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Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Body horror, Child abuse, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gore, Gun violence, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Blood, Vomit, Kidnapping, Grief, Mass/school shootings, Death of parent, Abandonment, Injury/Injury detail
My favorite thing about this book is that the synopsis doesn't reveal too much. This books allows you to be pleasantly surprised by the basic plotline, which is revealed fairly early on. This is more interesting than your average creature feature, and it's best to go in not knowing too much.
The characters are fun, flawed, and feel real. They all have fairly distinct personalities. This book is a quick, fast paced read. The action starts early on and doesn't really let up. It would be a 4 star read for me but then something happens closer to the end that I wasn't expecting and it bumped it up to 5 stars for me.
This is my 3rd Nat Cassidy book. It's better than Nestlings but I think I may have liked Mary more than this one. It's close though.
Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Violence, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Vomit, Kidnapping
Graphic: Ableism, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Chronic illness, Cursing, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Gun violence, Mental illness, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Torture, Blood, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Medical trauma, Stalking, Death of parent, Murder, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, Classism
Graphic: Child death, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Violence, Abandonment
Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Grief, Death of parent, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail
What an insane ride and nuanced look at how fear affects us and how we interact with the world around us
Graphic: Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Gore, Violence, Vomit, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Murder, Abandonment, Injury/Injury detail
Graphic: Cursing, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Grief, Death of parent, Murder
I thought this was a novel about both "child" and "adult" fears that used werewolves as a metaphor for abusive fathers, and that is not the novel I read. I haven't been thrown so much for a loop in a long time. I felt like every time I thought I knew what kind of book I was reading, it changed its skin again into something even more bizarre and horrifying. I felt like I was in a car speeding down the wrong side of the highway pretty much the whole time. It's like a Magnus Archives episode on LDS. I keep trying to draw comparisons to other books (thematically they have nothing in common but there's some surface-level comparisons to be made to Chuck Tingle's Bury Your Gays), but the work I keep coming back to is a Dean Koontz book I read in high school - Cold Fire. I was not surprised to see Dean Koontz name dropped in the Acknowledgements, along with Stephen King. This feels like a concept King would come up with through the haze of cocaine. If you read a lot of horror/thrillers in the 80's and 90's, I think you'd love this.
I don't want to spoil too much about this book because I think this roller coaster might be best experienced blind, but around the 1/3rd mark it revealed to be a completely different genre than I was expecting. There is so much gore and body horror. Mary: An Awakening of Terror is also canon to this world's universe?! This book itself was a shapeshifter constantly on the run, and I've yet to really get my hands around it. Go in with no expectations and buckle up for the ride!
(I know it's a maybe a weird thing to get a kick out of, but... after hearing him appear so many times on the show, I kind of wondered if Neil McRobert and Nat Cassidy were actually friends. And then a character in this book needs an alias on the spot and chooses the name Neil MacRobert, so I would say yes and that was really cool!)
Graphic: Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Gun violence, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Stalking, Death of parent, Murder, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Alcoholism, Cancer, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Alcohol
Minor: Suicidal thoughts, Vomit
Graphic: Child abuse, Gore, Blood, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Alcoholism, Body horror, Gun violence, Alcohol
Minor: Suicidal thoughts, Vomit, Stalking
Graphic: Body horror, Death, Gore, Violence
Moderate: Child abuse, Child death, Blood, Injury/Injury detail