This is eco and body horror like you have never seen before, and I am so here for it!
I'm a big fan of the "moving into a house and everything going wrong" trope in horror, and this was no exception. I liked that this wasn't the typical creepy old house and instead was much more modern, including the horror aspect. I think it would have been nice to have more interaction with their neighbors, but it didn't make or break the story by any means. I really felt that the couple was written in a fantastic way. Their personalities and even arguments felt natural and made me want to root for them even more.
I really liked the basis of the horror aspect, though I wish there was a deeper dive into the building of it. It's left pretty open for interpretation which might be some people's thing just not mine. I will say that the shock factor is a 10 out of 10 and my jaw remained on the floor from about 50% of the way through till the very end. I just kept telling myself I couldn't believe what I was reading!

The most terrifying story I have ever read…a couple buys a fixer-upper on a Florida swamp and it has no air-conditioning. AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

2 stars

Marcy and Owen Parker are newlyweds and, like all young couples, are looking for a house they can afford. But they are dreaming the impossible dream the end.

No, seriously, these nutjobs DO buy a fixer upper on a Florida swamp with no air-conditioning (and Owen conveniently neglects to tell Marcy he kind of crapped out on the whole “job” thing he was pursuing, so, you know, this is all going to end in a bloodbath of SOME kind, and not just because this is a horror book.) And not only are there a million and one things on the renovation list, it’s also, yay!, haunted.

Seriously, this is pretty much all Owen’s fault because they moved to this hellhole to care for his grandmother who then died right before they closed and THEN he becomes obsessed with the could-have-been-interesting-but-surprisingly-rather-dull history of the house, which we see just a tiny bit of in VHS tapes. Marcy tries to save Owen’s stupid ass from himself, but there’s some boring backstory which goes nowhere, plus, you know, they just got married…she’s not THAT attached.

I try to take chances on books from small publishers, (this one is from Raven Tale, I do believe) and sometimes you get lucky, (I just read a self-published book called THEO OF GOLDEN that was lovely) but this just wasn’t very good. There was no real insight as to what was happening or why, or, further, why anyone should care.

This is quite the creepy story, combining eco horror with cosmic horror and a dash of folk horror to round it out.

A couple buys their first home in a quiet retirement area in Florida. Close to a swamp and teeming with flora, it's a fixer upper but it's what they can afford. Owen is an indie documentary film maker and Marcy is a nurse.

Although they have a good relationship, it's marred by past events which will be revealed over time. One day Owen finds a lockbox filled with old VHS tapes which had been encased in bricks for some reason. Soon, he becomes obsessed with them despite Marcy's insistence that they take them to the police.

What he'll find on these tapes is something which starts out a bit creepy but soon turns into true terror. And he will never be the same again as whatever lies dormant on their property is ready to come out. And it's extremely hungry.

This author does a great job of building the horrors while we see the slow unraveling of this couple. The hot humid Florida swamplands provides a fantastic backdrop for the narrative. The creepy things keep getting more intense as the book progresses and you get the feeling that things are not going to end well for either Owen or Marcy.

This is a banging short novel which you'll definitely want to read. I highly recommend it.

I was hooked from the beginning!!
It was amazing and engaging.
I was instantly sucked in by the atmosphere and writing style.
The characters were all very well developed .
The writing is exceptional and I was hooked after the first sentence.