This book was so utterly weird and I have no idea what was even happening at times… but in a good way. I’m very curious to see where book two takes us!

Unapologetically queer and I loved every moment of this.

I will be 100% continuing this series, and going to to buy more of their works.

Thank you so much for this ARC.

I will be making multiple videos on my TikTok about this book

Reading We Are Always Tender with Our Dead was a disorienting, often uncomfortable experience — but I think that was the point. LaRocca doesn’t shy away from the grotesque, and this book leans fully in.

That said, I would read future books.

LaRocca lets his readers and his reputation down with We Are Always Tender with Our Dead. It reads like a first draft than a finished work. The writing is sloppy and repetitive, particularly in the sections about Rupert. I found it incredibly difficult to get past the first third of the novel and then got hooked in by the first article. Sadly, the articles interspersed throughout the novel appear to be simply a vehicle for LaRocca to insert a few additional horror prompts into the novel.

There was promise here; the Christmas Day massacre perpetrators, Rupert's mother's story and the bird with the human face were all great ideas. Sadly, only the perpetrators really got any attention in this particular novel and seemingly mostly for gratuitous violence. I don't mind violence in a horror story but the violence perpetrated against the family was simply cruelty and didn't hold any horror value for me.

I won't be reading the rest of the series.

2.75 stars rounded up.

Although deeply disturbing, certainly thought provoking. This book will make you question what is true horror – is it scary stories and paranormal encounters, or is it the evil humans can inflict upon each other and being trapped in a place/body/cycle of behavior that inhibits you from being your true self? Are your deepest darkest and strangest desires/inclinations even more horrific?

I can see the larger commentary the author was making with this story, and the atmosphere and setting for this story was great, but for whatever reason I could not connect with either man POV character (Rupert or Gladys). Rupert, although only seventeen years old, felt so indecisive to the point it seemed crippling. Gladys, before realizing that she was physically unable to leave the house, stood by her abusive and sadistic husband and kept someone else with her, selfishly, to ease her loneliness.

There are quite a few points in the story I would like some resolution for, but I do realize it is the first book in the series, so I hope the author answers some of the questions left unresolved such as:
Why were the bodies from the Christmas massacre were left out on the street? Why were people trapped in the Elderwood home? Where did the faceless family come from and who are they – did they also crumble once they left the house? What was Rupert’s father’s obsession with the dead corpse?

I would be interested in continuing the series in order to see how these events are all tied together in this strange town.

Thank you to NetGalley, Titan Books, and Eric LaRocca for a digital advanced copy of this book!

This book left me with mixed feelings. I LOVE a lot of LaRocca's work, so was very excited to receive this arc! While the premise had promise and certain scenes were SO memorable (the kind that will stick with me long after I’ve forgotten the rest), overall it felt rushed and sloppy in execution. The writing at times seemed more interested in shock than connecting with the rest of the stories, and I often found myself pulled out of the atmosphere instead of drawn in.

Since this is the first in a trilogy, I can see how the confusion and scattered threads might pay off later down the line. But judged as a standalone, it just doesn’t hold its weight. The greatness of the truly impactful moments only highlighted how much the rest fell flat.

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

4.5/5

We Are Always Tender With Our Dead by Eric LaRocca is the first novel in the Burnt Sparrow trilogy, and it doesn't hesitate to plunge the reader into the darkness that LaRocca has created. I was enthralled by the atmosphere that LaRocca brought to life within this novel. The town of Burnt Sparrow is a town that feels at once familiar and deeply uncanny — unmoored from time, a place where the unusual is not only expected but embraced. Though you may want to leave as soon as you enter, the strange curiosities housed within it leave you lingering for more; however, the more you learn, the more questions you have.

Though I rarely enjoy series, LaRocca hooked me so completely that I found myself eager to see where this trilogy goes

This first installment was such a fantastic book with the typical human horrors and oddities to expect from a LaRocca novel. It also unfolds as such a fantastic allegory for abusive relationships and the liminal space or "threshold" in which the victims may find themselves. It also serves as a cautionary tale for lingering too long in these spaces where you don't belong: the trauma, the internalization, paralysis of feeling stuck, etc.

As always, I feel so strongly about LaRocca's storytelling, and I feel like this was one of their best works when it comes to the allegory at its core. The characters were also incredibly endearing and interesting. Though it's a heavy story, the writing flows so effortlessly which allows you to focus on the heart of the story even more.

I'm extremely excited to continue on with this series, and I'm interested to see how the other two installments will connect to this story.

For longtime LaRocca readers, this is a triumph; for newcomers, it’s a haunting entry point into their world.

What a disappointment.

Having really enjoyed Eric’s novella from the start of this year - At Dark, I Become Loathsome - I was very excited to get a review copy of this, the first in a trilogy. But next to none of it landed for me at all.

