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A review by beautyinruins_ca
Your Turn to Suffer by Tim Waggoner
4.0
Your Turn to Suffer is an altogether weird slice of horror that takes a few sharp turns in the telling, but which is at its best when indulging in the bizarre.
The opening chapter is creepy, but deceptively so, stoking our interest in Lori's suffering, yet holding back on the true horror, even as it misleads us into expecting something safe and familiar. "Confess and atone - or suffer" is such a great line, but it really only scratches the surface of what's involved here.
Where the story takes its first sharp turn is in the fifth chapter, where what we expect to be a cruel reprimand from the boss turns into a giddy threat to "Tear off one of your tits with my teeth" (and worse!), and where instead of blaming Lori for her bad day, a coworker's sob story ends with the disgusting offer to share in eating a bloody, half-eaten cat. Yeah, suddenly, this just got interesting!
The mythology of the tale is a little shaky, with the rules seeming to change to suit the story but, in all fairness, even the monsters admit they're making it up as they go. The human-looking monsters are the scariest, perhaps because they are more relatable, but the ways in which the monstrous Shadowkin can corrupt those around us is horribly fascinating. There's a scene involving a young mail carrier and a busty housewife twice his age that grossed me out and made me squirm in ways few horror novels have ever managed.
Without betraying any surprises, the most significant sharp turns comes in the latter chapters, where what seemed to be a lazy motive is (thankfully) revealed to be a red herring, and where the driving force behind the horror is simpler than we can imagine, and yet carries far more serious consequences than we feared. A lot of people get to suffer in Your Turn to Suffer, and when it goes batshit off-the-rails crazy, that's where the story finds its dark, bloody, shadowy heart.
https://beauty-in-ruins.blogspot.com/2021/03/horror-book-review-your-turn-to-suffer.html
The opening chapter is creepy, but deceptively so, stoking our interest in Lori's suffering, yet holding back on the true horror, even as it misleads us into expecting something safe and familiar. "Confess and atone - or suffer" is such a great line, but it really only scratches the surface of what's involved here.
Where the story takes its first sharp turn is in the fifth chapter, where what we expect to be a cruel reprimand from the boss turns into a giddy threat to "Tear off one of your tits with my teeth" (and worse!), and where instead of blaming Lori for her bad day, a coworker's sob story ends with the disgusting offer to share in eating a bloody, half-eaten cat. Yeah, suddenly, this just got interesting!
The mythology of the tale is a little shaky, with the rules seeming to change to suit the story but, in all fairness, even the monsters admit they're making it up as they go. The human-looking monsters are the scariest, perhaps because they are more relatable, but the ways in which the monstrous Shadowkin can corrupt those around us is horribly fascinating. There's a scene involving a young mail carrier and a busty housewife twice his age that grossed me out and made me squirm in ways few horror novels have ever managed.
Without betraying any surprises, the most significant sharp turns comes in the latter chapters, where what seemed to be a lazy motive is (thankfully) revealed to be a red herring, and where the driving force behind the horror is simpler than we can imagine, and yet carries far more serious consequences than we feared. A lot of people get to suffer in Your Turn to Suffer, and when it goes batshit off-the-rails crazy, that's where the story finds its dark, bloody, shadowy heart.
https://beauty-in-ruins.blogspot.com/2021/03/horror-book-review-your-turn-to-suffer.html