📖 Book Review ~ Serenity Falls by C J Tudor

 

Michael Joseph 
10 September 2026

Thanks to the publisher for my copy of this book

Welcome to Serenity Falls – the most idyllic, and safest, town in the US – a place to grow up, grow your family and grow old together. For Dan and his daughter, Sadie, it’s the perfect relocation option. A fresh start, thousands of miles from their troubled past in the UK.

But their idyll is shattered when they find a dead body in the swimming pool of their new house – a house Dan’s late mother kept secret from him all his life.

It’s just the start of a series of disturbing discoveries. Abandoned houses where people have seemingly just upped and left. The strange woman Sadie sees around town putting up ‘missing’ posters for a child who drowned almost thirty years ago. An ice cream van that drives around at night making sure residents are asleep...

As plans gear up to celebrate Serenity Falls’ fiftieth anniversary, something is stirring beneath the surface of the blissful façade. Is Serenity Falls really the perfect town or is it founded on something far darker? And is someone so desperate to keep its secrets that they’d resort to anything to preserve.

📖My Review 

After an unexpected inheritance, Dan and his teenage daughter Sadie relocate to Serenity Falls in Florida. Leaving Manchester and everything they have previously known is no easy feat and once arrived at Serenity Falls they both soon realise that all is not well in this seemingly idyllic town. Mysterious events soon start to happen and a dark and brooding atmosphere helps to make Serenity Falls into one of those stories that you stay up long and late to finish.

I enjoyed way the story unfolded, the slow build up, observing how Dan and Sadie are pulled into a very different lifestyle and there’s a definite undercurrent of unease with a few surprise twists and turns along the way. The arrival of the decidedly creepy ice cream van which is featured on the front cover made the hair on the back of my neck stand up and I’ll never hear ice cream musical chimes in the same way again.

Reminiscent of Stephen King, and with Serenity Falls as its lead character, this is a thriller / horror story which ticks all the right boxes and has all the necessary elements of fear, surprise and nail biting edginess.

About the Author 

C. J. Tudor’s love of writing, especially the dark and macabre, started young. When her peers were reading Judy Blume, she was devouring Stephen King and James Herbert. Over the years she has had a variety of jobs, including trainee reporter, radio scriptwriter, dog walker, voiceover, television presenter and copywriter.

She is now the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Chalk Man, The Taking of Annie Thorne, The Other People, The Burning Girls, The Drift and The Gathering. All of her books are in development or optioned for TV. The Burning Girls is available on Netflix. 

She is also the author of a short story collection, A Sliver of Darkness.Darkness