Alex Gonzalez is a sicko, and I mean that as the ultimate compliment!! The premise to REKT is great—Sammy loses the love of his life, and gets pulled into the world of the dark web where horrifying things begin happening. A gorefest for sure, the violence and blood reflects how tortured Sammy's inner life and soul are in the wake of Ellery's death. This is THE RING meets AMERICAN PSYCHO, and I enjoyed every minute of it, even when I had to take a break and take deep breaths. This writer has the juice!!

Rekt has a compelling premise, delving into AI, internet safety, and the chilling consequences of technology in the wrong hands. Gonzalez explores these themes with a dark, unsettling edge that makes for some truly disturbing moments.

While the story itself is intriguing, the pacing falters, particularly in the middle, where it starts to drag and lose momentum. At times, it feels like a tighter edit could have made the narrative more impactful, trimming unnecessary length to keep the tension high. The ending, unfortunately, didn’t quite land for me—it felt confusing and didn’t deliver the payoff I was hoping for.

I find books focused on the dark web interesting so rekt definitely was up my alley. When Sammy tragically loses the love of his life, Ellery, he tries to take his mind off things by watching disturbing videos on the dark web. It evolves to point where it is an obsession and he can’t stop himself, especially when an anonymous user sends him a link to a video of Ellery’s accident. But that’s not the only video that’s on this new website that has been shared with Sammy - there are multiple videos of not only Ellery, but people known to Sammy being killed in every way possible.

I liked the concept of this story as it was different to other dark web themed books I have read. It shows the power of technology and how it is used to create deepfakes to instil fear and curiosity in people’s minds. I did get a little tired of Sammy going on about Ellery and how he deserves to feel like crap because of her death (I get it, but continuously grovelling and hurting others is not the way to move on). The side characters Izzy and Jay lacked some development and I didn’t really care for them at all which was disappointing considering they were present in the majority of the book.

Thank you to netgalley and Erewhon Books for the ARC!

This is definitely for fans of splatterpunk (that’s the closest I can get). A gore fest through the dark web with some 90s nostalgia. Take the authors hand and go through this gore filled journey with them.

Thanks to NetGalley for the copy of this ARC. This will be out March 25,2025.

For fans of: The Terrifier films, Red Rooms (2023), American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami, This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno, Maeve Fly by C.J. Leede

"The only thing that is real is death and dying and murder and blood. I am a man online. I am traumatized and I need people to know it."

This book grabbed hold of me and did not let go. I kept feeling the itch to dive back in, just like the main character Sammy and his obsession with the dark corners of the internet. It was the pull of a good internet rabbit hole, an internet legend in the making the likes of which you might see covered by a channel like MrCreepyPasta or The NoSleep Podcast. There were immersive, epistolary elements like chat logs, forum threads, and emails that gave the legend more weight. If you've ever been caught up in following the unfolding of an internet mystery (like smartschoolboy9, a recent example off the top of my head), that's exactly the feeling this book gives you. And it is dark. You have been warned.

With beautiful turns of phrase and imagery, Gonzalez unleashes the monsters of the dark web, presents horrific scenes of gore and brutality, and positions it all through the lens of a grief-stricken, traumatized young man who's trying to come to terms with his past and maybe even find some kind of redemption. He's so guilty about the death of his girlfriend that she haunts him just like the Wax Man, a CreepyPasta monster he created and wrote about to process his trauma. He won't allow himself to open up IRL the way he needs to, and like his dead girlfriend, he's grappling with wanting to not want to be online.

"That really sucks. You were a kid and you saw something that fucked you up. You went online to cope, and you made a persona where you can be angry and weird, and the internet liked it. And then it decided to eat you. There are a billion people out there and they saw a weak kid struggling and so they sunk their teeth into you. Then they showed other people. Then others. . . What difference does it make? You're not the chosen one. You're just one of many poor bastards that they decided to fuck with."

Which leads me to my ultimate takeaway from this: In the digital age, we are only given so many ways to process and share feelings about what we're doing, especially in the current alienated, fractured society of social media. It can start to feel like only the internet world matters, and lives in meatspace are meaningless or unimportant. We assert our selves and personalities through consumerism and media. Our connections are performative, fragile, and insincere. Some friends we only know by their internet usernames and social profiles. For troubled young men especially, they can end up in online spaces that twist them in ways they don't even realize are happening until it's too late and they've been caught. As one character says: "It has you."

