Good Morning and Happy Friday Eve!

I hope you’re all as excited as I am about the upcoming weekend. I love me some relaxation time and can’t wait for more, more, more!

In the meantime, I’ve finished another read. This time around I read The Reality Contagion a horror short story by Travis Liebert.

This is one of the Amazon freebies I found when I was burning out on Tor.

Don’t believe me? You can download it here for free!

I haven’t read anything by this author, I just took a leap of faith. So what did I think? On to the review!

Blurb

Jason Kember thinks he’s finally free of his mother’s constant rambling about all things occult. However, after five years of no contact, she calls him in a frenzied state and admits to performing a forbidden ritual. He dismisses her as crazy, but begins to question his beliefs in the face of strange and dark occurrences.

GoodReads

The Review

I gave this short story four stars!

This is my first time reading this author’s work, and it was very good!

The blurb pretty much explains the gist of the story, but in a nutshell, a son moves away from his mother and her crazy occult conspiracies only for her to contact him years later spouting the same insane ideas. Jason makes moves to ensure her mental health, but soon learns that everything may not be what it seems.

I really liked this story.

For me, the main thing was the writing. It was expertly done, didn’t have any purple prose, and was exciting.

Jason’s POV was handled well and I think a lot of people can sympathize with his plight. We all have that relative that we just can’t stand for various reasons. We got a little bit of depth and backstory to Jason’s life when he was younger, and I think it fleshed out the story without feeling info dumpy. Very hard to do with a short story, so major props to the author there.

Oh, and his mom? Creepy and a bit batshit crazy, which really intrigued me. There was an element of mystery about her that I enjoyed. I had a bad feeling from the start.

The horror itself didn’t necessarily dominate the whole way through, but it’s definitely there, and I think the author approached this in the right way.

I honestly don’t have any complaints with this story. The only reason I didn’t give this five stars is that I wasn’t completely blown away, but this is an extremely solid story, and I look forward to reading more from this author.

Definitely recommend this story!

That’s A Wrap!

Well that’s it for this short story review. I hope you enjoyed it!

Have you read this story? Are there other short stories you’ve read that you simply have to gush about? Feel free to leave a comment. I’d love to start a conversation!

Have a great day!

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