What’s frustrating is that the good parts were exceptional: the faceless family, the bird with the human face, the Christmas Day massacre and the decision of the town to leave the bodies in place…all will stick with me for a long time and all felt like exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for.

But just about all of the rest was not good. The writing felt sloppy and amateurish, the plot was almost non existent, the characters fuzzy and the whole piece was just a let down.

There are plenty of gory and shocking scenes that will certainly grab your attention, but they fee as though they’re included purely for the shock value, which adds to the amateur feel of the entire thing.

I think the biggest letdown is that this doesn’t feel like it’s written by the same author who wrote that dark, brilliant novella earlier this year, or the short stories of theirs I’ve read and enjoyed. Whether that’s by design, I don’t know, but it really didn’t work for me and I’m kind of bummed out by it. I can’t see me rushing to read the others in this series when they arrive.

Huge thanks to the publishers and to NetGalley for the review copy.

I knew going into "We Are Always Tender With Our Dead" that LaRocca has a reputation for pushing boundaries, and this book is no exception. This first entry in the Burnt Sparrow trilogy is unsettling, visceral, and deeply disturbing. Horror fans looking for a bleak and nightmarish read will find much to appreciate here.

LaRocca’s artistry shows in his vivid depictions of violence. The graphic descriptions are purposefully tied to themes like the brutality of humanity, the darkness of human nature, the corrosive power of shame, and the prejudice and bigotry that fester in small communities. The worldbuilding is strong, dropping readers straight into a grim, claustrophobic landscape that feels both immersive and relentless.

That said, there were a few aspects that didn’t entirely work for me. One choice that broke my trust as a reader was the inclusion of a story told by a character, which felt shoehorned in and came across as filler or a repurposed short story. It pulled me out of the narrative. At times, I also questioned the authenticity of character relationships, since their dynamics felt either flat or overly forced. Lastly, while I can forgive some ambiguity in the first book of a trilogy, I do wish LaRocca had rewarded me with a bit more insight into why events unfolded as they did.

Overall, the book delivered on bleak atmosphere, disturbing imagery, and striking ideas, but its uneven execution didn’t quite achieve a lingering chill or spark the desire for me to continue with the series.

Rating: ⭐⭐½ (Rounded up)

I can confirm that they were actually not very tender with their dead.
This is a beautifully written, weaving non-linear tale about a town that suffers an awful tragedy. However. the town and it's people are far from average and have very strange customs to say the least.
Would recommend reading the TW's at the beginning, I'm still trying to decide if some of the 'shock' moments felt necessary or just gratuitous.
You are left with more questions than answers by the end, but do you care enough to find out is the conundrum.
Ultimately, this first booked felt a little unbaked, but I think I would still like to read the next instalment as I am curious to see where it goes.

Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher.
3/5 stars.

I had to tap out at around 40%. Every page piles on another taboo (incest, necrophilia, abuse, torture) which I’ve read before jusst fine, but here it felt disconnected and added for the sake of shock value.
The premise of Burnt Sparrow was intriguing: a town haunted by tragedy, faceless intruders, and old wounds. But the execution? The plot was thin, scattered between the character’s POV that felt more like disconnected vignettes than a cohesive narrative. The constant switching between diary entries, news clippings, and POVs broke any sense of immersion.

Twice Splatterpunk Award winner and thrice Bram Stoker Award finalist, prolific queer horror writer Eric LaRocca regrets to inform us that he failed miserably in handling the subject matter with delicateness and sensitivity. From the foreword, We Are Always Tender with Our Dead (Burnt Sparrow, #1) shows that tenderness has nothing to do with LaRocca's narrative.

Inspired by Goethe's quote (all beginnings are delightful;) "the threshold is the place to pause", Burnt Sparrow #1 is the manifestation of a threshold, a doorframe or a windowsill where its inhabitants have paused at the point of no return, observing with dread the tragedies unfolding throughout the history of this godforsaken place. The story starts with a news article reporting the death by fire of a queer couple, and the indication of a third person possibly being involved in the crime. Shortly after, we read a diary entry by Ruppert, a seventeen-year-old, suggesting he committed a hideous act he doesn't regret, making the reader wonder if there is a connection between both events. Needless to say, LaRocca's novels are deceptively linear. Misery seems to be widespread in this sulphur-smelling town, as Hell itself has built its threshold on top of Burnt Sparrow, New Hampshire.

Surprisingly, this novel reads as an angst-filled, claustrophobic, coming-of-age story, and despite the initial lack of character development in Burnt Sparrow #1, Ruppert's characterisation is on point (which cannot be said about the whole cast). We spend some time learning about the town, its history and inhabitants. His father is distant, jobless, and static. Ruppert is a sensible closeted queer boy who reads Proust and Steinbeck, the personification of angst teen, orphaned on his mother's side, grappling with growing up under his estranged father's care. For the past few years, after his wife's death, Ruppert's father has become numb, until a massacre takes place on Christmas Day 2003, when a dozen Burnt Sparrow residents are shot. The killers had no face, no nose, no mouth. We are introduced to the town Elders, representing a shaman-like congregation, perhaps suggestive of indigenous North Americans, and the Esherwood, the Burnt Sparrow patrons.