Speaking of characters, they were overall rich and well done. There's a lot to appreciate in every single person who appears in a scene, if even for a paragraph. Everyone has their secret traumas and motivations, and it's only a matter of time before they get revealed.

It's the secrets and the mystery and the cyber-horror that drives this story. It's being haunted by or through technology: just when you least expect, or in the middle of a tense, high-stakes moment, you get a mysterious text on your phone. It's the lack of real privacy in the digital age: mass surveillance + AI = the creation of fucked up and non-consensual deepfakes of everyone you know spread on the internet.

Mix this with the toxic masculinity and anti-empathy of the dark web, and you get, well, something like The Com or Terrorgram. Or Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan types who build whole fanbases around misogyny and living up to a certain male standard. A "real" man puts women down by objectifying, beating, and raping them. Empathy is the problem instead of the solution; giving in opens you up to vulnerabilities, which goes against their "survival of the toughest/meanest" mindset. In a kill-or-be-killed world, only the killers survive.

Which brings me to thoughts on another recurring theme: death, grieving, memento mori. Sammy started out watching so many deaths online in order to desensitize himself from it. His girlfriend's death was just another car accident caught on a traffic cam. There was no ultimate meaning to it. Or was there? This is what gets under his skin and he has to find out, or die trying. Because without her, he can't find a real reason to live. Which is pretty sad, to be honest, but there are people like that, and it's people like that who can end up going down the same dark road Sammy has. Their tragedy makes for an excellent story.

And excellent money, because these sickos on the dark web managed to capitalize even on how people might die. They turned death into a game people can bet on.

Finally, I gotta talk about free will, because this made even a firm believer in free will like me start to question things. How much control do we have over where we end up based on where we started and what choices we have available to make? What were Sammy's options, considering his family members and their inherited trauma, his upbringing and natural personality? Was he always going to go down the dark path and get caught by it? What might have made things different, and at what points? Sammy grapples with this, but I think he finally does come to a conclusion.

e now lurks in Brooklyn, a place only marginally less terrifying than the setting of his book. He co-founded the horror zine youarenotalone, a title that feels eerily relevant when reading rekt, considering its themes of internet voyeurism, grief, and the slow, rotting descent into digital nihilism. Gonzalez also teaches horror writing workshops, meaning he’s actively training others to fuck with your head. Thanks, dude.

rekt is the story of Sammy Dominguez, a man whose life is crumbling faster than your WiFi connection at peak hours. Once a seemingly functional human with a future, Sammy finds himself sinking into the darkest corners of the internet after his girlfriend, Ellery, dies in a brutal accident. What starts as morbid curiosity—watching gore videos as a coping mechanism—mutates into a full-blown obsession when he stumbles onto Chinsky, a dark web hellhole that provides a buffet of snuff films, including a disturbing number of videos that seem to feature alternate deaths of Ellery herself.

As Sammy delves deeper, his life implodes. His relationships dissolve, his sanity flickers like a dying LED light, and his moral compass? That thing is spinning like a fucking Beyblade. But Rekt isn’t just about one man watching too much internet horror—it’s about the very real horror of the internet watching back. It’s about AI, voyeurism, and the terrifying realization that nothing online is ever really gone.

If the internet is a meat grinder for the human soul, then rekt is a 400-page reminder to keep your hands (and your goddamn eyes) away from the gears. Gonzalez isn’t subtle about his themes, but who needs subtlety when you’re talking about toxic masculinity, AI-generated nightmares, and the moral decay that happens when your browser history reads like a police report? Grief horror is nothing new, but rekt takes the concept and straps it to a jet engine. Sammy isn’t just grieving Ellery; he’s grieving himself, his past, his possible futures. His descent into the bowels of internet depravity is an act of self-destruction, a digital form of cutting where the scars aren’t on his skin but in his perception of reality. Watching death videos doesn’t just numb him—it reshapes him. He isn’t just watching horror; he’s being rewritten by it.

