Three friends, one cabin, epic horror.

The charcter development.... EXCELLENT.

I loved the entire tone and pace of this book. It exceeded every single expectation I had.

It was clever and a real page turner. I cannot recommend this horror more!

5 stars. Take all my stars!!

Thank you to wicked house and netgalley for my gofted copy!

The atmosphere was eerie, the folklore was creepy, the animals were spooky - everything you’d want in a horror book!

Thanks to #NetGallery, Wicked House Publishing, and Blaine Daigle for the chance to read and review #TheBrokenPlaces.

Oooh don’t often get a solid spooky Yukon story! Definitely give this one a shot if you’re into solid stories and characters you actually care about? I was most impressed with Daigle’s ability to get me invested in these friends.

This is a tight horror novel with an ever-growing sense of dread. The three main characters are all defined by different traumas, but they are distinct and relatable, or at least understandable. I enjoyed the overall story as well as the structure and pacing, and thought the flashbacks and other reveals about the characters’ histories were well done, not giving everything away in an exposition dump anywhere but filling in the pieces slowly. The folklore is an interesting twist on other isolated forest-based mythologies, and I again I appreciated that we were only revealed things bit by bit, with some questions still unanswered by the time the immediate story ended. The setting itself, the isolation of a cabin in the middle of a remote taiga during a solstice snowstorm, felt menacing and real. So, intriguing and fleshed out characters, a well-plotted and tight plot, and an overall engaging story, which succeeded in bringing dread and some horrific imagery, makes for an overall fun read, especially for anyone interested in the folk-horror subgenre exploring when modernity is in a fight with the natural world it is trying to either conquer or leave behind.

That said, it wasn’t a perfect read for me. While the flashbacks went a long way toward it, I did wish that I actually felt the connection between the characters as much as they described their love for each other. They repeatedly referenced their deep commitment and brotherhood, and while it felt genuine in the story, I would have liked to see it a little more. There was also a clear attempt at making the forest a character in the story, and the setting did feel genuine and creepy but I never really felt it to have the kind of heft it needed to really be an active participant, except for a few moments here and there. And while I don’t think every rule of the supernatural experience needs to be explained, I enjoy when stories refuse to handfeed you everything rely on the unreliability of the narrator’s experiences, I felt like there was some hand-waving at making the supernatural legacies fit the story. It just felt like anything could have happened in the plot and it would have been fine within the fuzziness of the mythology of the story, as the rules and expectations of the supernatural elements just didn’t seem to have any real heft. I just needed a little more to anchor things, so I didn’t feel like rules were arbitrarily being made up as we went along. And, lastly, some of the actual prose was a little too purple for my taste. I really appreciate poetic prose, especially in genre stories, but here it often felt forced, with every page having far more adjectives and qualifiers than necessary and sentences that felt like they were crafted just to sound important. Overall, the writing was strong and I did enjoy some of the flourishes but some of it just felt unnatural, it was just too heavy-handed.

I did really enjoy this story, and blew through it in just a few sittings. The chapters felt long enough to provide actual sustenance while still being able to end with some nice hooks that urged me to keep reading. It has strong plotting coupled with a good dose of ambience that makes for a compelling read. While there were some things I think could have been improved upon, I still heartily recommend it, especially for anyone terrified to find what might be buried in the frozen legacy of family history, hiding in plain sight in the middle of a cabin in the middle of nowhere.

I want to thank the author, the publisher Wicked House Publishing, and NetGalley, who provided a complimentary eARC for review. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I'm so thankful to have received both a physical copy and digital access to Blaine Daigle's The Broken Places leading up to its publication date of March 24, 2023. I thought this piece of horrific literary fiction was so well done, and I can't wait to run to my feed to see what my fellow readers think of this work of art. I am so thankful to NetGalley and Wicked House Publishing additionally for the bookish love.

This book has it all; creep factor, gore, great characters and plot, and more. Great read for anyone who loves horror, especially with a lore that is woven into the story.

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

The Broken Places is a horror book featuring our main character Ryne. Ryne and his friends take a trip up to the cabin he inherited from family to get away and destress, BUT there's something wrong in the woods near the cabin. The animals are acting weird.... and there are whispering voices coming from the woods?

