Facing the demons we inherit: a review of This Is My Body by Lindsay King-Miller

Shame is a demon—and sometimes it takes more than holy water to drive it out. In This Is My Body, Lindsay King-Miller delivers a gut-punch of a horror novel that fuses family trauma, queer identity, and religious extremism into a story that’s as unsettling as it is compulsively readable. At its core, this is a book about how the shame we inherit can twist us, haunt us, and, if left unchecked, destroy us.

Brigid, a gay single mom, has spent years keeping her daughter Dylan far from the influence of her fanatically Catholic family. But when Dylan begins experiencing violent, terrifying fits that seem eerily familiar to an incident from Brigid’s childhood, she does the unthinkable—she goes back. Back to the home she swore she’d never return to. Back to her manipulative, self-righteous Uncle Angus, the priest who once “saved” a girl through exorcism.

Brigid is not your perfect horror heroine. She’s deeply flawed, shaped by a lifetime of shame. She’s been vilified for loving another woman while excusing the things she should feel guilty for—like deliberately getting pregnant against her girlfriend’s wishes, convinced the news would be received as a joyful surprise. That blend of self-delusion and stubbornness makes her both an unreliable narrator and an achingly human one.

King-Miller’s demon is more than a supernatural parasite—it’s a metaphor for the corrosive power of shame itself. In Brigid’s world, hurt people hurt people. Those who weaponize shame, like Father Angus and Brigid’s mother, are the real evil forces. And when Brigid hides the truth of her past from Dylan, she leaves her vulnerable—making it far too easy for Dylan to trust a man who seems kind and holy, but is in fact the root of the family’s rot.

There’s also a fascinating undercurrent of irony: Brigid runs a metaphysical shop, selling crystals and charms she doesn’t believe in, while her daughter turns to those same tools in an earnest attempt to shield herself from harm. The generational echoes—both in superstition and in trauma—are everywhere in this story.

The novel builds toward a tense, twist-laden climax that’s both horrifying and cathartic, reminding us that sometimes the hardest demon to exorcise is the one whispering in your own mind. Fans of Rachel Harrison or Catriona Ward will find much to love here—dark humor, queasy family dynamics, and an unflinching look at how faith and fear can intertwine.

This Is My Body isn’t just about what happens when you go home—it’s about what happens when you never really escaped.

An advance reader copy of this book (ARC) was provided to me by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Side note

For readers who enjoy horror stories about inherited evil: my own novel, Demons of the Night, also explores the terror of facing supernatural threats without knowing the history that summoned them. If This Is My Body resonates with you, you might find a similar chill in those pages.

Related Content

• Women in horror Q&A with Lindsay-King Miller (Quirk Books)
• A Point of Pride 2024: An Interview with Lindsay King-Miller (Horror Writers Association)
• Blurring the boundaries, writing horror (Speculative City)
• We tell ourselves stories in order to live: The Midnight Club and queer personhood (Nightfire)

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