The Worst is Yet to Come by S.P. Miskowski

Tasha has never had a best friend. Until she met Briar. 

Tasha officially meets the new girl at school while saving her from bullying between classes. They skip out, wandering the town of Skillute and immediately bonding.

Tasha’s mother isn’t a fan of Briar, convinced she’s not the right kind of friend for her daughter. Her husband feels differently, glad their daughter finally has a friend at all. What neither they nor Tasha and Briar know, though, is that Skillute has a dark history that preys on the vulnerable. And Briar is very vulnerable.

Briar and Tasha are everyday teens, for the most part. But as the story progresses it becomes clear that neither of them has had what would be considered a truly normal childhood.

Tasha is a bit overly protected by a mom who tries too hard to be her best (and only) friend. And Briar has been moved around so much lately thanks to her mother's new boyfriend that she hasn't been able to set down roots at all. So they're both outsiders, to an extent. Which makes both of them perfectly matched in the friend category.

I wanted to love this short horror novel. Miskowski draws admirable reviews from big names in the horror genre, which was how I discovered this book to begin with.

And there’s lots to like in The Worst is Yet to Come. Lots. But overall I couldn’t love it. It felt disorganized, with dangling threads that never panned out and too many questions left by the end.

I used to hate stories with no explanation. No neatly tied up end. I’m ok with that now, but there was too much gray area at the end of this one for my taste. And maybe some of that is because Miskowski has explored Skillute in prior novels and stories that I’ve yet to read. Maybe I’m missing out on some of those threads because they’re part of previous Skillute installments.

The book alternates between various viewpoints, including Tasha, Briar, Tasha's parents, and one of Briar's neighbors who offers up some of the weirder elements of Skillute's history. And it's these elements that I really wanted more of - and again acknowledge that I'm likely missing due to not having yet read the other Skillute based tales. But I also think that a book should stand on its own to a large extent and, Skillute's twisted background aside, The Worst is Yet to Come simply feels incomplete.

It's not the lack of explanation about what's happening to the characters, which I won't spoil. But it's the various pieces that are introduced here that never come to anything. Two side characters, a brother and sister, keep a close eye on Briar in the beginning, murmuring cryptically to one another about things that never quite make sense. And then they vanish. Their part in the story is just one example of things that never quite fits comprehensively into the story.

So again, I liked this book. It hit all the right notes in terms of dark story and creepy setting. It also touches on some things that terrify me to no end as a new parent as much of the story is focused on the horrors of parenting today! But I couldn't love it, simply because I felt like I was missing too many pieces to truly get it.