Book Review: Maeve Fly by C.J. Leede

“I have tried the way of the misanthrope, the way of the deviant, the philosopher, the observer, the pretender. But there is one road I have not seriously considered walking down, have not permitted myself to. Perhaps it is time.”

📚

Maeve Fly is an extreme horror novel that follows protagonist Maeve, a Halloween lover who lives with her grandmother, Tallulah, and works as a Scandinavian ice princess at “the happiest place in the world” (yes, that California theme park and that blue-clad princess). By day, Maeve absolutely adores her job and brings joy to children and families from around the world alongside her co-princess and best friend, Kate. By night, Maeve — a consummate reader who always has a book in tow — visits her favorite Los Angeles dive bars to drink, read, and steadfastly avoid human interaction. All is going according to plan until Tallulah becomes ill, Maeve makes a strange and disturbing discovery, and Kate’s professional hockey player brother, Gideon, moves to town, upending Maeve’s carefully controlled existence and awakening something savage within, pushing her toward a violent, brash, and bloody reality more closely resembling American Psycho than beloved ice princess.

I absolutely loved this violent, gory, horrific, beautiful book. I read it in two sittings, and from the first sentence, its pages crackled with a singular energy, fury, and magnetism that would not permit me to do anything else but read. Once I started, I was hooked, and I devoured this book with a frenzied fervor second only to that which Maeve eventually unleashes upon the world. I had to get to know Maeve, learn her backstory (“the bones” of which are granted to the reader), watch her reality unfold and her life eventually spiral, understand what made her tick and how she viewed the world, life, and those around her. It’s a shocking, uncomfortable, at times nauseating, and darkly humorous experience, and while much of Maeve remains an enigma, the reader is granted a brutally honest and unflinching look inside her life and mind through fearless, feminist, piercing prose with an undercurrent of gloriously simmering rage.

There is so much to talk about here; this book takes the reader on a spectacular and unapologetic ride in under 300 pages. Those pages glow with a passion for both historical and present-day Los Angeles and the theme park-that-shall-not-be-named, strain with the tension and fury roiling inside Maeve, and occasionally darken with Maeve’s bleak and brutally realistic reflections on life and the hereafter. Maeve’s relationship with her grandmother, former Hollywood starlet Tallulah Fly, forms the backbone of her existence. As Maeve’s mentor, Tallulah loves, accepts, and understands her like no one else, and, as a result, is the center of Maeve’s orbit. I won’t say anything further to avoid going into spoiler territory, and readers should absolutely check the many triggers for this one (gratuitous sex and violence, graphic homicidal mania), but I will say that this book is an absolutely brutal and haunting journey to which I honestly don’t feel I can do justice in a review. If I could give this more than five stars, I would, and I will be reading anything and everything C.J. Leede writes moving forward.

And also, it is my dearest wish that some talented artist out there will create a version of Tallulah Fly’s iconic Halloween photo as described in the text, as I would love to add it to my wall!

❤Amanda

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, which means that, if you make a purchase using one of my links, I receive a small compensation to help support the time, work, and cost that go into creating my blog. Purchases made through Bookshop.org also support independent bookstores nationwide. Thank you for reading and supporting Her Infinite Archive!