Small Town Monsters takes its inspiration from The Conjuring/ Ed & Lorraine Warren, mixes in some high-school romance, and brings some Latinx flavor to the story. I came across the book when I attended the fantastic 2025 Dark Ink event at the Doylestown Bookshop in August 2025. I wanted to try some writers I hadn’t previously read when I experienced the panel wherein Diana was one of the featured writers, I could feel her passion for horror, for the writing, and this story / novel in particular so here we are…
Let’s get to it…Vera Rodriguez is something of an outcast in her school in the town of Roaring Creek. Her parents are famous demonologists so most of the town and school keep her at arm’s length. She also doesn’t show the same spiritual talents as her parents, so she feels like an outcast in her own family. Her closest “friend” or ally is her aunt, who amounts to her babysitter since Vera’s parents are often away helping to protect people from demons. In Small Town Monsters her parents happen to be away on another spiritual mission.
The other primary character is Maxwell Oliver, a popular boy who attends the same school as Vera. She’s got a little bit of a crush on him so she’s somewhat taken aback by the extensive looks he givers her one day in class. When he finally approaches Vera, he does so because his mother is acting strangely. Possessed, maybe.
Roaring Creek is that quaint small-town America where so many of these spooky stories take place. Everyone knows everybody else and it is a fairly tight-knit community. A few years prior to the start of the story, a tragic event took the lives of a few people, including Max’s father. Since then, the family restaurant has been struggling, with Max all but taking over major operations of the restaurant… and the care of his younger sister who happened to be born the same night of the tragedy that took their father’s life. In fact, Max’s mom went into labor just outside the building as it was consumed by flames.
Tragedy can lead to some really bad decisions, it can lead to people being vulnerable to suggestion or coercion. When your husband is killed in a tragedy, it can lead a person to spiral, to be desperate to ease the pain. That can sometimes be alcohol, or it could be a new religion that promises healing, understanding, and a better way of life.
What makes this novel so good, such a compelling read are Vera and Max. They are kids who have experienced some pain in their lives, and they have flaws. With Vera as the town outcast and Max as one of the popular kids, his circle of friends may have been some of the people marginalizing Vera. A little ironic that Max has to go to this “freak” for help and Rodriguez-Wallach captures this uncomfortable situation very well. It doesn’t go easy for Vera and Max, it feels genuine and real as they work out their issues while also trying to figure out the problem with Max’s mom.
Max and Vera are genuinely good kids. Vera is likeable, her outsider status builds up great empathy for her, and despite her initial misgivings about Max, she truly wants to help. I loved the relationship she has with her aunt and it was heartwarming (and a little heart-wrenching) when she had the chance to speak with her parents.
Max never loses faith that his mother can be pulled out of the dark quagmire to which her despair led her, and he also is very protective and loving of his kid sister. The darkness that envelops Max’s mom (as well as others) is palpable, unsettling, and very well developed. There’s a delicious and gradual reveal to the source of the horror I found just as well-handled as the characters of Vera and Max. In other words, a very believable set of events leading to the horrors.
Our young heroes aren’t just marginalized in the story, but the characters are from what is a marginalized group, especially in horror stories – people of Latin descent. In that aforementioned panel discussion, Wallach (herself of Latin descent) made clear she very intentionally created characters of Latin descent. It is a welcome “expansion” of what readers and consumers of horror stories/novels/movies typically see /experience with their characters. Sure, there may be some supporting characters who aren’t cis-white, but not many with the main Latinx characters.
Although a YA novel, published by a YA imprint and featuring youthful protagonists, like Justina Ireland’s Dread Nation and Adam Cesare’s Clown in the Cornfield novels, there’s a great deal for adults to enjoy. To wit, I am very easily old enough to be the father of either Vera or Max and I enjoyed the hell out of Small Town Monsters because quite simply, it is a damned good story!
Kudos the fantastic cover, which to me evokes the classic 1980s vampire film, Fright Night. No vampires in this novel, but there are indeed some otherworldly entities!
Small Town Monsters is a wonderful, quick, engaging, and potent horror novel. It is a compulsive read with well-drawn characters, who bring into focus a culture that doesn’t always get the spotlight. In other words, this is a novel worth reading on many levels especially as the daylight turns to darkness earlier, the leaves blow across the landscape, and the nights grow cooler.
Recommended
© 2025 Rob H. Bedford
Trade Paperback | 336 Pages
September 2021 | Underlined!
https://dianarodriguezwallach.com/
https://dianarodriguezwallach.com/small-town-monsters/
Review copy purchased
