The Mean Ones by Tatiana Schlote-Bonne is a novel that is at once premium pink horror with a “good for her” vibe. It is by far one of my favorite books of the year, and it touched me on such a personal level. It releases Septemer 30, 2025 – get ready!

Synopsis

So what if Sadie hears talking dead animals and a strange, comforting male voice in her head? The therapist insists these are just symptoms of PTSD. It makes sense considering that she hid under the bed and watched as her best friends were slaughtered.

But the murders were seventeen years ago, back when her name was Sabrina. Now, she’s Sadie: a perfectly normal 29-year-old. She works as a physical therapist assistant and lifts weights with her boyfriend, Lucas, who’s the sweetest, most considerate man—as long as he’s not angry. But when Lucas spontaneously agrees to join a couples trip to a cabin in the woods, the visions get worse, a strange figure stalks her during the night, and that male voice in Sadie’s head keeps calling, asking her to do things she’s never fathomed.

Sadie’s not sure if it’s her paranoia or something else entirely . . . But she is sure of one thing

Tatiana provided such deep insight to my questions in our interview below, and I think that it will help you to get to know her and her work better! She is becoming a must read author for me.

Interview

Sage Moon: Tatiana, after reading your first book, Such Lovely Skin, and now The Mean Ones, I love how you incorporate such important factors like grief and trauma into your writing.  Do you think that pairing real horrors with the inexplicable is important as the genre evolves?

Tatiana Schlote-Bonne: Yes! Real life horror—grief, insecurity, backstabbing friends—absolutely elevates supernatural horror. With my novels, I’m always thinking about how I can take something grounded in the real world.  Like Vivian’s obsession with her social media popularity in Such Lovely Skin or Sadie’s people pleasing in The Mean Ones, and amplify it with a horror element. With every story, I strive to make my antagonists tailor-made for my protagonists. In SLS, the doppelganger is going after Vivian’s reputation online because she cares so much about what others think of her in a superficial way.  So, of course, the doppelganger is going to get her canceled.

With The Mean Ones, I thought it would be particularly horrifying if I had a protagonist who couldn’t say “no” and have all these external pressures that she could save herself from (the controlling boyfriend, the camping trip), if she just says no.  But that’s the power she has to learn throughout the story. I was also interested in telling a story about a weak, quiet girl rising. I’m a fan of the brutally honest, gritty places that horror (and literature in general) can go.  So when I was playing around with the concept for The Mean Ones, I was thinking about public reactions to tragedies. Everyone’s always saying, “They lit up the room, they were an angel etc.” But I bet there’s someone in the background thinking, “That kid got what they had coming!” I wanted to write that person’s story.  That’s how Sabrina emerged.

SM: The Mean Ones was an incredibly complex, tragic, and ultimately rewarding read.  Much like Sabrina, your main character, I had similar traumatic experiences with supposed friends growing up.  The book literally had me in tears at various points.  What do you hope readers who have been through similar experiences will get out of Sabrina’s story?

TSB: Writing The Mean Ones was like sitting down with an old friend and saying, “Remember when…[insert trauma]” and cry-laughing about it. I want readers to feel that; I also want them to feel seen and empowered by the story. The middle school bullying trauma, the body hair / body insecurity, the toxic boyfriend—those elements are pulled directly from my real life. It was cathartic to write and I hope it’s cathartic to read.

SM: Folk horror is my favorite horror sub-genre!  The way that you reinvented it to pair it with pink horror and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is revolutionary and something that I hope we see more of as horror continues to expand and diversify.  What drew you to folk-horror when writing The Mean Ones? 

