No Rest for the Wicked is a small-town psychological thriller set against the backdrop of a Halloween-obsessed Midwestern town. The story blends a missing-person mystery, family drama, and themes of long-buried secrets, guilt, and the unreliability of traumatic memory. This novel is Rachel Louise Adams’s debut, and it’s already been receiving a lot of praise from critics and readers.

The story follows Dolores Hawthorne, a forensic pathologist, who has avoided her hometown of Little Horton, Wisconsin, for nearly twenty years—ever since a Halloween night tragedy. When her father vanishes days before Halloween, she returns to the town she swore she’d never set foot in again. As Dolores searches for her father, she’s forced to confront strained relationships and buried trauma. Her investigation draws her closer to the truth about what really happened that long-ago Halloween—and to a killer determined to keep Little Horton’s darkest secret buried.

The small town of Little Horton is the perfect backdrop for a slow-burn psychological thriller—the gossipy townspeople, the Halloween traditions, and the sense of seasonal dread all add enormous atmospheric suspense to the already tense storyline. Like the townspeople in the story, the town is festive on the surface but unsettling underneath. The town is referenced so many times by Dolores and others, often describing its corrupt past and backwards ways, that it feels like a character in its own right.

Dolores is a highly intelligent but flawed protagonist. Her past trauma is evident right from the start, and the details of what caused her to become estranged from her family are slowly revealed through compelling flashbacks. As Halloween nears in the present timeline, Dolores must not only help locate her father but is also forced to confront the past she thought she’d left behind. Her inner monologues reveal a lot of internal conflict—especially with regard to her stepmother, Charlotte, and her adolescent boyfriend—making her a protagonist that readers will empathize with. Through Dolores’s journey, the author explores themes of memory, trauma, estrangement, and the unreliability of what one remembers about one’s past.

The rest of her family—her brother Asher, her stepmother Charlotte, and her half-sister Josie—are not just side characters; they’re all well-developed with their own secrets, inner conflicts, and agendas. Their familial tension feels very authentic, and the tense and mistrustful dynamic between Doloris and Charlotte is very captivating, as both women are strong, fiery characters who speak their minds.

There are some darker themes in this book readers should be aware of, including sexual assault, feral cat death/cruelty, murder, and violence. This is a slow-burn, emotionally intense story that really heats up in the last 30%. The direction of the story is quite unpredictable in the first half—with few details revealed about the disappearance of Dolores’s father and other murders in the town. With a shocking discovery early in the second half, Doroles’s urgency to find her father escalates—and once all the plot threads (past and present) pull together, the tension ramps up significantly. There are some big twists that follow—one of which is foreshadowed, and seasoned thriller readers may find predictable. What’s not predictable is what happens in the last few chapters—the author fleshes out the story to provide satisfying emotional arcs and thought-provoking final scenes that will stay with readers for a long time!

This book is a prime example of the saying “don’t judge a book by its cover.” While the striking cat-illustrated cover may lead readers to think this is a cozy mystery or even a supernatural witchy story, the story is instead very much grounded in real-world horror and very relatable family dysfunction! Cats do make cameo appearances, as Little Horton’s streets are overrun with feral cats—and the glimpses of their glowing eyes and skittering shapes create a sense of being watched, adding to Dolores’s mounting paranoia!

Overall, No Rest for the Wicked is a standout debut that will especially appeal to readers who enjoy small-town thrillers with emotional stakes and creepy vibes. It’s a book that readers will have to be patient with to see its full value, but its rich characters, twists, emotional weight, and satisfying conclusion make it well worth reading!