Throwing a brutal axe-wielding maniac into a packed Texas honky-tonk was already enough to sell me, but what made Neon Moon work so well was how much personality it had. This entire book feels loud, sweaty, claustrophobic, and slightly drunk. Then the blood starts flying.

Darlene Boone has spent the last year working at the Teegarden Saloon and trying to rebuild her life after surviving an abusive relationship. On one of the bar's busiest nights, an axe-wielding killer shows up and turns an ordinary night of whiskey, country music, regulars, and rowdy customers into a fight to survive.

The setting was probably my favorite part. The Teegarden doesn't just feel like somewhere Reynolds picked because a bar would make a convenient contained location for a slasher. It has personality. You can practically feel how crowded and loud it is before everything goes to shit, which makes the chaos once the killing begins even better.

And Darlene was such a good lead. She's tough without feeling invincible, and I was rooting for her almost immediately. More importantly, there's actual emotional weight behind her being a survivor. Her past isn't just thrown in to make her seem like a badass final girl. It informs how she reacts to being put in another situation where someone is trying to hurt and control her.

Once the slasher portion really kicks in, this thing MOVES. There is barely any time to recover before something else happens. It's bloody, frantic, and completely committed to the kind of ridiculous carnage I want from a story about a maniac with an axe loose inside a honky-tonk.

I also appreciated that underneath all the violence, there's actually a lot of heart here. Darlene has people who care about her, the Teegarden feels like its own little community, and that makes the survival aspect matter more than it would if everyone were just bodies waiting around for their death scene.

My only real complaint is that I could have happily spent more time here. At 122 pages, it gets in, causes absolute fucking mayhem, and gets out. I would've taken more time with Darlene and the rest of the Teegarden crew before everything went to hell.

Also: Levi. The opossum. In the cowboy hat. Obviously an icon.