There is a bit of a folklore-ish theme to the book. The author did an amazing job with the storyline and character development. This isn't your typical horror book, there's multiple levels to this book.. and it seems to bypass just the typical horror genre/ trope.

Well worth the read!!

"Blaine Daigle" is an outstanding new horror writer that readers need to be aware of if they want to be chilled and thrilled in the best way possible!


Deep in the wilderness of the Yukon sits an isolated log cabin that has been owned by several generations of the Burdette family and is now passed down to Ryne Burdette who needs a healing vacation along with his two lifelong best friends who have all been through some tragic events the past few years. Ryne has always had a love/hate relationship with his cabin memories without fully understanding the reasons behind his feelings because he knows there were many family secrets that his father and uncle had kept from him. On the slow, treacherous and tedious drive where the roads are narrow while covered with snow and ice the friends wonder if they should turn around as news of another blizzard is headed their way but Ryne is determined that the cabin will be the safest place to be in the upcoming storm. When they are only a few miles from their destination an enormous buck with some of the largest antlers the trio have ever seen stands dead still in the middle of the road blocking their way. This buck seemed to have no fear and whatever they tried to scare him, he still would not budge and inch. The most disturbing thing about this deer were his eyes, they were the deepest black, void of any energy or spark of life and the way it stared at them made the hairs on their necks prickle with some sort of primal fear. The men are hunters and very familiar around wildlife so they understood how unnatural this behavior was for an animal. This will be another clue that that they should turn around and go back since it might be their last chance since the blizzard has picked up speed and is almost on top of them and visibility will soon make it impossible to travel plus the nearest town is twenty miles away so if they needed help in a hurry there will be no chance of anyone being able to save them. Their brotherhood bond will now be tested in ways that they could never imagined in their wildest nightmares.

Believe Me, This Is Not A Bad Dream!

WoW! This was quite a nightmare of a horror. So Wickedly Great!

The story starts as a slow-burn as it steadily builds and builds then escalates into a nonstop creepy, shiver inducing, hurry turn the lights on type of story where you will be rapidly turning the pages OR pausing, trying to catch the breath that you didn't know you were holding while trying to settle yourself for the next chapter. I can't believe this was "Blaine Daigle's" debut book and I certainly hope he is in the process of writing another because I will be at the front of the line waiting impatiently to get my hands on it. The storytelling and writing were everything that I could ask for in a horror book. It had it all, creepiness, continual cold, eerie feelings throughout the story, the claustrophobic snow driven atmosphere was just spot on. The length of the book was perfect. I felt as if this author packed 600 pages of detail into a less than 300 page novel. I'm in awe of how he accomplished this feat. The characters were so detailed with their back stories that they felt like real people where I cared about them and their experiences and hoped they would make it through this horrific nightmare of a story.

Last but not least for Horror Lovers was plenty of violence, blood, gore, chilling animal horror, body horror, spooky folklore becoming reality and the best eerie atmosphere imaginable!

I want to thank the publisher "Wicked House Publishing" and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this fantastic book and any thoughts opinions expressed are unbiased and mine alone!

I have given this novel a rating of 4 1/2 TERRIFYING AND HEART SHATTERING 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌠 STARS!!

This is horror of horrors, real terror lurking in the darkness... I wasn't sure if I could get into this, I didn't feel that I could relate to the people, but having kept reading and delving deeper into the woods I was caught up in legends, menace and darkness that haunted the frozen forest. The three characters grew on me and carefully written and developed characters became real, I wanted them to run, but mostly to survive this nightmare. Winter in a storm in an old cabin in the woods is never going to be a great idea and when the animals begin to behave strangely it is clear that Ryne, Shawn and Noah are in real trouble. The past and it's secrets lurk just below and when they rise to the surface there is no way out. Genuinely creepy and at times truly terrifying I certainly recommend reading, just not at bedtime!

This book is outstanding and heartbreaking. I love wintery, isolation filled books, and this book delivers in big ways. It's cover is exquisite, and lets the reader know what they are in for. I found the folklore horror to be grotesque, beautiful in a macabre way, and utterly heartwrenching. This author has a ton of talent, and I will be first in line to get the next book they write.

