At Dark I Become Loathsome by Eric LaRocca

At Dark I Become Loathsome by Eric LaRoccaAt Dark, I Become Loathsome by Eric LaRocca
Narrator: Andrew Eiden
Published by Blackstone Publishing Inc on January 28, 2025
Genres: Horror
Length: 4h 51m
Format: Audiobook
Purchase on: Amazon// Barnes & Noble// BookBub
Add to: Goodreads // StoryGraph


From Eric LaRocca—Bram Stoker Award–nominated and Splatterpunk Award–winning author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke—comes At Dark, I Become Loathsome, a grim yet gentle, horrifying yet hopeful, intense tale of death, trauma, and love.
“If you’re reading this, you’ve likely thought that the world would be a better place without you.”
A single line of text, glowing in the darkness of the internet. Written by Ashley Lutin, who has often thought the same—and worse—in the years since his wife died and his young son disappeared. But the peace of the grave is not for him—it’s for those he can help. Ashley has constructed a peculiar ritual for those whose desire to die is at war with their yearning to live a better life.
Struggling to overcome his own endless grief, one night Ashley finds connection with Jinx—a potential candidate for Ashley’s next ritual—who spins a tale both revolting and fascinating. Thus begins a relationship that traps the two men in an ever-tightening spiral of painful revelations, where long-hidden secrets are dragged, kicking and screaming, into the light.
Only through pain can we find healing. Only through death can we find new life.

five-stars

review

This is my first horror book of the year and by god, was At Dark I Become Loathsome by Eric LaRocca simply amazing. I read this via audiobook, which added just so much atmosphere and emotion to the text. Andrew Eiden (whom I’d only ever listened to as Teddy Hamilton) was perfect at evoking the maddening despair and heartbreak of protagonist Ashley Lutin.

For as much as I loved this, it was, at times, so incredibly uncomfortable to read which made the material even better. What do I mean by that? There are so many themes that can be dissected here, but one constant undercurrent is the idea of masculinity in the patriarchy; so to sit with open grief and victimization in a patriarchy where we’re told that isn’t manly, and to feel the tension between what is and what it shouldn’t be, to feel uncomfortable, really punctuates the themes. Ashley talks about how he needs to be manly, how his voice isn’t manly, what his dad thought of him, what he projected onto his own son. This cognitive dissonance between what is expected, and what is truth tears Ashley apart. Leads him to physically changing his body to something he considers monstrous. What is more monstrous than man?

I want to go on and on about this because At Dark I Become Loathsome by Eric LaRocca is just so deep, but I don’t want to spoil anything. There are a lot of trigger warnings you definitely need to heed before picking this up, but if you find that they are something you can stomach, I absolutely think this is a horror book that should be read, dissected, and studied.

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