Urgh this book was creepy and terrifying. It was horrifying. I never want to be in the position of the main character. It was so dark. I think this will stick with me for a long time. I think this was probably the aim of the author which makes this a great and successful book, but for me, it was too much.

This is a tricky one to write. Lesath is one of the most confusing books I’ve read in a long time, and even by the end I was still completely baffled, trapped in an answer-less void, desperate for more information but a little thankful that it was all over.

But that’s Kherbash’s aim, right? Such is the testament to our authors understanding of his contemporaries, the psychological web is weaved to absolute perfection. We waste no time in Lesath, immediately throwing Greg into a medical ward in the middle of nowhere, forced to remain until a nearly identical escapee is found to take his place, rather than cause chaos in the ward. While Greg agrees to the terms, it’s not long before everything begins to unfold and everything (and everyone) isn’t as it seems.

It’s a fantastic setting, and despite sounding a little cliché, it moves fast enough that it doesn’t allow itself to get bogged down with boring, irrelevant details. The ward is gothy and pulpy, as are the nurses and orderlies, and Greg’s exploring unearths some really well described environments that help stop a single location book from feeling stunted.
Lesath won’t be for everyone, especially considering modern horrors focus on immediate and obvious threats, but the book is one big mind game and its perfectly executed. I absolutely cannot fault Kherbash for his work at nailing a bygone era.

Lesath isn’t a colour-by-numbers horror, it’s difficult to digest and sometimes even harder to read, but it’s also clever fiction that deserves attention. Give it a read, maybe read it again after a few months if you’re lost, but whatever you do, don’t ignore it.

This books is an odd duck but also a hidden gem.
It gives a sense of induced seclusion with curious readers who want to find out what lurks around every corner.
I had trouble ending this book which for me is a sure sign of complete immersion.
It is a sweet nightmare that you can't wait to escape yet to curious to completely wake up from.
It reminds me off an old story called the Keep. Similarity of an eerie setting. I would not want to reveal anymore.

What a weird reading experience this was. I spent nearly all of this book confused at what was happening and who was who. This is definitely the author’s intention, as they have stated on Goodreads they wanted to write an unconventional narrative that leaves much open to interpretation.

Lesath reminds me a bit of Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation series. That is a very mysterious story and also doesn’t really provide any answers, however I felt satisfied at the end, unlike Lesath.

Literally everything in Lesath is a mystery. Who the hell are the characters? Are they all unreliable narrators? Where are they? Why are they there? What is happening? Is the story linear?

I feel like this book would make quite a good film, but I don’t think it’s been written as a novel very well. There are lots of interesting ideas here, but I kept thinking it’s definitely a story that needs to be told visually.

2.75 stars
I am torn. I nearly gave up on finishing halfway through reading this book.

I enjoyed the horror, mystery elements and the atmosphere the author created. But it was so confusing and twisty plot wise, that I could not keep the characters straight or which one of them was narrating. I figured it would get better as I read on but not really. Some elements of a conspiracy and abnormal happenings were cleared up by the end. Mostly I felt like we got 15% of answers and 85% unknown. The description given with the book seems too tidy for how the book actually is.

I finished it anyways but I wished I had been better prepped for the journey. I would have been less stressed out about how it doesn't make sense. Rereading it sometime in the future might let me enjoy it more.

I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my review.

When I finished reading this book, I found myself to be more irritated than scared or unnerved. The author’s writing style wasn’t terrible, and I did enjoy it, but sometimes found it confusing and really hated the large amount of questions left unanswered by the end of the novel. I felt a bit bait and switched by the ending of the book, but can’t say any more without spoiling it.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Thank you NetGalley.


This is for sure a dark and creepy novel. I don't even want to imagine myself in the character's position.. no thanks.

This is a bit of a tough one. (Note that in this review, I won't be discussing the plot at all. This is one of those books where the less you know going in, the better.)

