" You can find this review and all my others over at Read Book. Repeat

Jaime is struggling with his first steps into fatherhood which leaves him reeling full of regret and ending up in Hawaii in the hopes that meeting up with his brother, Eric, will help. After a particularly violent encounter, the brothers find themselves on a fishing vessel along with a father and son. The group soon find themselves pulled into a strange phenomenon that threatens to change life on Earth as we know it.

When I first saw this book available on Netgalley, the cover is what caught my eye. It just stood out from the rest and the use of colour, I thought, I was fantastic. After reading the blurb again, while trying to decide what to read next, I was so sold on this. I haven't read much cosmic horror, but I felt like this one was done absolutely fantastically, to the point that I feel like I'm going to have to venture a bit more into the subgenre and see what gems I can find.

This was a quick read, which is fantastic as I'm trying to power through my backlog of egalleys, I didn't want to put this book down at all and I almost finished it in one day. The only thing that stopped me from doing just that, was that my eyes would just not stay open any longer. You better believe I was cursing myself at not being able to power through the final 20% of the book before sleep. Something about this story just gripped me from the beginning. We start at a slow roll then all of a sudden, it's full steam ahead and this ride isn't stopping for anyone. It just had me enthralled and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think one thing that I've discovered I like about cosmic horror, is that I don't have to suspend belief because there aren't any rules as to how situations would work in a cosmic horror setting. Cosmic horror is just that, it's the unbelievable, the out there wacky ideas of what COULD happen from the simplest of things. Such as what began the slow decline into out there whacko land for this book, of which I won't tell you, you'll have to read it. It was such a simple, yet for me, terrifying idea, and it just made sense. What came after the thing, made sense, in such a nonsensical way, I honestly can't even describe it so anyone would understand. You'd just have to read the book to see if you came to the same conclusion as I did.

I really enjoyed the characters in this one and I felt that Jones did such a fantastic job at being able to endear these characters to me in such a short page count. As I've said many times before, some authors can't do this in a novel that is over 400 pages, so to be able to do this in a shorter page count just makes me love the book that much more and is also a key player in what encourages me to pick up more books from the same author. I'm a very character driven reader, so while the story has to grab me, the characters do too. I really felt for Jaime, he was struggling with so many different things and to end up in the situation that he did, I felt for him so much. I really loved Matt, I don't know what it was about him, I just wanted to give him the biggest bear hug possible, I think he might have been my favourite character, and he was just a supporting role in the story. Eric interested me, learning a bit about their childhood and the things that would happen with him, really intrigued me, and I think that was a big driving point for not being able to put this book down. I needed to know. I had to find out what was going on with his sleepwalking, I had to know how it all tied together with what happens to these characters. Even though I'm still not 100% sure how it all tied together, I feel like that kinda went over my head, even though I understand what happened towards the end, I'm still not sure why it did. But I can't even be mad at it! Because it just makes sense for cosmic horror to me. Thinking about it now, it gave me Jeff Vandermeer Southern Reach vibes, that was another one that was cosmic horror, where I'm still not 100% sure what happened or why, but it just made sense.

All in all, I'm not gonna say that much about this one because I think you need to go into it with just the basics and just allow the story to take you into territory unknown. If you enjoyed some or all of the Southern Reach series, then give this one a crack. I never thought that cosmic horror was for me, until this book. Now I'm going to go on my merry way and try to find more books like this. If you want a gripping story that throws the rules out of the window, then pick this one up, it was a wild ride from start to finish. "