Welcome to Goblin! Here we find a town that isn’t so different than any other small town until you look a bit closer. To do this, we will traipse through to meet Goblin’s inhabitants who are more than a little off.

This collection of novellas starts by leading us through a “legendary love” that calls for giving without limits.
Next we find ourselves with a man who is terrified of absolutely everything. Kamp is a man who has disassembled his entire life to try to keep his fear at bay, but are you really living if you can’t even trust your own shadow?
Happy Birthday, Hunter is basically what would happen if one of the children from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory survived to become a big game hunter. We are also properly introduced to the North Woods where there are rumors of whispering witches and other wild beings.
Presto reminds us that all magic is not created equal. I’ll leave it at that.
A Mix-Up at the Zoo is where these novellas start getting good (in my opinion, anyhow). This is a story of a man who is great with kids and animals, but can feel a darkness creeping up on him. He does what he can to try to escape these feelings, but is it too late?
The Hedges was my favorite story by far. When his wife dies, a man spends his time building a maze out of hedges that is so elaborate that no one has made it through....until a little girl figures it out. What is our prize in the center of this maze? What kind of trouble will it bring to our characters? Knowing Goblin and it’s propensity towards the uncanny, it’s safe to assume some things are better left hidden.

This book took me awhile to get through. It wasn’t that it was poorly written or even boring, but there was just something off to me. Some of the endings were kind of meh. That being said, Goblin really does pick up in the second half. Is this a perfect book? No. Is it worth reading? I think so.

Thanks to NetGalley, Random House/Ballentine, and Josh Malerman for this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

**I received an ARC from the publisher on Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I loved how this was 6 different short stories but they all took place in the same town. It was a good read. Very well written. Each short story was good and creepy. Loved it.

I liked that the stories were all set in the same town, but I found some good, others a disappointment, as the writing was very uneven.

This book fell flat for me. I was really intrigued by the synopsis and got a lot of creepy/spooky vibes. However, once I started reading each novella it wasn't doing it for me. A lot of them nothing creepy happened until the final pages. I found myself struggling to get through.

I did enjoy that they are were all connected to the town Goblin.

Josh Malerman is such a good writer. But also such an uneven one. Or at least this has been my personal experience with him. I didn’t read his debut, but really enjoyed the movie adaptation (one of the few things Netflix got really right in recent past) and I’m waiting to sufficiently forget the plot to read both the novel and its sequel. So my first time reading him was a fairly underwhelming Unbury. But then I decided to give him a second chance and Inspection proved to be a huge improvement. And then Mad Black Wheel was a slam dunk. Basically this is all to say I was very excited to find Goblin on Netgalley, requested it, got approved for it and read it right away. And found it kind of underwhelming.
Sure, the expectations were high. And to be fair, it’s a good book, at times a very good book. But it’s like I was looking for the maddeningly thrilling fast paced wildly original tale like MBW and got a King or son of King, more accurately pastiche instead. Ok, maybe not a pastiche, but a book like that, you know, one with an imagined town where scary things occur and conveyed at a leisure pace and with a moral cherry on top.
Goblin is a small town of Malerman’s prodigious imagination, a place that receives an oppressive amount of precipitation, a place where the dead are buried standing up. It’s a strange and spooky place and why wouldn’t it be? It’s named Goblin. It also has an appropriately strange and spooky backstory that dates back to the Native Americans of the region who knew a thing or two about evil spirits.
And so in six tangentially interconnected novellas, properly bookended by a separate extra story that is technically both a prologue and an afterword, Malerman invites you to visit Goblin and meet some Gobliners. It’s an atmospheric journey, you can practically hear the October leaves rustling no matter what months you’re there. You’ll need a raincoat, some wellies and probably some sort of a weapon. Because it isn’t safe in Goblin, it isn’t safe at all.
Just consider some of the people you’ll meet…
A man who has some distinctly original ideas about the nature of real romance and real friendships.
A man scared to death of being scared to death by a ghost.
A man who needs to assert his masculinity by murdering innocent (unarmed…or are they) animals and is determined to have himself one unforgettable birthday.
A magician who’ll go to any lengths to become extraordinary.
A zoo tour guide moonlighting at the slaughterhouse (this one practically writes itself in abattoir red).
A maze that’s a character unto itself and only one of the many splendid topiary works of Goblin.
And bookending it all a tale of a very unusual delivery.
So, intriguing, right? And it is. Somewhat uneven. The stories declined in appeal as they progressed, for me. One and two were good and the fourth one, Presto, was by far my favorite, owning largely to the irresistible allure that’s stories about magic and magicians have for me. There was sort of a theme of a fairly slow progression towards an either abrupt or an underwhelming ending. Not enough payout for the investment sort of thing, maybe. And the pacing was quite slow, nothing like Mad Black Wheel, in fact had I not been told this was Malerman’s book, I wouldn’t have necessarily guessed it.
And I know, all of this seems like I didn’t like the book, but actually I did, mostly, like it. It was objectively well written, spooky and fun. I very much enjoy scary stories and my preference is for literary ones and that’s what this book is. It was slightly slower paced than I would have liked and not as great as I’ve come to expect from the author, but still absolutely a good read and well worth checking out, especially for genre fans. Goblin is well imagined, well rendered and in every away a town best left to Gobliners. Armchair visits only are advised. Recommended.

