Splasher by Billie Host

Splasher is a horror book set within a university swim team, as people start dying in and out of the pool. Spencer is back at the university where a fellow member of the swim team died ten years ago, now the assistant swim coach for the team. When two students are found dead in the pool on his first day, the whole team are thrown off, but it doesn’t stop there.

I loved the concept of this book, combining a slasher with such a specific setting as a university swim team. My sister is into competitive swimming so I appreciated all of the detail behind the swim team, rather than it being a cursory theming, though I can see that some people might find there is a lot of swimming content in the book. The narrative itself is pretty simple, and the reveals are barely reveals, but I still found it pretty fun to come along for the ride. The narrative perspective swaps between a few characters, which doesn’t always work—I think it would have been better without one of the perspectives who was antagonistic, as it felt like revealed too much— but I liked how it meant you got some depth to more of the characters through their perspectives.

The book was marketed I believe as adult horror, but I think it is most similar to Point Horror books and fits more into that kind of genre (or at least into Point Horror nostalgia for adults). It reminds me a lot of why I used to love the Nightmare Hall books as a teenager: taking a specific element of university life and doing horror around that. However, despite being set in 2006 (mostly, and for occasional flashbacks in 1996), it is updated from Point Horror as there’s actual queer characters, which I appreciated. It’s not a particularly tense or scary slasher and it has quite a slow pace, so it is best for something fun and a bit silly with Friday the 13th vibes.