by Cynthia Chow

This week we have a review of a Halloween thriller, No Rest for the Wicked by Rachel Louise Adam, along with an interesting interview with Rachel. Details at the end of this post on how to enter to win a copy of the book and a link to purchase it from Amazon.

No Rest for the Wicked by Rachel Louise Adams
Review by Cynthia Chow

Eighteen years ago Dolores Diaz left her home in Little Horton, Wisconsin for Los Angeles, cutting off contact with her family and never intending to return. Not only did she change her last name from Hawthorne back to her mother’s maiden name, she completely cut off contact in the hopes of erasing everything from that past life. Only the news that her father has gone missing is enough to force her to fly back, although separating from her husband after catching him in bed with another woman certainly gave her no reason to stay in LA. The town’s former mayor and state senator, Alex Hawthorne was beloved by his daughter until an event that shattered her life and caused her to flee and never return. Until now. The FBI, led by Special Agents Wyatt Hold and Paul Turner, have asked Dolores to assist them in locating Alex, although Wyatt’s investigation involves more than just his disappearance. Little Horton, also known as Halloweentown for its obsession with Halloween, has a reputation for horrific murders that often occur on that holiday, making it a destination site for true crime obsessives and Halloween fanatics.

Once back in Little Horton, Dolores is confronted with the “evil” stepmother, the half-sister she never met, the resentful half-brother she last saw when he was five, and the man whom she loved…and was the reason why she fled. Soon the murder of the town doctor has the agents asking Dolores to help them with her professional skills, which just happens to be her experience as the L.A. medical examiner. Staying longer in the Halloween town than she expected, Dolores has flashbacks to 2003 and the incident that changed everything. Halloween is filled with more than just tiny superheroes and tours though, as it has Dolores meeting the woman who holds onto the resentment and still considers Dolores to be a spoiled rich mean girl. That Kate Butcher is now a Little Horton police officer with a hot boyfriend herself hasn’t changed her own self image as a bullied and embarrassed teen.

This is an outstanding mystery that draws in readers from the first page. This is definitely not a cozy, but Dolores is so likable and compelling that readers will be so invested in her happiness as she struggles to overcome the traumas that led her to sever ties with the Halloween town and her family.

While not exactly a Rashomon retelling, chapters from different characters’ perspectives highlight how the same experiences can be interpreted in vastly varying ways. The plot veers into unexpected directions, and even the most jaded mystery readers will be caught off guard without feeling misled. The Halloween element plays out in the background, but the suspense of solving the increasingly horrific murders of the past and present make this an exhilarating, extremely satisfying read.

Cynthia Chow is the branch manager of Kaneohe Public Library on the island of Oahu. She balances a librarian lifestyle of cardigans and hair buns with a passion for motorcycle riding and regrettable tattoos (sorry, Mom).

Interview With Rachel Louise Adams:

KRL: How long have you been writing?

Rachel: I started when I was seven years old. I don’t know why it seemed so important to write an epic adventure novel about my six dogs, but it’s a decision I remember making with pinpoint precision. Soon, the crayon and sheets of paper I’d started with couldn’t keep up with the pace of my thoughts, so I taught myself to type through computer games. Twenty-two years later, here we are.

KRL: When did your first novel come out, what was it called, and would you tell us a little about it?

Rachel: My debut novel is called No Rest for the Wicked. It came out on September 16, 2025. It’s a mystery novel which follows Dolores Hawthorne, a mid-thirties forensic pathologist who’s going through a difficult divorce when a phone call from the FBI whirls her back to Little Horton, the Halloween-crazed midwestern hometown she hasn’t seen in eighteen years. Her father—a former U.S. senator—has just been reported missing, and when bodies start piling up, it becomes clear that those crimes are connected to her tormented past. With Halloween drawing closer, she’s forced to face and unmask her demons before they come for her and her loved ones.

KRL: Have you always written mysteries/suspense and if not, what else have you written?

Rachel: I dabbled with a lot of genres. Romance and fantasy in my teens, coming-of-age and dystopias in college, and even political fiction. Mostly, I tried my hand at horror before landing on mystery—I think most of my suspense novels still bear the “scars” of my horror background.

KRL: What brought you to choose the setting and characters in your latest book/series?

Rachel: I always make up the small towns in which I set my mystery novels. I don’t know why it came to me that Little Horton—the setting of No Rest for the Wicked—would be obsessed with all things Halloween. It was probably that the small town where I grew up in Brittany, France, can’t throw a good Halloween party to save its life. And yet I was brought up by a North American mother who taught me you couldn’t let spooky season fly you by without dressing the part.

I suppose that when creating Little Horton, I played that famous game of “What if?”

