Firstly, thank you NetGalley for the eArc of this book. This was right up my alley! The beginning of the book was slow paced, but once it got going...oh baby, was it going! This book was definitely my type of horror. This was the first book I've read by Saskia Nislow, and I was impressed. I think that one of my favorite things about the book was the style in which she choice to write the narrator. I feel like I was never really sure which character was narrating the book or if was a different entity all together. I also loved how unreliable the characters were. All of them just unreliable kids just trying to fit in with their family. I like that none of the characters explicitly had names either...The Liar, The Secret Keeper, The Crybaby, The Boy Twin. That helped in really making the reader start caring about these characters, but like in their own time. What can I say, I really enjoyed this book. The characters, the setting, the forest entity, the tension...great book. The best soil comes from dead things. <3

I love a botanical horror but I did not love this novella. Mostly how the characters were named really irked me. I don't think it would have bothered me as much as an audio. It made me feel disconnected with the characters and reading their nicknames over and over made the storyline drag in my opinion.

The imagery is really good and creepy though.

Great suspense! Love the visuals given, really draws you into the story. The dynamic between each of the children and the names they have given eachother is such a great part of why I enjoyed this book.

It was alright, not the best book i've read, not the worst. Just very painfully mid, Cover was GORGEOUS though. I was just really bored and didnt really care for it

3.25 stars rounded down. A strange short book, and I am mainly just confused (but that might be the point). This was an enjoyable gothic horror novella with a twisted ending, and would be a great spooky season read. The POV was also a bit confusing for me at times, especially since the children had nicknames. All in all, a good gothic horror novella with mushroom vibes.
Thank you to NetGalley and Creature Publishing for the opportunity to read this ARC, opinions are my own and given freely!

I really enjoyed this novella! It was the perfect "palate cleanser" in between reading longer books. The nature horror and descriptions were fantastic and painted the most fabulous disturbing images (my favorite being feeding the kelpie creature human teeth like they were sugar cubes). Reading this novella felt how it is to recall a dream after waking up- you think you know the details but when you try to concentrate on them they feel transparent and unable to be grasped. I did find myself getting a little turned around with the number of characters and trying to track who was still fully themselves and who was not (iykyk). Having more concrete chapters with the name of the child focused on would have been helpful in organizing my mind, but it was also this disorganization that added to the dreamscape/hallucinatory element of the writing. Overall, I recommend this book for horror lovers or anyone who wants to feel a little hesitant the next time they walk over a forest floor.

Alright… I’m writing this review after just finishing this book a few minutes ago so everything is fresh in my mind. I am a fan of this type of horror. I love Hazelthorn and What Moves The Dead.

I loved this style of writing and even loved a lot of the things that other reviewers said made them feel disconnected to the story. Such as the use of monikers vs names. I also assume the style of narration has to do that the narrator is actually a collective consciousness. I loved all of that. I only wish there was slightly more clarity in the last major scene before the epilogue. I’m still a bit confused on what was actually going on there.

Reading this book feels like a bad mushroom trip. Nothing is quite the way it is supposed to be but you can’t exactly put your finger on what it is. One minute things are one way and the next you can’t even remember how they were but you know they’re different now. No one looks/acts right if you look too closely, and everyone else seems to act like everything is fine.

All in all this was a very interesting read. I guess I just wish I had *slightly* more clarity when it comes to what the heck does any of this have to do with the grandfather… I’m not sure if something was implied that I somehow missed.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the earc

Thank you NetGalley and Creature Publishing for a digital copy of this book. Root Rot was sooo unsettling and creepy in the best way. Easily one of the coolest styles of horror I’ve ever read! This almost has a dream-like quality to it, especially if you are used to weird and frustrating dreams where every character around you doesn't notice the wrongness of it. This was imaginative and unique and will constantly have you thinking "wait, WHAT?!"

Highlights of Root Rot:
1. Imagery — Consider me creeped out, beautifully. Botanical/fungal body horror is having a moment, and I’m a big fan.
2. The Liar — The Liar is the only character with any real substance. Nislow cloaks her past in just enough mystery to allow the readers become more engaged in piecing her history together themselves.

Where it falls short:
1. Plot — Or lack thereof. This is my biggest and most heavily weighted gripe. What is the point? It feels like it’s either trying too hard to be ambiguous or actually doesn’t have a plan.

My overall impression is that I won’t remember much about this book other than it has a cool cover and something to do with fungi.

YES!!

I inhaled this in a single sitting. The POV is all over the place, the narration is unreliable AF, nobody has a name, and I can't tell if it's night or day, but I'm digging it! So much forest rot!! Bleeding mushroom babies? ALL OF THE YES!!

I am all for this kind of damp, murky creep-factor, and the fact that it's kids (who actually roll with it all quite remarkably, considering) just makes it creepier. Bonus points for plenty of grisly botanical body horror and flesh sloughing off everywhere

This whole thing reads like an earthy, face-melting acid trip crossed with a fever dream and I was here for it. The ending actually made sense to me (I know a few have been left scratching their heads) and I ended up being quite pleased for the children and the forest once all of the adults had gone home

A delightfully disorientating, perspective-spiralling novella, with all the illogic and vivid visceral urgency of a dream. A bit of queer(ed) bittersweet triumph at the end. Root Rot's language has something of a dark alienation magic that reminds me of Kafka. It does make for an impenetrable little read. But I like books that are stubborn, and belligerently unique, that burrow their own hollows, so you have to follow them on your knees crawling through the dark narrow earth.