The novel progresses, and much of the background information is given in bits and pieces. Here, LaRocca questions morality, small-town power dynamics, queerness, desire, xenophobia and much more. Some of these enquiries are explored in a "horror" language, meaning you'll be disgusted. There are numerous trigger warnings and a list in the foreword. However, the violence often felt gratuitous, with no noticeable intention (including necrophilia, incest, rape). Ruppert meanders most of the novel, questioning and philosophising about everything around him, offering depth and a sense of disquiet. I daresay it has a tint of gothic.

After the massacre, the Elders and Mr Esherwood take the prisoners under their "care" and order the killed resident's corpses to remain on the spot where they were killed, creating job opportunities for the body-watchers. Ruppert and his father start working, preventing the corpses from being moved by fauna or foe. I won't spoil what happens, but I was expecting more. From this point Ruppert meanders endlessly and not much happens. It is fairly common for the first book of a series to set the scene for the remainder, however, Burnt Sparrow #1 felt unbaked. There are still too many loose threads to cast a full judgement, but this was not a strong first book of a series. It failed to engross me. Burnt Sparrow could work for others that are in it for the gore, the disgusting, the violent. Unfortunately, it wasn't for me.

"The threshold is the place to pause"
There's something beautiful in the way LaRocca treats rituals across all of his books. Whether it's something intimate with a character, or a larger part of the plot, he always finds a way to make the grotesque so enchanting and haunting. We Are Always Tender With Our Dead is no exception.
Every ritual has deliberate placement within the story and I can't wait to read the next book to see how they all weave together. The threshold being where this book pauses is so poetic.
"There's a stillness after every story told"
The stillness after LaRoccas books is always company I enjoy sitting with. This book comes highly recommended regardless if you're a long time fan or new to LaRocca and his work.

I wish I could say that I understood the point of this book. Eric LaRocca's work is often macabre, definitely dark, very queer, but ultimately wraps up in the end. However, this book remains a mystery. The whole book feels unbounded. I know this is the first in a planned trilogy but given my complete sense of WTF the whole way through, I don't think I have any interest in reading what happens next. Some of the scenes were gratuitously violent, which isn't atypical for LaRocca, but normally there is a purpose to the violence. Here...I'm scratching my head. Two stars because I could somewhat identify with the struggle Rupert was facing but a feeling of total confusion, with no resolution at the end, no questions answered, left me feeling like I might have wasted my time on this one.

We Are Always Tender with Our Dead is a haunting, visceral and deeply unsettling book that lingers long after the final page. Set in the small and isolated town of Burnt Sparrow, New Hampshire, the story begins with a brutal act of violence carried out by three faceless entities on Christmas morning. What follows is not only the town’s attempt to grapple with grief and loss but also the devastating ripple effects of trauma, cruelty and fractured relationships.

At the centre is Rupert Cromwell, a teenage boy forced to confront the harsh realities of family dysfunction in the wake of tragedy. His story intertwines with those of other townspeople as LaRocca exposes the rawest parts of human nature—bigotry, bitterness and despair—while also showing moments of tenderness, love and resilience.

LaRocca’s prose is striking, weaving beauty into horror with poetic intensity. The imagery is macabre yet elegant, creating an atmosphere that is at once heartbreaking and terrifying. This book does not shy away from the darkest truths of violence and cruelty, but it also highlights the fragile threads of humanity that endure even in the bleakest of circumstances.

We Are Always Tender with Our Dead is a devastating, unforgettable book. It hurts and holds you in equal measure, a testament to LaRocca’s ability to shock, move and captivate readers with profound eloquence.

Read more at The Secret Book Review.

This book has taken me places I would never stand in a ten foot vicinity of. Purposefully disturbing and oftentimes off-putting, WE ARE ALWAYS TENDER WITH OUR DEAD is set in Burnt Sparrow, a small town haunted by sinister forces that bring tragedy and ruin upon its citizens. This book gives rise to LOTS of questions and very few answers, likely since it's the first in a trilogy about Burnt Sparrow, which feels like a heavily traumatized adult's Gravity Falls. 


