Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5
Published by: Penguin Michael Joseph
Publication date: 10th September 2026
Content warning: death, murder, drowning, dementia, alcoholism, animal death, cancer, mental health issues

“Once you’re here, you’re here to stay…”

Yeah… you might want to go and pre-order this!! Another author I’ve never read before but what an introduction for me! I was properly chuffed to get an early proof of this and it was calling my name whenever I passed my bookshelf. So, naturally, I ended up dropping everything to start it. It’s a chunky book but I raced through it and now I just need to talk about it! I am so thrilled to be sharing my review for Serenity Falls by C.J. Tudor!

About the book

Welcome to Serenity Falls – the most idyllic, and safest, town in the US – a place to grow up, grow your family and grow old together. For Dan and his daughter, Sadie, it’s the perfect relocation option. A fresh start, thousands of miles from their troubled past in the UK.

But their idyll is shattered when they find a dead body in the swimming pool of their new house – a house Dan’s late mother kept secret from him all his life.

It’s just the start of a series of disturbing discoveries. Abandoned houses where people have seemingly just upped and left. The strange woman Sadie sees around town putting up ‘missing’ posters for a child who drowned almost thirty years ago. An ice cream van that drives around at night making sure residents are asleep…

As plans gear up to celebrate Serenity Falls’ fiftieth anniversary, something is stirring beneath the surface of the blissful façade. Is Serenity Falls really the perfect town or is it founded on something far darker? And is someone so desperate to keep its secrets that they’d resort to anything to preserve them?

The beginning

Crikey, C.J. Tudor’s writing is a bit special, isn’t it?! I fell head over heels in love with it from that first page and from then on, I just craved more of it. This is the book you want to read all the damn time and I started taking it everywhere with me!! We’re introduced to Dan and his daughter, Sadie, who find out they’ve inherited a huge house in Serenity Falls, Florida – the most idyllic and safest place in the US. A perfect American town. A place with zero crime, voted the best place to live in America, where house prices were in the millions. They pack up their lives in Manchester, UK to begin a brand new life. A fresh start that they so desperately needed. But when they arrive at their stunner of a new home, they’re met with the grisly sight of a dead body floating in their swimming pool… and that’s just the start of the weirdness. We meet many of the inhabitants of Serenity Falls and start to learn how the town operates, what is expected of them, and I was completely and utterly hooked. If I closed my eyes, I could easily walk around this town. The description and setting is just that bloody good.

“Welcome to Serenity Falls. A place to grow up, grow your family and grow old together.”

The POVs alternate between Dan and Sadie, as well as the odd chapter from previous inhabitants and employees from Serenity Falls. But these characters have one thing in common; they’re all dead. These different perspectives build up the picture of Serenity Falls even more, but there is a darkness tainting their words. Things have happened here, and it’s clear Serenity isn’t what it seems. I got such strong Stephen King vibes with this book and I loved the atmosphere building. It felt eerie and haunting, and certainly not as happy and as perfect as all the brochures claimed it to be. I really loved Sadie as a character; the author has captured her teenage attitude so well. She’s a little rebellious, inquisitive, and wants to know all the gossip about this place (and so did I!) The humour is also spot on. I literally couldn’t fault it. There are stories swirling round about certain people and families, as I guess they do in small towns. My guard was always up, and I couldn’t wait to get into the even weirder goings on in this place. Literally the most perfect opening to the book. Gimme more of it!

The middle

Despite Serenity Falls having ‘no crime’, we hear lots of murder stories, which didn’t fill me with confidence. It seems everyone we meet knows of someone who has been killed in tragic circumstances in this seemingly perfect town. How safe was this place really? The creepy vibes just kept on coming and I just loved it so much! I also really loved Dan and Sadie’s father/daughter relationship and learning about their past, including more about Dan’s wife, Sadie’s mum. The multiple POVs worked flawlessly in helping us learn about Serenity’s past and present, and I became so engrossed in finding out more about this community, their way of life, and especially the horror stories of creepy Harold’s cabin. There were rumours that this place was haunted, and that getting there was a huge safety risk, but good god I was invested and needed to know more about it! And can we please discuss the ice cream van?! The eerie, chilling feeling I got when learning about Serenity’s curfew, this goddamn van playing Mr Sandman while patrolling the streets, are you kidding me?!

“It’s easy when you’re young. You believe you’re immortal. You believe everything is black and white. Good and bad. Right and wrong. But life isn’t that easy, or kind.”

