02/10/2025
Hawkins (Downpour) spins the familiar into the grotesque in this chilling collection of 13 horror shorts. The author excels at putting dark twists on everyday domestic circumstances. A painter escapes an unhappy marriage with some supernatural aid in “Moonrise Over Water with Sargassum, 2022. Oil On Canvas.” In “Green Eyes,” a child cares for her ailing mother even after the woman’s death. An uncanny children’s TV show takes center stage in “The Stumblyum Imperative,” while in “A Candle for the Birthday Boy,” a six-year-old’s birthday party goes horribly wrong. The exceptional gore—narrators perform revolting actions such as probing “the glistening yellow-gray” of their own exposed fat, which “yields beneath touch like molded gelatin” (“Storms of the Present”)—makes looking away impossible. Not all the stories are quite as successful, however. If, as in “Interlude,” about a little boy whose parents think he has a rash, the buildup is too mundane in its purposeful misdirection, what should be a delightful shock ending turns into a cheap trick. Still, plenty of entertainment lies within these pages. Readers will be thinking about Hawkins’s skin-crawling fables long after they turn off the lights. (Self-published)
02/06/2023
Hawkins disturbs and terrifies with 13 tales of suburban horror in his chilling debut collection. Opening with an eerie narrative of a young girl and her sick mother who take a home remedy to the extreme and closing with an intense heart-wrenching lethal children’s birthday party, Hawkins’s bold premises and deft followthrough create gut-wrenching tension sure to thrill horror enthusiasts. A splatter of gore and heavy doses of suspense keep readers frightfully engaged while his array of memorable characters haunt the pages. Whether it’s the teenager obsessed with mannequins, an innocent boy with a suspicious rash, or a bullied kid whose shadow seems to have a mind of its own, this varied cast walks through darkness with only a sliver of hope that they’ll ever reach the light.
With crisp prose and brisk character work, Hawkins reminds readers that danger can lurk close to home by setting his stories in a variety of familiar suburban locations such as a comic book store, the local mall, an office building, and typical neighborhood homes with secrets lurking behind closed doors. Throughout, visceral imagery brings the terror to life: readers will hear the “wet gurgle” and see the “blossom of brownish red” liquid spreading out. Killer opening lines such as “It was the blood that changed everything” make the twisted and ominous worlds inviting.
A broad array of horror is presented within Suburban Monsters. “Storms of the Present” is an intense body horror piece featuring a woman desperate to be thin. “Green Eyes” and “Moonrise Over Water with Sargassum” toy with the elements of nature, and for those suffering from coulrophobia, beware the creepy clown. At times, Hawkins dares to go darker than readers might be eager to follow; “Candle for the Birthday Boy” is somewhat punishing in its depiction of an overweight kid. Whatever the subgenre preference, Hawkins delivers nightmare fuel to readers brave enough to dive into this hair-raising collection.
Takeaway: Spine-chilling horror stories set in familiar locations with relatable characters.
Great for fans of: Kealan Patrick Burke’s Secret Faces, Alan Baxter’s Served Cold.
Production grades Cover: A Design and typography: A Illustrations: N/A Editing: A- Marketing copy: A-
2022-11-25
The suburbs are a breeding ground for malevolent entities and hideous sights in this debut collection of horror short stories.
In “Green Eyes,” the first of 13 tales, an outcast at school lives alone with her mother. The two have an unusual remedy when one of them is sick, which only turns scarier as the story continues. Throughout this collection, the seemingly harmless either precedes something sinister or proves to be the source of horror. For example, Phil works at Darryl’s comic-book store in “Origin Story.” It’s hardly surprising when their conversations entail hypothetical superpowers, until it leads to a frightening reality. In the same vein, the tales’ settings are familiar, typically welcome places, such as a retail store, a nighttime beach, and a kids’ birthday party. Hawkins grounds so many of these stories by integrating relevant concerns, from low-income housing to body-image issues. Bullying, too, plays a part in some of the characters’ lives, including the blue-collar narrator of “Carpenter’s Thumb.” After he crushes his thumb with a hammer swing, his co-worker Carl laughs mercilessly, just one sign of the two men’s increasingly destructive relationship. Narratives will draw readers into characters’ mindsets; even when they’re nameless or they fear something intangible, it’s easy to tremble right alongside the players. That’s certainly true for Carol when her young daughter becomes obsessed with a cult children’s show in “The Stumblybum Imperative” (“The screen was awash with bright colors as the characters huddled in their costumes…Oversized heads made of felt and foam pressed together, barely fitting inside the frame”). Although Carol finds herself mesmerized as well, it’s still unsettling when one of the bubbly, plushy-costumed Stumblybums turns inexplicably erratic right there onscreen. The author’s pithy writing churns out chilling scenes that feed on suspense and don’t linger on the gory bits for long. Regardless, the book’s highlight is the potent, cringe-inducing “Storms of the Present.” In it, one person goes to terrifying lengths to lose weight—and that’s merely the beginning of a dark descent.
An assortment of jolts, abominations, and shaken nerves that readers won’t soon forget.