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Maeve Fly

by Cj Leede

By day, Maeve works as a beloved ice princess; by night, she haunts Los Angeles bars. Her best friend’s brother awakens something dangerous, and she adopts a bloodier persona.

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A USA Today bestseller!

Winner of the Golden Poppy Octavia E. Butler Award • Winner of the Splatterpunk Award for Best Novel • A Bram Stoker Award Nominee • One of Esquire 's Best Horror Books of the Year • An Indie Next Pick!

"This is gory and brutal and beautiful and painful and terrifying and a pure delight."―Stephen Graham Jones

A provocative and unforgettable debut that is both a blood-soaked love letter to Los Angeles and a gleeful send-up to iconic horror villains, Maeve Fly will thrill fans of slashers and the macabre.

By day, Maeve Fly works at the happiest place in the world as every child’s favorite ice princess.

By the neon night glow of the Sunset Strip, Maeve haunts the dive bars with a drink in one hand and a book in the other, imitating her misanthropic literary heroes.

But when Gideon Green - her best friend’s brother - moves to town, he awakens something dangerous within her, and the world she knows suddenly shifts beneath her feet.

Untethered, Maeve ditches her discontented act and tries on a new persona. A bolder, bloodier one, inspired by the pages of American Psycho . Step aside Patrick Bateman, it’s Maeve’s turn with the knife.

"An apocalyptic Anaheim Psycho ." ―Grady Hendrix, New York Times bestselling author of How to Sell a Haunted House

Also by CJ Leede : American Rapture

First published: 2023
Publisher: Tor Trade
Pages: 304
Amazon reviews: Read reviews on Amazon

Book tags

Content warnings

Horror profile

Scary: 3 out of 5
Creepy: 3 out of 5
Gore: 4 out of 5
Disturbing: 4 out of 5
Weird: 2 out of 5

How we calculate this

These are editorial estimates of intensity, informed by reading and review evidence, then checked before publication. They aren't star ratings, reader-vote averages or a measure of quality.

Each dimension runs from 1 (low) to 5 (exceptionally intense). A 5 is reserved for strongly consistent evidence. People experience horror differently.

Scary: Fear, tension and immediate threat.
Creepy: Unease, dread and an uncanny atmosphere.
Gore: Graphic injury, blood and bodily detail.
Disturbing: Upsetting ideas and lingering psychological impact.
Weird: Surreal, strange and reality-bending elements.

We draw a filled profile only when all five scores have been reviewed. Unrated does not mean mild. Missing scores are not estimated from genre tags or your saved taste. This profile isn't a complete content-warning guide.