TSB: Honestly, I didn’t realize I was writing folk horror when I was drafting this book. Sure, there’s a cult, an entity in the woods, sacrifices—but I wasn’t thinking about how those elements fit into the folk horror sub-genre.  In my mind, the story was too “modern” to fit neatly into folk horror. My focus was on Sadie’s story of survival and developing inner strength.  While I thought I was using some folk horror elements to tell this story, I didn’t think it was that folk horror-y. Then some of my writer friends read an early draft and were like, “Wow, you wrote folk horror!” and I was like, “Wait, really?”In hindsight, it’s obvious now that The Mean Ones is folk horror when it’s directly inspired from Midsommar and The Ritual. With those stories, I kept thinking about how the viewer/reader watches the cult activities happen as the character experiences the events for the first time.  I was very interested in the story of “after.” What’s life like years after the cult sacrifice happened? What if one of the side characters not directly involved in the sacrifice is still haunted by this whole thing decades later? I was tinkering with the idea of a horror novel about a powerlifter who’s strong on the outside but weak inside.  Making her the survivor of a cult sacrifice from seventeen years ago felt perfect for combining all these elements. Plus I kept reading Reddit posts about creepy encounters with deer with chronic wasting disease, and that’s how The Mean Ones was born.

SM: I relate to the feeling of deep despair Sabrina experiences from not being believed on an incredibly personal level.  Having one’s experiences invalidated, which is incredibly common with women and those assigned female at birth, infuriates me to the point of no return.  Questioning one’s reality is something that has been present in horror for quite some time, but the way you portrayed it is realistic and painful.  What would you say to readers who have been through things that other people refuse to believe?

TSB: You don’t owe “proof” to anyone. It’s enough that you know you went through it. As someone who loves throwing a good “I told you so” around, I’ve found that the lengths to obtain said “I told you so” often aren’t worth the emotional effort, and the satisfaction is fleeting. I was gaslit by my father my whole life and after years of wallowing, I’ve come around to accepting that his reality is completely different from mine. You know that Keanu Reeves meme that’s like “you want to believe 2+2 is 5? You’re right. Have fun.” I’m reaching that level of inner peace and feel much happier. Life is too short. 

But for writing a horror protagonist? Having a character who’s obsessing over what may or may not be real is prime material, especially for Sadie whose support system and inner strength is non-existent. When I was first drafting The Mean Ones, I kept accidentally making Sadie too much like my current self and starting her at this point in life where she doesn’t care what others think.  I had to keep regressing her character to where she’s constantly under threat of others’ opinion (“protagonist who can’t say no learns to say no!” was literally pinned at the top of my writing notes.) It makes her pretty frustrating to read about in the first half of the book (she was frustrating to write!) but I knew that discovering inner strength and accepting her own reality even when it denies what’s “normal” was what she had to learn, so I started her as far away as possible from that.

SM:The Mean Ones is layered with complex themes – both real world horrors and more traditional folk horror themes.  I am passionate about the healing powers of horror, and think that a lot of what you incorporated into the story can be healing for the reader.  But I also wonder: did combining both of these help you as a writer through any of your personal experiences?

TSB: It was really fun and satisfying to make a composite of the popular girl bullies from my middle school days into Allie and Blakely and kill them off. It was also oddly satisfying combing through all the mid-2000s pop culture and trends, like the way being obsessed with thinness was normal and encouraged—I’d almost forgotten about that, or perhaps blocked it out, but when writing this book, I was like “Oh yeah, I went through that. I survived that (lol.)”

While writing this book, I also ended up reflecting a lot on my relationship with exercise since powerlifting is a huge part of Sadie’s life. I was not athletic growing up, never played sports, and found exercise like running, using machines, etc. dreadfully boring and unenjoyable. Then I found powerlifting and olympic weightlifting in college, and understanding these lifts: how to activate my muscles and breathe and get the timing right to pull myself under a barbell was fascinating. Weightlifting gave me confidence in my body and my abilities that I desperately needed, and it was a huge mental distraction from my familial trauma I was wallowing over at the time. When I saw my dad again for the first time after I started lifting, I was significantly less afraid of him.  That sort of empowerment Sadie feels from lifting in TMO was probably the easiest part of the book for me to write – because it’s mine. 

About Tatiana Schlote-Bonne

Tatiana is the author of the horror novels Such Lovely Skin, The Mean Ones, and What Feeds Below (Fall 2026.) She has an MFA from The Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa. When she’s not writing, she’s either gaming, lifting weights, or teaching people how to lift weights. She is of Japanese, Mexican, and European descent, and lives in Iowa.

Official Website: Tatiana Schlote-Bonne | Horror Author