★★★★ out of ★★★★★
By S.P. Miskowski
The Worst is Yet to Come is the latest novel by multiple Shirley Jackson Award nominee, S.P. Miskowski to be set in the fictional Pacific Northwest town of Skillute. It is the story of Briar Kenny who has moved to town with her mother and her mother’s boyfriend Rayburn and become the new girl at Clark middle school. She is befriended by fellow classmate Tasha Davis, “the first girl who’d ever regarded Briar with something other than anger or pity.” Briar is the cool rebel that Tasha longs to be, while Tasha has the loving a stable home life Briar craves. The two develop a fast and fierce friendship, the kind it seems only teenage girls can, but something sinister is lurking just below the surface of Skillute that will test the bonds of Tasha and Briar’s newly formed friendship and those who stand in its way.
This novel has the exciting pace and as many twists as a straight forward thriller, with added supernatural and occult elements. This is the second novel to be set in Skillute (and there are stories that take place in the eerie town as well) and while I wasn’t lost reading it, I would have liked a little more background on the town and some of its more, ahem, eccentric residents in this novel. Miskowski’s writing style made reading this book a breeze and there were some genuinely spine tingling moments, but it was the descriptions of Tasha and Briar’s bond that really resonated with me (being a teenage girl once myself) and I suspect will do the same with other readers. I look forward to digging into Miskowski’s back catalog and returning to Skillute.
The Worst is Yet to Come with be released on February 22nd, 2019 by Trepidatio Publishing and is available to pre-order on their website, Amazon or wherever you buy your books.
- Paperback: 208 pages
- Publisher: Trepidatio Publishing
- ISBN-10: 1947654462