Dead Animals

This book feel unsettling, dark, creepy and at times, without hope.
It is very much worth your time.

Wow, this book really surprised me! It was weird, creepy and uncomfortable in the best way. It was a short and snappy but satisfying read. I will be highly recommending this to all my fellow weird girls.

I wasn't sure how it would go but I ended up enjoying this book as it had me feeling a range of emotions and relatability.

I was absolutely gripped by this book. I couldn’t stop reading it. It was disturbing and dark but written in such a way that it was very accessible and you felt pulled to find out what would happen to the protagonist

This is a creepy and downright strange story that explores themes of trauma of queer romance in the most twisted way. This book will hold you in a lingering feeling of dread throughout; you'll wonder where this story is going. You'll wonder if, perhaps, this story follows an unreliable narrator. This book will confuse you, and you won't know what to think of it as you read it, but it will hold you. It'll hold your attention in the most spine tingling way,

The story follows a young waitress holding heavy baggage and trauma. Living her life in a tiny little bedsit, you truly feel the isolation of this character and grow to love and sympathise with her.

The story takes a turn when she meets a mysterious woman named Helene. Helene is gorgeous (you can feel her aura through Stuckes' beautiful writing) and you can understand why our narrator is so enticed by her. But there's a dark side of Helene which we begin to uncover the very day they meet. There's something not quite right about her; there's a secrecy in the weight of her words. You'll wonder what the deal is with Helene as you learn more and more about here, with every piece of information about her disturbing you more and more, but you won't be able to stop reading. This book fully invests you in their relationship, and though it is twisted and somewhat macabre, you'll be desperate to discover more.

This is a short but disturbing story, and you'll feel a tad numb once it finishes. It'll all end too soon, and it'll take you a while to understand the story you just read. Hours after finishing, you'll put two pieces of the puzzle together; you'll remember something from the early half of the book which appears far more disturbing now in retrospect. This story will linger with you like the sorrow and trauma that lingers with the main character. And that's a good thing; it just proves the power of Stuckes' delicious writing.

Thank you to Hodder & Stoughton and Sceptre for providing an audiobook and eBook via NetGalley

Good grief I inhaled this book. Perfectly tense, blending elements of horror into the narrative that make you question the narrator’s reality just as much as she is. It was a dark read, following the narrator in the weeks and months following a traumatic event (content warnings abound, please read them before picking up this book, it explores some very heavy themes), Dead Animals navigates finding safety again after having it ripped from beneath you.

The story begins in second person, and I didn’t notice when the story shifted into first person and became that of the narrator’s. What happened to her has happened to so many women that Dead Animals could be anybody’s story. I noticed a few of the Goodreads reviews criticise this shift from second to first person, blaming bad writing, but to me this seems purposeful - and cleverly so.

Going into this short novel blind, I was surprised to find it veer towards horror in the second half of the narrative. It worked tremendously well and really amped up the tension. Highly recommend.