First things first, I feel I need to point out that my two-star rating is not reflective of the writer's ability or even really the novel itself, but rather my own experience of it. As I will explain, Lesath is in no way a bad book - it has a pretty intriguing plot and some good writing, but it just isn't for me.

To illustrate, I recall giving The Lovely Bones, a highly acclaimed book (albeit one that is completely different to Lesath), a two-star rating as well because I just didn't enjoy the book at all, even if I could fully understand why others did and that it is, in essence, a pretty good book. I hope that potential readers of Lesath can read my review and go: "This sounds like exactly my kind of thing; I don't know what this woman is on about", when they read about the aspects of the book that bothered me.

At first, I ascribed my generally "meh" feelings towards Lesath to the fact that I haven't really read much horror before, but a bit further in, I was able to pinpoint what was actually niggling at the back of my mind.

Essentially, Lesath reads like a movie. Granted, some books make you think: "This needs to be adapted for the screen, ASAP!", but that's not what I mean here. Lesath actually feels like it was a movie before it was adapted to a book, or else was conceptualised in the author's mind as a visual narrative that was then transferred to paper. I kept having this mental image of the process of screenwriting, which I learned about through my husband's experiences in the industry. When writing a screenplay, the simplified process entails coming up with a concept, writing out the "beats" (essentially that which happens in every scene, but in short), and then "fleshing out the beats" to create a script that contains both dialogue and direction (the various prompts that give the dialogue context and shape the scenes themselves). Lesath feels like it was written following this formula. By the end of the book, I was left with the vague sense that I had just watched a movie, albeit a slightly incoherent horror movie, and not read a book.

This might not sound like a bad thing, but imagine a movie (or even a PC or console game, for that matter) being described to you by someone else, from their perspective. Chances are, there would be certain cues, whether visual or auditory, that they inevitably leave out in favour of detailing other elements, leaving small but noticeable holes in the overall story - as is the case here. It felt like there were certain tiny cues that I would have picked up on if it were a movie, but in writing, I missed a few points that now seem to have been crucial to some of the more mysterious elements of the story. Adding to this, the chapters read more like scenes - separate and distinct pieces of a greater whole with breaks in between, interrupting the natural flow that you usually get in a well-structured book.

Further compounding the overall horror movie feel, it seemed that dialogue was regarded as secondary to overall atmosphere and the "fleshing out of beats", creating conversations between characters that are at times disjointed and confusingly stilted. One character in particular, called Hitch, acted and spoke in ways that more often than not made no sense to me at all.

All of that being said, the author is most certainly a good writer. The language is good enough to keep you engaged without being overly dramatic, and I can definitely say that I'd be looking out for any more books from A.M. Kherbash in the future. But, given the structure of the novel, the writing in Lesath wasn't enough to make me really enjoy it.

As I mentioned earlier, this book will most certainly appeal to a great many readers for exactly the reasons I pointed out here - I'm just not one of them, unfortunately.

Not really my style. The writing style just didn't do it for me and I felt that the characters could have been more fleshed out. That being said, I was expecting more of a scare when I went into this.

This is not my cup of psychotropics.


2 stars for the plot and the claustrophobic atmosphere created by the author.


I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Greg takes a hike into the woods in search of a mysterious legend of a facility. I could totally identify with that curious explorer side of Greg...but then he finds the facility and things go downhill quickly, for Greg and for me too. I wondered if the author was using the narrative as a metaphor for mice in a maze. I felt that for much of the book I was following various characters around in a maze of hallways, crawlspaces and ductwork and all too often I was lost in all of the running around that never really seemed to end. I kept reading in hopes of finally finding out what was going on, and to some extent I did find out. I did find out what the objective was for Dr. Carver, but that's about all. I'm afraid I didn't care for the book, but I give it a break and an extra star because it's not exactly my type of story. It's a little heavier on conspiracy than it is horror. I also give it a break because I grew a bit impatient and skimmed/speed-read a bit, so perhaps I missed something in doing that. #netgalley #Lesath

The premise of this had me very excited to read it and while it wasn't a bad book i didn't like it as much as i'd hoped. There was a X-Files feeling to it but that wasn't really enough and while the main character was good, i still wanted more.

