This B Just Won’t Die! by Tanya Pell
Gallery Books (October 13th, 2026)
Reviewed by Adam Allen
Tanya Pell has established herself as a brilliant writer of different types of horror, and with This B Just Won’t Die!, she showcases her mastery of the slasher. This book works as a classic slasher, following the familiar beats but still has twists and surprises that will keep veterans and new readers alike shocked and delighted. Some truly gnarly kills, an iconic villain, and some fantastic set pieces make this an instant classic of the subgenre.
The novel opens at a horror convention, and Pell has clearly done her research, nailing so many of the things that make these gatherings of genre fans wonderful, surreal, and a little sad all at once. Barbara Jacobs, formerly known as Barbie, but even more well-known as Debbie, the final girl in a series of films that featured a mirror-faced slasher who always comes back, usually leaving a bloody message on a mirror to announce his return.
It is the twentieth anniversary of the franchise’s first film, and Barb hopes to use some of that attention to breathe new life into her acting career. Being a long-running final girl has put her in a typecast hole, but at the same time, she is self-aware enough to recognize that she was lucky to find a role that gave her consistent work for so long.
The films have also given her a fanbase who are willing to pay to get her signature on pictures. But in those pictures is a version of her she no longer recognizes and no longer really wants to be. Being objectified has also brought her unwanted attention, especially in the form of a stalker whom she had to take out a restraining order against after increasingly disturbing incidents.
Amidst this backdrop, the murders begin. Someone is trying to bring back Mirror Man, and Barb is once again asked to step into the role she has played so many times.
But the beauty of this book doesn’t stop there, because Pell uses the slasher to explore how society views women, and specifically how it views them as they age. Barbara Jacobs is a completely three-dimensional, breathing, fully formed, flawed, and fantastic main character. She makes good decisions, bad decisions, selfish decisions, selfless decisions, and shows how so often a man (especially a white man) can do the same things and be celebrated, but when a woman does it, it’s a problem.
The director and co-star of the iconic slasher film she is celebrating the anniversary of are considered rugged, mature geniuses and iconoclasts. On the other hand, Barb and her other female co-stars are past their prime, “used to be hot,” and have to act exactly as expected and desired by the industry if they hope to continue working in show business.
Pell doesn’t flinch from the realities of the human body as it gets older (or when it is damaged in an attack), and this becomes a book that works so perfectly as both an entertainment and a philosophical look at the effects of patriarchy and unfair expectations of women. It is so nuanced in its examination of human behavior, and Pell doesn’t give the reader easy answers. It’s not simply a case of stop doing this, start doing that, because people are never really good or evil, and you can love someone and still not like what they do.
The final third or so of the book takes place at the original location of the first film in the “Mirror” franchise and is everything a slasher lover would want in the final act, and a perfect ending for Barb, who’s the real-deal final girl even without a script.
Pell has written a new slasher masterpiece that belongs right next to the work of Stephen Graham Jones and Brian McAuley. An absolute must-read.
