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Synopsis:
An insidious darkness threatens to devastate a rural New England village when occult forces are conjured and when bigotry is left unrestrained.
After a recent string of disappearances in a small Connecticut town, a grieving widower with a grim secret is drawn into a dangerous ritual of dark magic by a powerful and mysterious older gentleman named Heart Crowley. Meanwhile, a member of local law enforcement tasked with uncovering the culprit responsible for the bizarre disappearances soon begins to learn of a current of unbridled hatred simmering beneath the guise of the town’s idyllic community—a hatred that will eventually burst and forever change the lives of those who once found peace in the quiet town of Henley’s Edge.
From the Bram Stoker Award®-nominated author of the viral sensation, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, Everything the Darkness Eats is a haunting supernatural thriller from a new and exciting voice in genre fiction.
Review:
I have been a fan of Eric LaRocca’s work up until this point. Their short story collections and novellas are haunting, interesting, and filled with grotesque and wonderful scenes. There was no way that I was not going to pre order their first novel Everything the Darkness Eats and devour it.
This is a much more tame and less thrilling incarnation of LaRocca’s writing. The novel takes place in a small town where people are disappearing but nobody notices the Rolls Royce creeping down the street, stalking these people. Inside the Rolls Royce is Heart Crowley, a person who is using dark magic in the basement of his mansion. A parallel story is about Malik, a Muslim-raised police officer in town who is supposed to be investigating these disappearances but is distracted by hate crimes committed against him and his husband Brett. The two stories barely intersect, and in the end, neither of the stories have a very satisfying resolve. There are so many holes in the story, so much that just doesn’t add up that throughout the novel, I could not find myself as engaged as much as I found myself finding the whole thing absurd. When reading horror, the reader has to suspend belief, but in Everything the Darkness Eats, so much has to be overlooked that the novel that it really does not work.
Of my many questions about this novel, one of my biggest questions is about Malik and his husband Brett. Malik is a police officer, but when someone breaks into his home, the rest of the police force does nothing for him. Even though this might be the unfortunate reality with those in the LGBT+ community, Malik is one of them (i.e. a police officer). The is no doubt that his coworkers on the force had prejudices against him before the hate crime so how was he getting along with the police department before they turned against him? This is not explained. He does leave after the incidents in his home, but you cannot tell me that the language that the officer uses against Malik when investigating is new, that Malik does not receive this kind of reception at his job every day. The interpersonal relationships of every single character in this novel seems so off that it is a distraction. This makes the characters and story unbelievable.
This whole novel is a disappointment. I wanted to be able to say that LaRocca knocked this story out of the ballpark and that everyone should read it, but honestly, I cannot recommend this. It is a poor execution of a story that could have been so much more.
ghostvillehero 