Bad Cree review

I picked up Bad Cree by Jessica Johns after seeing Naomi of From the Mixed Up Desk/Boozhoo recommend it on her TikTok and Instagram. Before I get into my review of the book, I wanted to hype Naomi who does a fantastic job of promoting Indigenous books and horror books written by women. Please check out her Bindery and join (you can do so for free or for a paid monthly sub) and help her in her goal of creating an Indigenous Imprint.

Content Warnings:
Death, Parent Death, Animal Death, Racism and harm done to Indigenous Women is a present theme in the background though it doesn’t play a large part in the plot, mental health issues mentioned, and body horror.

When Mackenzie wakes up with a severed crow’s head in her hands, she panics. Only moments earlier she had been fending off masses of birds in a snow-covered forest. In bed, when she blinks, the head disappears.
Night after night, Mackenzie’s dreams return her to a memory from before her sister Sabrina’s untimely death: a weekend at the family’s lakefront campsite, long obscured by a fog of guilt. But when the waking world starts closing in, too–a murder of crows stalks her every move around the city, she wakes up from a dream of drowning throwing up water, and gets threatening text messages from someone claiming to be Sabrina–Mackenzie knows this is more than she can handle alone.
Traveling north to her rural hometown in Alberta, she finds her family still steeped in the same grief that she ran away to Vancouver to escape. They welcome her back, but their shaky reunion only seems to intensify her dreams–and make them more dangerous.
What really happened that night at the lake, and what did it have to do with Sabrina’s death? Only a bad Cree would put their family at risk, but what if whatever has been calling Mackenzie home was already inside?

Bad Cree is one of the best examples of grief horror I’ve ever read. The slow hike down the trail of family, what it means to be a “bad,” guilt, and loneliness vs being a burden on your loved ones not only added to the character development and dire circumstances Mackenzie is in but also created a sense of realness I couldn’t shake even when I closed the book. The relationships, the descriptions of the people and places, the way Mackenzie described feeling as a member of her family all felt so real – like I was sitting in High Plaines with them, smelling the cooking and wrapping myself in the blanket of their relationships that was both comforting and uncomfortable depending on what was going on.

I loved how this book subverted the plot tool of isolations. If you know anything about writing or dissecting horror, you know that isolating the main character or characters from help or comfort is a huge plot device. It adds to tension, danger, and helps draw the main characters and the antagonist or monster together.
In Bad Cree, the isolation is played with not only physically but internally/emotionally and then done away with completely. Johns holds up isolation and tosses it in the corner showing that it is not only unnecessary for a scary, tension filled plot but the overcoming of isolation rather than succumbing to it can also be part of the horror itself.

I also loved the diversity in the book. Not only is the book filled with Indigenous characters by an Indigenous author but many of those characters are queer from Mackenzie’s best nonbinary friend Joli to her bisexual cousin Kassidy. The inclusion of the characters not just in the story but in the lives of the other characters without explanation, preamble, or mention of homophobia or transphobia was not only wonderful to read as a queer person but made it all the more real and comforting even during the difficult parts of the plot.

In all, this is a book the wormed into my heart and will be there a long time.
5 stars. Highly recommend.

Recommendations

If you want more Indigenous Horror, check out Never Whistle at Night Indigenous horror anthology and/or My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones.

If you want more grief horror with queer characters, check out Undead Folk by Katherine Silva.

If you want more cozy horror with descriptive and immersive settings, check out The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher.