The Siren of Groves Peak by Glenn Rolfe
Flame Tree Publishing (June 16, 2026)
Review by W.D. Gagliani
There’s no mystery for the reader to solve in Glenn Rolfe’s The Siren of Groves Peak, but there’s plenty of everything else that makes for a successful horror novel plumbing the depths of human emotions. There’s no more than a touch of gore, no real splatter, and it’s not an endless buffet of death and kill scenes. Though there is just enough of all those things to keep the plot rolling. The true anchor—and what makes the novel a proverbial page-turner—is the largely realistic and sympathetic cast. Relatable characters will always win in a contest between unending gore versus folks who remind you of people you know, such as aging former high schoolers hanging around their hometown, still planning to get out, only to have their dreams dashed.
Cryptid, horror movie, and murder podcast-loving old high school pals, BFFs Lizzy Emerson and Willow Gilson, mid-twenties, live with their dads in the Maine coastal lobstering town of Groves Peak. For decades, through economic upturns and downturns, the town has remained prosperous. It’s the result of a mutually beneficial pact between the siren Millinginia and the town’s lobstermen. Unable to conceive easily, the siren promised to keep their lobster traps full in exchange for the townsmen’s seed. Using her mythical magical song to hyper-activate the men’s natural lust and desire, Millinginia’s trysts eventually included most of the men, becoming an open secret that even jealous, resentful wives found convenient to keep. Well, not all of them. Some wives left, some seethed, and some sought ways out. Eventually, the siren conceived and birthed a “youngling,” a daughter.
But something terrible has happened, and Millinginia’s happiness has turned to bloodlust and an all-consuming need for vengeance. And so the traps are no longer full, slowly choking the town’s economy, and soon the gruesome killings begin.
Rolfe lays out the novel’s framework at the outset, preferring to focus his lens on the townspeople as their long-standing prosperity quickly wanes and the men start dying horrible deaths—guilty and innocent alike. As is typical in Rolfe’s work, characters are drawn with deft, sparse strokes and realistic dialogue. Everyone knows everyone else because they all went to high school together, and while some relationships are still strong, others are downright toxic.
Lizzy and Willow form the novel’s moral center. Lizzy takes care of her dad, a functioning alcoholic widely believed to have killed his wife twenty years ago, when she disappeared without a trace. Willow Gilson is Lizzy’s wingman and co-adventuress since grade school— though she’s terrified of the ocean, her strong-willed father is the most successful of the lobstermen. Now Lizzy delivers Frank Gilson’s lobsters to restaurants, and Willow tags along when she isn’t writing for a local magazine. Neither of the engagingly appealing best friends knows about the pact, or even about the siren’s existence. Yet, despite their innocence, Lizzie and Willow soon find themselves at the center of events. Only when bodies begin to pile up are the town’s most destructive secrets dragged into the light. The friends’ unofficial, amateur investigation leads them to previously unknown connections within their loose circle of friends. Rolfe fills out the cast with the innocent and the guilty—and their actions—and keeps them all human even as they gradually become aware of their non-human nemesis.
It’s tempting to portray The Siren of Groves Peak as a morality play laying bare a small town’s secrets, grievances, and petty resentments, along with people’s transgressions against others—and most of those being men’s against their women. It’s also a ripping good yarn that keeps you guessing as to which of the well-drawn characters will survive. Not only because of its Maine setting, one can’t help but compare the small-town horror motif to its most famous practitioner, and Rolfe’s version, while faster-paced and perhaps therefore more direct, stacks up well against King’s Maine-centric tales. Indeed, there are other creepy towns in Rolfe’s Maine, and we’d be disappointed if there weren’t. Some of the nastier, unsavory townspeople occasionally edge into Jack Ketchum territory, lending their scenes more bite. As in the best classic-style horror, the most monstrous are not always the “monsters,” but instead our fellow humans. For Millinginia’s all-consuming rage is entirely understandable even if ultimately overt, and Rolfe wisely uses it as a catalyst for both the satisfying climactic action and the denouement, both of which will stick longer than the turn of the final page.
With The Siren of Groves Peak, Glenn Rolfe expands on a fine oeuvre that includes Blood and Rain, Abram’s Bridge, The Haunted Halls, and August’s Eyes, any of which will serve as an easy entry into his style of observational small-town horror.
