The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre by Philip Fracassi is a slasher horror that takes place at a retirement home. The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre is The Thursday Murder Club meets Scream. The final girl, Rose, is in her late 70s and still feisty. She is a force to be reckoned with. The body count is super high in this slasher, but no one seems to notice or care since they are old. But a group of four residents notices and works with an officer who is starting to believe. The story has great character work that gets into the heads of these octogenarians. We get a snippet of their life before the slasher ends it. The writing is very good and has lots of beautiful passages of death. The tone Fracassi sets is balanced in humor, tension, brutality, mystery, and hope. I think another writer would have leaned into the humor of old people. Fracassi writes about these people with such dignity and truth. They all feel real, and sometimes they do funny stuff. It is the difference between laughing with someone and laughing at them. I worked at a retirement home through college, and I kept getting flashbacks of people and events. Fracassi nails the setting and the events of a retirement home. The kills are very inventive; some go under the radar like an overdose, but others are just brutal. The gore is never over the top, with just the right amount of details. The mystery aspect is a lot of fun. I guessed the wrong killer and was surprised by the reveal. The pacing is good for the most part, but there is a little bit of lag in the middle. The ending was great and left me very satisfied. The ending has a great callback moment, where something manifests that was set up earlier, and it was glorious. The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre by Philip Fracassi was first published on September 30, 2025, by Tor Nightfire.

Why did I read The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre by Philip Fracassi? The idea for a slasher at a retirement home really sold me. I got to know Philip for his many horror podcast appearances, and he hosted an excellent one called The Dark Word. I did read this book in anticipation of meeting Philip Fracassi at JeffCon, a little fan convention in Tennessee. I got to meet him and get this book signed, along with some others.

Plot Summary: After a movie night at a quiet retirement community called Autumn Springs. A resident returns home to find a stranger in their home. The calls for help go unnoticed. In the morning, the body is found, but it is chalked up to a bad fall. Something doesn’t sit well with Rose. She was one of the last people to see her alive. Rose forms a group to investigate the one murder that slowly starts increasing. Can Rose solve the murders? Before she becomes one. And can she convince the police that there is a serial killer and not natural causes?

What I Liked: The characters are great. Fracassi does a great job quickly summing people up in a paragraph or two. I recently read And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, and she was able to introduce characters so fast. Fracassi has that same skill. Which is great as a slasher because I really cared about the victims. Rose is the standout character. I was just at a panel with Fracassi, and he must have gotten asked a dozen times about Rose and what’s next. Rose is a complex character who has such a great character reveal toward the end of the book that shook me. You don’t want to mess with Rose; she is a badass. Stan, the alien-obsessed hippie, is another character I loved. The older Gothic sisters were great. There are plenty of others, but those really stuck out. The kills are very inventive, and you will read about some interesting deaths. I would never spoil them, but man, are they great. The ending delivered to me is a pretty wild scene. The callback was very special and deserved a slow clap.

What I Disliked: The killer made sense for who it was revealed to be, but I would have liked it to be someone else. But it was a minor dislike. It wasn’t a blow my mind revealing it was just okay, and I guess it fits. The middle did lag a bit for me, but the killer has a long setup kill. That is meant for misdirection, and I was misdirected, so I guess it worked. But when the characters get to a party, the pace is lightning fast until the end.

Recommendation: The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre by Philip Fracassi is a can’t-miss original horror slasher. The character work is just amazing. If you loved Breathe In, Bleed Out by Brian McAuley, then you have to check out The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre by Philip Fracassi. They are both slashers that elevate the horror. I can’t imagine this not becoming a film. Speaking of films, Fracassi is about to blow up. He has an A24 film called Altar, based on a short story, and then Fail-Safe, also based on a short story, with J.T. Mollner directing and JJ Abrams producing.

Rating: The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre by Philip Fracassi. I rated 5 out of 5.