Ever had a deeply disturbing dream that made no sense but you try to piece together the fragments anyway and then realize it actually made sense after all but you can’t explain why? Welcome to Root Rot.

This is a fever dream of a novella that starts off with a strong sense of nostalgia but quickly turns into a trippy nightmare where fungi take on human form and family aren’t what they seem.

I have to admit I had a hard time following the character’s names at first (which aren’t really names but epithets - “The Liar”, “The Secret Keeper”, “The One With The Beautiful Voice”) but then I read an interview where the author describes the characters as a collective network of mycelium. And as someone who understands the lifecycle of a mushroom organism and structure of mycelial network, it really clicked with me.

Let’s just say I’m a fan of any #sporror so of course I have to recommend this. Especially if you’re looking for quick read that’s distorted, bizarre and takes you into a nightmarish realm where you feel a loss of automony but are part of a whole and somehow you’re completely ok with it all.

In other words, get ready to be fully absorbed.🍄‍🟫

Super interesting premise but slightly difficult to understand what’s going on and who is who. I struggled with this one but still appreciated the concept.

Less of a novel and more of an eerie, kaleidoscopic fever dream that will linger long after finishing. The narrative is disorientating, slipping about between POV's, and use of a collective "We/Us" voice that I'm uncertain who it belonged to - one of the nine children, or some other entity? It's not entirely clear, and I think that is exactly the point of the entire thing.
The atmosphere is dreamlike, a childhood memory, fuzzy and decayed around the edges, as if a memory/identity is slowly rotting somewhere amongst fallen leaves, recalling to itself. Toeing the edge of horror and wonder, folklore and fever dream, and never settling on any which one.

Absolutely recommend this weird journey to anyone willing to give into the strange. an unforgettable little dark tale that will lurk in my mind for sure.

Thank you Saskia Nislow for this trip, and Creature Publishing for allowing me this ARC read.

I'm still processing what it is I've just read... in the best way possible! 🍄🫣

The unique writing style, the nameless children and those haunting and disturbed descriptions of the transformations in this short, but unsettling story warped my mind as I was reading along... 🫠 Saskia does an amazing job at making you question the reliability of the narrators, and their grip on reality... what a truly horrifyingly terrific, mind-bending read 😨👏🏻

Thank you Creature Publishing & NetGalley for the ARC 🫂

This was dark, chaotic, and fungal! I was never sure from one moment to the next entirely what was going on, which I feel was probably intended! The baby-shaped fungus in the roots of the tree was a particular highlight!

This was a weird, confusing weird that made me feel like I was experiencing psychosis the entire time. It’s very short, but I had to keep going back and forth because I kept second guessing my memory. The character have no names, simply referred to as “the one who runs away”, “the liar” “the girl twin”, etc. Told in the collective perspective of a group of children on a family trip to a lake house, this was an amalgamation of body horror and, psychological horror. This was a genuinely unique experience, I will definitely read again.

This book was so confusing in the best way possible. It just kept getting more creepy, I enjoyed it 😅
I was hooked from the start and finished it in a couple hours!
Definitely horror and dystopian. If that’s your vibe I think you’ll enjoy it!

Root rot read like a fever dream and honestly, I'm disoriented. The characters weren't named, only called by a description. Where I see the stylistic choice to keep them nameless, it did make the writing a bit clunky, especially as some are described as "The one with the beautiful voice" which is quite a long name

Thank you NetGalley and Creature Publishing for giving me access to an e-arc for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

Unfortunately, this book was not for me. As a lover of T. Kingfisher and all that foresty, mushroom and gothic horror this just did not work for me.

I couldn't get past the fact that the characters had no description that made them feel real. Their names consisting of things like "The Liar" and "The One Who Runs Away" made it extremely difficult to want to read this book, and to be able to follow along.

I also assume that the reason the children don't speak with quotation marks was because they were all talking through the soil, but I have no idea. The parents would speak with quotation marks, but the children did not. This was again another thing that made it difficult to follow along. I had to question what everything meant and why it was laid out that way.

The point of view made this so difficult to enjoy. At times I was reading in third person, then mid sentence it would change to a collective point of view using "we" instead of "she or he". This made it frustrating and I could not follow along. However, again I am assuming this was how it was supposed to be read and not an error at all. Assuming this ties in with the storyline but it just felt so out of place, and in my opinion didn't work well.

I also assume that this is a book that acts in a repeated cycle, everytime they go back to the house it happens again, and again? But I don't know because nothing was explained and I also assume that was the whole point.

I felt very dissatisfied with this read and I wanted to DNF a few times but I also wanted to try to finish it. Though the ending did leave me disappointed.

My opinion is my own and I am thankful for Netgalley and Creature publishing for allowing me to ARC read this story. However, this wasn't for me.