Discouraged following endless employment rejections, aspiring fashionista Dez (Desiree) Lane may have found her ticket to trendiness. While it means going out with creep Patrick Ruskin, this may allow her to crack open the door to meet Patrick’s mother – fashion icon and magazine magnate Marie Caulfield-Ruskin. After a few short weeks of dating, Dez is overjoyed to be invited to the private Ruskin Family Island just off the coast of Savannah, Georgia for Easter festivities. Upon arrival, everything feels off for Dez; the family is distant, rude to staff and generally cold to her. This feeling is only enforced as she’s promptly asked to sign an NDA before she can continue with her stay – otherwise, she’s on the first boat back to shore. Dez signs, against her better judgement, as she cannot let yet another opportunity to further her career slip through her fingers. What unfolds next is, in a word, gruesome.

Let me tell you, this was a trip to say the least. I read Dawson’s THE VIOLENCE a few years ago, so I thought I was prepared for how far she could go with the “blood and guts”, so to speak, but I feel like this one was on another level. The Ruskins are awful, awful people, so what happens throughout the story is certainly in a way, cathartic. It always seems like those with unimaginable wealth and power rarely pay the appropriate price for their horrific actions, and author Delilah Dawson has tasked herself with seeing appropriate punishment doled out here.

GUILLOTINE is a swift, merciless read that you’ll likely finish in no time; its brisk pace and small page count lent itself to the type of story Dawson told. While I found Dez to be an unremarkable protagonist overall, I thought the story around her had been fleshed out enough to make an impact, when all was said and done. GUILLOTINE will fit nicely in your spooky season stack this autumn.