“Horror movie enthusiast Charley is determined to keep a low profile when she’s enrolled to a girls’ boarding school on a remote island. That is, until someone starts killing off her senior class! From elaborate scare tactics to severed heads in fridges, Charley has found herself at the centre of a teen horror movie. And that’s not the only alarming thing that’s happening – she’s now seeing the ghosts of her former classmates! 

Haunted by her peers, and with everyone beginning to suspect her, Charley decides to do something about it. She and her only best friend Olive are going to solve the murders and find out who’s killing off the class before graduation. Charley just needs those pesky ghosts to shut up and give her a hand…

A fast-paced tongue-in-cheek YA novel about two friends trying to survive senior year – literally! Perfect for fans of Fear Street, The Midnight Club and the SCREAM franchise.”

Hello and welcome to damppebbles. Today I am delighted to share my review of How to Survive a Horror Movie by Scarlett Dunmore. How to Survive a Horror Movie was published by Little Tiger Press on 5th September 2024 and is available in paperback, audio and digital formats. I chose to read a free eARC of How to Survive a Horror Movie but that has in no way influenced my review.

If you’re a regular visitor to damppebbles and familiar with my reading tastes, then you’ll understand when I say that I couldn’t resist this book! Yes, I’m probably not the target audience here but do I care? Grown-ups can read YA horror thrillers too! Books about horror movies, or plots set around or inspired by horror movies, have my FULL attention. So I had to read this book, and I am so very glad I did.

But first, this is one of the many books I read last year when things were going a bit wrong in regards to the blog and the (grr) shoulders. We’ll skirt the details for now but know that I was reading like a woman possessed, I wasn’t, however, really reviewing anything on the blog. Totally my fault, nothing to do with the brilliant books. I won’t mention ‘when’ I read this book (not hard to find out if you follow me on Goodreads!) but it was a while ago. So with that in mind. this may be a slightly shorter review than normal. How to Survive a Horror Movie definitely deserves to have its time on the blog though.

Charley is the new girl at Harrogate, an elite all-girls boarding school located on a remote island. She hates it, doesn’t really want to be there but knows there is no going back to how life was before. The only thing that keeps her sane is her love of horror movies. Oh and her bestie, Olive. Olive and Charley are far from being the most popular girls in school and that’s fine really. They’re happy to hole up in their shared dorm and indulge in their favourite blood-soaked slasher movies. That is until her classmates start dying in strange, often macabre ways. Ways that, weirdly, resemble those favourite horror movies Charley and Olive watch non-stop. Having never been friendly with any of the dead girls, Charley is quite surprised to discover that they’re now haunting her! And of course, who is the most likely person to be responsible for the gruesome killings on campus? Who is everyone starting to blame? The horror chick of course! In a desperate bid to clear her name, Charley and Olive embark on a mission to find out who is killing off their senior class one by one. Aided by the ghosts of her dead peers who hinder the investigation more than help, Charley needs to find the killer. Before the killer finds her…

How to Survive a Horror Movie is a thoroughly entertaining, gruesome, tongue-in-cheek horror novel which I found very compelling and really quite endearing. I loved this book and had a lot of fun with it. It’s dripping in teenage angst but also laugh-out-loud funny at times too. Particularly when the ghosts of Charley’s dead classmates turn up! It’s clear from the outset that Charley has a secret of her own. The author dangles the past in front of the reader, snatching it away before we can glimpse what actually happened to our MC. It’s not until later on in the book that we discover the reason behind Charley’s reluctant, unwelcome move to Harrogate. The main characters are all well-written and interesting. I had my suspicions as to who was behind the killings, but I was so far off the mark, it’s embarrassing! I really enjoyed this well-written homage to horror movies. So much so, that I was delighted to see a sequel will be hitting bookshelves in a couple of weeks! Sign me up for that one right away, please. Recommended.

I chose to read and review a free eARC of How to Survive a Horror Movie. The above review is my own unbiased opinion.

How to Survive a Horror Movie by Scarlett Dunmore was published in the UK by Little Tiger Press on 5th September 2024 and is available in paperback, audio and digital formats (please note, the following links are affiliate links which means I receive a small percentage of the purchase price at no extra cost to you): | amazon.co.uk | Waterstones | bookshop.org | Goodreads | damppebbles bookshop.org shop | damppebbles amazon.co.uk shop | damppebbles amazon.com shop |

Scarlett studied English and Creative Writing, eventually finding a love for YA literature. When she’s not writing, she can often be found watching scary films or exploring abandoned abbeys, old cemeteries and ruined castles in Scotland for inspiration.

How to Survive a Horror Movie, the first in a new comedy-horror YA series, is published by Little Tiger on 5th September and will be followed by a sequel in 2025.