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Eric LaRocca: Things Have Gotten Worse since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes (Hardcover, 2022, Titan Books Limited) 4 stars

Three dark and disturbing horror stories from an astonishing new voice, including the viral-sensation tale …

Boring. Uninspired. In some places objectively stupid.

1 star

Not horror, just icky. Not dark, just with mental illness.

First story is about two people with obvious mental illness performing some form of BDSM relationship, but its just icky tasks. Completely unbelievable in the way the characters wrote and they both sounded the same; so much flourish in what is supposed to be casual personal emails, it almost feels like both of the characters are authors. Or just one self indulgent author. Second one is about yet another person with mental illness only this time there's religion involved. It had such an obvious plot hole that I was literally shocked into silence; I went back and read it several times to make sure I wasn't missing something and nope. Final story is about someone who you could have a reasonable argument of having mental illness because no one would do that. That's not how people are like. Ridiculous. With a ridiculous message trying to sound profound.

Each story succeeded only in pissing me off by their respective end and finishing only out of spite. Its hard to pick a worst. I honestly reset my brain at the start of each one, went in wanting to like it. I kept thinking, hoping that the author would give something more. Something more that what was obviously going to happen in each story. Something horror more than just the occasional "ew".

Content warning Here I explain the objectively stupid bit