Maeve Fly

April 3, 2023
Leede’s bloody debut sends its nihilistic heroine down a twisted path in the footsteps of her literary idol, Patrick Bateman. Maeve Fly leads a split-life between her day job as a princess at a cheekily unnamed mouse-centric amusement park in Anaheim and the dive bars of the Sunset Strip, alternately fixated on her coworker Kate; her Hollywood starlet grandmother, Tallulah; and her own place in the midst of celebrity. When she meets Kate’s enigmatic hockey star brother, Gideon, the pair enter an increasingly twisted relationship and Maeve turns to murder, mutilation, and nocturnal perversions with no motive other than entertainment. (“Men,” Maeve muses, “have always been permitted in fiction and in life to simply be what they are, no matter how dark or terrifying that might be. But with a woman, we expect an answer, a reason.”) Leede does an excellent job of anchoring the story’s more chaotic excesses in Maeve’s narration, which offers equal parts trenchant insight and pitch-black humor. Though the plot occasionally loses focus, it quickly finds its footing again as Maeve’s deteriorating mental state drives things toward a satisfyingly visceral conclusion. The result is a gore-soaked love letter to Los Angeles that fans of American Psycho and Samantha Kolesnik’s True Crime won’t want to miss.

April 1, 2023

DEBUT Bursting onto the extreme-horror landscape, Leede wastes no time making her readers extremely uncomfortable, yet unable to look away, as she introduces Maeve, who spends her days as the famous ice princess at "the happiest place on earth," while her nights are spent defaming strangers for fun online and visiting the seedy bars of her beloved Los Angeles. She is also a killer, brazenly murdering people and hiding her crimes in plain sight, in her elaborate Halloween decorations. But when Maeve meets her friend's gorgeous brother, she begins to question everything she knew about herself. Unapologetically dripping with graphic sex and violence, this book would be easy to dismiss as profane, but that would miss the point. Leede is actively working every angle to disgust and disturb her readers, balancing extreme scenes with obvious dark humor and Maeve's engaging narration. VERDICT Obvious comparisons will be made to American Psycho, but this illicitly alluring tale pairs even better with current voices in the extreme-horror subgenre, such as Michael J. Seidlinger, Eric LaRocca, and Hailey Piper.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 15, 2023
Leede's bloody and gory debut will make readers clutch their metaphorical pearls in the best way possible. The novel focuses on twenty-something Maeve as she interacts with her rigorously crafted routine, specially curated relationships, and meticulously selected job as a popular-ice-princess impersonator in the Happiest Place on Earth. The old-Hollywood descendant fits perfectly in her superficial and gritty Los Angeles bubble full of desperate stars, shady wannabes, and kitschy surroundings. Despite her best attempts, things start to unravel quickly when Maeve meets her closest friend's brother, while her sick grandmother (and role model) progressively deteriorates. Instead of adapting and evolving, the self-proclaimed misanthrope adopts a bolder, more dangerous persona, and those who offend her get to meet the nightmare behind the mask. This is the story of a ruthless antihero who becomes unhinged when her reality turns upside down and slips right through her fingers. Horror fans who enjoy villain-origin stories, social commentary, terrifying female characters, and unreliable narrators will devour each deliciously morbid and shocking page.

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