For a novella, this book was still too long. I think the two storylines felt like a hat on a hat and were not successfully tied together. Malachia’s world was strange and much more interesting but still didn’t pay off for me. Also, the use of footnotes to add even more of the annoying main character’s voice and opinions was excessive and felt immature. The entire reading experience was like being stuck in the most annoying boy in the world’s head; I’ll pass.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

This book had a great plot with intriguing characters. I’ll definitely be looking out for more from this author.

The title and cover of this book initially drew me in as a fan of horror. The contents completely encapsulated horror and enter its own genre that you have to read to understand.
This is a mind bending twisty tale of two characters whose paths intertwine in an otherworldly way.
There was heavy use of complex imagery and some very intricately described settings. Some of the writing is hard to follow, with complex words and titles seemingly thrown in at random. This took away from the story as a whole when you have to take time to understand what is being talked about.
The author seemed to want to create a House of Leaves esque atmosphere but on another planet. The format does slowly descend into chaos but I do not think it was set up well enough to be executed properly.
If you have time to devote to really paying attention and get absorbed by the imagery then you would enjoy it.

I - could not understand this … I mean I finally did.

The writing is soooo hard to follow.

You get more details about what doors look like … compared to anything else happening in the story.

Sorry Netgalley but my love of the cover was about as good as it got with this book.

Unfortunately I did not enjoy the writing style snd struggled with reading it.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advance review copy in return for an honest review. I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. I picked this book because the cover looked really interesting and it made it seem like a fun thriller but this was such a confusing book. I kind of get where they were tryi. To go but they tried to make it too weird and it left it just way too confusing.

I tried really hard to get into this but the formatting and the storyline just lost me. I could never get hooked and every time I tried to pick it back up I had to remind myself what had happened.

Style and story just not for me.

Shades of David Lynch hover over an almost stream of consciousness into the unreal. Strings floating to strings, clips and footnotes rounding out the text. An interesting, if disjointed, read.

This book was good - but I wish it had been longer. I LOVE me a splatterpunk novel and I was so excited to rip into this and it gave me a lot of what I wanted but also missed some huge marks.

The writing was great - I loved the style even though it was a bit lyrical at times, it was descriptive and gritty and fit the tone of the book so well.

My only thing I really wanted more of was well, the story. I was enraptured from the first few pages and with the length of this book it felt like we screamed through it faster than I would have liked. It’s a choppy short read and I think the fact I wanted more is a good thing, but it definitely impacted my rating as I wanted things to be drawn out a bit more and explored in more depth.

Overall a very fun read - but I’d love to see something full length with the space to breathe to fully flesh everything out.

I've never done acid, but after reading this body-horror novella I feel like I might somewhat understand the sensation?

Hot Singles in Your Area follows two characters as they navigate a maelstrom of other-natural entities. Noah, a janitor looking for a change, applies to a position where he'll be selling advertisement spots for a seemingly fictional newspaper with quite a... particular choice of content. Of particular note are the "Hot Singles" advertisements, which Linda indicates will be a big part of his focus. The other main character, Malachia, is the only remaining human in the City of Silence... and that a big problem. She seeks the guidance of the Carrion Oak, the one remaining of the Nine, who indicates that the City needs to do its regular reset, but that folks also need to come back and currently it's not known where they've gone. She must find them.

There were a few really clever elements to this novella that aren't immediately apparent. For example, the "Hot Singles" we see in the mixed media near the beginning of the book are actually the physical descriptions of the entities who are avoiding returning to the City of Silence. Instead, they are living at the Mansion, an apartment complex where these entities pay to remain in a material plane. I also liked that neither Noah nor Malachia appear to be wholly human, like each believes themselves to be. To Malachia Noah appears smudged over with Vaseline and shifts between images of trees and hounds, whereas to Noah Malachia appears to cycle between desiccated corpse and goth chick. If I'm understanding correctly, this is because of their connections to almost a "patron" within the Nine - Noah and the Red Moon, Malachia and the Benefactrix.

I unfortunately have to be more critical than positive, however. This novella had a lot, lot, lot of potential, but it ripped through the story so fast that it was incredibly difficult to draw myself into the plot or the care about the characters. I want to say that if this was a full length novel, with more fulsome descriptions and exposition, this could have been much better. There were also a lot of unknowns left unknown in the novella - for example, the primary narrator appears to the reader through footnotes, as this is the only place first-person language appears. These footnotes are plentiful in the first third, but are almost non-existent the more the story progresses. Who was this narrator? Why have they disappeared? Likewise, I'm unsure I fully grasp why Malachia is sent to be an employee of the newspaper when her goal as given by the Carrion Oak was to find and bring back the people from Silence, whereas the whole job of the paper is to sell "advertisements" aka demi-planes where these folks can live instead of returning to Silence.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

What a strange little horror novella! I honestly recommend going in knowing nothing (like I did).

