Title: Headless

Author: Scott Cole

Release date: March 5th, 2024

A few years back, I read Cole’s bonkers novella, ‘Crazytimes,’ about the world suddenly becoming unhinged and infuriated and bloodthirsty maniac’s. Meteors are falling and everyone is out to kill the people around them.

When I saw Cole announce ‘Headless,’ with a synopsis that mirrored ‘Crazytimes’ to a degree, I was excited. In this one, strange ‘bouncing’ hail/rain is falling from the sky, satellite dishes are crumbling and re-entering the atmosphere and every where around the world, heads on top of shoulders are suddenly changing color before they explode. But once the heads go ‘pop!’ the bodies keep moving.

Cole has a knack for believable bonkers, so with ‘Headless,’ I was chomping at the bit to see just what in the hell he’d created this time.

What I liked: The story opens up with three different characters living their lives. Joanna just wants to be known as Joanna, not Joe, and is grabbing her groceries. Linzy wants her significant other to get home so they can get it on. This headache she’s been fighting isn’t leaving and maybe a quick romp will alleviate it. And Carter lives a solitary life just down the hall from Linzy. Working from home while being a bachelor.

Then, Linzy’s dealing with her boyfriends head missing, and the world is flipped upside down. The three of them are thrust into Carter’s car, escaping the city and driving to find somewhere ‘safe.’ But just where is that safe place? Infrastructure is crumbling, people’s heads keep exploding and the car’s gas tank gets lower and lower.

Cole does a great job of throwing these three at the reader, but also forcing them together to overcome and try to survive the seemingly unsurvivable.

As the story progresses, the trio travel further, eventually having to stop to find gas and food. It’s here where the most extreme moments occur, some that’ll potentially be the DNF point for readers, but Cole handles it like the master of extreme he is, and uses it to push the emotional boundary, as well as the ‘what would I do’ should I ever find myself in that situation.

The ending is spot on and executed so very well. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise – and won’t for many readers – but I was rooting for these folks and when you get to that point, it because difficult to let some characters go.

What I didn’t like: Two things really. At first, I wasn’t really sold on the trio as separate story lines. Because the chapters are short and snappy, I didn’t get to really know any of them until they all came together. It was necessary, but at first was a bit chaotic trying to learn who was who.

Secondly, I’m not totally sure I’m sold or was ever sold, on the necessity of the alien interludes. Sprinkled throughout are small, paragraph length chapters, told through the alien’s POV. It’s used to create sentience, or to educate the readers that they have a plan, but I found it kind of took me out of the story, even in that brief moment.

Why you should buy this: Fans of Cole’s will be all over this, as will fans of anything Grindhouse Press releases. For fans of extreme/Splatterpunk, you’ll have a field day with this one. It’s kind of like ripping through a dusty road at 100 mph knowing full well that the vehicle you’re in has no brakes. Ruthless, breakneck and vicious, Cole did a wonderful job of ripping everything apart.

5/5

Title: The Day of the Door

Author: Laurel Hightower

Release date: April 23rd, 2024

*Huge thanks to Laurel for sending me a digital ARC!*

When one of your favorite authors announces they have a book coming out, you get excited, you preorder it and then you patiently wait for the release day to devour it. In this case, I was lucky enough to jump the release day window when Laurel kindly sent me an ARC (though to be fair, I kind of subtlety whined about it on FB, when I said I was jealous a buddy of mine had already read it and Laurel DM’d me! And I stand by jealousy from that time, HA!!).

Everything about this one screamed to me that it would destroy me. Trevor Henderson cover. Check. A sibling dying under mysterious circumstances. Check. Laurel Hightower writing it. Check. Everything Laurel writes is gold, but sometimes, like in this case, its gold wrapped in golden gold. What I mean is, this one was solid gold.

What I liked: The story that unfolds within focuses on Nathan Lasco and the surviving siblings who have lived all these years after their brother died. While nothing had ever been confirmed, they all believe it was their mother who killed him, behind that closed door, though she’s always insisted a malevolent entity was behind his death.

