They call it The Violence: a strange epidemic that causes the infected to experience sudden bursts of animalistic rage, with no provocation and no memory of their crimes. While it tears the nation apart, one woman sees something unlikely in the chaos—an opportunity.
Chelsea Martin has been a prisoner in her own home for too long. Her controlling husband has manipulated her for years, cutting her off from all support. Her narcissistic mother is no help, and her teen daughter is realizing she might be falling into the same trap when her once adoring boyfriend shows a dark side.
But when the Violence erupts, Chelsea creates a plan to liberate herself and her daughters once and for all.
What follows is a shocking and thrilling journey as three generations of women navigate a world in which they are finally empowered to fight back. Somewhere along the journey from her magazine-ready Tampa home to the professional wrestling ring, Chelsea becomes her own liberator, an avatar of revenge and hope, and a new heroine for a new world.
It’s getting close to summer and for me, that always means I’m craving epic horror novels. Apocalyptic stories. Zombie stories. Pandemic stories. Things like that. I’m not totally sure why, but I suspect it has something to do with reading THE STAND the summer I was fourteen (or maybe fifteen).
I think I went into Delilah S. Dawson’s THE VIOLENCE expecting that type of huge, sweeping horror epic, but the book is actually a lot more intimate & contained. In fact, it takes place entirely in Florida and focuses on a very small group of characters.
The book is set a few years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. And just while the world is settling into a “new normal,” there’s a new outbreak: people beginning attacking one another, with shocking degrees of violence. The attacks are unprovoked, and the attackers typically don’t stop until the person they’ve attacked is dead. The attackers are left with no memory of the incident.
At the heart of the story are three generations of women from the same family, all of whom have been abused by the men I their life. Now is as good a time as ever to say that this book is, at times, deeply upsetting. It’s also funny, adventurous, a little bonkers/unpredictable. But domestic violence is at the very heart of this novel & there are for sure scenes that some readers will find incredibly difficult to get through. From the author’s notes at the beginning & end of the book, it’s also clearly a very personal book. To that end, some readers might find THE VIOLENCE quite cathartic.
Chelsea Martin is a mother of two girls, Ella (17) and Brooklyn (5). Her husband’s name is David & he’s an abusive monster, full stop. He’s physically abusive, emotionallly abusive…he is nearly constantly negging or gaslighting Chelsea. I think deep down, Chelsea is looking for a way out. But on the surface, she is frequently trying to placate David. Make sure he’s taken care of & that his favorite beer is cold, in the fridge, and ready for him.
Ella, meanwhile, is dealing with a boyfriend named Hayden who is not much better than David. Hayden is excessively needy, and very emotionally manipulative. And while Ella seems increasingly less inclined to put up with Hayden’s shit, it’s clear that the emotional and physical abuse from her boyfriend & her father has left Ella in a fragile state. There’s a pretty big age gap between her & her little sister, Brooklyn, but Ella is THE BEST big sister. Her fierce love & protectiveness of Brooklyn will be her north star in the brutal days & weeks to come.
Chelsea *also* faces emotional/psychological abuse from her mother, Patricia. Patricia married an extremely wealthy man a bit later in her life, and has settled into a life of golf club lunches & live-in cleaning/gardening staff. She lives in a gated community & has shut herself off emotionally from her daughter & her granddaughters. It’s really fucking sad & leaves Chelsea feeling like she has no one to turn to regarding David’s abuse.
And then The Violence hits & everything goes fucking haywire. Chelsea winds up separated from her girls, who are stuck staying with Patricia. And then things spiral even further from there. I’ve already said way too much about the plot so I want to try & pivot away from that slightly.
This is such an incredibly character driven story, and I grew to absolutely love all three of the POV characters. Yes, it’s unquestionably a horror novel. There are some wild, bloody sequences to be sure. But this is really such a powerful story about these incredible women overcoming tremendous amounts of trauma & adversity. Oof, I just loved this one so fucking much.
THE VIOLENCE takes some truly wild twists & turns and you just have to go for the ride. When I had heard that there was a sort’ve pro wrestling subplot, I didn’t know what to think! But that whole aspect of the book is honestly so fun & empowering, and also felt like it was written by someone with a deep reverence for the sport (I could be wrong on this!)
Of all the character arcs in THE VIOLENCE (and they’re all great), it was Patricia’s that most captivated me. There are really just a handful of books I’ve read in my life (THE LIVING DEAD was the most recent one) where there’s a character that goes on such an interior journey, they become almost unrecognizable from the person we meet at the beginning of the book. We learn a lot about Patricia’s early life as a young mom just trying to survive. So while the woman we meet at the beginning of the novel is harsh, and pampered, and generally just horrible…Patricia is a survivor. Oof, I don’t want to give away too much, but there were parts of Patricia’s story that fully wrecked me. Facets of her personality that just slowly reveal themselves & break your fucking heart into pieces. Just a stunning amount of character work here.
I know I mentioned it before, but well, the book is called THE VIOLENCE and there is some shocking violence in this story. There’s a pretty graphic & upsetting dog death that readers should be aware of. And again, please be mindful that the domestic violence scenes might be very hard to get through for some readers.
This was such an incredible book, for sure one of my favorite reads of 2025 so far! It’s kind of like a reverse epic horror novel in a way…there’s this worldwide pandemic happening, and while we gather information about it as the story goes along, the plot is much more concerned with the relationships between the characters than anything. I’ve read a handful of Delilah S. Dawson’s books (including two under her pen name, Lila Bowen), but this is the first true horror novel of her’s I’ve read (I did recently love her horror novella, BLOOM). And yeah, I just couldn’t be more impressed. This is a primal scream of a book. A righteously angry, gorgeous work of feminist horror. I can’t wait to check out Dawson’s most recent horror novel, IT WILL ONLY HURT FOR A MOMENT soon!
Grimdark Dad 