Woom by Duncan Ralston

Title: Woom
Author: Duncan Ralston
Publisher: Shadow Work Publishing
Genres: Splatterpunk, Horror
Pages: 131
Release Date: September 7, 2017
Book Rating: 💀💀💀💀
Spice Rating: 🌶🌶🌶🌶

Click here for the goodreads page and here for the storygraph page

Disclaimer: This book is bought with my own money. It is not an ARC.

Trigger Warnings:
Abortion, Body horror, Rape, Drug abuse, Addiction, Pregnancy, Racial slurs, Fatphobia, Vomit

Book Summary

I believe pain lingers,” Angel said. “Do I believe in spirits? In the supernatural? Probably not.” The Lonely Motel holds many dark secrets… and Room 6 just might possess the worst of them all.

Angel knows all about pain. His mother died in this room. He’s researched its history. Today he’s come back to end it, no matter the cost, once and for all.
Shyla, a plus-sized prostitute, thinks the stories Angel tells her can’t be true. Secrets so vile, you won’t want to let them inside you.

But the Lonely Motel doesn’t forget. It doesn’t forgive. And it always claims its victim.

My Opinion

When I started this book, I was not entirely sure what to expect. I knew it was a splatterpunk with lots of spice, but that didn’t prepare me for what I read. And especially not for what happens at the very end. I was blessed (or cursed?) with a very vivid imagination, and I am pretty sure that I will never get that scene out of my mind’s eye ever again. Do I mind? Not really, because it made the book stand out for me!

This book takes you on a dark journey through trauma, sexuality and obsession. It was quite a disturbing read, with plenty of gore for us body horror lovers. But it is not only gore that this book has to offer its readers, it also has a psychological layer that is simply heart breaking if you think it through. Is it disturbing? Yes. Is it twisted? Absolutely. But the way that it is explained, the ‘why’ behind the character’s actions, that is what made this book a four star read for me.

“Some places hold the pain in their walls, in the carpet snags, in the cracks of the ceiling and chinks in the baseboards.”

Thematically the book is very solid! Especially with its title being a play on the book’s content, especially a little detail about our main character. I am not even sure if I can call our main character a protagonist. He felt more morally grey to me, especially when we dive into his history and why he does the things that he does. There really is a good story behind the layers of gore and depravity. A story that managed to stay with me days after I finished the book.

When I first finished the book, I rated it 3 stars. But as I said above, the story stayed with me for days and after thinking it through I had to up my rating to 4 stars. I just couldn’t stop thinking about it and honestly, that is what makes a book great in my opinion.

It is fast paced, and for its length that is absolutely perfect. It has less than 150 pages, so I didn’t expect anything else. Again, as with many short horror novels I have read, I would have liked for the book to be a little bit longer. But that’s mostly because I got attached to the story and was not ready for it to be over. It managed to get me invested in the characters.

I think the book did really well by keeping it to two main characters, with the occasional side-character that did not need a whole lot of development. Even though the story is told from the perspective of only one character, we still get to know the other as well through conversations and actions. That was really well done, because that is not always the case. Sometimes, when a story is told from only one character’s point of view, the other character gets neglected. Absolutely not the case with this one!

There were just a handful of things in this book I didn’t like. The ending was a bit predictable, especially for the attentive reader. I figured it out not even halfway through the book and that made it all just a little bit less enjoyable. Maybe that’s on me, and the 100s of horror media I consume every year. I also found that sometimes, details would contradict one another. And that threw me off just a little bit. Luckily enough, the psychological underlayer as well as the detailed gore kept me invested enough and made me adore it!

This book is definitely splatterpunk, though it felt a little bit more emotional than most books in this genre I’ve read. It has plenty of gorey details and shock value. If you’re into that kind of thing, Woom definitely is a book I would recommend.

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