Genre: Adult Horror
Year Release: March 22, 2023
Buy Links: Tenebrous Press Site | Kindle Edition
Read an eARC from the publisher
Trigger warnings: graphic depictions of gun violence in the workplace, gore, death by bludgeoning, suicidal ideation. A portion of all sales goes to the Sandy Hook Foundation.
Two office workers channel their worst impulses in casual conversation in a twisted friendship that makes those daydreams a reality through a loophole that acts almost like Groundhog Day for the unhinged. Violent, mind-bending, with a breathtaking ending that hasn’t stopped bouncing within my brain since I finished.
This is one of those books where the main characters are absolutely repulsive. They’re in jobs that pay the bills and, on the surface, seem relatively adjusted, until you, the reader, get insight into their conversations, mostly revolving around how great the break in routine in the form of tragedy would be. This novella definitely serves as a character study of the worst type of white collar worker: someone with lots of ideas but who fundamentally does not contribute much to society or culture. They’re so realistic, I found myself getting mad at them like actual people and not people within a work of fiction.
The writing and development of these two is something incredible, especially given the book’s length. I will not spoil the journey, but the amount of self-awareness that emerges is masterful, especially following the restraint-less self-indulgence of the Tide – the unreality that strikes our main characters like a cyclical storm. It’s Office Space for the twenty-first century in ways both painfully true and deeply upsetting.
Intense and horrifying in its mundanity; absolutely proceed with caution give the subject matter.
Jo Writes Fantasy 