Sammy’s journey is also a grim examination of how the internet radicalizes lost, lonely men. He’s not some 4chan basement troll from the start—he’s a normal guy with trauma, a dude who starts by peeking into the abyss and eventually gets dragged inside. His story is a cautionary tale about how online isolation festers, how grief and guilt can warp into something unrecognizably monstrous, and how unchecked digital consumption can make you a participant in your own downfall.

In rekt, the internet serves as the monster in the closet, the demon under the bed, the thing that whispers, Just one more click. Chinsky, the dark web site Sammy stumbles onto, feels less like a malevolent entity, one that evolves, predicts, and consumes. Gonzalez taps into a fundamental fear of the digital age: that we aren’t in control of what we see. That we’re being watched. That our deepest, most fucked-up impulses are being catered to, curated, and fed back to us.

Gonzalez writes like someone who has seen too much and isn’t afraid to make you see it too. His prose is unrelenting, visceral, and disturbingly immersive. The book reads like a mix between Chuck Palahniuk, Creepypasta threads, and a transcript from an FBI internet crimes division case file. The pacing is relentless, pulling you deeper into Sammy’s unraveling mind until you’re trapped with him in a nightmarish freefall.

There are moments where the novel slows, and yes, some might argue that certain passages drag—but that’s the point. The book mirrors the experience of doomscrolling: the hypnotic, inescapable pull of something awful that you know you should look away from but can’t.

Strengths

Unflinching Horror: Gonzalez absolutely embraces disturbing content. The book is visceral, relentless, and at times, genuinely stomach-churning.

A Relatable (If Deeply Flawed) Protagonist: Sammy isn’t some edge-lord caricature; he’s disturbingly real. His descent is believable, and that’s what makes it horrifying.

Relevant as Hell: This book taps into fears that feel uncomfortably current—AI-generated horror, radicalization, online addiction.

Emotional Weight: This isn’t just about the horror of gore—it’s about the horror of grief, of being lost, of not knowing how to climb out of the abyss.

Criticisms

Pacing Gets Murky in the Middle: There’s a stretch where the momentum slows, and while thematically it makes sense (mirroring Sammy’s increasing detachment), it may cause some restlessness.

Not for Everyone (Which is a Strength and a Weakness): If you have a weak stomach or a lingering sense of optimism about humanity, this book is gonna wreck you (pun intended).

The Ending Will Divide Readers: Some will love it (I personally was into it), some will hate it, but no one is walking away indifferent.

rekt is not a book you read lightly. It’s a book that grabs you by the skull and forces your eyes open to witness the worst parts of human nature—online and off. Gonzalez has crafted something uniquely horrifying, a novel that doesn’t just tell a scary story but becomes one. It’s bleak, brutal, and borderline dangerous in its ability to make you think about every link you’ve ever clicked.

Is it a fun read? Fuck no.

Is it a brilliant one? Absolutely.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to clear my browser history and tape over my webcam. Again.

Gonzalez did a great job of putting the reader into the absolutely vile skin of the protagonist and the degeneracy of his world, an impressive feat considering most of the extreme gore and depravity was referenced as shock videos rather than actually experienced in the story. While there's been quite a bit of horror that explores grief in recent years, I can't think of any that delve this deeply into the protagonist's particular brand of psychological self-harm (and later, harm to others). I love any story that incorporates technology as a conduit of horror and the deep web aspect worked great to explore the isolation and toxicity of modern-day masculinity. Truly an upsetting read!

Shout out to Alex Gonzalez and Kensington Publishing for the ARC.

This book BLEW my mind. The nostalgia of the early 2000s internet and the horrors of the early World Wide Web came back and slapped me in the face. EBAUMS World?! PAIN OLYMPICS?! It was like you hid in the corner of my family's computer room and obtained my entire youth search history while I learned how to use my 95 DELL and traverse the internet with my friends. This concept is everything nightmares are made of.

This book is a fascinating take on the dark web, toxic masculinity, incel behaviors, and the AI? Question mark? The future is here - we're already living in it.

