Theme Music by T. Marie VandelllyBook Review: Theme Music by T. Marie Vandelly – A Disturbing Psychological HorrorTheme Music by T. Marie Vandellly
🎶🔪 Book Spotlight: Theme Music by T. Marie Vandelly
Genre: Horror • Psychological Thriller • Domestic Suspense
☕ Book Details & Rating
Format: Audiobook
Standalone
Year Published: 2020
Page Count: 400
Rating: ☕☕☕ (3 Coffees)
☕ Coffee Pairing
Perfect Sip: Quad Shot Iced Americano
Why it Works: Theme Music is bloody, intense, and deeply psychological—the kind of book that doesn’t let you relax for a second. It needs a coffee just as extreme. A quad-shot Americano packs the raw, jittery energy to match the relentless dread and psychological unraveling in these pages. It’s not sweet, not comforting, and not for the faint of heart… much like this book.
⚠️ Trigger Warnings
Theme Music contains graphic and disturbing content, including familicide, gore, child death, mental illness, hallucinations, alcoholism, and crude/foul language. Reader discretion is strongly advised.
About the Book
📖 Spoiler-Free Synopsis
When Dixie Wheeler moves back into her childhood home, she’s hoping for a fresh start. But her past is written into the very walls—25 years earlier, her father murdered her entire family in that house before turning the weapon on himself. Dixie was the only survivor, just a baby at the time.
Now as an adult, she can’t escape the dark legacy of her family’s tragedy. Strange sounds, unsettling visions, and a creeping sense that she’s not alone begin to unravel her sanity. Is the house haunted by her family’s ghosts, or is something more sinister at play inside Dixie’s mind?
A deeply psychological, bloody, and haunting read, Theme Music blurs the line between supernatural horror and psychological breakdown, leaving you questioning what’s real—and what’s madness.
🚨 Spoiler Warning
The following review contains mild spoilers. While I’ve avoided major reveals, some plot details are discussed to provide context.
My Thoughts
Man, I don’t even know where to start—this book is dark. As I mentioned above, Theme Music is extremely graphic; the murders are described in chilling detail. Our main character, Dixie, is messy from the start—who buys their childhood murder house? I get that she was a baby when it happened, but still. I was with her boyfriend, Garrett, and her aunt, Celia, on this one: she seemed unhinged and creepy. Garrett tries to be supportive at first, but when Dixie decorates the house to match the crime scene photos, down to the furniture her uncle saved, his patience understandably unravels.
Once Dixie is settled in, the unraveling begins. She starts seeing ghosts of her family, hearing things, and noticing items moving around the house. Add in her heavy drinking, blackouts, and the voice of her father in her head, and it’s clear she’s spiraling. As she digs into her uncle’s homicide file and crime scene photos, she starts to believe her dad may not have been the killer after all. She reaches out to the retired detective for clarity, and her childhood friend—who shockingly was in the house the night of the murders—brings even more layers of doubt and suspicion.
I’ll be honest—this is where I almost DNF’d. The line between psychosis, possession, and haunting blurred so much it became deeply uncomfortable. I even looked up spoilers (something I never do) just to reassure myself I could finish. Thankfully, it isn’t possession, and while I guessed early on what really happened, I was still hooked by how Vandelly connected the dots. Around the 60–75% mark, though, the language ramps up noticeably. The first half has scattered swearing, but as the plot grows heavier, so does the profanity—bordering on too much for me.
Character-wise, Dixie is complex—vulnerable, unstable, and determined. Garrett, however, frustrated me. His moral turn later in the book felt far-fetched, and I’m shocked he didn’t just run for the hills. Her childhood friend ended up being the most surprising, while her uncle Ford remained awful through and through.
Where the book faltered for me was in its overuse of psychosis scenes and weak procedural elements. We didn’t need quite so many “is she crazy or haunted?” moments—the point was already clear. And the police investigation? Absolutely abysmal. Between those drawbacks, I landed at a 3-coffee rating.
Final Thoughts
Theme Music is not for the faint of heart. It’s graphic, unsettling, and digs deep into the psychological breakdown of its protagonist. While the overuse of psychosis scenes and weak procedural elements held it back for me, the book still delivers an intense, bloody, and disturbing atmosphere that horror fans may appreciate. I also want to note that the language becomes much heavier in the second half of the book—bordering on excessive at times—which, combined with the graphic content, made this a tough read. Overall, I landed at 3 coffees: not perfect, but undeniably gripping.
