Alright, I did a horrible job this month when it came to posting a single thing. When life gets chaotic, a few things get forgotten about. I did want to share some reviews for books I loved last month. While I won’t share ALL of the books I read throughout September or August, I’ll make sure to highlight my favorites, because there were some phenomenal ones in August.
This one is what I kicked off August with and it set a high bar! Aron was wonderful and gave Chandra and I copies of this when we were at Haunt the Readers the beginning of August. Definitely check out his books if you love the extreme horror and splatter punk genres.
MODERN HYSTERIA – Aron Beauregard (Released March 23rd, 2022)
Book Description:
EVERY PARENT’S WORST NIGHTMARE
A mysterious internet figure, known only as Mr. Boy, is preying on depressed teenagers and brainwashing them into horrific acts of self-harm and suicide. The macabre message behind ‘The Dropout Challenge’ is simple: Dropout of sight. Dropout of school. Dropout of society. Dropout of life altogether.
Derek Pearson is a struggling graphic novelist whose younger brother took his own life after becoming ensnared in The Dropout Challenge. Upon hitting rock bottom, Derek becomes obsessed with pulling back the curtain on the malevolent mastermind responsible for his brother’s gruesome demise.
Despite a lack of urgency from the authorities and his outrage regarding the tragedy, Derek has also discovered a strange positive trend in his artistic trajectory. For the first time in his life the story he’s telling through his illustrations is worth finishing. But with art imitating life, many questions still remain. Who decides how it ends? And has Derek become more fixated with crafting the perfect conclusion for his masterpiece than getting justice for his family?
This volume contains 15 interior illustrations.
My Thoughts: 5/5 stars
Started and almost finished on my less than 3 hour plane ride home from Haunt the Readers. It killed me having only 50 pages left and then having a 2 hour drive home. This came on my radar after hearing Aron and Kris had their author panel at Haunt the Readers!
I LOVE anything Slenderman adjacent or that has to do with online entities or things of a similar nature. Mr. Boy is up there with his twisted and horrible games he plays with young and impressionable children. A cautionary tale of kids and their internet usage but man, this was dark and gruesome. The illustrations were perfect and a couple of them I had to shield so the small child next to me didn’t see them on the plane.
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