Reviews with content warning for Child death - Sour Candy

A horror novella about a man named Phil who comes across a kid throwing a temper tantrum in a Walmart. The kid offers him a piece of sour candy, and he takes it to be polite, and next thing you know that kid is in his house, calling him daddy. His entire past and present have been rewritten so that everything points to him having a kid he KNOWS he doesn't have.

Also, the kid is creepy as hell, and Phil becomes a prisoner in his new life.

I suspected this book would be fire from the beginning, and I'm glad to say it exceeded expectations. It has a creepy child, eldritch beings, body horror (cw if you have a thing about teeth falling out), and such impressive, palpable tension packed into just 107 pages. Definitely will read more from this author.

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babydog420's review against another edition

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dark mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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laurenkristine's review against another edition

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challenging 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? No

4.25

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shaziareads's review against another edition

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dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

2.5

unfortunately Sour Candy was just not totally for me. let me start off with the things I liked about this short novella: the concept - amazing, very spooky. not only does phil end up becoming the parent/haunted by a strange child, everything in his life changes to reflect that. photographs in his house feature the child, his neighbors, friends, coworkers, all know of this child. there seems to be some kind of lore--for lack of a better word--behind this phenomenon, and i would have loved if it was expanded and this was a full-fledged novel.

what i didn't like: the casual first person narration. the unnecessary tasteless language (fortunately not overdone, but definitely could do without). the ending was also kind of ambiguous, not so much in an open-interpretation kind of way but more like there could have been more to it.

i think i'll still give kealan patrick burke's other works a try, he is highly rated and i have a few of his other writings on my tbr list.

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