When Nathan finds out that a film crew wants to get them all back together, the kids and his estranged mom, he hopes things will finally come out and a confession can be obtained.

It’s from this point on that Hightower gives us one of the most infuriating, gas-lighting and self-centered bitch of a character you’ll ever read. Not since Caitlin Marceau’s ‘This Is Where We Talk Things Out’ have I been this frustrated and a big part of that is just how fucking accurate the depiction within of the mother is. She’s one of those people who suck you dry, slurp the energy from the room and somehow make you feel bad and that you’re the one who did everything, not her. Time and time again, literally in every single paragraph that she appears in – and many where she’s being mentioned – this character ignites a fury in the reader and will piss you off so much that you want to just scream at the top of your lungs for somebody to walk over to her and just smack the shit out of her.

Hightower nails this character, and typically, knowing how she operates, this character is based off someone specific, which ramps up that fury and passionate dislike even more.

Nathan himself is a very complicated character, one who you both feel for but also wish he’d get things together. He comes off as a guy who is willing to try and turn things around, but not willing to go all the way, other than his firm belief that nothing paranormal occurred all those years ago. That is, until the repressed memories start to return and we get snippets of a darkness that walked the hallways and lurked in the corners.

Between the anger that the mother creates in the reader and the sheer terror Hightower creates throughout, this novel had me hooked and hooked hard. It was something that called to me when I wasn’t reading it and I love when a book does that.

The ending of the events and the revelation of what really happened was both cathartic and horrifying and really worked well to show the bond of the siblings, who they themselves were solid, if not secondary characters, but to also answer the question about whether this was a haunting or not.

What I didn’t like: While Nathan’s boss/crush was a solid character, I wasn’t really sold on her ending aspect within the novel. I can’t share more than that, for spoilers, but her role was great otherwise, I just don’t know if it was a way to try and utilize her in the future for a second book, which it kind of felt like.

Why you should buy this: Hightower never holds back from unleashing terror and this is yet another reason why she’s a must-read author for me. From start to finish this rips along and as the lights dim and the stairs creak, she does a wonderful job of scaring the shit out of the reader. All while making them want to slap that person who gaslights them in real life, because we can’t slap this fictional mother.

Which is such a shame.

5/5

Title: How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive

Author: Craig DiLouie

Release date: June 18th, 2024

*Huge thanks to Netgalley, the author and publisher for the digital ARC!*

Over the last number of years, I’ve been blazing my way through Craig’s horror-centric bibliography and loving it. Craig also has released some critically acclaimed military fiction, but that’s not something that I really read much of and so I haven’t explored any of those. Craig’s writing has run the gamut of subjects, themes and has always provoked visceral responses from readers – good and bad. If you scroll through Instagram or, lately, Tik Tok, you’ll see his novel ‘Suffer the Children’ mentioned in 99% of every video titled – ‘Horror Novels That Emotionally Destroyed Me’ – and for good reason. His novel ‘One Of Us’ is easily one of the most powerful horror/dystopian novels ever released and he’s managed to conjure cults, Djinn’s and haunting ghost hunting shows that will stay with each reader for the rest of time.

But, if you follow him on Facebook, one thing that you’ll notice is his affinity to motion pictures. When Craig posts about a movie or TV show he’s recently watched, you’ll notice that the promotional poster/image is always accompanied by a very in-depth and engaging discussion on what worked and what didn’t for Craig. It’s never a simple short paragraph, it’s a scholarly look at what he’s absorbed, and I say that positively.

Which meant, going into his newest, ‘How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive,’ I knew I wouldn’t be reading a simple slasher. A formulaic, by-the-numbers story of a horror movie and a quaint cast of characters who were specifically there to play their part before the knife beheaded them and we moved on.

No, what Craig ended up doing was flipping the ‘horror’ aspect and gave us a deep dive into the 70s slasher boom in film, where horror fits into the pantheon of genre – both in film and an introspective approach about writing horror novels – and the lengths some auteurs go in the hopes of being remembered forever and finding their place in cinematic history.