Genre speculation: Is this splatterpunk? Kind of? Objectively yes? I have found typically with splatterpunk there is a lot of splatter and no punk, what I mean is- there is a lot of gore, and no plot. This entire story is driven by grief and the through-line is poetic from start to finish.

Reviews - Reviews aim to be as spoiler-free as possible.
Ratings - Historically a low rater.

Stars: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Would read again and again and again
Dark Content: 🩶
Gore: 🔪🔪🔪🔪

Bookshelves:
Horror ‎

Diversity Check:
Cultural Representation
Intersectionality

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me an e-arc of this book.

This was a really dark premise, and I think it was pulled off in a way that gives it a lot of plausibility, thus making it even more terrifying. The strongest aspect of this story was Sammy. He's such a complex character that has a lot of extremely tragic flaws that take him down some undesirable paths. His arc is graceful though, and there was a lot of buy in for me. The story did drag a little around the middle, but I was invested enough in the story to keep going. I would say the violence is very extreme and even in the splatterpunk realm at times. There's some extremely disturbing descriptions, but they aren't ALL for shock factor.

Overall, I loved the premise and the characters were great. I think this would make a fantastic movie.

When immense grief, generational trauma, horror and an internet connection converge. Rekt is a story where a young man's descent into the online world and consistently side stepping his emotional needs leads him down a dark spiral of increasing exposure to violence and acting against his self interests.

Sammy is not a character I would say I rooted for at any point in the novel. He does reprehensible things. However, Rekt is asking insightful questions about where does one go when they lose community and themselves IRL? We know what Sammy *could* have done but he increasingly acts against his own interests. What is it about going online and searching the Internet for help even when it does not serve us? Even when it harms us?

The novel then becomes part rollercoaster, part chase, and part whodunnit where intricate clues are woven between forums. Yet Gonzalez told us the entire time what to expect. I'm a sucker every time for a writer who expertly tells me how things are going to go from the jump and yet I'm shook every single time.

As others have noted this book is not for the faint of heart. Not just because of the CWs needed throughout but it may make you question your relationship to being online. Gonzalez has captured a sentiment lingering in the depths of my mind for a while which is that can we really go back to existing only IRL and for how long? Where does online end and IRL begin once the two worlds collapse together? Can you escape one if you're entrenched within the other? Like one of the characters, I too "want to not want to be online." But can we at this point of existence or are we too deeply embedded to ditch being online altogether?

If you love shows like Black Mirror and simultaneously have been looking for a reason to log out and finally delete your data, then this book is for you.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a review copy!

A hard read that deals with hard topics, "rekt" is in a very similar vein of another book I read called "Scanlines," about a group of teenagers cursed by a particular snuff film. It's such an interesting premise, that I genuinely liked Gonzalez's take on the premise as well.

Alex Gonzalez's "rekt" (meaning "wrecked" in online gaming slang) combines internet horror and grief horror to come up with an amazing, absolutely original, and tremendously horrifying tale of Sammy, a Latino man in his 20s, losing his humanity and ultimately his sense of social and interpersonal reality. The book goes way beyond anything similar in portraying, in harrowing detail, how the loss of a loved one, his high-school girlfriend, around whom Sam had built his whole life, leads him on a journey through the worst content the dark web has to offer: snuff, torture and gore vids, absolutely dark content which Sam devours daily and about which he inevitably becomes obsessed. Already fed on creepypastas and nosleep-type of subreddits, Sammy gets addicted to the internet's dark side, with disastrous consequences for his personal life and his sense of self. Sammy's descent is described in first person, intimately, intensely; as his world collapses and his sense of morality slowly evaporates, Sammy is reduced to an impersonal, selfish and sick coping mechanism, impacting everyone around him negtively.

Up to this point, the book might have been solely a horrific novel about trauma, grief, and addiction in the online world of the 2020s. However, just a hundred pages in, the story reaches a wholly different level, when Sam is sent a link to a CCTV video of his girlfriend's fatal car accident. And then he's led to a host site with links to an assortment of videos where she's killed in the most gory of ways. In one, she's being drown slowly and painfully. In another, she's abused horribly. And in yet another, she gets tortured to death. WTF right? Well, what follows is an original, gory, entertaining and totally immersive, yet emotionally very heavy, tale of Sammy's unfortunate discovery of a nightmarish conspiracy celebrating pain and death for money. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

"rekt" is totally unpredictable, immensely imaginative, and incredibly well-written. I've never read anything like it. It touches in unexpected ways themes of toxic masculinity, internet addiction, and PTSD, visting places most people feel uncomfortable even mentioning. It'll blow your mind.