Lesath by AM Kherbash is an X-Files-esque read tinged with elements of Shutter Island, Inception, and the Agent Pendergast series by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child. We mostly follow Greg, an unreliable narrator if ever there was one. A drifter who lives in his truck, and hopes to create a career in free-lance writing, Greg follows hints to a secret facility in Duncastor (or does he?), where he ends up a captive of the place. The facility director, Dr Carver, tells Greg that he must stay in place of an inmate who escaped, and who happens to look exactly like Greg. There are flashbacks to Greg's childhood that alludes to a twin named Ory, and some nameless abuse. Though most of the story focuses on Greg, there are asides following the enigmatic Dr Carver, as well as Holden, a former staff member turned inmate. Greg agrees, albeit reluctantly, but as the days pass, he discovers this is something more than a special correctional facility. Something sinister stalks the shadowed halls. Something hungry.

It reads like a paralysis dream, that foggy liminal state when the brain wakes, but the subconscious still controls body functions, aware and unable to move. A state that can lead to vivid dreams as real as the waking world. Greg, whose twin 'Ory'- Greg/Ory- makes me think that Greg suffers from DIDS, and 'Ory' is a dominant, yet secondary personality manifested to deal with the childhood trauma. A protector figure that resurfaces as 'Grim'. This mysterious doppelganger makes an appearance (or does he?), interacting with others, but never Greg, except one 'shroom worthy encounter that seems to support the DID.

Much of the story is disjointed, which suits its tone and substance. Every page will leave you questioning what is true and what shapes reality, what hides in the dark and what hides in our own inner depths. The ending, too, suits the book, but it left me going AAAHHHH! I wanted to know if my guesses and suspicions were correct, but like Inception, the ending leaves it open for the reader to continue to ponder the possibilities. Are you brave enough to face Lesath? Are you brave enough to face yourself? Enter the shadowed halls of Duncastor, where dreams are reality, and reality tis but a dream.

Overall, a great read. Recommended for those who like psychological thrillers, especially with hints of X-Files, Inception, and Shutter Island, or those who enjoy Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child's works.

***Many thanks to Netgalley and the author for providing an egalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I was given the opportunity to read a prepub copy of this book from Netgalley. So thanks and thumbs up. Now, on to the review.

I really enjoy Mystery Box books. You know, the type of book where weird things happen that seem completely illogical and inexplicable, but by the end make perfect sense? Well, this book is exactly that. You have a main character who wakes up in a strange facility filled with prisoners who never speak, a bunch of creepy silent nurses, abusive orderlies, and strange doctor who's a surreal mix of Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Faustus. There also might be a monster crawling around in the air ducts. The entire book feels like a hallucination with sudden narrative shifts between characters, locations, and time. The success of a Mystery Box book types depends entirely on the author's ability to tie all the elements together in the end. So, does Lesath deliver on it's premise or does it get lost in a fever dream? The answer is that it kind of works, but not really.

It's impossible to really discuss the book without giving away spoilers, but I'm going to give it a try. While the book does provide answers to many of the mysteries that the story presents, it never gives any context to those answers. You will eventually know what the doctor was doing in the facility, but you never know why he was doing it? Other questions - Who is Ory, what is the meaning of the flashbacks, who were the prisoners / patients, and most important, why should we care about any of this might be hinted at, but never truly answered.

The answers(such as they are) that Lesath gives are also very late in coming. It wasn't until I was 85% of the way through the book that I started piecing together what was actually going on. I imagine that many readers will stop reading the book long before they get to the mysteries and, those that do get to the end, might not be satisfied with the answers that they receive.