What I liked: The novel initially focuses on Max, a director who has just wrapped up his trilogy of movies titled ‘Jack the Knife.’ It started small, low-budget and dark. Now, he’s realized its become campy and too popular. Film goers are laughing when they should be screaming and he’s determined to make a horror movie so frightening it’ll make him a legend.

This of course comes with a set of problems. A producer who wants more Jake the Knife, not art-house. And the reality that most horror had been done before. Then he meets Sally Priest, a young woman who happens to be sleeping with – and attending acting classes taught by – the sole survivor of a horrifying mass death that happened on a film set. Sally and Max become unlikely sole mates, even after Max acquires the very camera that was used to film that cursed movie. A camera that is cursed itself.

DiLouie walks a really fine-line between fiction and meta-ness. If you’ve written anything before, you’ll relate to a lot of the banter and internal struggles that Max has, that Sally has and that those they interact with have. As well, as Craig dives into the making of movies, the struggle to get greenlit and have something financed and made is one of the hardest things to pull off. Add in the headbutting between Max, the director, and the producer, who each have different views on how things should be done, we get Craig injecting the novel with an unexpected psychological turmoil. Max, who desperately wants to direct and film his magnum opus turns to this cursed camera, a thing that begins to speak to him and show him how he can make the most terrifying film ever made.

In the beginning, Max is a clear cut main character, but as the story progresses, Sally herself gets elevated from a secondary starlet to co-headlining. It mirrors her transformation from sultry, blonde, eye candy, to the bad girl, the final girl, the role she so desperately desires.

Once we get to the final 25%, DiLouie has set the domino’s up perfectly to watch them all fall. There’s so many really unique aspects to this novel, but to share them would be spoiler domain and I just don’t want to ruin that for any future readers. Safe to say, there is plenty of gore, buckets of blood and some truly harrowing scenes – both physical and psychological.

It all leads to a really well executed finale and a worthy closing to this novel.

What I didn’t like: I think, for me at least, was I was more invested in Max’s journey and Sally’s transformation that I never truly found myself scared or unnerved. I was more in this for the dynamics and the ‘we can do this’-ness of Max and Sally together that the haunted camera and the horror movie making and the events that occur didn’t make for unnerving moments, not in the way ‘Suffer the Children’ or ‘Episode Thirteen’ did, and we didn’t get the emotional impact moments that were so prevalent within ‘One Of Us.’

Why you should buy this: DiLouie really has outdone himself with this one, though. ‘How to Make…’ is a novel that transcends just fiction. It speaks to those who read, watch and consume horror. It’s a love letter to the fans who don’t care what producers say. To those who don’t want a part four but a new take on an old trope. With this one, DiLouie showcases his ability to craft phenomenal characters that take you along on their journey, a journey you care about, and a journey not purely there to have them killed off by a nameless knife-wielding maniac.

Loved this one.

5/5

Title: Threads of Ash: South (The Frayed Kingdom Book 1)

Author: S.H. Cooper

Release date: May 24th, 2024

*Huge thanks to S.H. Cooper for sending me a digital ARC!*

You know, it’s not uncommon for any of us to scroll through any of the various social media pages we all have and come across the argument that a writer should only write in a singular genre. That they should pick a trope and not go beyond it. That they should pick their lane and stay in it.

Yet, almost without fail, the authors I love reading most AND the authors who continue to push the envelope and advance every genre are those that hop back and forth like an elementary kid playing hopscotch.

I’ve read a number of S.H. Cooper’s books in the past – I was even honored to previously blurb one of her standout releases – and time and time again, Cooper crafts stories that are masterful. Saying that, I’ve not yet read any of her fantasy releases, so, when I saw her putting out a call for reviews, I quickly sent her a DM. This one sounded fantastic and that cover art had me sold.

I had no idea what I was going to be in for, but I was excited to dive in!

