She’s a Doll is goofy, weird, funny, feminist horror—and somehow, despite beginning with a murder and involving a woman whose consciousness gets trapped inside a creepy old doll, it’s also surprisingly hopeful? I had such a good time with this.
Lucy is twenty years old and has just earned a certificate in business administration through a remote learning program. She should be proud of herself. She should celebrate. Instead, she feels embarrassed that it isn’t a bachelor’s degree and doesn’t even tell anyone. That tells you quite a bit about Lucy, but so does the fact that she shows up to a tea party dressed as the Mad Hatter while everyone else is wearing cute sundresses and pearls. 😂 She is unapologetically odd, and I loved her almost immediately.
Then Lucy is murdered by an idiot named Kyle, the twin brother of her best friend, Krissy.
Not a spoiler! It’s right there in the premise.
Lucy’s consciousness returns inside an old doll, and she eventually discovers that an acquaintance named Nicola can hear her. Naturally, Lucy recruits Nicola to help her take care of some unfinished business.
This is definitely horror, but if you hear “woman murdered and trapped inside a doll” and immediately picture blood-and-guts horror, that really isn’t what this is. It’s much more interested in female rage, friendship, grief, revenge, and the absurdity of its premise. It’s quirky and funny and genuinely fun—which is not a word I use particularly often to describe horror.
On my personal Weird Book Scale, this lives somewhere in the vicinity of Sky Daddy, and I mean that as a compliment. 😂 If you can roll with a woman falling in love with an airplane, you can probably roll with a dead woman bossing around the living from inside a creepy doll.
I tandem read this one, listening to the ALC while following along with my Aardvark hardcover, and honestly: what an Aardvark book. A pink-covered horror novel about female rage and female friendship that is simultaneously dark, funny, bizarre, and heartfelt? It feels like it was genetically engineered for an Aardvark box.
The audiobook was particularly impressive. The narrator has to distinguish between Nicola, Lucy when she was alive, and Lucy after her consciousness inhabits the doll. Lucy’s two voices need to be different enough to reflect what has happened to her while still sounding recognizably like the same person, and I thought the performance handled that brilliantly. I also loved that the Australian setting and voice of the novel came through so strongly.
For all its weirdness, there is also something unexpectedly tender underneath this story. Lucy is dead. That cannot be undone. And yet the book still manages to leave room for friendship, connection, and hope.
If you like your horror light on gore, heavy on female rage, and just a little unhinged, this is an absolute blast.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4/5 stars
🎧 Tandem read: ALC + hardcover
📅 Publication date: September 15, 2026
Thank you to RBmedia and NetGalley for the advanced listening copy. I purchased my hardcover through Aardvark Book Club.
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