I love horror set in cold, snowy places. Whenever I see one I definitely need to check it out, so when I saw this book I put it on my to read list. And this story wasn't bad, but for some reason it didn't completely work for me. The characters were a bit flat, the horror bits should have been really creepy but they felt off to me. Like cool idea, love the concept, but the execution was fine, but also not keeping me on the edge of my seat. I couldn't pinpoint what exactly it was as when I was reading I kept thinking I should be loving this....but it was just okay. I would try another by this author and see if I enjoyed it more.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for a copy of this book.

Ryne Burkette inherits an old hunting camp deep in the Yukon Wilderness. He invites two of his best friends to spend the weekend at the cabin and to enjoy the wilderness. Once they are there, they begin to experience strange behaviors of the local wildlife. This book is told in two timelines. One timeline is told when Ryne was a child . He was at the cabin with his father and uncle. Ryne can barely remember seeing his uncle at the edge of the woods facing some kind of mystical being and later hearing his father and uncle arguing afterwards. The second timeline is set in the present. A winter storm sets in, trapping Ryan and his friends at the cabin. Something is watching them, calling to them. Will Ryne solve the mystery as to why he was compelled to come back to the cabin.

Awesome 👍 I could not put it down . I will definitely be reading more by Blaine Daigle!
I received a Arc copy from netgalley.

Ryne Burdette has inherited his family's old hunting cabin deep in the Yukon woods. He went there as a child with his father and uncle and saw and heard strange things. His father told him he was dreaming, and he was given a dream catcher. When he returns to the cabin in Wolf's Bone, with his two best friends, Noah and Shawn, Ryne comes face to face with his legacy, his family's history, the woods, and the animals in it.

I loved the atmosphere in this book. I love books that take place in cold settings. I could feel the chill and freeze in the air, the isolation and the dread as the snow continued to fall and the three friends became more isolated and trapped in the cabin. There is tension flowing throughout this book as things begin to get creepier by the second. A weekend away with friends has turned into a nightmare.

This book was gripping and atmospheric from the start. It's chilling, creepy, horrific, and riveting. I was glued to the pages wanting to know what was happening and how things would turn out.

Wowza! What a fantastic debut horror book! Very well done. The characters were likeable and well-drawn. I was fully invested in them and what they were experiencing. The pacing was fantastic and kept things tense and had me on the edge of my seat. What an impressive page turner!

Atmospheric, chilling, well written and riveting!

I look forward to reading more books by Blaine Daigle in the future.

Blurb: (goodreads)

When Ryne Burdette inherits his family's old hunting cabin deep in the Yukon wilderness, he wants to say no.But after a tragic year, he sees a weekend trip to the cabin with his best friends as a way to recuperate and begin again. But
there is something strange about these woods. As a winter storm moves in, the animals begin acting strangely and the natural laws of the wilderness seem to fall apart.

“The woods are lovely dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, miles to go before I sleep.”
Thoughts:
Thank you @netgalley and @wicked_house_publishing for the gifted copy of this book. I loved everything about this book from the the characters to the setting and I definitely loved the creepy plot. I enjoyed all of the suspense that was intermingled with dark
and creepy folklore. I'm hoping to read more books by @blainedaigleauthor in the near future!!!

“He’s part of this family. It’s not in your hands or mine. It never was, and it never will be. You can fight it all you want, but one day, you will have to make your peace. Best accept it now.”-4%

Ryne, Shawn and Noah have all had a hard go at life recently, and these three friends all have two thing in common. They are broken people, and they are all going to Yukon to stay at the cabin that Ryne recently inherited from his father for a boys getaway. Located just outside the town of Wolf Bone, Ryne’s cabin has been in the family since first built in 1857, and was a source of fond childhood memories and nightmares. Things in Wolf’s Bone just are a little bit odd, and the longer the men stay the more the family secrets begin to emerge, but the more dangerous the forest becomes.

Spoiler warning** Do Not Read If You Are Looking For A Happy Ending.

The Broken Places by Blaine Daigle is a modern gothic horror novel that utilizes horror to examine the lasting effects of childhood trauma and inherited family trauma. Much like a lot of gothic fiction, a lot of time is spent building up the setting, the characters and the plot. This makes the narrative seem slow paced at first, but trust me when I say that if you stick with the book it will pick up pace and you will be so glad you kept with it. As the narrative picks up it helps to instil a sense of panic in the reader after the initial set up.

