TITLE: The Bloody Brick Road
AUTHOR: Maude Royer
PUBLISHER: Gallery
PUBLISHING DATE: January 6, 2026
PAGES: 352
SOURCE: ARC
FROM GOODREADS: In this wildly creative, horror-soaked reimagining of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, nothing is as it seems in Dorothy’s dystopian nightmare. Fans of Tender Is the Flesh and Maeve Fly will want to follow her twisted journey down the yellow-brick road.
When nineteen-year-old Dorothy Noroît finds out she is pregnant, the road ahead seems bathed in golden light. She has a hard-working boyfriend, a beautiful home, and a job where she works with her best friend. But on October 2nd, 1994, everything changes. A reckless driver causes a massive freeway pile-up, and the Saint-Victorine Hospital in Montreal is suddenly overwhelmed with trauma victims, including five mothers-to-be. Days later, Dorothy leaves the hospital alone and suddenly finds herself without a boyfriend, without a job, and without any direction.
Fast forward twenty-four years.
The city of Montreal is plagued by extremist group, The Winged Monkeys. The gruesome murder of a young man has just made headlines. Lieutenant Henri Duhaime and his partner Detective Emilianne St. Gelais have been brought in to investigate. Just when they begin to wrap their heads around this heinous act of violence, another young man is found brutally murdered. And then another. Desecrated corpses and organs are scattered across the city and investigators are sent running in opposite directions in a race against the clock to solve the murders.
This unhinged retelling of the beloved classic, filled with a twisted cast of your favorite characters, brings together horror and revenge in a blood-soaked, funhouse mirror reflection of the timeless tale—and with endless Easter eggs for readers to discover. Translated from the French for the first time, The Bloody Brick Road will transport you to a dark new world.
Dorothy is young, recently terminated from her job, pregnant and obsessed with shoes. Her boyfriend works in a nearby town and is not home very much. One day on her way to prenatal yoga, she is a victim of a horrible accident which lands many in the hospital struggling to survive or already passed. While she is there, she not only loses her baby due to premature birth, but she is dumped by her boyfriend and evicted from her home.
As the synopsis says, fast forward 24 years. A string of brutal and definitely grotesque murders is happening in Montreal. Duhaime is pulled from retirement to assist with the investigation. Along with his partner, Emilianne, who he considers a bumbling fool, he works hard to put the pieces together to discover the connection as well as the culprit.
When I picked this book up, for some reason I had strictly the horror genre in mind. I will say I found it to be more of a bloody, gruesome thriller/mystery, with some absolutely horrific scenes. I mean, it also comes with a complete list of trigger warnings in the beginning, but I tend to ignore them for the most part in all books. Once the mystery and the killings started to develop, I found this book hard to put down. I found all of the characters, even Duhaime and Emilianne, disturbing in unique, individual ways and you will never guess what happens to the ruby stiletto pump, which I also consider a victim in this tale.
If you like reimaginings or gripping thrillers, this is definitely a book you want to consider picking up. I'm glad I continued on and darn it, this is one of the main reasons I find it so hard to DNF a book to begin. The Bloody Brick Road is a hidden gem I would have hated to miss.
Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, there is no dog named Toto harmed in this writing of this novel (worded weirdly intentionally because if you know, you know).
MY RATING: 4 PAWS
Glad it worked out for you.
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