Scary Summer Reads: Diavola

There’s something deliciously unsettling about vacation horror, especially when the trip takes you to a sun-soaked villa in Italy that promises rest and relaxation but instead serves up whispers in the walls and shadows in the corners. Diavola by Jennifer Thorne is exactly that kind of book: a deceptively beautiful setting hiding a slow burn of dread.

Thorne paints Villa Taccola in rich detail, a place where beauty and rot coexist. You can practically feel the heavy air pressing in, smell the aged stone, and hear the creak of every hallway. The backdrop alone would be enough to put readers on edge, but what makes this story hit harder is the family trapped inside it.

We’ve all known families that pull each other apart instead of holding each other up, and Thorne captures that with uncanny precision. The Pace family is a mess of old grudges and unspoken guilt. At the center of it all is Anna, the outsider, the one who doesn’t quite belong, the one who absorbs everyone else’s dysfunction. Anna as the protagonist isn’t particularly likable, but then again neither is anyone else in this family. And that is where the true horror creeps in. You’re trapped in this villa not just with flickering shadows and closed-off rooms, but with people who repel as much as they reveal. Their toxicity becomes another kind of haunting, making the atmosphere heavier and the dread harder to escape.

What impressed me most is the way dread builds almost imperceptibly. There are no cheap jump scares, no overblown theatrics. Instead, unease seeps in like damp through stone, subtle and persistent, until you realize you’ve been holding your breath for chapters. It’s a perfect reflection of the tortured artist’s soul, lonely and bruised, aching for connection but haunted by shadows that refuse to fade.

Diavola is a wickedly atmospheric read, perfect for long summer nights when you want to feel unsettled without ever leaving your chair. It’s gothic, it’s personal, and it lingers like a bad dream you secretly don’t want to shake.