Gritty, raw, and so heavy. An upcoming release once again reminding me why I love grief horror so much. Rekt was wholly original and a very addictive read. I enjoyed almost everything about it. I will say that there was one incredibly disturbing mention/trigger that I really could’ve done without. But woah! What a book! It really makes me want to cover up the little camera on my phone and laptop, that’s for sure.

Absolutely loved it. Very very heavy on the trigger warnings of all kinds. Very graphic, very gory. Great representation of internet toxicity and toxic masculinity and the damage these can do to a vulnerable person left without support. Will try and get my hands on a physical copy.

Rekt is an interesting look at grief horror based in the horrifying realities of the dark web.

The story follows Sammy who has always indulged in the dark content available online -various gore videos and snuff films. After his girlfriend dies while the couple are in their early twenties, Sammy finds himself lost. His entire future was planned out with the love of his life and now he is completely inconsolable as he falls deeper into his online ventures. One day, he receives a message containing a single link to a site on the dark web. With curiosity getting the best of him, Sammy follows the link to find a video of the accident that killed his girlfriend.

From here, things go off the rails as Sammy spirals deeper into his obsession, and it starts affecting his life in unexpected ways until he is fully plunged into the complex mystery of the site and all the videos on it...

I thought this had a really interesting premise! I am a fan of grief horror and was intrigued by the mentions of the dark web/tech in the summary. This book gets dark and disturbing at points, and throughout it all is the voice in the back of your head making you remember that some of this shit is a little *too real.* The author takes a good look at AI and internet safety, and the potentially harmful effects AI can have if in the wrong hands.

Though I enjoyed the story, I felt the pacing to be a little off. It started to drag through the middle and lose intrigue a bit. I even put this book down for about a week while in the middle of reading it, which is something I never do. I enjoyed the themes explored and the path the story took, but unfortunately, I was left wishing I enjoyed it more than I really did.

I'd recommend this to horror fans who used to spend a lot of time reading creepypastas and visiting the nosleep subreddit. Also to anyone who likes their horror to get dark and gory with a blend of technology and real world scares.

Thank you to NetGalley, Kensington Publishing / Erewhon Books, and Alex Gonzalez for giving me the opportunity to read this book prior to publishing.

First things first, this book is NOT going to be for everyone. At times it was barely for me. It is dark, that’s apparent. But it’s... dingy, grimy, sick, twisted, grotesquely intriguing. It’s a lot.

I felt a lot of emotions whilst reading this. Unease was the biggest one, followed by paranoia. I found myself unable to read this book at night because it felt like someone was watching me through my phone camera whilst I read it. I don’t typically get affected by the books that I read, but I can honestly say that this book was the most... reactive? I don’t even know if that’s the right word to use my brain is *that* fried after reading it.

It took me down a very bizarre, very windy road (honestly, probably my own descent into madness) that I can admit now was a batsh-t crazy tangent to even go down, but like I said. The paranoia got to me, and I felt like I was losing my mind and needed to put on a tinfoil hat. I think part of what “scared” me whilst reading, was that the plot hit me kind of like the plot of the Purge franchise. Totally, in a different timeline, plausible. I know the dark web is out there. I know people use it, and probably “normal” people, too. I know that the content mentioned throughout the book is even accessible on the mainstream web, so yeah. At one point in reading this I got pretty convinced that a betting system of people dying, and how, was currently taking place and that I was on the proverbial chopping block. I mean... I was looking around my house and over my shoulder every time I picked my phone up to read. It was bad. But I would not be surprised at the very least if anything like this was to ever come to light, though.

I did have to take a break with reading this book because it got to a point where I was concerned for my own mental health on top of being worried about a fictional character’s mental health. I didn’t know what to really expect when I started reading this (I truly thought it would be meh, I can’t lie), and I did want to be shocked. And shocked, I was. Some stuff felt over the top once I got myself out of the paranoia space, and I felt idiotic for letting a book do that to me, but I guess this book acts as a decent example of how some writers are better than others at getting people to immerse themselves into what they write, either for the best or worst, or the best of both.

