The blurb was everything I wanted in a book and it did not disappoint. It was bizarre, the clues and just everything happening in the book was satisfying and kept me hooked.

Root Rot is a creepy, gorey body horror - of course with some messed up botanical elements. This story is based on a "family" of children, all from different parents, and all have very unique personalities - hence nicknames such as The Liar, The Crybaby etc. The body horror in this one is so disgustingly descriptive, you'll want to rinse your mind after imagining those scenes. The horror element was definitely carrying the quality of this one, however it felt like the actual writing itself was lackluster. The perspective jumpes from first person, to third person, to different characters - its a bit disorienting. The cover of this one is beautiful, and I was very lucky to be able to snag up an ARC for this. Even though the rating is a little low, im still interested to see what else Saskia can traumatise us with.

Saskia Nislow's ROOT ROT was quite unlike anything I've read in recent years. At first, I was reminded of Jeffrey Eugenides' VIRGIN SUICIDES because of the first-person plural narration, but the novel very quickly became its own thing.
Creepy and disturbing, I read this in two sittings (and would have been one!) and lived in the world for days afterwards. The themes of toxic families and personal boundaries were incredibly well explored, and I know I'll be revisiting this work in the not-too-distant future. I'll be keeping an eye out for Saskia Nislow's next works, that's for sure!

Root Rot is one of the strangest, most disorienting little novellas I’ve read in a while, and I mean that in the best way possible. Told through a kaleidoscope of perspectives, it follows nine unnamed children at a family gathering after their grandmother’s passing. Labeled only by archetypes, The Liar, The Crybaby, The Secret Keeper, The One with the Beautiful Voice, etc., the children wander the woods surrounding the lake house, encountering bizarre and unsettling phenomena that blur the lines between myth, memory, and fever dream.

The narrative style is unusual and poetic, with a collective voice that pulls you into the secretive, unsettling world of childhood imagination and family dynamics. It often felt like overhearing distorted childhood recollections around a campfire, part nostalgia, part nightmare. I loved how Nislow leaned into symbolism, spore horror, and toxic family dynamics, creating an atmosphere that was equal parts Southern gothic and eco-horror. Some imagery, particularly around the missing children and fungal growths, was haunting and will stay with me for a long time.

That said, this is not a straightforward read. The story thrives on ambiguity, red herrings, and surrealism, which makes it more about the journey than the destination. At times, I found myself more intrigued by theorizing what was happening than by the actual conclusion, which felt a little underwhelming compared to the build-up. Still, the writing itself was mesmerizing, and the weirdness kept me hooked from start to finish.

Overall, Root Rot is eerie, bizarre, and dreamlike, a modern gothic tale that won’t be for everyone but will absolutely captivate readers who enjoy experimental horror, fungal dread, and strange family sagas soaked in myth and memory.

⭐️⭐️⭐️½ rounded up to ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4/5 stars)

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

🫜ROOT ROT🥔 by @cronebro is the kind of book that gets deep under your skin before you even know it is happening. Thank you to the author, @netgalley, and the publisher, @creaturepublishing for the e-ARC. This title released in March and is on shelves now!

🌲🌲🌲

Nine cousins travel with their families to stay at their Grandfather's property. Near a river with a lush and ever-expanding footprint of land and known in family lore as a special gathering place, the home at first seems common enough. Named only as The Oldest, The Boy Twin, The Girl Twin, The Liar, The One Who Runs Away, The Baby, The Crybaby, The Secret Keeper, and The One With the Beautiful Voice, they start to notice distortions in time, gaps in their memories, names being whispered through the night, faces hanging the wrong way, and mushrooms that ooze blood. A sense of grotesque transformation and unsettling claustrophobia escalates as The Liar watches her cousins surrender to something unknown one by one.

This eerie novella feels like a fable with its cautionary, beguiling, folkloric atmosphere. Told in the collective voice of the 9 children as "we" there is both a familial bond and a tepid wariness between the children and especially with their seemingly unreliable parents. This stretches from magical family vacation into grimy, body horror filled depravity and it is both thrilling and confusing at times to be witnessing the story. You can tell fairly early that SOMETHING is wrong with this inconsistent, uncanny place but it is just beyond your reach amongst the shifty shadows and bleeding forests. I was absolutely compelled by this story and highly recommend this for a fall read as it has that same decaying, dark vibe as the season.💀

This book feels like a fever dream, a memory pulled from childhood that you can’t quite make sense of later in life. It is raw and vulnerable and dark. It calls into question a child’s “active imagination” versus the reality of living through an actual nightmare. The story is written in an untraditional way. There are no chapters, no quotations marks when someone is speaking, but most interesting there are no character names (only nicknames or epithets related to how each child is seen in the family). This implores the reader to think about how children are viewed in a family structure and how that shapes boundaries or dynamics within said structure.

File under: Summerween, it’s campy, creepy, it is all consuming in the best way possible.

I wish the characters had real names, it was very hard to follow just their fake names. The imagery was also very hard to follow at times, specifically the end with the horse thing.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of this book. This was truly a bizarre and disorienting book. I don't know that I really understood what was going on some of the time, but it held my interest and kept me reading. I would recommend this book to someone looking for a creepy, surreal semi-horror read.

Thank you netgalley for allowing me early access to this book. This was a very well done horror, I felt like there were things crawling under my skin. Shudders.

Root Rot is a quiet, unsettling novella that buries you under the feeling of dread until, you too, are swallowed up by the earth and changed.

