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A review by inwetiewele
Wild Spaces by S.L. Coney
emotional
tense
fast-paced
4.5
“…he wonders how the sea felt when her inhabitants started walking away. He wonders if maybe that’s why she keeps eating away at the land, trying to take back what it stole.”
I received an ARC of Wild Spaces through NetGalley and now that I’ve finished I’m finding it hard to put my thoughts into words. This novella seems to have mastered that creeping sense of discomfort and fear that you look for in Horror. There were parts of it that I found myself, pulse pounding, white-knuckling my coffee mug, because I was so afraid of what was building in a scene or chapter. Chapter 5 had me full stop, tears streaming down my face, weeping on my lunch break. 15 pages from the end and I had to stop and collect myself before I could continue.
There’s a part of me that doesn’t know who I would recommend this book to. Especially after the one thing I had been dreading more than anything did, in fact, happen tearing me to pieces in the process (see above mention of weeping).
The other part of me wants to scream from the rooftops that this book is beautifully written, horrific and terrifying in a way that some full length horror novels can’t even achieve. I can’t remember the last time a paragraph of a book left my hands shaking and my stomach twisted up with nervous dread and Wild Spaces made me feel that way for more than 80% of it.
Overall Wild Spaces is exactly what it’s billed as. A coming of age story a la eldritch horror and it does NOT pull any punches in either of those respective genres.
I received an ARC of Wild Spaces through NetGalley and now that I’ve finished I’m finding it hard to put my thoughts into words. This novella seems to have mastered that creeping sense of discomfort and fear that you look for in Horror. There were parts of it that I found myself, pulse pounding, white-knuckling my coffee mug, because I was so afraid of what was building in a scene or chapter. Chapter 5 had me full stop, tears streaming down my face, weeping on my lunch break. 15 pages from the end and I had to stop and collect myself before I could continue.
There’s a part of me that doesn’t know who I would recommend this book to. Especially after the one thing I had been dreading more than anything did, in fact, happen tearing me to pieces in the process (see above mention of weeping).
The other part of me wants to scream from the rooftops that this book is beautifully written, horrific and terrifying in a way that some full length horror novels can’t even achieve. I can’t remember the last time a paragraph of a book left my hands shaking and my stomach twisted up with nervous dread and Wild Spaces made me feel that way for more than 80% of it.
Overall Wild Spaces is exactly what it’s billed as. A coming of age story a la eldritch horror and it does NOT pull any punches in either of those respective genres.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, and Death of parent
Moderate: Violence