What I'm Reading: Mallory Arnold's 'Cross My Heart, I Hope You Die'
Last year, I came across Mallory Arnold's How to Survive a Horror Story and was immediately drawn to its tale of writers trapped in a mansion, competing to inherit the fortune of a deceased horror author who was a fan of riddle-driven, Saw-like traps. The novel is a delightful take on the locked-room mystery, with a cast of flawed characters getting knocked off one by one in grisly fashion.
Now, Arnold is putting her twist on the well-trodden Woman-Scorned-Gets-Revenge story in Cross My Heart, I Hope You Die, tripling the drama with three female narrators who live in the same Montana town and discover they've all been dating the same man, Jason, a swindling jerk with enough red flags to recreate a USSR rally.
Nora is the athletic one, a track-and-field coach with daddy issues. Cham is the rough-around-the-edges mechanic who falls for Jason's organ-donor con. And Ruby is the privileged schoolteacher with a shady past that somehow figures into the horror that unfolds when the three women unite and plot to lure Jason to an isolated mountaintop cabin where they can exact their revenge. But of course, the plan for their cheating boyfriend goes horribly awry, resulting in murder and mayhem.
The novel is swiftly paced, setting up the premise in its opening chapters, which are subsequently intercut with audio transcripts taken from the aftermath of the horrific events. When the story moves the action to its snowbound setting, a very dark underbelly is revealed, plunging these women into one traumatizing hellscape.
Arnold wonderfully checks off all the thriller boxes here. There's unreliable narration, creepy atmosphere, supernatural teases, slashery deaths, obligatory misdirects, and a requisite plot twist I should've seen coming (but didn't).
Cross My Heart, I Hope You Die is like an adult version of those page-turning YA novels most of us grew up with (think: R.L. Stine, Christopher Pike), a title that can sit alongside equally delicious entries from authors like Brian McAuley, Darcy Coates, and Riley Sager. And while she hits all the right narrative marks, she also manages to provide a subtle showcase for the power of female friendship, a theme her readers will consume with relish.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (out of 5)
*Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced reader copy! This novel will be released on July 14.
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