Our Winter Monster by Dennis Mahoney: Review by Gabino Iglesias

March 31, 2025March 27, 2025 locusmag 0 Comments Gabino Iglesias, horror

Our Winter Monster, Dennis Mahoney (Hell’s Hundred 978-1-64129-633-5, $26.95, 304pp, hc) January 2025. Cover by Janine Agro.

Dennis Mahoney’s Our Winter Monster is a wonderful mix of pulpy horror and crime that has a struggling couple at its center; a strange monster that wreaks havoc in an idyllic little town in the middle of winter, and a killer on the loose. Fast-paced, full of chaos, and featuring a unique monster that isn’t what it appears to be at first, this is a fun novel to read and a book that will hopefully turn more horror lovers on to what indie press Hell’s Hundred is doing.

Holly and Brian have been drifting in a relationship that appears to be doomed. They used to be better together, but then a violent encounter with a deranged man changed things in subtle, insidious ways. To try to fix things, the couple heads to Pinebuck, New York, for the weekend. The small town is pretty, all covered in snow, and a change of scenery might be just what they need. Unfortunately, the weather isn’t on their side and Holly and Brian end up trying to get to Pinebuck before a blizzard hits. When they have an accident right outside of town, pandemonium ensues. There’s a monster out there in the blizzard, and when Holly and Brian become separated, they fight to find each other while trying to steer clear of the monster. Meanwhile, Sheriff Kendra Book gets calls about mayhem, people in trouble, property damage, and some big thing tearing through town. Kendra, who is still reeling from the loss of her girlfriend and the aftermath of a couple that got lost in Pinebuck a few weeks prior and was never found, must face the blizzard and her own demons in order to survive the night and keep the town safe.

This story moves. From opening pages in the car to the explosive finale and a little surprise that Mahoney delivers in the last third of the book – a surprise that pushes the novel into crime territory instead of horror – Our Winter Monster is just like the blizzard at its core: relentless and constantly violent.

There is a lot to like here, but the thing that stands out the most is how the author managed to fill a campy, gory monster tale with complex, engaging, diverse characters. Also, while the running around, killing, and destroying are almost always present, there are also moments of introspection for Holly, Brian, and Kendra that contribute to their likeability and make them feel like real people who are facing real issues on top of a monster.

Sometimes when the gore and action come at readers fast and hard, it’s easy to lose track of the other things going in a novel. You know, the quieter, slightly more subtle things. In this story, those things stand out. They shine. For example, this is really a narrative about overcoming the odds. It’s also about how complicated love can be, how our perception of ourselves and other people can shape our actions, and the way in which relationships can be weakened or strengthened by trauma.

Gabino Iglesias is a writer, journalist, professor, and book reviewer living in Austin TX. He is the author of Zero Saints and Coyote Songs and the editor of Both Sides. His work has been nominated to the Bram Stoker and Locus Awards and won the Wonderland Book Award for Best Novel in 2019. His short stories have appeared in a plethora of anthologies and his non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and CrimeReads. His work has been published in five languages, optioned for film, and praised by authors as diverse as Roxane Gay, David Joy, Jerry Stahl, and Meg Gardiner. His reviews appear regularly in places like NPR, Publishers Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle, Criminal Element, Mystery Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and other print and online venues. He’s been a juror for the Shirley Jackson Awards twice and has judged the PANK Big Book Contest, the Splatterpunk Awards, and the Newfound Prose Prize. He teaches creative writing at Southern New Hampshire University’s online MFA program. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.

This review and more like it in the March 2025 issue of Locus.

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