You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
If you're like me and you got about 70% of the way into this and paused to check goodreads for spoilers, I'll answer it for you: yes, the cat dies.
If this had been a full book, I would have stopped there. I have two hard passes with horror movies: rape and animal death. Either happens and I turn it off, full stop. Books get a little more leeway, but if this had been a full length novel, I wouldn't have continued after Louis showed up. I know what happens to cats in horror, and I'm not here for it.
Ania Ahlborn is hit or miss for me. I hated The Devil Crept In and how bleak it was. I loved Within These Walls and its cult-specific horror. Palmetto falls in the "it was okay" middle.
The pacing felt a little quick and the madness/hysteria/paranoia/whatever-you-want-to-call-it felt rushed. It came on so fast, as in immediately upon Kim entering the property. Yes, it's a short novella, but I've read short stories that manage to build dread more steadily than Palmetto in a fraction of the pages.
I can't help but compare this to The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. New house, new mother, gaslighting husband, paranoia; the similarities are there. In that comparison, Palmetto falls short. The Yellow Wallpaper successfully did what Palmetto tried to do with suspense and an unreliable narrator.
The reason this has 3 stars and not less is the creep factor of cockroaches. If you've never lived somewhere with cockroaches, you can't understand just how unclean and gross you feel when you see one in your home. Ahlborn does a great job of capturing how violating it feels to have cockroaches, and my skin crawled every time an antenna popped out somewhere. They're nasty things and I do not ever want to live somewhere with them again.
Like many horror stories, the ending is ambiguous. Other reviewers said the final line really affected them, but it wasn't impactful to me. In my limited experience with her work, I've noticed Ahlborn gravitates toward stories with infant and animal death. Not my thing. Louis dying was predictable and cheap.
What I did like was the innocuous setting beginning with house hunting. I liked the revolving names Kim had for the baby prior to her birth. I liked the Pet Sematary and Vampire Chronicles references. I liked the creepy lady in the corner and her teeth. I liked that this creeped me out.
If this had been a full book, I would have stopped there. I have two hard passes with horror movies: rape and animal death. Either happens and I turn it off, full stop. Books get a little more leeway, but if this had been a full length novel, I wouldn't have continued after Louis showed up. I know what happens to cats in horror, and I'm not here for it.
Ania Ahlborn is hit or miss for me. I hated The Devil Crept In and how bleak it was. I loved Within These Walls and its cult-specific horror. Palmetto falls in the "it was okay" middle.
The pacing felt a little quick and the madness/hysteria/paranoia/whatever-you-want-to-call-it felt rushed. It came on so fast, as in immediately upon Kim entering the property. Yes, it's a short novella, but I've read short stories that manage to build dread more steadily than Palmetto in a fraction of the pages.
I can't help but compare this to The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. New house, new mother, gaslighting husband, paranoia; the similarities are there. In that comparison, Palmetto falls short. The Yellow Wallpaper successfully did what Palmetto tried to do with suspense and an unreliable narrator.
The reason this has 3 stars and not less is the creep factor of cockroaches. If you've never lived somewhere with cockroaches, you can't understand just how unclean and gross you feel when you see one in your home. Ahlborn does a great job of capturing how violating it feels to have cockroaches, and my skin crawled every time an antenna popped out somewhere. They're nasty things and I do not ever want to live somewhere with them again.
Like many horror stories, the ending is ambiguous. Other reviewers said the final line really affected them, but it wasn't impactful to me. In my limited experience with her work, I've noticed Ahlborn gravitates toward stories with infant and animal death. Not my thing. Louis dying was predictable and cheap.
What I did like was the innocuous setting beginning with house hunting. I liked the revolving names Kim had for the baby prior to her birth. I liked the Pet Sematary and Vampire Chronicles references. I liked the creepy lady in the corner and her teeth. I liked that this creeped me out.
Tight lil novella about bugs being creepy or something. I don’t find bugs creepy. Just turn me into a roach or whatever, Kafka. I dare you.
dark
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Ew, ew, ew. I HATE bugs, so this was the perfect book to terrify me. I hate that I read this right before bed. Then ending will probably make you want to throw up!
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This novella was fast-paced and super eerie. I'm not usually creeped out by bugs, but Ania really gave me the chills with this one!
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I joined a couple reading challenges on here, and Palmetto is the first book that I added to one of them. Its short page count was perfect for getting me back into the flow of reading. Palmetto is fast paced, creepy crawly, has some gross imagery that is difficult not to picture happening in real life, to you, and a bit on the dark side. It also does one of the top things that I hate most with books; the ending is abrupt, and the plot left unresolved, bringing up more questions than answers.
If you enjoy ambiguity and making up your own conclusions, then this novella is for you.
If you enjoy ambiguity and making up your own conclusions, then this novella is for you.
dark
reflective
fast-paced
I’ll be dreaming of cockroaches for days. Thanks Ania🤮🪳😂
Palmetto is the short tale of Kim and Eddie, a young married couple with a baby on the way, buying a house they can't afford, all in pursuit of the perfect life.
This perfect life comes at a cost though in the form of an increasingly overwhelming insect infestation that Kim experiences much more than Eddie.
Structurally, this novella hits all the right points, and builds up to an outlandish ending that worked quite well. That being said, your reaction to to Palmetto is largely dependent on how much of a creep factor bugs are for you.
In my case, it's not that much, so my seemingly lukewarm rating is due to that, rather than anything being 'wrong' with the book.
This perfect life comes at a cost though in the form of an increasingly overwhelming insect infestation that Kim experiences much more than Eddie.
Structurally, this novella hits all the right points, and builds up to an outlandish ending that worked quite well. That being said, your reaction to to Palmetto is largely dependent on how much of a creep factor bugs are for you.
In my case, it's not that much, so my seemingly lukewarm rating is due to that, rather than anything being 'wrong' with the book.
fast-paced