Daigle narrative mixes Body horror, Gothic Horror, Religious Horror as well as takes inspiration from cosmic horror to create a whole new take on the haunted house/places trope to truly explore the depths to which trauma can be inherited and passed down through the family. Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read this as an arc copy.
I really enjoyed reading this book, it was an emotional one for me and I would read it again but it took a toll on me mentally
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5433263616

Book Review 🦌
The Broken Places
Blaine Daigle
Published March 2023
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

#qotd : What's your favorite wild animal?

Thank you to NetGalley for my copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis from GR: "When Ryne Burdette inherits his family's old hunting cabin deep in the Yukon wilderness, he wants to say no. Nothing much is left in that place except for unpleasant memories and the smoke of old burns. But after a tragic year, he sees a weekend trip to the cabin with his best friends as a way to recuperate and begin again.
But there is something strange about these woods. As a winter storm moves in, the animals begin acting strangely, and the natural laws of the wilderness seem to fall apart. Then, the soft voices start whispering through the trees. Something is watching them.
As the storm gets worse and the woods get darker, the three friends must dive into the darkest waters of the Burdette family lineage. Because the horrible truth is deep, resting in the shadowed places no one wants to look."

I didn't know much about this book when I started it. This was a "read now" buddy read book that one of my Slasher Queens chose. Man, oh man, what a journey this book took me on. It was a touch slow at first and I was worried, but it picked up quickly. This book was creepy and weird and bizarre and kind of Haunting honestly. The author did a great job of making you feel you are there experiencing everything. I could see the cabin and the deer and hear every howl and creak.
If you want a unique book that will send shivers down your spine, go pick this one up.

#brokenplaces #blainedaigle #netgalley #bookclub #buddyread #creepy #atmospheric #snow #blizzard #deer #hunting #fiction #newbooks #newread #newreview #weekofreviews #weekinreview #canva #photoedit

A horror book that lives up to the genre. It was one of those books you can't put down. Full of twists and turns that I didn't see coming.

I'm always game for creepy woods, folk horror, and weird deer. The plot is a familiar, yet classic, one where a group of friends - all going through their own traumas - gather in a remote location, and things go terribly wrong. The characterization of the friends creates a good comradery and conflicts. Ryne, Noah, and Shawn are effective characters for carrying this plot forward. I found Noah's characterization and trauma the most engaging, and the continual idea of drowning in grain was one of my favorite aspects. The wilds of the Yukon are captured in loving, creepy detail and brought to life. The lore and explanation of the familial baggage Ryne carries with him was unraveled with care. The scares were entertaining and, overall, this is a fun read.

That said, I had a good bit of trouble with how purple the prose felt. While other readers did enjoy the numerous details about the setting and nature and the various metaphors and similes, I found them overdone and it slowed the pacing of the story and my engagement with it. This may only be my experience, but it was a rather unpleasant one despite the enjoyable plot and characters. Similar to other novels of the same kin, the lack of female perspective (excepting the epilogue) and presence made this seem like a story I'd seen too many times, although with more likeable male characters.

Readers who enjoy snow-based terrors, transformational body horror, and literal generational trauma will find much to enjoy in these pages.

Much thanks to Wicked House Publishing and NetGalley for a digital copy of this work in return of an honest review.

This was a short but very effective horror!

Ryne has been coming to his family’s hunting cabin in the Yukon every year since he was a child but things changed when his father and uncle both died. He finds himself now needing healing and isolation after a few traumatic incidents leave him reeling. Along with his two friends who are also going through extremely difficult times, they travel to the cabin to have a reset trip away. As a storm threatens the sky, the friends realize that’s the least of their worries in the woods.

I really loved the feel of this book. Blaine Dangle created these extremely relatable characters and the story was visceral, action packed and downright frightening. I kept getting flashbacks to summer camp (even though this is most definitely set in the winter) and staring at the edge of the tree line at night and wondering if anything was looking back. Basically that feeling permeates the whole book.

A solid read and a fantastic debut! A great read for any horror fan!

Read this if you like:
- Creepy rhymes
- Isolated settings
- Unfriendly villagers who may or may not want you dead

Thank you to Netgalley and Wicked House Publishing for an advance review copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Out March 24, 2023.