Josh Malerman is one of my favorite voices in contemporary horror. If you need references, check out my reviews for Inspection, House at the Bottom of the Lake, and Malorie, all five stars and amazing reads. So when I was approved for Goblin, I did a happy dance and jumped in.

A novel in six novellas, Goblin centers not on one central character, but on different inhabitants of the small town of Goblin. What strange, terrifying creatures lurk within the city limits? Who are the people calling Goblin home?

I really enjoyed this collection. I never would've thought myself to be a novella fan, but I realized that this format works exceptionally well--especially when the writer is that good. Malerman weaves similarities into each story, and the effect is a complete portrait of Goblin in various perspectives. What I appreciated about these stories was the focus on friendships. In Goblin, you'll find the most eclectic bunch of friendships in one place. Old and young, odd and off-putting, these relationships were the foundation of many of the tales--and the fear that lives just beneath the surface. My favorites included the Prologue, Man in Slices, Kamp, Presto, and The Hedges.

Ranging from weird to gruesome to terrifying, Goblin is a fun, engrossing reading experience that I'd love to see made into a series (here's looking at you, Netflix).

Thanks to Ballantine and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for honest review consideration.

Where to begin with this book? To be quick and to the point I hated it. This book was such a chore to read, and reading shouldn't be a chore. Prologue: Welcome was pretty good. Fast paced, creepy, it really got me excited to read Goblin. Then came the rest of the stories....ugh. Some were okay, others downright boring and made very little sense. By the time I got to A Mix Up at the Zoo I was over it. That story was just plain dumb. At that point I wanted to put the book down. Why did I finish it? I really don't know. Maybe I was hoping for an ending that would make it all worthwhile? Yeah that didn't really deliver either.
Goblin had huge potential, but just never lived up to it. Parts of this book needlessly went on and on. Other parts needed more. The Goblin police could have finally been explained perhaps? I'd normally give this 1 star but I finished it, so I'll give 2.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group- Ballantine for providing this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

It rains a lot in the town of Goblin. That much is clear. A mysterious delivery bookends these 6 novellas, which are all set in Goblin. I did enjoy the last tale, The Hedges, but I'm afraid the others just didn't do it for me. Other than the face that they were all set in Goblin, constant rain, and that fact that Hedges and Owls were mentioned in more than one I didn't really find much connection between them. I found myself wanting to skip through sections of three stories as I found them rather tedious and pointless. #netgalley #Goblin

Really entertaining book of short stories that all relate together set in the town of Goblin. I would say they book has more of a "creepy" vibe more than an outright scary one, but the stories are long enough to where you have some decent character development and also learn alot about the town and its history.

Josh Malerman is a hell of an author. Period.

"Goblin" is a fascinating, modern take on "Twilight Zone" style storytelling. These 6 (technically 7) tales all take place in the extremely creepy town of Goblin, Michigan, where the shadows are a bit darker, the atmosphere is leaden with dread and where nothing ever seems quite right.

While technically horror (and there are scares, creep-outs and gory moments aplenty) what "Goblin" does best is delve into the just flat-out strange and bizarre. If you thought the scenario of "Bird Box" was creepy and odd, you haven't seen anything yet.

The stories are all linked by setting, theme and background elements, though not by any actual characters. The haunted North Forest and the witch rumored to live there; the life-like hedges crafted by Goblin's famous resident artist; the missing "key to the city"; a malevolent police force who everyone loathes and fears more than anything else; the mysterious owls who are such rare prizes...these and other elements are woven through the tales and offer a sense of continuity and the occasional surprise, and the world building behind this work is extraordinary. This is not a normal place where bad things happen to boring people: this is a macabre and strange town where the bad things that happen would seem to be the natural effect of residing somewhere so twisted and dark.

The six stories themselves all work, but some, of course, are better than others. "Welcome" and "Make Yourself at Home", the framing storyline, is incredibly creepy and effective. "A Man In Slices" and "A Mix Up At the Zoo" are fantastic mood pieces and character studies, even if both of their conclusions seem inevitable. "Kamp", a story of paranoia, is my least favorite tale only because it seems to lack any sort of memorable climax, but it is still a haunting piece of fiction. Luckily any missteps with that tale are more than compensated for in the finest two pieces, "Happy Birthday, Hunter!" and "The Hedges", both of which are terrifying and drip with atmosphere at almost every turn ("The Hedges", in particular, is flat-out brilliant, and worth the price of the entire volume).

