A perfect book for spooky season, WHAT COMES BEFORE by Molly Macabre is an expertly crafted tale, bringing forth a creepy forest and a remote cabin for us to wrestle with. These are welcome fixtures in a story that delights in the way that it wrongfoots the reader. Genuinely, I thought I had this one sussed, but I admit my guesses were wrong. Molly knows this, and she leans into this narrative manipulation with style.
The main character, Tess, has escaped the rat race to spend a brief few days at a remote cabin in the woods to unwind. But something happens on the way and it throws her plans into the wind. She soon meets Aiden, and the two of them travel together. Once things start to get very weird, with the forest almost coming alive, they must work together to ensure they can find a path to safety.
This is a read-in-one-sitting book. I believe the immersion works best here if you commit to the hour or two that it will take to read this short novel in one go. The economy of storytelling is first-rate, and the setting, with the forest and the cabin is beautifully rendered. I cannot overstate how well Molly Macabre uses the feel of her locations to give texture to the story, and I was reminded of her skill at this in her previous work DARK BLOOM.
There are moments in this book when, like the loose soil on the ground in these woods, the narrative disallows any surefootedness for the reader. This deliberate, unsettling approach is Molly Macabre’s way of saying she is not going to give you anything solid to hold onto for this ride. And that’s why this book works.