What if there was a town where everything revolved around Halloween? Jack-o-lanterns on your neighbors’ doorsteps, pumpkin spice lattes downtown and slashers at the local movie theater every day of the year. What if everyone in Little Horton was a little superstitious, because so many horrible things took place on October 31st? Killing sprees, lethal accidents, natural disasters. What if the main character, Dolores, hated Halloween because of some mysterious traumatic event—and what if she had to come back when her father went missing, and the climax rolled in with a smell of Halloween candy and blood that is most assuredly not corn syrup?

When it comes to characters, they just popped up on the page as the universe of No Rest unwound. I wanted it to be partly focused on family secrets and partly a procedural, so their jobs had to tie them into the investigation. The protagonist is a forensic pathologist, because medicine has been an obsession for me since high school. She’s intelligent, good at her job, but also emotionally distant. It’s easier for her to dive into dead bodies than to check what’s going on inside her own.

KRL: Do you write to entertain or is there something more you want the readers to experience from your work?

Rachel: Mostly, I would say, I want to move my readers. I want them to go through an emotional range that you don’t usually get in mystery novels. To make them laugh, to shock them, for them to feel so invested in the characters that they’ll shed a few tears in all the right places. I want them to empathize with all the characters—including the villains.

So, of course, there’s something more than entertainment at stake. But I think it’s important we never lose sight of entertainment when we craft a novel. If we can’t entertain, then nothing else we achieve in the book will be worthwhile, because readers won’t stick around. What’s the point of being thought-provoking if you can’t make people have a good time?

KRL: Do you have a schedule for your writing or just work whenever you can?

Rachel: I don’t have a writing schedule so much as writing goals. If I don’t hit two thousand words by the end of the day, I won’t be happy with myself. Usually, I write first thing in the morning, and I don’t stop until I’ve hit the 2k mark. If that happens at three p.m., then I’ll do some research and refuel with a good novel. If I haven’t reached 2k by evening, though, it doesn’t matter how hard I try to fight it. It’s hard to find sleep until I get it done.

KRL: What is your ideal time to write?

Rachel: It varies. Right now, I’d say it’s in the afternoon—but only if I’ve already done some writing in the morning. For many years, it was early morning, and then I went through a phase where I got most of my writing done in the middle of the night. Writing is weird.

KRL: Do you outline? If not, do you have some other interesting way that you keep track of what’s going on, or what needs to happen in your book when you are writing it?

Rachel: Yes and no. I experimented with both outlining and pantsing—ultimately, I find that if I know exactly what’s going to happen in a novel, all the fire propelling me to write it goes out of me. I’ll end up dragging the story behind instead of getting dragged. When I don’t outline, though, the plot will usually unfold in my head some time before the words are on the page. I’m (usually) at least a few chapters ahead. Before long, I know who the culprit is, although it’s happened that I’ll change my mind right before the climax.

KRL: Did you find it difficult to get published in the beginning?

Rachel: Yes! Part of the reason is that I queried too soon. I started looking for agents before I knew what a beta reader was or what genre I was writing in, before I understood the market or the “rules” of contemporary writing. But then, I started querying when I was still in high school.

I always say getting an agent is the easiest thing I’ve ever done—and the hardest. When I took a break, focused on upgrading my prose to the next level, I wrote what I consider to be my first “real” novel. Then I waited six months, rewrote it, and I got an agent. In a heartbeat. Literally, I queried three agents that day. One of them wrote back that very evening requesting a full manuscript and offered representation a few weeks later. The second agent asked for a full just after that, and I never heard back from the third.

So, yes, getting published is hard, but I would say it’s hard for a reason. I was simply at a stage in my writing journey when querying agents was the wrong thing to focus on.

KRL: What are your future writing goals?

Rachel: There are so many more mysteries I want to write. I know I write fast for a lot of people, but there’s just no way I can compete with all the set-ups constantly brewing. Small-town mysteries feel like home to me, but I’d love to experiment with different genres, especially horror.

KRL: Who are your writing heroes?

Rachel: There’s so many of them. Stephen King, Dennis Lehane, Karin Slaughter, Fred Vargas, Gillian Flynn, Rachel Harrison, Joe Hill, Jason Rekulak. But I also have to throw in a few classics like Edgar Allan Poe and Mary Shelley. My writing just wouldn’t be what it is without that touch of Gothic braided into the atmosphere.

KRL: What kind of research do you do?

Rachel: When I wrote my first novel, I was in the middle of my first year as a PhD student. Research was my nine-to-five, and it was something I genuinely enjoyed. But it also meant I didn’t have as much time as I would have liked for mystery-novels research. Mostly, it came down to articles and YouTube videos (autopsies, “a day in the life of”, interviews with FBI agents) which I gobbled down on the treadmill when I felt like, if I sat one more minute in front of my computer, my brain would leak. Now, though? It’s open season. Books, podcasts, from forensics to law enforcement and prison to Midwestern culture—anything that’ll help me understand the life experiences of my characters.