A fabulously frightening and well-conceived piece of horror fiction. All of the stars!

I'm confused by how I feel about this book. Did I like it? Yes. Did I love it? No. Was I frustrated at the way most of the stories ended, or rather, didn't end? Yes. Did I have any idea what was going on with those Goblin police officers? No. Will that stop me from reading another Josh Malerman book? Also no.

Thank you for the advanced copy.

My thanks to Random House/Ballentine books, Josh Malerman and Netgalley.
I've nothing good to report here.
I'm wishy washy when it comes to Mr. Malerman. I loved Bird Box, House in the Bottom of The Lake, and numerous short stories.
I expected to live this. A very strange town. I saw reviews that compared it to Castle rock or Derry. That is usually a warning sign for me, but I decided to give this a go.
I can't fault Josh on his characters. He does a fine job writing that. My problem is that he "in my opinion" truly sucks skunk spew on his endings! Good stories, but he can't hit the landing!
I finally quit this at the 75% mark. I kept thinking that maybe he's saving the best for last!
Maybe? I will eventually finish those last 2 stories, and if it gets better I'll update.
My biggest questions are obviously not going to be answered. Why are these Goblin citizens buried standing up? I mean, really. That's just down right weird as all get out! Also, what's up with those Goblin town police?
Give me some story into that, with a righteous freaking ending, and I'll get on board with that!
For now? Boring and nonsensical endings aren't cutting it.
Would I recommend this? Only if it's free.

Josh Malerman is already an icon. The reason is simple. He is in that echelon of writers that achieve magic each time they put pen to paper. Told in separate novellas, GOBLIN is as unique and ambitious as it is good. And oh boy... is it good! From the prologue, I knew I was ready to lose sleep, and myself as I began learning about the town of GOBLIN. Each story was excellent. It was as if I were reading the equivalent of an old episode of the Night Gallery. I simply loved this book. It was even better than I anticipated. You NEED to read this yourself. I can't do it justice.

I’m addicted to Mr. Malerman’s riveting, twisty, extraordinarily creative, shocking writing style and his impressively well developed characters! Now I had a chance to read his stories which consisted of 6 creepy, unputdownable, dark stories and also novellas connected with each other!

And the prologue of the story about delivery guy who’s carrying something terrifying which freezes our blood was one of the best opening and hooked me up immediately. I’m so pleased to find out the book ended where all the madness has started!

The stories are truly rich with weird characters and weirder facts about Goblin!

Let me summarize them quickly with a few sentences:
A man in slices: okay, first thing I gathered from this quirky, outstanding story is town’s rituals like burying its people standing up and it gets weirder when you decide proving your compassion to your loved one: because it means you totally play Van Gogh and you need to cut more than your ear to send her love to win her appreciation! Iykk! It’s getting more weirder each second: but this was truly great introduction to Goblin history and two men’s complex friendship! Charles Ridnour who forms this so intense relationship with the girl needs his friend’s to cut his own finger because he didn’t accomplish to cut his own!

And Kamp also introduces us another awkward character: Walter Kamp who scares shitless of ghosts, covering his own house with traps to catch them without being caught but he also traps himself in his own house.

Happy Birthday Hunter: is a story of accomplished hunter Neal Nash who is about to celebrate his 60th birthday but his obsession about getting the Great Owl finds himself at the North Woods alone to finish his business but it means he can also become a prey as he plans to hunt this special creature because woods can be more dangerous and the Owl is protected by the species of nature!

Presto is about a talented magician’s stopping by the town for his special performance but there’s something creepy about his show: Roman Emperor’s show can contain more dangerous elements you’d hardly imagine!

A Mix Up at the zoo: Dirk Roger has two occupations. One of them at the Goblin zoo and the other at the slaughterhouse but some unexpected mix up can make things more complicated and deadly!

The Hedges: When a smart woman finally solves the mystery of Hedges, it results with cat and mouse chase between owner of the Hedges and Goblin police which ends at the North Woods.

Overall: it was jittery, exciting, riveting bunch of stories help to cure your urgent horror story cravings earned my 4.5 stars rounding up 5 eerie, scary, mind hunting stars!

Special thanks to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group/ Ballentine/ Del Rey for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest opinions.

Wow. A group of short stories the likes of which I’ve never seen all seem to connect. Spooky, majestic, beautiful are adjectives that describe this book. I highly recommend this one. I loved it.