At dark, I become loathsome

About three-quarters of the way through LaRocca's latest, the narrator, Ashley Lutin, muses that "[d]espair and misery . . . can ferry you to the most consecrated of places within the confines of your mind," an apt summary of what drives many readers to seek out this type of boundary-pushing horror. Despair and misery (and degradation and shame) abound here, as Lutin, a widower who sees his late wife's ghost, copes with the unbearable pain of not knowing his missing son's fate by consuming and sharing stories--online or in person--about people indulging their darkest impulses. When one of these online storytellers becomes the latest participant in the arcane ritual Lutin has devised for people considering suicide, events veer in a direction that will leave the protagonist questioning everything. LaRocca is a singular author, and this is a strong, ambitious, intentionally disturbing book filled with lyrical prose, stories within stories, and the title phrase repeated throughout like a mantra. Recommend to readers of Poppy Z. Brite's Exquisite Corpse (1996), Agustina Bazterrica's Tender Is the Flesh (2020), or the author's own Things Have Gotten Worse since We Last Spoke (2022).

This unsubtle outing from LaRocca (Everything the Darkness Eats) follows in the growing trend of queer horror in which the characters' queerness directly contributes to the manifestation of the horror element. In this case, widower Ashley Lutin, a self-proclaimed "self-loathing bisexual," is haunted by the disappearance of his eight-year-old son, Bailey, whom he is afraid he drove away by calling a slur in response to perceived feminine behaviors. As a way of coping with his depression, Ashley renders a strange service to those contemplating suicide: he buries clients alive for 30 minutes, then digs them back up. As Ashley learns more of what may have happened to his son, however, the purity of his rituals becomes harder to maintain. The narrative's graphic and violent sex scenes illustrate Ashley and other characters' depravity, but there's disappointingly little substance among all the shock value. Frequent clichés and few genuine scares don't help. As an extended metaphor for the destruction caused by denying one's sexuality, this falls flat. Agent: Priya Doraswamy, Lotus Lane Literary. (Jan.)

LaRocca (Everything the Darkness Eats) presents his most accessible book yet--a stunning, immersive, and relatable tale about the unbearable anguish of grief. Ashley performs "fake death" rituals. People who desperately want to rekindle their will to live hire him to bury them alive for 30 minutes. Bringing others to the brink of death and back again helps Ashley ease the pain of living in a state of perpetual grief due to the death of his beloved wife from cancer and the unsolved kidnapping of his young son. As his son's birthday approaches, Ashley is contacted by a new client, Jinx, who intrigues and titillates him with a grotesque tale. Ashley can't stop thinking about Jinx and his work, making him question everything, but this interaction may lead him even further into the shadows, becoming even more loathsome. VERDICT LaRocca gives readers an unforgettable protagonist, a complicated man who will repulse them at first but will ultimately steal their hearts. Suggest to those who like the extreme horror of Paula D. Ashe or the work of Kathe Koja; it's also a good pick for those looking for intense horror, as seen in What Kind of Mother by Clay McLeod Chapman.