Synopsis
When Tyler receives a mysterious letter in the mail from a man claiming to be his stepfather, he is suddenly plunged back into the nightmares of his past, and has to make an important decision that will change him forever. Disseverment is a psychological horror story not for the squeamish.
Z.C. Krol lives in Ohio with his wife and dogs, and is working on another project. When he’s not writing, he’s probably watching a bad horror movie or reading something creepy. You can email him at zckrol.writing@gmail.com and he’ll absolutely respond to you. You can also find him on this new website called Facebook. Bonus points if you send him horror memes.
Review
I met this author through a Goosebumps Book Club discord, and really loved the cover design, so I grabbed a paperback to check out.
This is well written, and precise in its word choices. There is not a single piece of unnecessary content in this novella. It starts off quickly, setting the stage where the main character is in a good place. The kind of vibe that is just immediately eerie to me, because you know with a genre tag like ‘horror’ something is bound to go wrong. And fast… it’s like the idea of starting something stating there is a knife, so that the audience subconsciously keeps remembering that there is a knife. However for me, when the bad or scary starts out with happiness, it makes me five times as on edge.
There are dark themes and traumas described in this, so I’m sure it won’t be for everyone. Somehow the author takes things that are already dark, and elevates them to all new horrors. And I really liked that he did so without getting gory, overly bloody, or heavy in his descriptions. If you’ve ever wondered how horrifying Dexter would be if the audience wasn’t designed to like him? Or if he wasn’t targeting bad guys? Vivisection is not out of play here.
Heavily tapping into obsessions, possession, infatuation, extreme control. This one represents these and turns them up to 11, to the most extreme versions of them.
Personally a 5/5*, a quick and enjoyable horror. The twist weirdly made me think of the movie ‘Stalked by my Doctor,’ which is awful (and this is NOT) and my niece made me watch it because she thinks it’s funny.
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