Review: 'How to Survive a Horror Story' by Mallory Arnold
Pub. Date: 8/7/2025
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Welcome to Queen Manor. If you survive... well, that's quite a story to tell...
When legendary horror author Mortimer Queen passes, a group of writers find themselves invited to his last will and testament reading expecting a piece of his massive fortune. Each have their own unique connection to the literary icon, some known, some soon to be discovered, and they've been waiting for their chance to step into the author's shoes for some time.
Instead, they arrive at his grand manor and are invited to play a game. The rules are simple, solve the riddle and progress to the next room. If they don't, the manor will take one of them for itself.
You see, the Queen estate was built on the bones of Mortimer's family, and like any true horror story, the house is still very, very hungry.
With the clever, locked-room thrills of Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone with the ghostly horror of The Fall of the House of Usher, How to Survive a Horror Story is a bright, biting, thrill-ride that begs us to contemplate how the best horror stories come to be.
Horror literature is a great genre for intertextual fun, especially if we sneak in some books more usually categorised as mysteries and thrillers. Because the genre encourages its readers to always be looking for clues, for ways out, for any information that might help resolve a situation, connecting your story to others increases the fun. With intertextuality, you help shape your text's meaning, but also form and content, through that of other texts. This is not the same as borrowing ideas or motifs from texts, but rather, knowledge of other stories deepens your enjoyment and understanding of the text you're reading. For example, How to Survive a Horror Story is set in a rather odd manor house, which seems to have a life of its own. For readers of the horror and mystery genre, this most likely immediately brings other such houses to mind. For me, strong resonances to Hill House, in Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, became immediately apparent. A house that isn't right, a house that is hungry, a house that offers both a home and a threat. Knowing what Jackson has done with this idea makes me more curious and eager to see what Arnold will do with it. This kind of intertextuality is especially fun when a book is somewhat self aware. In the case of How to Survive, we have this kind of self-awareness because it is a horror book populated by horror writers. They know how these stories go, they have written them themselves, and so their own knowledge should, technically, help them out. In this way, the books can comment upon themselves, upon the development of their genre, and for readers interested in this kind of puzzling, it is a lot of fun.
Melanie is on her way to the Mortimer Queen Manor, the decrepit-looking, Gothic house where famed horror author Mortimer Queen used to live. Upon his death, he invited Melanie there for the reading of his will, as he had, to her surprise, apparently left her something. Alongside Melanie, we meet Scott, Crystal, Winnie, Petey, and Buck, all horror authors who share some kind of connection to Mortimer. (Gia, the housekeeper, is my favourite character, alongside the house itself!) As we get to hear from each of them, it becomes clear that no one is entirely sure why Mortimer would want to leave them something, but all hope for some inspiration for their next book. What they find is not your traditional will reading, however. Rather, a game has been prepared for them and the price of failure is death. From room to room, secrets are revealed and delightfully gore-y horror ensues. I don't read a whole lot of horror but I found the descriptions etc. in How to Survive quite matter of fact. It was horrid, what happened, but there was such mix of directness and fantasticality to it, that I wasn't, necessarily, horrified. (What does this say about me?!) I knew, pretty much from page one, not just who would survive the house, but also why and to what end. That doesn't have to be a bad thing, it can in fact heighten anticipation to be on someone's side and to follow them through danger. To a certain extent, it did that, but here it also meant that I didn't fully connect to the other characters and found them all a little bit of a cliche. I gloried in the house, however, and did very much enjoy the clear pleasure Arnold herself had in coming up with its various tests and rooms.
This is, if I'm right, Mallory Arnold's debut novel and it shows a great deal of promise, especially on the level of concept and imagination. The set-up of How to Survive, while not brand new, is given an interesting spin here and Arnold clearly enjoyed plotting out the rooms and challenges, the intertwining of the POVs, and the use of storytelling to question storytelling. In its execution, all of this could have used a tighter hand, I think, be it characterisation or pace. There are also a few elements of the story which didn't entirely work for me, and one of the twists towards the end, which kind of counteracted an earlier twist, actually didn't work for me because I enjoyed the idea of the original twist and what it suggested about the power of storytelling. Something that threw me off and took a little getting used to was that How to Survive was written in the present tense. I do think that it work well for the story told here, as it keeps you a little more "in the moment", so to say, but it's still not my favourite. I really enjoyed switching perspectives between the different guests and thereby getting to see the characters through each other's eyes. I enjoyed this recently about Stacie Grey's She Left, where the protagonist's POV would get interrupted by brief chapters from the other characters in the role they were playing within the mystery. Here, the narration is largely shared equally, even if there is a clear protagonist, but their tone doesn't really differ all that much. The nice thing about these switches in How to Survive is that eventually they begin to reveal one of the novel's main themes/questions, which is who is telling the truth, who gets to write the story, and whether it truly matters at the end. I liked paying attention to those little details. In that way, How to Survive also reminded me of The Labyrinth House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji, which I recently read and adored. There too, we find a group of people, connected to a famous author of mysteries, locked in his odd house, trying to complete a game of storytelling and revelations. I do have to say Ayatsuji's approach was the more masterful, carefully planned and executed down to phrasing and word choice. The stakes felt real, despite the absurdity of the situation, and there was a real cleverness to figuring things out. I think that for a debut, however, How to Survive is promising and I definitely look forward to reading more by Mallory Arnold!
I give this book...
3 Universes!
How to Survive a Horror Story is a fun ride, with a lot of great ideas that show Arnold's imaginative abilities. While a little underdeveloped here and there, I did have good fun with this book and would recommend it to readers who love a creepy house as much as I do.
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