PI Annie Gore is back and this time she’s heading into the hollers of Eastern Kentucky to investigate the death of one of Appalachia’s last snake-handling preachers. His estranged daughter Katie May thinks someone rushed the funeral and the whole thing feels wrong. Annie takes the case because she sees herself in Katie, a woman who needs to understand her father to understand herself. But the deeper Annie digs into this insular community, the more apparent it becomes that someone wants her to stop looking.

I LOVED The Witch’s Orchard last year. It was one of my top 10 reads of 2025 so my expectations for this were through the roof. And it wasn’t bad at all; it just didn’t knock it out of the park the way the first one did. That’s probably unfair because the debut was SO good that a follow-up was always going to feel a little pale in comparison.

What Sullivan does really well is write small communities. She understands how secrets and rumors brew in these tight-knit towns, always simmering under the surface presenting some kind of danger even when the residents don’t realize it. The snake-handling church setting is fascinating and she handles it with the kind of authenticity you’d expect from a ninth generation Appalachian. She’s not writing this world from the outside looking in and you can feel that.

I really liked how Annie’s relationship with the local sheriff plays out. We see so much “local law enforcement pushes back on the outsider investigator” in these kinds of stories and Sullivan flips that in a way that felt refreshing and earned. There are plenty of red herrings, lots of twists, and you never feel like you have everything figured out until the very end.

The vibes are different from The Witch’s Orchard though. If you loved the first book’s atmosphere, this one hits a little differently and I can’t fully explain why. Still a solid read, still a good mystery, still Annie being Annie. I’ll absolutely keep reading this series. You could technically read this as a standalone, but I wouldn’t recommend it as there are things about Annie from the first book that add a lot of depth here and you’d miss out on that context.

Archer Sullivan Reviews

AMAZON | GOODREADS | BOOKSHOP | ★★★★

Brimstone Hollow comes out August 11, 2026. Huge thank you to Minotaur Books for my copy in exchange for my honest opinion.  If you liked this review please let me know either by commenting below or by visiting my Instagram @speakingof.books or on Tiktok @speakingof.books