up to her. She can’t pretend to not be the survivor from summer camp all those years ago anymore.

This book was grotesque. The body horror was beautifully done. Anytime Sadie entered the “other place” the descriptions blew me away. I was fascinated by all the gross and disturbing details of that world.

Girlhood was a great piece of the novel. I think a good chunk of us have experienced girlfriends who are not real friends in our lives. We’ve all experienced self-doubt and a longing to belong, even if it’s a toxic place to belong. We really get to explore girlhood into womanhood and how sometimes we carry that self-doubt and lack of confidence into our lives and how it can lead to us letting others mold into what they want to see.

The cult elements and the demon Ralac were so fascinating to me. The description of the creature reminded me of the monster from the movie The Ritual (I haven’t read the book yet, it’s on my TBR).

This book genuinely had my heart racing and had me fully unnerved at times. So good! I want to thank NetGalley and Creature Publishing for the eArc. The Mean Ones comes out on September 30, 2025!

I'm not the biggest fan of YA books generally—there are exceptions, of course, but I usually find they wash over me. I've been told that Tatiana Schlote-Bonne usually writes in that style, but that this was her first foray into more adult horror, and I'd heard more than enough good things about her previous work that I wanted to dive right into it. It doesn't hurt that it has one of the best covers I've seen this year, either.

The Mean Ones inhabits a space in-between camp slasher, folk horror, and thriller. Often I've read stories where attempting to sit in various subgenres has led to each becoming diluted and not explored to its full potential, which isn't the case here. Alternating chapters between 2023 and flashbacks to 2006, the book focuses on unravelling the mysteries around the main character—Sabrina in the flashbacks, Sadie in the present day, having changed names to hide from her past. As a child she witnessed her two friends brutally murdered; as an adult she has visions—perhaps hallucinations—of 'the Other Place,' an inverted, terrifying world where a seductive voice calls to her. As we learn more about what happened at that summer camp, it becomes clear that Sadie must embrace her Sabrina past to survive. She's a very relatable character that I feel the author has put a lot of herself into—both share a love of weightlifting, for example—and is easy to empathise with, especially in the way she tolerates a shitty relationship to try and feel 'normal.' While it is easy to root for her, you can't help but feel there's a darkness under the surface, especially while learning more about what really happened to her school friends all those years before.

While the material here is certainly adult—there are moments of gore that will turn many stomachs, as well as occasional, fairly explicit, sexual depictions—the writing often feels quite YA. The writing is more efficient than flowery, the chapters are short, and the pace is lightning-fast. This made it a very fast read, and an addictive one at that, with the 'one more chapter' factor ever-present. If you're looking for a fun read that you can easily fly through over a weekend but still provides chills and wince-inducing violence, The Mean Ones just may be the book for you.

A strong 3.5* read, bumped up to a 4* because I really liked the final chapters and thought the story wrapped up wonderfully.

"The Mean Ones" by Tatiana Schlote-Bonne is about a woman named Sadie Ellis, who can hear dead animals and survived cult killings at a summer camp when she was a child.

The novel is broken into two timelines. The first time line occurs when Sadie is an adult. She and her boyfriend are invited to stay at a cabin with two of their friends. Sadie is hesitant, but her boyfriend talks her into going. The trip goes from normal to bizarre and terrifying.

The second time line occurs when Sadie is at the summer camp where her friends are murdered by a cult.

I enjoyed this novel and will definitely be reading more from Tatiana Schlote-Bonne!The novel is grotesque, unnerving, dark, and surreal. I loved the twist ending and the pace of the novel. It is a great slasher for summer!

Thank you, NetGalley, and Creature Publishing for sending me an ARC of this amazing novel! It comes out on 09/30/2025!

This is everything I could have wanted and more out of a horror novel. It descriptions were dark, bloody, and utterly disturbing. I was enthralled from the start and was not expecting the story to go the way it did at all! I applaud this author for not shying away from what I think could be considered an unconventional ending. The plot and characters were so good. This one will definitely be sticking with for me for awhile. I can't wait to see more from this author.