[REVIEW] Laughlin Hills by Caitlin Marceau
Laughlin Hills Community Magazine: Issue 01
Caitlin Marceau
DarkLit Press
September 2022
5 out of 5 Stars
If you’re looking for something to get you out of a reading slump, kick start this Halloween season, or simply want to have a great laugh, look no further. There’s something for everybody in this tongue-in-cheek horror comedy, parodying the community magazines of the suburbs: an advice column for readers to send their dilemmas, coupons for local stores, news articles, event announcements, and reminders for human sacrifices. I lost count of how many times I laughed while reading it, every session was funnier than the last, and found myself wanting to enroll in the classes advertised, and participate in the town’s events (maybe not the blood drive for Vlad Tepes III’s blood bank).
It was delightful to see this new side of Caitlin’s writing, her more irreverent tone, the puns and the overall playful vibe of the magazine orchestrated a unique reading experience that left me hungry for the next issue. It’s hard to pick just a few favorites to talk about in this review, truly there was no bad or boring article, they were all highly creative and every single one got a laugh out me. Three of the pieces are constantly battling it out for first place, and they are the Laughlin Hills Community Centre Fall 2022 Course Catalogue, the Laughlin Hills High School and Secondary School advertisements, and the Monsters Unite as Union Comes Together, with the Ask Lucy segment as an honorable mention. It speaks volumes about Marceau’s writing capabilities that she’s able to spin this mix of seemingly mundane and basic elements of life into hilarious pieces that also give insight into the terrifying place that is Laughlin Hills.
However, one of the biggest highlights, for me, was the graphic design of the magazine itself, it actually looks like a magazine: there are crease marks on the pages, some pages appear to be torn, and there are grocery lists and doodles done in black marker, some of the coupons were “torn off,” and, my favorite touch, the ominous blood spatters that get bigger and bigger as you read further. There were so many details that took Laughlin Hills to the next level, it’s clear that everyone involved with the magazine had the utmost care and attention when bringing Caitlin’s wonderful project together. The end result reads like a real community magazine, albeit of a very creepy and dangerous town, it paints the individuals and institutions so vividly, that there’s no doubt in my mind that Laughlin Hills exists and that’s where Marceau vacations from time to time. In addition to all of Caitlin’s achievements, which I’ve praised time and time again in previous reviews, she’s proved herself to be a marvelous word-builder.
I can’t wait to read the future issues, which hopefully will be many, and pray that my ghost will be sent to Laughlin Hills when I die many decades from now. I’ll wreck even more mayhem in that lovely community alongside the changelings, vampires, banshees, women in white, and lovely bands of monsters. I recommend this to all horror comedy fans, people wanting to get into horror but don’t want anything too scary, younger readers, Caitlin fans, and pretty much anyone that enjoys creepy and spooky content. It can also be a wonderful tool for those learning English as their second (or third, fourth, etc) language: the language used is simple, it’s divided into short and independent segments, and it’s a format that almost everyone is already familiar with, and it has a lot of horror/spooky related vocabulary. Honestly, if your reading taste is even a little similar to mine, you’ll love Laughlin Hills Community Magazine.