I wanted to like this book more than I actually did. I has hoping for a really juicy, twisty horror-mystery and, unfortunately, Lesath is not that. There were a few tense/POV shifts throughout the novel that I found confusing and occasionally had to re-read passages to figure out who was talking or what had happened. [*****SPOILER**** I don't always need every question to be answered by the end of the book, but I don't think anything had been answered. Who were the twin boys? Where were they? Why were they part of the narrative? What was Carver creating? What was going on with Greg's whole situation? ****END SPOILER*****] Ultimately unsatisfying.

From page one, I really identified with the main character and I literally could not put the book down until I reached the end! A great thriller/suspense/horror novel!

Gothic horror is one of my favorite genres, and I typically love literary horror as well. Sadly, I just couldn’t get into this book. The writing style left me turned off, especially the herky-jerky way of moving between the story of the twins and the present day events in the prison.

I’m also a big fan of suspending disbelief and giving fiction authors a very long leash to make up fanciful things that aren’t realistic. But I really couldn’t get past the lack of realism with the doctor being like, “Yeah, I know you’re not who people think you are, but good luck doing anything about it legally.”

I wanted to like this book, but I can’t recommend it. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an ARC. This review contains my honest, unbiased opinion.

Disclaimer: I received this book from NetGalley. Thank you, NetGalley and Kherbash for your work.

I wanted to like this book more than I did. I really struggled reading it even though it was shorter than a lot of the books that I have encountered before. However, there was something about the way that Greg, the main character, narrated that I just couldn't figure out. Some of the text seemed to coalesce around images that weren't vivid--thus, I could not picture them. However, I do think that Kherbash is great in the sense that he makes me want to reread the book. Still, I'm not sure I can stomach to read something like Lesath again. While other reviews point out that it isn't straightforward, which I understand, I also don't think that the author gives anything to the audience in terms of backstory or exposition. I need at least some of that to figure out what's happening.

Either way, I think if you like to reread books for clarity, this might be the book for you. It's not really the book for me, though.

Lesath centres around Greg, a nomad in between jobs and living out of his car. He is investigating a strange building out in the sticks, a building surrounded by stories of creepy goings on. Greg believes the building to be derelict, but after falling unconscious outside and finding himself locked in a cell inside the building, he learns that he bears a resemblance to a recently escaped inmate, and will be held there until the inmate is found.

As he tries to find his way out, he starts to believe he is going mad, and things begin to crawl around inside the vents..

Lesath is an eerie psychological thriller that calls back to the Gothic, and really has a feel of Shutter Island about it, where the main character has to navigate the corridors in an attempt to find answers. It’s an expertly crafted horror that will keep you guessing throughout.

This one may require some future re-reads.

Lesath plays out like a waking nightmare: you're immediately dropped into the brain of the narrator, a seemingly random, out of work journalist investigating an abandoned complex in the middle of nowhere. He's promptly knocked out and becomes a defacto prisoner of the actually-not-so-abandoned complex. Explanations are in short supply throughout this taut novel: characters appear and disappear with dizzying rapidity, POV changes come in intense bursts, motivations twist and turn nearly as much as the endless corridors in the complex, and the dialogue carries an often dreamlike and surreal quality. Also, there may be something in the vents. All of these things combine to make this a gothic head scratcher. You're never quite sure where the plot is at or where it's going, who is trying to do what, or what the endgame is.

And yes, I'm arguing that this is (predominantly) a good thing. True horror sticks to the shadows as much as possible. My main gripe would be that none of the characters really stood out for me. The scenes shift focus so quickly that not even the narrator or the villain seemed to me to have a face, and I often found myself confusing multiple characters.

There's potential here if Kherbash continues on in this world, something that is hinted at by the open-ended climax. As a standalone title for the time being, it's a good one if you've got a couple free nights in your schedule.

***I was given a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to NetGalley and the author.**