KRL: What do you like to read?

Rachel: My family will joke that I’ll read anything, even the back of a cereal box. I can enjoy non-fiction as much as a good thriller. Mostly, it’s the quality of the writing that draws me in. If you write fantastic prose, I’ll buy your book, no matter what the premise is. If I don’t connect with the first few paragraphs, even if the hook is something I’d love to read about, then it’s a pass.

KRL: What are your favorite TV shows or movies?

Rachel: So many of them. I love Breaking Bad, Black Sails, Game of Thrones, Lost, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed and—my all-time favorite—Prison Break. In terms of movies, the first two that come to mind are Knives Out and Get Out. They both understand the mystery and horror genres so well.

KRL: Love all of those! Have you any advice for aspiring or beginning writers?

Rachel: Here’s what I wish someone had told me when I was querying in my teens and early twenties: if you keep getting rejected by agents, your book probably isn’t ready. It’s not what we want to hear, I know. But persevering down the querying road can be so time-consuming and devastating. And the truth is, when your prose is ready, you will get picked up, or at least get some of these more personal replies that tell you how much closer you are to pro-level writing.

If I had to do it all over again, I would write a book, have it reviewed by at least two beta readers, edit, wait a few weeks, edit some more. Then I’d start querying. And if I got more than ten rejection letters, I’d stop querying altogether. Go back to the book and work on my prose, or the plot, or the characters.

Getting published is possible, but it’s a marathon, not a sprint. You need to focus your energy on what’s useful. No agent will pick up your book—well-written though it may be—if it isn’t up to industry standards. The rules are out there, available for free on YouTube, blogs, even e-books. You can learn them. Invest your energy into the right things at the right time.

Also, don’t think you need to have a platform or be semi-famous before you get published. I was a total nobody (still am) and it didn’t stop me from signing three book deals with major publishers.

I’d also advise that you keep in mind, the best and most rewarding part of writing happens between you and your computer. If writing isn’t worth it to you, in and of itself, then it might not be worth pursuing. Once, I read the following advice in an agent’s bio: “If anything in the world can discourage you from writing, let it.” I think it’s brilliant, because it makes you dig deep down about why you really want to write in the first place. For most of us, it’s something that we fell in love with for deeply personal reasons, and it can be excruciating to watch that passion get turned into rules about structure and character development, not to mention edits from your agent and editors.

So, try and salvage some of that special spark and keep it just for you, safe from the ebb and flow of pursuing writing as a career. It’s okay to give up on the dream of publishing a novel—I think it’s better to do that than to fall out of love with writing through the publishing process.

What I do is, on top of working on my to-be-published novels, I’m also a prolific fanfiction writer. I keep writing new stories and updating old ones, and it’s very important to me that part of my writing has nothing to do with the book industry. Keep having fun. That’s why we all write to begin with.

KRL: What is something people would be surprised to know about you?

Rachel: How about: English isn’t my first language. I learned it in my teens and began writing in English—imperfectly—around the age of fifteen. No reason other than I was drawn to it, and it just felt like my thoughts translated to a Word page better in English than in French.

KRL: Do you have any pets?

Rachel: Yes! I have two cats who mean the literal world to me, though if you visit my Instagram profile, you’ll only see one of them because the other is shy.

KRL: Where can our readers find you online?

Rachel: I’m on Facebook, Instagram and Goodreads. My DMs are open, so feel free to reach out.
instagram.com/rachellouiseadams
facebook.com/profile.php?id=61573118319614
goodreads.com/author/show/53547270.Rachel_Louise_Adams

You can click here to purchase this book from Amazon.

To enter to win a copy of No Rest for the Wicked, simply email KRL at krlcontests@gmail[dot]com by replacing the [dot] with a period, and with the subject line “no rest” or comment on this article. A winner will be chosen October 18, 2025. U.S. residents only, and you must be 18 or older to enter. If entering via email please include your mailing address in case you win. You can read our privacy statement here if you like.

Check out other mystery articles, reviews, book giveaways & mystery short stories in our mystery section. And join our mystery Facebook group to keep up with everything mystery we post, and have a chance at some extra giveaways. Also listen to our new mystery podcast where mystery short stories and first chapters are read by actors! They are also available on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Spotify.

Disclosure: This post contains links to an affiliate program, for which we receive a few cents if you make purchases. KRL also receives free copies of most of the books that it reviews, that are provided in exchange for an honest review of the book.