Review by Booklist Review
Move over Derry, Maine! LaRocca, master of transgressive horror, introduces readers to Burnt Sparrow, New Hampshire, in the first of a planned epic trilogy spread out over multiple decades. We Are Always Tender with Our Dead begins disturbingly as hundreds of townspeople lie dead in the center of town, victims of an attack at a Christmas parade, allegedly perpetrated by three faceless humanoids. The engrossing tale features two narrators, 17 year-old Rupert and Gladys, wife of the richest man in town, who lead readers through their own personal nightmares. LaRocca brings the two together while simultaneously using news clippings, diary entries, and stand-alone short stories to build the rich and dangerous history of a town thoroughly infested with evil. Expertly balancing extreme disgust and awe-inspiring wonder, LaRocca pushes readers to their limit with his use of graphic and illicit sex and violence, making them squirm with intense discomfort, forcing them to confront the truth about the horrors all humans inflict, especially on those they love the most. The results? Mesmerizing. The thought of waiting for book two? Unbearable. Think Twin Peaks by way of T. Kingfisher's The Twisted Ones (2019) and Hailey Piper's A Game in Yellow (2025).
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
LaRocca (Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke) opens his Burnt Sparrow series with this bleak contemporary horror outing set in a small New Hampshire town that feels cursed with misery and violence. Teenage protagonist Rupert Cromwell's mother recently died and his father's grip on reality has been loosening ever since. When a horrific crime rocks their community, leaving many dead, the town elders make the bizarre decision to leave the crime scene exactly as is, bodies and all, "for the foreseeable future," and tap Rupert and his dad to serve as "Preservers" responsible for ensuring that the scene remains intact. Things take an even stranger and more sinister turn as, through this job, Rupert becomes unwittingly entangled with the town's most dangerous man and his deeply closeted wife. Themes of sexual identity and discovery figure prominently alongside an examination of death and its attendant rituals. LaRocca creates a lushly gothic atmosphere that smothers both the reader and his characters. The extremely graphic violence, decay, and taboo sex scenes may prove too much for squeamish readers who aren't prepared to wade into territory quite this dark. Only those with iron stomachs need apply. (Sept.)
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