Rupert, the main character, is a young adult that wants nothing more than to leave his hometown, but every year that dream feels further and further away, until a tragedy unfolds that sends the town reeling, and Rupert is led down a path further in than out. The book is primarily told in Rupert's POV, and occasionally Gladys' (wife of the town's richest man), interspersed with blog posts set in the "future" that add to the town's conspiracy, though the added detail is as confusing as it is insightful. Who are these faceless creatures? Why are the town elders so adamant about displaying the dead bodies on the road? Is there some sort of supernatural monster epidemic? Generational suffering caused by the sins of their ancestors?? Was the shooting ever reported on national news? What is this emerald? What is Rupert??? There are so many puzzle pieces laid out, and only the vaguest hints of a picture being formed, which means the atmosphere is Great, but the story isn't something that I can fully appreciate until I've seen whatever else this trilogy has in store.


The narration leans very introspective and it feels like you're spending most of the squatting in Rupert's head despite the third person. LaRocca does a good job in conveying his very teenager-stuck-in-nowhere-america anxieties; the fear of eternally standing at a threshold and never going over, of time moving faster and your world shrinking faster than you can decide what to do with your life, of making irreversible decisions at seventeen. His fraught relationship with his father takes center stage for majority of the book, and their passive-aggressive push-and-pull dynamic of parental neglect and teenage resentment felt grounded and real.


Gladys as the secondary narrator was an interesting choice, especially since she felt less integral to the story than, say, Cyril, but I think his POV would've made the book twice as dark as it already is. Still crazy to think that Gladys was probably the sanest person in every room she walked into. Not sure if we'll see more of her in the next books, but I'd love to see how she and Rupert bond after what happened at the end. 


The elders are almost definitely going to be expounded on in the future (as they should!!), like what do they Know, what business do they have blood scrying, is there a Reason why they're all men? The faceless creatures are also something I'm very curious about- what compelled their initial violence and what tamed them in the aftermath? Coupled with the baby bird, they make for some very nightmare-worthy images. Also curious to see more of that creature that shifts into a loved one. The horror here seems largely fuelled by the corruption of what we thought as familiar, which adds to the claustrophobic feeling of entrapment that's ever-present on the page. A fascinating mix of supernatural and psychological horror that draws you in thrashing and convulsing.

Thank you to Titan Books and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Positives:
- The first third really had my attention. LaRocca is a very compelling authors and I can see myself possibly reading other books of his in the future!
- I enjoyed the mixed media parts of this book— news paper clippings, recordings, etc
- never read a splatterpunk before and this, negatives aside, wasn’t a bad start. the scenes of gore and assault were fairly non descriptive and left things up to the imagination, focusing on more of the aftermath and the horrors that come with it rather than the actual acts themselves.

Negatives:

- I can’t get over the incest scene. I just can’t. It was tasteful out of the three of the major “shock” scenes. Felt weirdly indulgent ?? What is the point? Scenes prior were quick, non descriptive and it surprised me how much detail was given to this scene. It was long, depraved, and drawn out. Sure, it very well is a scene found in books like these, that’s not my problem, but what is the main point of it? To show why Mr Esherwood is like that? Similarly, there were a few things in this book that were introduced and rather than being used to aid in the mystery of burnt sparrow, they felt shoehorned in (specifically Mr Esherwood incest trauma and Rupert’s “mom” being a trans man(? Did I imagine that?))

- Rupert has no motivations?? Or much of a character for that matter. Could have been a point but he felt more like a shell of the prospect of a character walking around and having things happen to him rather than him actively participating in the world around him.

2/5 idk man

WE ARE ALWAYS TENDER WITH OUR DEAD was absolutely excellent, disturbing, shocking and strangely beautiful. The descriptions of Burnt Sparrow and its eccentric inhabitants were unforgettable. I think the epistolary form worked wonderfully for this book, tracing people and patterns of behaviour through the small town's history and casting light onto some grim, grisly incidents in the town's elder years. I have loved every book I've read thus far by LaRocca, and this was no exception.

I will (and HAVE) read literally everything Larocca writes and he has yet to have a real dud for me. This is another beautifully grotesque book from him, although perhaps a little more abstract than his usual work. I loved immersing myself in his writing as expected, but i came away not sure if i quite grasped everything this was going for (specifically how much to take at face value versus symbolism). I’m definitely looking forward to the next installment in this series to see what’s next.

Once again Larocca’s horror is not for the faint of heart so make sure before going in that you can stomach graphic horror scenes.

I went into this anticipating that I would be disgusted and uncomfortable, and I certainly was. I really enjoy LaRoccas style of writing, I find it quite engaging and I read this book in a day.

There are some deeper messages hidden within the prose that get you thinking. However, there were a few plot points that seemed unnecessary. Whether this is intended to set us up for the second book remains to be seen. I read the trigger warnings so I knew what to expect but I do feel like some of these things were included just for the shock value, as I couldn't quite tell what their purpose was.

I only finished reading this yesterday so my rating might change after I've had sometime to process what I've read and how I feel about it.
Right now though, I'm not sure whether I would continue with the Burnt Sparrow series but we shall see.