Review: The Barre Incidents - Lauren Bolger

Genre: Horror Published: Malarkey Books, October 2025 My Rating: 1.5/5 stars

On the one hand, I have a lot of thoughts about this book and could’ve gone on a full rant here. On the other hand, I’m not here to kick down at indie-published books, so I’m trying to reign myself in. Consider this my brief outlet for disappointment and frustration over something that could’ve been a lot better than it was.

It took me almost a month to finish this 350 page book (probably 3x longer than it usually takes me to finish a book of the same length. I stayed hopeful until the very end, but every chapter made it more of a chore to continue…

The Story:

The Barre Incidents starts with such a strong premise, but quickly becomes an unfocused and chaotic mess… We follow Kara, who returns to her small hometown of Barre to mourn her father. Contrary to Kara, who left Barre as soon as she could, her father has been a lifetime resident of the town, working as a miner in the local granite-quarry. Upon her return to Barre, Kara experiences a string of inexplicable events and encounters, that introduce her to the supernatural secrets the town has been hiding. Soon she learns that her dad was (and ís) heavily involved in these secrets, and his soul might not be able to rest just yet. Helped by an old friend from childhood, Kara investigates.

What didn’t work:

I’m perfectly able to suspend my disbelief when it comes to fantasy and horror, as long as stories are consistent with their internal mythology and logic. Here I felt this wasn’t the case. There’s a line in the synopsis that gives the problem away already, so I don’t think this is a spoiler: “When cryptids, an interdimensional creature, and an old god creep out of the shadows…”

Lauren Bolger heavily mixes her mythology in this book, to the point where it feels like she got a little overenthusiastic in her research and attempted to cram in every supernatural creature that she felt was “cool” into a single story. We have shapeshifters and ghosts, and cryptids from modern American mythology including Mothman, alien visitors and Indrid Cold. But then all of the sudden the main baddie is a God from the classic Norse pantheon?!? How the heck did they get in the mix?!

On multiple occasions, the introduction of a new cryptid/creature gave me complete whiplash. None of these creatures felt like they belonged in the same story, and the only place you’d usually find them together is in some monster-mashup-fan-fiction…

This unfocussed mismatched variety-show of cryptids might have worked in a fun and self-aware monster-adventure story. That isn’t what The Barre Incidents is going for. It aims to tell a serious horror-story with a core theme of grief. None of that came across… Partially that’s due to the unserious tone of the cryptid-mishmash, but more importantly, it was due to the poor character writing on Kara and her dad. Neither felt like true people, and there was no way for me to relate to their decisions, their actions or even their implied bond. You know I’m critical about grief representation, but this is the bare minimum: you need to show me grief and sorrow, not just tell me it is present…

TLDR: I hoped for a slow-burn horror story about grief and maybe some generational stuff concerning the miners occupational hazards etc. I got a low budget fan-made tribute episode of the X-files.

You can find this book here on Goodreads.