While the premise was nice, the writing was... not what I expected. I wanted more from the characters because I felt that what was on the front cover and the front flap was not what we were given.

Provocative exploration of grief, trauma, and the depths of human depravity, with poetic prose and graphic violence. Fun!

LaRocca at his BEST! Included in BookTrib Chill Quill monthly round-up: https://booktrib.com/2025/01/29/the-chill-quill-witches-hauntings-and-dark-thrills/

Trigger Warnings: Violent, sexually explicit, suicide ideation, death

As far as the splatterpunk genre, this is mild. However, don’t make any mistake, At Dark, I Become Loathsome is not for the faint of heart. Ashley Lutin is a narcissistic, tortured, and miserable soul tormented by the twin losses of his son and wife. To find relief, he offers clients relief from their own suffering through a dark ritual with the intent of saving their lives. “At dark, I become loathsome.” Instead of being a savior, Lutin becomes executioner, presumably to offer the stricken ultimate release. Told from Lutkin’s point of view and his client’s journals, readers will learn about the depraved actions and thoughts of what people hide from the daylight. What Lutin may believe to be benevolence turns out to be a disguise for his own pure egoism and hidden desires.

Listening to the audio version, Andrew Eiden (aka Teddy Hamilton) gives the perfect voice to the suffering and darkness of the characters. Lutkin’s “at dark, I become loathsome” and LaRocca’s title is meant to carry the theme throughout the book but becomes a tiresome, repetitive chant. The book is violent and readers should be wary of picking up At Dark, I Become Loathsome. It is not merely horror, it is psychological terror - sexually explicit and sadistic containing adult themes, suicide ideation, and animal brutality.

Rating: 3 stars!

To fully understand this book, you would have to read this book.. Its dark, twisty, full of absolute terrors. Ashley and his story are a whirlwind of madness.

Thank you NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for an ARC in exchange for an honest review

Allegedly Ernest Hemingway once described writing as sitting down at the typewriter and bleeding -- and honestly, I can't think of another modern writer who seems to live that philosophy as much as Eric LaRocca. As a writer, LaRocca always lets his intrusive thoughts win; and that means as a reader, you're in for unimaginable amounts of darkness and devastation when you pick up one of his books.

"At dark, I become loathsome." This is a mantra that Ashley Lutin frequently repeats to himself in the depths of his grief. After his wife died of cancer and his son disappeared, Ashley developed a ritual for others who find themselves caught between their wish for death and their desire to live a more fulfilling life. Through this ritual, he meets a man named Jinx, and their connection sends both men down a dark and brutal path towards the possibility of redemption.

At Dark, I Become Loathsome is a pitch-black journey into the tortured soul of a man that has been battered by grief, guilt, trauma, and shame. It's emotionally raw and devastating, full of misery and tragedy and depravity. No other writer is telling stories the way LaRocca does, and stories like his and voices like his are so incredibly important -- as long as you are in a strong enough place mentally to consume them. I feel like I don't always get what LaRocca is trying to convey behind all the shock and awe in his books, but I definitely got it this time; in At Dark, I Become Loathsome, LaRocca is writing at the top of his game. Thank you to Blackstone Publishing for the complimentary reading opportunity.

LaRocca’s ability to relate the grotesque in terms of such beauty never ceases to enthrall me. Reminiscent of surrealists like Lautréamont, Bataille and Cocteau, deeply disturbing and yet redemptive.

Highly recommended.

This is an incredible book that I would not recommend to anyone, ever, without a whole list of content warnings and the knowledge that they are *actually* interested in extreme horror. It's heartbreaking. It's gross. It is also so compelling, an artful and unflinching examination of the worst parts of grief. I don't know if I can say I enjoyed reading it, but I'm certainly not sorry I did.

Eric Larocca writes some of the most heinous, disturbing stories that also somehow wrap you in a warm blanket and hold you close as you read. It is truly a fascinating writing style that always pulls me and demands it to be finished.

Ashley Lutin is going through the motions after his child has been stolen and his wife died from cancer. Believing he can help people, he's developed a ritual of burying a person alive to give them a new lease on life. He hates himself for it, hates his life, but he can't give up though he's tried before. Sharing stories within the story about others finding pleasure in the destruction of others, in the complete breakdown of someone's body and mind, and the question of how can he even be human when he feels like this. It's a story of grief, and pain, and pleasure, and the conviction that you're going to know the right thing to do and then not doing it.

It is a terrifying story and a heartbreaking story and you feel like you're in the coffin waiting for the soil to be removed, for the lid to be opened, for the chance to breathe again. Amazing.

Rating: 1.67 leaves out of 5
-Characters: 1/5
-Story: 1/5
-Writing: 3/5
Genre: horror, lgbt, thriller
-horror: 0/5
-lgbt: 5/5
-thriller: 0/5
Type: Ebook
Worth?: no

I want to first thank Netgalley and the publishers for letting me read this.