In this short novella, we follow a family taking their first trip in many years back to a family cabin after their grandmother’s death. All the children are introduced without names and more with nicknames that symbolize who they are and how they react to situations, I.e., “The Baby,” who is younger than two, “The Girl Twin and Boy Twin,” “The Crybaby,” and “The One with the Beautiful Voice,” just to name a few.

Slowly, we begin to see odd things begin to happen and a lot of the time we are left questioning what is happening as much as the children, like did we see what we thought we saw? Or are we simply explaining it away because the logical conclusion is just too much?

One of my favorite aspects of this book is the slow psychological look at the denial and explanation that humans do to try and make sense of what they’re seeing. There’s still a specific scene in the woods with The Crybaby, The Girl Twin, and The Liar that has stayed with me simply because I’m not sure what I read and if it was explained away by The Oldest in this fashion because the horror of what was done to something real needed to be mentally blocked off. Another key point I appreciated was the small body horror the author took on anatomy; the pieces we were able to get descriptions of that really set in the complete wrongness of a body part like feet or something simple like eyelids blinking in the wrong direction.

Thank you to Netgalley and Creature Publishing for this arc!!

What an unsettling book this was. I feel honoured to have read this as an ARC, and I can confidently say that it needs a whole lot more recognition than it gets.

After the death of their grandmother, nine children are reunited in their grandfather’s vacation property, where they soon discover a sinister ploy afoot.

I have never read a book that used the specific point of view that Root Rot has. At first, it kept me guessing, confused by who our narrator truly was. By the time you realize that it’s not your typical horror book about a cabin getaway in the woods, things have already taken a wild turn.

There were moments that sent shivers down my spine, and I really, really ought to stop reading horror past midnight, because the bizarreness of this novel had wormed its way into my dreams at some point. Truly speaking, I still do not know what I read, but I loved it all the same. I would have enjoyed it much better if it had been a full-length novel, though.

This little novella read is quick, quite bizarre, and downright creepy. The basic idea is that you have 9 grandchildren who go to visit their grandfather after their grandmother dies, and while they visit, they start seeing weird and strange things that they instantly forget. The author furthers the quirky feel of the book by not giving the children names, but rather, identifiers like "The Liar." The prose is good, the scenes are scary, and you are left finishing the end of this book thinking that you are going as mad as the grandchildren are.

Ambitious and Visceral, but Ultimately Disorienting...

The prose in Root Rot is beautiful—lush, unsettling, and full of striking body horror. Unfortunately, I struggled to connect with it. The characters, referred to only by titles instead of names, blurred together, and the mushroom-centric horror felt like well-trodden territory. While the atmosphere was eerie and immersive, the story left me more confused than compelled. If you love surreal, dreamlike horror and don’t mind sacrificing clarity for style, this might hit the mark. For me, it was more fog than fascination.

Thank you Creature Publishing and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book. This was delightfully creepy. There were many moments where I wanted to look away but I could not put it down.

Firstly, I did not finish reading this book.

The synopsis was intriguing, although not original. For horror fans, especially in the “mushroom” “rotten” subgenre, this could be a fun read.

The reason why I did not keep reading is because of the unnamed characters (The Liar, The Crybaby, etc). It wad extremely confusing and I just could not keep up. It’s really a matter of preference!

You know the video of the cat with the little Santa hat on its head, waving it back & forth trying to bite the hat with the most perplexed look on its face? That’s how this book made me feel.

This book was the epitome of a fever dream. You look up wild fungi fever dream, it just has the title to this book! Don’t get me wrong, I totally enjoyed it because that’s right up my alley. I did question myself mentally saying “what the hell is going on?!” multiple times. If this book ever turns into a motion picture, it gives A24 vibes.
If you like being confused, in awe, and weirded out…get this book.

Thank you NetGalley, publishers & author for this ARC.

3.5 stars rounded up

"that's someone else's sky. it's not for us."
reading this novella felt like trying to piece together a confusing, scattered fever dream.

the lack of names and collective 'we' used through the story make the reader an almost unwilling part of the exploration of the blurred lines between family, self, home and the body. the unconventional writing style made it a little difficult for me to be absorbed into the story right away, but once i was in, it was like being transported right to the house, to the lake.

i am not usually one for horror in books but this story truly did make me want to explore the genre to discover more unsettling, eerie stories and more unconventional storytellers weaving their tales in surprising ways!

— thank you to NetGalley for providing a free ARC.

Thank you, NetGalley, for the ARC!

I enjoyed this even though at times the writing threw me off a little. Overall, a fun, creepy story that will have you questioning “what did I just read?”

A big family divided between adults and children visits their grandfather’s house. The kids, being cousins and siblings of different ages, try to get along and explore the surroundings. Everything seems to be going well and everyone’s enjoying themselves. Until they aren’t. Faces start to look weird, strange shadows and sounds start to appear, time feels different than it’s supposed to, and for some reason everyone is acting really weird.

~~~

A quick read that turns very dark fast. A little off putting that no one had actual names (The Oldest, The Baby, The Boy Twin, The Liar, The One Who Runs Away, etc.). But you get used to it at some point. Some scenes are actually terrifying. Like the one with the feet turned around backwards, or the animals literally eating The Secret Keeper (who willingly gave them her eyes, teeth, tongue , hair, and literally her entire body.

Overall I gave this 3.5 starts rounded up to 4!
A quick body horror/ nature horror read

It felt like being at a family lunch, sitting at the kids' table chatting with cousins about scary stories until weird things start happening.
I loved it.
I would definitely reread it