We slowly begin to piece things together and I loved every new detail we learn about Serenity Falls. Different character perspectives from different timelines started to align and I was so pulled into the mystery of this town. It gets more and more unsettling as things progress and with each passing chapter I was kicking myself for not reading C.J. Tudor’s books sooner. Sadie learns more about Serenity from her new friends, the stories, disturbing detail about how this place controls the people who live here. Was anyone really safe? What would happen to anyone who didn’t follow the rules? Those who broke curfew? Those who stayed awake at night? I was concerned about Dan, his migraines, nosebleeds and unfamiliar sleeping patterns. I was also intrigued about how his mother came into possession of this house and why she never mentioned it before she passed. There was so much happening, so many things to uncover, but it’s so easy to digest and so tightly plotted. The detail was out of this world, the characters perfectly developed. I couldn’t wait for everything to come together!

The end

Dan and Sadie – through their own detective work – get dangerously close to the truth. And it’s pretty clear that certain people in Serenity Falls don’t like it. I loved the dual timelines even more here because we get so deep into this whole mystery and everything started to make more sense. It was truly shocking! I especially loved Sadie’s “f*ck it” attitude in those final few chapters. (Thank god for her courage!) I loved the twists, how those answers we are so desperate for are slowly revealed, and they are done so meticulously and in a way that just enhanced that unsettling feeling I’d felt from the start. I could not stop reading! There were parts of me that wanted the weirdness to continue, like I wanted it to be turned up a notch at times, but tbh, that is if I really wanted to nit pick. Imagining yourself in this town, imagining yourself subjected to some of the horrors embedded within it, discovering what has really been going on around you… man, you just would not be able to recover from it, would you? Dan and Sadie have the chance to escape it all. Could they? Or, should they?

“Someone was very keen for you and your daughter to come live here. I don’t know why. But I do know that the longer you’re here, the harder it gets to leave.”

The ending chapters get truly wacky and wild and I just loved them! The danger ramps up, the future becomes uncertain, true colours come out, people surprise you. I loved the unexpected twists and learning some very interesting information about Dan’s life and past, and everything tied up really well. There are chilling hints about the future, how change was coming, how humanity as they knew it could soon be a thing of the past. It was scary imagining a life like that. The ending of the book does kind of leave things open, so if you’re not usually a fan of those kinda endings, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on it. I did personally really like it and it had me thinking so much after I’d finished! Genuinely the stuff of nightmares. I am desperate to read more from C.J. Tudor after this and would love to hear any of your recs for books in a similar genre or those that have a similar feel. I think I’ve just found another auto-buy author guys, and I may just have to treat myself to her previous books! If you love a slow-burn, unsettling mystery, then I think you will adore this!

Overall thoughts

Serenity Falls is an unsettling, sinister, slow-burn mystery with that delicious dash of horror that felt creepy as hell from beginning to end. I think I just found a new favourite genre. Gimme this nightmarish goodness any day of the week! Dan and his daughter Sadie inherit a massive house in idyllic Serenity Falls, the safest town in the US. A place with zero crime, voted the best place to live in America, where house prices were in the millions. After packing up their lives in Manchester, UK, they head to Serenity to start their new lives. But when the first thing they discover at their stunning new home is a body in the swimming pool, you just know things are off. And, you’ll be pleased to know, this book gets hella weird. Just what I wanted!

I was always questioning how genuine the inhabitants of Serenity Falls were, how much we could trust them, the kinds of secrets they were obviously keeping. There are stories from the past, unexplained murders and disappearances, empty houses where owners have upped and left with no explanation, but there is no crime in Serenity Falls. Nothing bad ever happens here. Yeah, right… This town had an artificial feel which always made me feel uneasy and kept me on my toes. The multiple POVs and timelines worked effortlessly and added so much to the whole mystery. It became one of those books you think about all the damn time. As truths are slowly revealed, I quickly found myself wanting to protect Dan and Sadie from the horrors within this town… but then come the twists. You are not ready!!

This book is so atmospheric, it’s tension-filled, brilliantly plotted and so clever with that lingering feeling of dread. The secrets of Serenity Falls will get under your skin and I guarantee you will feel a bit sick the next time you hear an ice cream van, just sayin’. Off to buy every other book C.J. Tudor has ever written, see ya.

Huge thanks to C.J. Tudor and the team at Penguin Michael Joseph for my early proof copy! You can order your own copy of Serenity Falls right now over on Amazon* or wherever you buy your books. Make sure you’re following the author over on Instagram for more updates!

* As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Thanks so much for your support!

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