What I liked: The story begins with a bang. We’re thrown into the mix of a town under siege. A ‘disease’ known as the weeping blight is sweeping the land and teen/young woman Yaveta is trying to flee. Soon enough, while chased, she encounters a man, a northerner that they refer to as milkskin’s that is armored and ready to fight. The man’s name is Wulfren and together they flee, heading south.

From there, it’s a gripping mix of fantasy/horror and comradery dynamics. Wulfren is quiet, brooding and secretive. Yaveta is young, questioning and innocent. She’s trusting of all and because of this, we see that openness continually put them into harms way, even as Wulfren warns her about what is going to happen next.

As they continue on towards the town of Orkeas, where Wulfren is to meet someone and where Yaveta’s aunt lives, Cooper works her magic by writing a fantasy novel with the sensibilities of pulse-pounding horror. There is no bloat here. We don’t get thirty pages dedicated to describe what it is they’re eating for dinner or pages and pages of purple prose showcasing the details of the land and the hills around it. No, Cooper keeps it sleek, streamlined and the reader is richly rewarded for that. It creates an atmosphere throughout of ever growing tension. If things are bad in the outskirt areas, just what awaits them in the next town.

And what does await them is fantastic and a phenomenally executed mix of fantasy-horror creature creation. I won’t spoil it here, but Cooper has outdone herself with the world building and the figures and things that inhabit it. Even when we get brief moments of backstory or historical information, its to the point and solidly shared.

Once we get to the ‘final destination,’ where we all know this won’t be the ending, because A) it’s a fantasy book and B) I mean it says it in the title that this is book one!, we see where they need to go next and just what might await them.

Cooper does a great job of leaving this on a chaotic, tension-filled cliffhanger and one that will have readers desperately begging for book two to arrive sooner than later!

What I didn’t like: Really, the only thing I didn’t like was that it ended on a cliffhanger. Look, I knew it was going to, and I knew this was book one, yadda yadda, but that will always be the thing that will make me pull the limited hair I can still grow on my head out! I just wish more fantasy ended each book with a finish that still set up where the next book would go.

Why you should buy this: Are you a book snob who turns your nose up at fantasy? Well, consider this more of a horror story with an armored guy with an axe! Are you a book snob who turns your nose up at horror? Well, consider this a fantasy story with creatures and action. Hey wait, that’s like all the other fantasy out there.

Look, the reality is here, that S.H. Cooper has written her ass off to create this PHENOMENAL story that is 100% about two people who are so completely different in normal times they’d never team up, who are thrust together because of things outside of their control and have to figure out a way to band together and survive. This is pretty much every horror AND fantasy novel and movie that’s ever been released, but told through the lens of a masterful storyteller who will have you gripped from page one and just doesn’t let go.

I honestly can’t wait until book two and I’m annoyed that Cooper hasn’t announced it already!

Outstanding novel and I’m sure this will be an outstanding series sure to be raved about for decades to come!

5/5

Goodreads link;

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/205821290-threads-of-ash

I’ll update this with a pre-order or live link once it’s available!

Title: Stallo

Author: Stefan Spjut

Release date: January 1st, 2012

Just yesterday, in the review I posted, I mentioned how I love the strange ways books end up on a readers radar. Well, today’s review is another one with a mildly fun case of ‘how’d I learn of this book!’ It was actually Adam Nevill who shared that he’d read Spjut’s novel ‘Trolls,’ which turned out to be the sequel to ‘Stallo.’ Unbeknownst to him, Adam had read book two first before diving back into book one. Hearing that he’d loved it and knowing how Adam’s own books have ingrained themselves in my reading brain, I snagged ‘Stallo.’ But I did hesitate for one main reason. Page count. At just over 600 pages, I had to find a moment where I mentally wanted to commit to a book that voluminous. I can zip through novellas and even novels up to 400 pages, but as soon as I know a book is over 400 pages, my brain seems to categorize that as something else. As though I’ve gone from watching a single episode of a TV show to suddenly committing to watching the entirety of the Lord of the Rings Extended Editions in one go.

