Take a photo of a barcode or cover
alexcannotread 's review for:
Sour Candy
by Kealan Patrick Burke
"It all seemed so very normal, and yet it wasn't. Somewhere between encountering the woman in the store and his arrival home, he's entered the Twilight Zone."
This story took me practically no time at all to fly through. I was entertained every second reading it and had no idea where the story would end up, only that I was intrigued as hell to find out.
In 67 pages, you see Phil Pendleton miserably trying to piece together how one morning, he woke up as the childless divorcee he knew himself to be with his girlfriend smiling at him from the doorway, to becoming, after a strange encounter at Walmart and an accident later that afternoon, suddenly pinned as the father of a strangely dressed boy who appears to never age. Phil persistently denied having any relation to the boy, however, his life seemed to be altered and distorted to everyone except himself.
This story became increasingly mysterious and creepy as I read on. The boy was always acting supposedly normal, which was why I kept becoming more and more excited to what his end role would end up being.
My only complaint is that I think this story would have been better off shortened and executed as a short story rather then a novella. There were some loose ends in this story, such as what the child actually was, who the elders were and where had they come from, how did the "birthing" actually happen (it apparently ended in a fire, and I was disappointed to not read some full-on Alien sort of birthing scene), etc. Were this a short story, I would be more expectant of these questions to be answered in assumption.
This was still a very fun read that I could see myself picking up again in the future. There were never any slow moments and I was hooked throughout my entire time reading. The writing itself was fantastic and it had a nice flow of eerie suspense that left me imagining all kinds of end results, going from deception and satanism to simply mental insanity, and I loved every second of it.
Overall I would rate this novella 3.5 stars!
This story took me practically no time at all to fly through. I was entertained every second reading it and had no idea where the story would end up, only that I was intrigued as hell to find out.
In 67 pages, you see Phil Pendleton miserably trying to piece together how one morning, he woke up as the childless divorcee he knew himself to be with his girlfriend smiling at him from the doorway, to becoming, after a strange encounter at Walmart and an accident later that afternoon, suddenly pinned as the father of a strangely dressed boy who appears to never age. Phil persistently denied having any relation to the boy, however, his life seemed to be altered and distorted to everyone except himself.
This story became increasingly mysterious and creepy as I read on. The boy was always acting supposedly normal, which was why I kept becoming more and more excited to what his end role would end up being.
My only complaint is that I think this story would have been better off shortened and executed as a short story rather then a novella. There were some loose ends in this story, such as what the child actually was, who the elders were and where had they come from, how did the "birthing" actually happen (it apparently ended in a fire, and I was disappointed to not read some full-on Alien sort of birthing scene), etc. Were this a short story, I would be more expectant of these questions to be answered in assumption.
This was still a very fun read that I could see myself picking up again in the future. There were never any slow moments and I was hooked throughout my entire time reading. The writing itself was fantastic and it had a nice flow of eerie suspense that left me imagining all kinds of end results, going from deception and satanism to simply mental insanity, and I loved every second of it.
Overall I would rate this novella 3.5 stars!