My Selling Pitch:
A modern gothic horror that’s horny creepypasta villain meets grief is not an excuse to be an insufferable deadbeat dad.

On my do not read list.

Pre-reading: Love this cover.

(obviously potential spoilers from here on) Thick of it: Eric, buddy, PAL. It's 9 in the morning. At least let me finish my coffee before I gotta ride my feminism on your ass.

You know sometimes I read those smutty rom coms and eye up a dom, and then I read this shit. Like yup, NOT a sub.

Reusing waif this early is lazy.

He is not a ghost. He is just a guy. Hit him with your car.

God, I love meditations on wanting. Just a bitch who yearns over here.

That's what she said lol.

Is she gonna fuck her dead husband and have a demon baby? (50%?)

A locallll

Damn, planted like perennials is a barrrr.

Oh girl, what the fuck. They're not selling their son into sexual slavery, are they? Are you kidding?

Me in the summer about bugs.

…jelly roll boys is NOT where I thought this was going.

I love all the mixed media in his books.

Does that mean his boss goes to the group? (Unconfirmed, but heavily implied.)

“It’s simple to stand in one place and allow yourself to be claimed by the poisonous, the fatal. But it’s a fine art to remove yourself, to pull yourself away from the attractive invitation of the abyss.”

They pronounced Haverhill correctly. Nice.

Ghost like the little bugs in Khaw’s house? Is Kent the little boy? (Nope.) ((Also, you know you’ve got a Boston accent when you take your book notes through voice texting and Siri interprets Khaw as car lmao.))

Hasn't poor Evelyn been through enough? Women aren't emotional receptacles for damaged men.

Unfortunately, I’m bored.

Brother, OCD much?

Not providence, lmao.

This is some redpill manosphere shirt. Go touch grass, my guy!

Why is this Jessica Day’s short story class? But like gross! That was fun! It reminded me of the interlude in We Are Always Tender with Our Dead.

Evelyn deserves better.

Brother, you can be poly, or just have a cheating kink, but that doesn't mean other people are incapable of it. And monogamy is no more ethical than polygamy if everyone's a consenting adult.

Some Dorian Gray type shit

I wish he would stop saying shriveled cock. I don't share this weird degradation grotesqueness kink of his.

If this comes out as a he was a woman the whole time-

Where are we going with this your child is a mirror of you? Like I’m just confused where we’re going. There's so little left.

Out damned, Spot! Again, where are we going because this just reads like what he did to Evelyn.

This guy sucksss!

There's such weird I want to fuck a belly button vibes in this and I can't relate lmao.

He was vile!

Fuckin’ boy moms, man.

I wonder if I was that bad- yes, you were. You were that bad. You were literally awful.

Gross little bug man.

Fuckin’ cuck.

I fear it's a 2.

The way I’m more curious about his boss’s storyline than anyone else in this book.

Post-reading: Look at this photoGRAPH! Obvious Nickelback joke aside, unfortunately, I can't muster up a single fuck to give about this book.

Visually, skin crawling, but the language gets real repetitive, real fast. Take a shot for every “shriveled cock” you have to endure.

I’m quickly realizing LaRocca’s faceless mixed media interludes are so much more successful for me. Is it because I can read in my own deeper meanings to the sparse dialogue and the horror works better because I can’t see it and dismiss it as not that bad? Possibly! But I really hope I’m not forcing brilliance where it isn’t.

The rest of this though…fuckin’ woof. I’m a gothic horror slut. Parallelism makes me wet. On paper, this should’ve worked for me. Instead, I just found all the characters painfully unlikable. I was more interested in the boss’s storyline the entire book, but we never come back to him.

The horror itself read discordant to me. LaRocca has the biggest hard-on for infesting little creepy crawlies, but I don’t get the jelly donut of it all. Toaster strudel, cream-filled Twinkie-sure! I don’t know if he was going for a you catch more flies with honey type thing, but it just struck me as so random. And like jam-slathered pedophilia shouldn’t feel random?

There’s definitely a preoccupation here with birthing, and that’s been in his other novels too. Can’t relate, don’t want to relate. Still curious what I was supposed to take away from this other than a creeping suspicion that you have intrusive thoughts about wanting to fuck your son. There’s a case for OCD rep in this, but I always hesitate to count horrors as true mental health examples, when they purposely exaggerate pathology and pass kinda damning morality clauses on their characters.

A lot of the sexiness of this leans heavily on fetishized degradation and gender-role-charged submission that quite frankly came off as misogynistic. There’s also a weird tirade that homosexuality and monogamy can’t coexist. You can argue it’s just the main character’s biased perspective, but no one in the novel challenges this belief and it’s presented as an accepted fact.

Porcelain Khaw is a banger character name, but it feels kinda wasted on this nonthreatening horny creepypasta villain. There’s nods to a bunch of classics-Wuthering Heights and its “Haunt me then!” continues to be a trendy cultural touchstone for ‘25/‘26 works, and there’s a lot of Dorian Gray in this.

It just did nothing for me. I’ve finished, and I won’t think of this again beyond wishing the cover hadn’t primed me for dripping wax play. (I’m getting tongue. I’m getting tongue to a flame Jennifer Body’s style. Just me? Too telling for main? Either way, I’m disappointed we didn’t get some candle in the wind, eternal flame type shit when the more apt blood spattered disco carapace is RIGHT THERE for a better cover! I digress.) I don’t know who to recommend this to that will prompt anything more than a lukewarm ew. I expect more from my horrors, and I’d hope you do too.

Who should read this: Modern gothic horror fans Queer horror fans

Ideal reading time: Anytime, but leaning towards spooky season because ghosts.

Do I want to reread this: Nope

Would I buy this: No, which sucks because I want that cover.

Similar books:

• Blake Flame by Gretchen Felker-Martin-historical, queer horror, trans, social commentary
• You Weren’t Meant to be Human by Andrew Joseph White-dystopian, queer, pregnancy horror, bugs, trans, autism, social commentary
• Brainwyrms by Alison Rumfitt-dystopian, meta fiction, satire, queer horror, bugs, trans, social commentary, mixed media
• Deliver Me by Elle Nash-pregnancy, bugs, psychological horror, family drama, unreliable narrator, queer, social commentary
• Helpmeet by Naren Ruthnum-gothic horror, revenge thriller, deal with a demon
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde-classic, gothic horror

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.