First off, gore to me is not horror. That being said I have read Eric's work and he has written some good books. Sadly this one wasn't it. It is a quick read, yes, but it felt so long. I just really didn't vibe with this book.

At Dark is lonely. It follows a deeply flawed man who has lost his wife and son in a relatively short amount of time, who runs a Burial Ritual service wherein he buries clients alive for 30 minutes in order to induce, at best, a renewed desire to live. What follows is a perverse and dark dive in to desire, loss, pain, loneliness, and myriad other complex and strangely mixed emotions and subjects that may leave the reader feeling bereft and even upset. Painfully, I saw my own father in the point of view character Ashley, and myself in his missing son. I have never felt so painfully seen, and never have I related so deeply or seen my parent-child experience in a book at this magnitude.

I've been having difficulty putting words to it since I finished it. Spiritually, it feels like a companion to Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite, in so many ways: the writing style, the subject matter, the execution, how beautifully but realistically, rawly queer it is. In others, it feels so uniquely itself, so individual, so set apart, it really shines as itself rather than feeling derivative.

As with Exquisite Corpse, At Dark is not for the faint of heart. It is at times graphic and painful, and deals with subject matter a lot of us would rather left in the dark. However, it handles it rawly and in my opinion the only way you should, without minced words and as honestly as possible.

Trigger warnings, if available, should absolutely be utilized. This book is going to live with me for a long time, and it's now one of my favorites.

A HUGE thank you to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for this free e-ARC copy in exchange for my honest review. I loved this book beyond words.

As a self proclaimed Eric LaRocca fan, this has by moved up to top three in the works they have written. It was dark, gruesome, horrifying...but my god was it also beautiful. I finished it in three hours unable to put it down and was engrossed immediately after the first chapter and could not put it down. Eric LaRocca continues to improve in their writing and complex storytelling and the way they navigated grief, trauma, and love through through his writing is beautiful. As long as Eric LaRocca continues to write, I will continue to read his work!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an advance copy in exchange for honest feedback.

Maybe LaRocca just isn't for me. Really fought to the end of this one and wish I hadn't. Sometimes just seems like he has eight or nine great ideas but rather than flesh out one, they all make it into one short read.

I did really enjoy this one, I loved how grief was portrayed. I do think that I enjoyed the two little stories within the story a little more than the overarching plot line, but in the end I found it really thought provoking.

Strangely emotional but grotesquely terrifying, as LaRocca usually does. Horrible themes and perversions written about with…style? Its definitely unique, and for the gore lovers.

My first read by Larocca and I was extremely impressed. Will definitely check out his other work

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ebook copy in exchange for an honest review

I expected something amazing and was still blown away by this book. LaRocca is definitely my second favorite author, but I think he might be getting closer to that number one spot after this!

The plot was intense and interesting, if not a bit bizarre (as I've come to expect from LaRocca). The characters were so realistic, few that there were. The narration, the dialogue, the descriptions, everything was perfectly on point. But the best part, the one thing that will always make this author stand apart from the rest, was the writing. LaRocca knows how to work magic with words. Every time I read something by him, I find myself trying to read faster, pulled in to the story and the language in a way that is absolutely addicting.

Off I go, to somewhat impatiently await the next Eric LaRocca masterpiece. Hats off to you, sir.

Eric LaRocca is one of the most unique horror writers out there, today. The beauty with which he writes the most shocking and disturbing scenes you've ever read pulls you in, even when you want to look away.

"At Dark, I Become Loathsome," is a heavy hitting gut punch to add to LaRocca's growing body of expertly crafted, devastating, work. This story follows a grieving husband and father down a dark path to see just how far he'll go to try and find some sense of wholeness and healing.

The "stories within a story" approach to narrative often misses the mark for me and can feel tedious to try and follow, but it really worked well here. As with most of LaRocca's work, there were some really rough scenes in this book and trigger warnings should definitely be checked before diving in.

I would recommend this book to fans of horror who are looking for a very dark ride, with twists and turns that lead to a destination as bleak as the journey it took to get there.

Holy fuck was this bleak.

Eric LaRocca is on another level with this one and I still don't entirely know how I feel about it. This has all the classic hallmarks of a LaRocca horror book - gore, sex, psychological trauma but there is such an overwhelming blanket of despair and hopelessness draped thrown over it all that, at times, felt almost unbearable to keep reading. You HAVE to be in a proper mental head space to read this one. Ultimately, this is an exploration into loss and grief and true emotional agony that will leave you with so many unanswered questions and ruminating thoughts on loneliness. I think this book was well done but the overarching themes could have been explored a little more thoroughly and it felt like there were too many added extra side stories that took away from the emotional pull of our main character.