Dual POV, mixed media, equal parts creepy and satirical, and a whole lot of "wtf is going on?"

I wish some of the world building was more fleshed-out, but also maybe that was kind of the point?

Either way, I had a good time with this. A couple of scenes genuinely freaked me out and that doesn't happen often.

Slightly House of Leaves coded.. but also not at all. I'd read from this author again.

Unfortunately there was something about the writing style of this one that really just didn't agree with me, I found it really hard to properly get stuck into the book and take it all in

This book was nothing like I expected it to be. I expected it to be like a horror book, with maybe the occasional spice. But I didn’t expect was the satire, or how often the F word was used (it was used 105 times in this 144 page novella).

I started this book, and stopped it many times throughout a 12 hour period, when I finally forced myself to finish it. The newspaper clippings that were written throughout the book sometimes confused me- they weren’t always important at that time of the story.

I was given an opportunity to read this ARC through NetGallery.

Described as 'A blistering body-horror following two imperfect strangers ensnared by a sinister media powerhouse'. This book follows two main characters who collide in bizarre ways.

This book wasn't as engaging as I hoped it would be. It reminded me of 'This is How You Lose the Time War' in that the writing made me feel extremely confused, I couldn't easily understand what was happening without going back and forth a lot. I definitely think it's an interesting and unique read and would recommend it to fans of more abstract literature.

This was so weird- unlike anything I have read before. This could be considered a book that involves body horror- but not necessarily the straightforward kind you often see featured in horror stories.
While I did not dislike this book, there was something about the writing that caused me to feel disengaged when reading certain sections.
I also didn’t understand the placement of the newspaper articles that were randomly dispersed throughout sections of the book- some disrupting the narrative.
The reader is introduced to two main characters who are each experiencing their own separate unfortunate ordeals; but at the end we see their worlds and experiences collide.
I did prefer how the character Noah was portrayed over Malachia -and found the sections of the book describing Noah’s experience to be more enjoyable in terms of reading.
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

This book was weird, and I really like that about it.

Firstly, while I really enjoyed the mixed media aspect of this book with the newspaper ads, I felt like they were a bit disjointed being placed in the middle of two chapters. I feel like I need to re-read those portions to try and see how they fit in with the storyline. Disregarding that I really enjoyed the adverts that were eerie on their own.

Secondly, I liked that the author did not skimp on the body horror aspects of the book and how the satirical portions of the book did not feel disjointed.

2.5 ⭐️ A haunting and freakish tale that follows the lives of two characters, Noah and Malachia.
Noah, a janitor yearning for a change, finds himself catapulted into the mysterious world of Printed Matter after an uncanny hiring process. Almost immediately, Noah's new position begins to unravel into a nightmarish sequence of events. Parallel to Noah's eerie journey is the story of Malachia, a member of the Congregration, whom finds out she’s alone. She wanders until her path leads to Noah. I appreciate the originality and the way this story challenges perception, but I found it difficult to fully immerse myself in it.

This book was not something I typically read, it was sometimes hard to follow but i LOVED the detail to it!
The papers were so well done, and definitely had the creepy vibe going for it and it was amazing!

I didn't know what to expect going in to this book but it was different than anything I could have thought and that's a very good thing.

This horror/comedy is weird, satirical, and has everything you'd want in horror including tentacle plant ladies, demons, alternate worlds, and other creatures which you just have to read about to grasp their full scope.

Told from two perspectives, one in our world and one in another, they both collide in sometimes goopy and humorous ways. One of our main characters just wanted a job that didn't require him to clean up urine and blood. When he gets hired with no resistance as a salesman for advertising from a newspaper of some kind, he might just wish he didn't apply.

In another existence, our other main character is wondering why the magical and very eccentric city she lives in is empty, leaving her all alone with things she doesn't want to imagine.

These two arcs will come together in this blend of horror and hilarity with a great satirical twisty narrative that can sometimes be puzzling but still very entertaining.

I recommend this novel if you're looking for something weird and oddly different.

This was a really cool book. I couldn’t put it down once I started it. It was a five star read! I think others will enjoy it as much as I did.