ARC Review: A Family of Killers by Bryce Moore

I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

A Family of Killers by Bryce Moore
Published by Sourcebooks Fire on August 6, 2024
Genres: YA Historical Fiction, YA Horror
Pages: 384
Source: the publisher
Format: ARC
My Rating:
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Blurb:

From the author of The Perfect Place to Die and Don’t Go to Sleep comes another chilling horror that explores the eerie story of America’s first serial killer family.

Warren Bullock always thought he was a decent person. But lately he’s been haunted by a sinister voice in his head urging him to commit unspeakable acts of violence against the people around him.

And then the rumors start… There have been a string of disappearances in southeastern Kansas, and his father’s friend is one of the missing travelers. When Warren’s father leaves to investigate and doesn’t return, Warren knows this is his chance to prove that he is stronger than his darkest impulses. 

As he makes his way through Kansas, he finds himself at a suspicious inn run by the Benders, a family with deeply unsettling mannerisms. They watch every move he makes, stand over him in his sleep, and the daughter seems to be able to see into both the past and future.

As he delves further into the disappearances, he realizes one or all of the Benders may be responsible for all the missing people―and might be the reason his father never came home. It’s up to Warren to set things right, even if that means giving into the voice he has been working so hard to ignore.

My Review

Last year I read a book by this author that I really enjoyed called Don’t Go To Sleep. So when this historical fiction horror story about a serial killer family in Kansas was sent to me, I was extremely eager to read it.

Overall there was a lot of interesting bits to this story. I can’t believe living this close to where all the actual history of the Bender family happened, that other than a few very small stories on the news recently about an anniversary or something, I didn’t know much about this story. I liked how at the beginning of each chapter there was a snippet from real news stories when it was all going on. To be fair, there wasn’t exactly a complete record of these events to give a lot more to the story, which I think gave this author a lot of openings to write his story the way he did.

The story was really about Warren coming into his own, growing up. As the youngest son in a family where he’d also been quite a few years behind his other brothers, he’d kind of had things easier and not only did he not feel like he was capable of as much as his brothers, no one else in the family saw him that way either. There was a lot of interesting history and even geography type of facts told as he traveled to try to find his father who had left to find a friend of the family who hadn’t shown up when he and his infant daughter were supposed to. So this was also a bit of a survival story, as Warren had to remember how to survive in the wilderness. Of course he’d always had his family to do all the actual work, so even though his father and brothers had shown him what to do, it wasn’t ingrained and something he had practice at doing.

Warren had a lot of issues going on with himself to deal with as well. First he totally had social anxiety, didn’t like to be around a lot of people, and didn’t know how to always talk to strangers or even people he knew. He seemed to be a bit of a germ-a-phobe as well. And finally he had this voice inside of him telling him to do horrible violent things to people. Even his own family members. Just to see the gory results. To be fair, I feel like that last aspect didn’t need to be part of the story? But maybe it was just to show that it could be easy to do those things or to give empathy to the Benders? I don’t know. I feel like there were other parts the author had in the story that showed that well enough without this extra bit.

There was a lot of excitement in this story. A tornado, bandits trying to rob him, stampeding buffalo herds, the Benders themselves, and just getting lost too. There was code breaking, solving a mystery and using clues to try to find the Benders. I could see my students enjoying this one for sure!