“Another Fine Mess” by Lindy Ryan

A rural, southeastern Texas town has survived a summer of horrors — for the most part. The ghouls have been slain by the Evans women, like they’ve always done, and the dead can rest now. That is, until more killings start happening. Something is prowling the town and it’s out for blood. The Evans family will face a new kind of danger and uncover old family secrets, even if they’d rather leave them buried.

 Lindy Ryan returns readers to a small Texas town in her horror novel Another Fine Mess (Minotaur Books 2025), the sequel to Bless Your Heart (Minotaur Books 2024). The year 1999 isn’t over yet, but Lenore and Luna have already lived through the strigoi raising the dead from their graves. As the only two surviving women in the Evans clan, they have to carry on at the family funeral parlor and overcome their grief. Luna, now initiated into the Evans duty of killing the undead, realizes that there are even more secrets in her bloodline:

“Everything the Evans women knew had been passed down from generation to generation. Her family had kept one monumental secret from her — much bigger than the secret she had tucked in her backpack — but she couldn’t imagine that they’d held anything else back after.”

Where the Evans women, mothers and daughters, had each other to rely on before, now Lenore and Luna have to rely on their allies. Roger, the new sheriff, is mourning Grace Evans. Kim, a cosmetology student, wants to work at the funeral parlor. Crane, the new goth in town, has become Luna’s closest confidante. Though they’ve all had to reckon with the world of the undead, none of them could have prepared for the strange creature now threatening them all. Pets in town are going missing, and it doesn’t take long for humans to find themselves being hunted:

“He caught a whiff of something foul on the breeze, the stench of copper and fur, and when the creature moved, the moon lit up its nocturnal eyes. Its teeth.”

With the summer’s deaths being blamed on a rabid wolf-hybrid, new faces begin to come to town. Outsiders are moving in close on old Evans secrets, but there are some family mysteries that even the Evans women haven’t solved yet. At the middle of it all seems to be Pie Evans, the great-great-grandmother who went missing years ago. The surviving Evans women and their allies have much to mourn, but they have to contend with their grief if they’re to hold the monsters at bay.

Though Another Fine Mess continues the series’ balance of monster hunting, grisly deaths, and dark humor, Ryan delves deeper into what it means for people to move forward after the unthinkable. The Evans women know how to bury the dead, but sometimes that’s easier than having to face the secrets that they carry to the grave. As everyone faces their demons in their own ways, background characters from the first novel are made more complex and relationships are tested. No one in town will be left without scars, but Lenore and Luna will fight to keep them alive:

“Grief he knew his way around, but vengeance made for a scarier monster than even the Evans women could put down. The dead ate to satisfy a hunger they could never fill. The living did it just for the fun of watching someone bleed.”

Though the supernatural creatures in Another Fine Mess are those of old tales, the story’s messages about grief, secrets, and family ties are rooted in reality. The novel keeps women at the center of the narrative and how their roles affect one another. Pie, Ducey, Lenore, Grace, and Luna bridge the gap between the living and the dead, and reveal how some things do not stay forgotten. As night settles over Texas, and a full moon emerges, secrets and other hidden creatures will emerge too.

Lindy Ryan

Lindy Ryan is an award-winning author, director, and anthologist who was raised in Southeast Texas. Another Fine Mess is her most recent addition to the Evans family anthology begun in Bless Your Heart. She also writes magical romance novels under the pen name Lindy Miller. In addition to being an author, Ryan is a professor at Rutgers University and the current author-in-residence at Rue Morgue. Ryan currently lives on the East Coast.