Matt McAvoy Book Review

I was in the mood for a little over-the-top, horror-gore silliness, a short, fun read, and I have to say this bone-licking, blood-sucking little vignette from D.E. Fox really delivered that – and then some.  In fact, I think it’s fair to say that some of the violence in Second Hand Rose really does push its boundaries, and I need to be honest and say there are some out there who will find its depictions of the gruesome, grisly slayings and devouring, including of babies and children, quite distressing – to be frank, if you’re not acquainted with and don’t have the stomach for the tongue-in-cheek bloodletting of Richard Laymon and the like, you may find some of this a little too much to take.  D.E. holds back nothing.  This is precisely the reason why you can’t take this kind of thing too seriously, for otherwise it may disturb.  As it happens, that’s just the kind of gorefest I was in the mood for when I sat down to read it, which I did in full over one hugely entertaining night.

The book isn’t perfect, it’s true; in fact, it has a lot of problems.  The manuscript undoubtedly needs a little work and the author’s writing style felt a little elementary to me, leaving a lot of gaps in its fast-moving, context-trampling narrative.  I felt a few more thousand words and at times a slightly slower, more detailed approach would have helped this book’s tone and atmosphere a great deal.  There is certainly enough meat to its story to expand and pace the content a touch better.  The story itself is great, with just the right measure of supernatural and base evil, with a cracking period origin story – think Candyman or It; it would have been great to go more into the characters in both timelines (the past and the present).  These timelines blurred a little for me at times, and I did feel that overall D.E. could have delivered perhaps a slightly more accomplished horror work.  I hope she chooses to revisit it one day, and gets into really enjoying immersing herself rather than feeling the need to rush through the story, because if this deliciously devious slice of nastiness is anything to go by, fans and future fans of her work are in for real twisted treats from her in the future, I feel.  I hope to read more of the same from her.