Even though it put me into a weird headspace for a hot minute, I did actually like the book and I enjoyed(?) the author’s writing style. I don’t personally know anyone who is into splatterpunk books, but this is definitely up the alley of anyone who is.

Thank you again to NG, Kensington, and Alex Gonzalez for the ARC.

Great book! It had all the fears of growing up. Make a choice. Turn the page or close the book. Enter the darkness if you wish!

Thank you to NetGalley for providing a review copy.

This is one of the most unique books I've ever read. Rekt walks the line between horror and thriller, but I think it firmly belongs in the horror category. As the story evolves, the concept is nightmarish. I hesitate to say too much, because letting the story surprise me was one of the coolest things about the book. 5 stars

“Rekt” by Alex Gonzalez is a downward spiral into the dark side of humanity, the internet, and toxic masculinity. Disturbing and grotesque, this is a descent down a rabbit hole of madness that very few manage to crawl out of.

When Sammy’s girlfriend, Ellery, dies from a tragic and brutal accident, he turns to the internet as his haven. A place where he can fill the void and distract himself from grief in gore and violence, things that once terrified him as a kid. Not long after, he receives a link to the dark web where he sees the video of Ellery’s death, then hundreds of other deaths, even for those still alive. They range from peaceful to utterly and despicably disturbing.

The host site, Chinsky, is a place of unimaginable horrors brought to life by means Sammy can’t even comprehend. He has no idea what it is or who Haruspex is, the web handle of the person who sent him the link to Ellery’s accident. The more videos Sammy watches in an attempt to find the roots of Chinsky, the more twisted and destructive he becomes.

Before picking up this book, readers should be aware of the several content warnings that will come with this book. It’s not an easy read and has a lot of disturbing material that is hard to push through. At times, I wanted to DNF because the content was dark and things kept getting worse instead of better, making the read quite uncomfortable.

Sammy’s descent took me out of the book at times because his actions were becoming impossible to justify and he didn’t feel like a character worth spending time on. Yet, I pushed through because the concept is so fascinating (in that it doesn’t feel that far out of reach in today’s world). Sticking with it turned out to be a good thing. Sammy gets back on track, and the story has purpose again. What ensues is a bloodbath straight out of a slasher film. Readers of horror may struggle with some of the content in the last half of the book as things only get worse in that regard, but the parts that are something out of a horror film are well written.

There is an appreciation for how Sammy’s grief is depicted. While he turns to some not-so-great habits as a means of coping, his grief is tangible. Losing someone who’s supposed to be there forever … it takes time to heal and learn to live without them. Some people never figure out how to do that. Sammy, arguably, falls into the latter category. Everyone around him is trying to make the best of it while he’s stuck in a loop and that only pushes him to fall deeper into unhealthy coping habits. Having a deeper sense of who Ellery is also helps to understand Sammy’s inability to let her go and generates some sympathy for him.

Overall, “Rekt” is a depressing, grotesque, and horrifying read that only gets darker with every page. Gonzalez offers an unflinching view on grief, toxic masculinity, mental health, and self-destruction that will stay with the reader long after the story. “Rekt” by Alex Gonzalez is expected to be published on March 25th, 2025. Be sure to add it to your TBRs!

Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Publishing (Erewhon Books) for providing me with an e-ARC and the opportunity to share my honest opinion in this review.

Rekt was quite literally INSANE. Just as insane as I had hoped for it to be. Grief horror is top notch and mixing it with this whole world of the dark web was so entrancing. I threw my kindle at the end because WHAT?!?!????! Also, my brain is totally scrambled.

Anyway, I was captivated by this story to say the least. It was action packed, unique, creative and down right disgusting. The mixed media at the end really truly added a lot to it, which I rarely say. Sammy was so lost and beyond damaged yet you kinda have a soft spot for him at times?? Don’t come at me, maybe I’m just too sensitive. I love reading about complex characters like that, who have me questioning every feeling I have.