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Thank you to NetGalley, Josh Winning, and Penguin Michael Joseph for a Galley of this in exchange for an honest review.

Summerween is well and truly here! Heads Will Role is a tense slasher novel, filled with commentary on our modern society’s reliance on our phones, and how cancel culture ruins lives. We follow 20-something ‘Willow’ who has recently been on the receiving end of intense social media backlash. With nothing left to lose, Willow checks in Camp Castaway, an adults-only tech-free retreat not unlike the classic US summer camp of many a slasher film. Surrounded by new people, all of whom are broken in sharp and dangerous ways, Willow begins to heal, but things quickly turn sour. Oddity after oddity, suspicious event after suspicious event, creepy happening after creepy happening, Willow and her new friends begin to worry about who, or what, else is in these woods. Told primarily from Willow’s POV, Winning drops us into the minds of other campers, and sures up our understanding with epistolary chapter breaks, laying the foundation of the world, and drip-feeding us information.

This was tense, and suspenseful, treading a careful line between real-world creepy, and supernatural elements, to keep the reader guessing right to the end. Winning had mastered the POV switch, even without the helpful labels, it would be possible to tell the narrative voices apart. Each character is unique, each situation its own, and yet there is just enough confusion around identities that no one ever seems truly safe.

This is a twisty, engaging novel, perfect for anyone who wants to participate in TikTok’s annual Summerween recommendation boom! After all, nothing says sunshine and ice cream like serial killers! A solid read, thrilling, but won’t make you sleep with the lights on – best of both worlds through and through. I give this 4 stars, only because the final twists didn’t totally convince me, but overall an absolutely stellar novel!