But, this one kept calling to me. Look at the opening of the synopsis – ‘In the summer of 1978 a young boy disappears without trace from a summer cabin in the woods. His mother claims that he was abducted by a giant. The boy is never found.

The previous year, over in a Swedish National Park, a wildlife photographer takes a strange picture from his small airplane, of a bear running over the marshes. On its back sits a creature, which the photographer claims is something extraordinary.’

HELLO, THIS BOOK SOUNDS PERFECT. It checks all of my boxes. Woods. Check. Creatures. Check. WTF is going on? Check. It was time to dive in. And so, I cracked this open (in reality, just went to it on my Kindle) and dove in, not completely aware of the wonderful world Spjut was about to introduce me to.

What I liked: The book starts off exactly as the synopsis bit says. Magnus, a young boy, goes to a cabin in the woods with his mother. There, they have some fun and he goes exploring. Not long after, they see some wild animals lurking around, a fox making itself known. Then, when the mother sees something odd outside, Magnus wants to see and before she can stop him, he rushes outside, where a massive being grabs him and he’s gone.

Fast forward twenty-five years later and we meet Susso, a young woman who believes her grandfather managed to take a photo of a small troll on the back of a bear. She runs a website around the photo and other stories similar. She’s contacted by a woman who believes a forest person is visiting her home. Then, that woman’s grandson is kidnapped seemingly at random, but soon it appears that its related to the stories of the trolls and shapeshifters that hide in the woods.

From here ,Spjut takes us on a rollercoaster of Susso, her mother and her former boyfriend, racing around Sweden in search of clues and hoping to find where this boy, Mattias, was taken. We get a ton of really great folklore intertwined and we even get a really great introduction of John Bauer and his role in the troll history. I do have to say, in my life, I’ve always seen trolls as massive beings and never really considered them in the smaller forms or shapeshifting forms, so huge thanks to my friend Espen Aukan who answered some of my questions regarding the Sami people, the Stallo folklore and some troll related questions!

The final quarter of the novel is jam-packed with action, revelations and we get to learn more about who these big trolls were/are and how we could potentially end up with a sequel, which was released in 2017.

What I didn’t like: This book does have a lot of slow down spots, particularly when time is spent with the trio going from hotel to hotel and we get limited movement of the major chess pieces. It has moments that come off as bloated and I’m not sure if that is due to translation – I suspect Swedish might be more succinct than English – or if the novel itself tried to include too much small subplots, but at times I had to step away for a day or two, when it just felt like nothing was happening.

Additionally, I wasn’t a fan of the majority of the story being told in third person, but a first person shift would come whenever it was being focused on Susso’s mom. That was an often grating shift and I found the book would lose its momentum.

Why you should buy this: Overall, I did really enjoy this, if not the slower moments. But man alive, when this thing fired, it fired on all cylinders. We got some phenomenal scenes in the woods, in apartments with a squirrel and even at an old farmhouse complex in the middle of nowhere. The folklore elements were great, really having my imagination run wild and the historical elements that Spjut sprinkled throughout were wonderful.

This was a novel that I greatly enjoyed and one I’m glad to have tackled. I’m still on the fence about reading the sequel, but who knows, the mountains often call my name and when its a troll whispering it on the wind, that pull is sometimes too hard to ignore.

4/5

Title: Worse Than Myself

Author: Adam Golaski

Release date: July 17th, 2008

If you’ve read any of my reviews over the last almost-decade of me posting reviews, you’ll see that I’m a huge lover of the randomness of how books get onto a readers radar. 99% of the time, it’s a new book release being announced and we collectively lose our minds, preorder and repeat. But it’s that other 1% that I think would make for a wonderfully odd anthology. A book about those random occurrences that put a specific book in our hands. Such as ‘I was waiting in line to buy a water at the airport and I spotted a curly haired man with glasses sneakily signing a book.’ That’s a true story. Over on Instagram, Neil Gaiman posted about it maybe two or three years ago. He often stealth signs and in this case, a woman saw him doing it, asked him about it, as she had never read his work, and bought that book, excited to read it and having a very cool story about acquiring it.

