[Novella Review] Human Flesh by Nick Clausen

Human Flesh by Nick Clausen was a creepy and very unsettling tale of love, the cold, and horror!

Once I started reading, I couldn’t put it down. Organized as various pieces of evidence, we see text conversations, blog entries, voicemail transcriptions, emails, and newspaper articles, all of which get darker and darker as the story progresses.

Full disclosure: I was given a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my rating in any way.

Let’s dive in to my review!

My Thoughts on Human Flesh by Nick Clausen

First of all… GOSH THAT COVER! SO creepy and so perfectly designed! The red really pops, and that creature and tag line…!

I had posted my review for another of Nick’s books, They Come At Night, and Nick spotted it and reached out to me directly to send a copy of Human Flesh over. I absolutely LOVE when authors get in touch when I rave about their books! It’s always such a great feeling!

Of course, as I had loved the other book, I couldn’t wait to dive into this one! Like I said above, I picked it up one evening and didn’t put it down until I had finished it.

I read it once nighttime had fallen in our new house… We’re still getting used to all the noises of the house settling, the refrigerator clicking on and off, acorns falling from the tree and hitting the roof, and other such things. So of course, I was jumpy to begin with, but this book really had me on edge!

I loved that this tale began light and easy, but then got darker and darker as it progressed. The organization of the tale as pieces of evidence was so interesting! Right from the start, seeing “EVIDENCE NO. O1,” you of course understood that something bad happened, but getting there was quite the trip!

This was so well written. The author absolutely nailed the teenager blogger persona. Reading these entries reminded me of the LiveJournal I used to keep back in grade-school, but of course, mine was much less interesting!

The spooky factory of this tale was wonderful. It gave me the chills! There was one scene where a girl is looking through her grandfathers bedroom to the window over the roof that was so terrifying, I couldn’t bring myself to look at any windows for the rest of the night!

I also loved that this tale was set in my home state of Maine! It was too funny reading the girl’s blog entries about one of the characters and his accent. And this passage had me laughing right out loud:

I also want to thank the reader who brought to my attention what Martin found so funny about what he said when he saw us, the thing about us being maniacs. Evidently, he didn’t said “maniacs” as in “crazy people,” but “Maineiacs,” a term used to describe the people up here.”

My Final Thoughts on Human Flesh

Let’s just say that I am very happy that I read this on a warm late-summer evening rather than a brutally cold winter evening. It was that spooky! 😀

I highly recommend this one to readers looking for quick but creepy YA Horror tales to get totally immersed in!

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