Now, in the case of ‘Worse Than Myself’ by Adam Golaski, my story isn’t as crazily coincident and cool as that woman’s (and it doesn’t involve Neil Gaiman, though I do believe he’d love this collection!), but it was still a neat confluence. Or not? You decide. I’d jumped onto Twitter to reply to a DM, when I saw Canada’s King of Monster’s Trevor Henderson had posted that the first story in this collection was perhaps the best short story he’d ever read. I was immediately intrigued, so I went and bought the Kindle edition and read it.

Ok, so my story is DEFINITELY not as cool as the woman in the airport, but anyways, here we are and now that I’ve read this collection, I think Adam should sign a few copies and leave them in an airport book store!

What I liked: I’ll admit that I’m often weary of the word ‘weird’ when it comes to storytelling. I’m not sure why, maybe it’s me equating it to Bizarro in a way? Though I do enjoy some Bizarro. But more likely it’s that I often prefer my short fiction ‘straight forward,’ as in A-B-C storytelling without strange side narratives or things like that.

So, it seems that when I read a collection described a ‘weird fiction’ I’m often a bit more on guard, a bit more hesitant when reading, expecting the floor of the story to drop out at any moment.

The collection opens up with the story Trevor had mentioned, ‘The Animators House,’ and I will say, this was superb – though not my favorite of the batch. It starts off with a family going to visit their cousin, Mike. Mike is now a minister, devoting his time to religion and Molly and her parents haven’t seen him in some time. Once there, he tells them a horrendously terrifying story about why he chose his calling and after they leave, they’ve put it behind them. That is, until they stop at a roadside restaurant and everything takes a turn. This one goes ‘weird,’ but not in a bad way. I can’t say much more for spoilers, but this story will absolutely get under your skin.

Other highlights for me were, ‘The Demon,’ where we see a couple and their friend head to a very strange costume party at a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. A hallucinatory nightmare, this one starts creepy and becomes downright LSD-infused by the end.

‘They Look Like Little Girls’ was a phenomenal piece where tension was king. It follows a group of random strangers on a Greyhound bus. They stop at a remote stop as the bus is having mechanical issues and they must wait for a replacement to arrive. Small talk begins, but soon, things moving in the darkness outside is spotted and what they first believe are ‘dogs’ show themselves to the travelers. This was just outstanding.

Which brings me to the absolute highlight of the collection for me – ‘The Man From the Peak.’ A folklore story masquerading as a love triangle story, a man attends his best friends going away party, as his expensive home high in the mountains. He is secretly seeing his friends girlfriend and he’s hoping she’ll stay and not move to Boston. There’s a bunch of people there for the party, but when a strange man appears from higher up in the mountains and forces his way into the party, things take a turn. We get bits and pieces of what he really is, and the ending of this one was so spot on pristine that I was truly upset it was over.

What I didn’t like: Throughout, some stories either just didn’t connect with me, or started out well before going off the railings. Case in point, was the story ‘In the Cellar.’ This was initially feeling like a story that would be one of my favorites. It followed a man recounting a strange visit he had to a cottage, and it involved a girl and some stairs. But the last ending line was so jarring and felt so out of place, that it really ruined how that story presented itself.

As I said, I often struggle with ‘weird,’ so take that with a grain of salt. As with all collections what I loved you may not and what you love, may not have been something I enjoyed.

Why you should buy this: This collection, no matter whether the story resonated or not, was written masterfully. Adam throws you into each mini-world he’s created with glee and you almost feel like you’re trapped while reading it, one hand wrapped around your throat as the other frantically gets the words on the page. From start to finish, this was a dark, brutal collection that really pushes the reader to the edge. And sometimes, they get pushed over.

4/5

Raw Dog Screaming Press Direct Link:

Worse Than Myself

Amazon: