Darker Days by Thomas Old Heuvelt

Good morning! Today I'm a stop on the Random Things tour for Thomas Old Heuvelt's Darker Days!

Bird Street might seem like the perfect neighborhood. The kids are talented--prodigies event, the families seem perfect...but all is not as it seems on this idyllic street. See the residents made a deal. A deal that requires a death. A deal that turns their lives into nightmares every November. A deal that begs the question, is it worth it?

Ha! So first off, I love Thomas Old Heuvelt. His ability to dig into the meat of human fears, human feelings as a whole, is something that sticks with me every time I read his work. 

Second, I don't trust anyone on Bird Street! At least not the adults.

It's a street made up of just five houses. Five families. And the kids are affected the most by the deal these families have made. Because in November they go feral. I don't have a better way to describe it. We know from the start that the kids go on lockdown after Halloween. We know at least one has been hospitalized in recent years. And we know that this behavior is not the norm for these kids. 

We also know they're aware of it and they're exceptionally privileged the rest of the year!

It's not giving too much away to say this is a play on Faust. It's in the description. And yet it's not limited to just one person. It's the whole street. Five households colluding to manipulate fate or whatever may be in order to prosper and get their way. At the risk of everyone around them. See, I don't trust them! Because people willing to make deals with the devil...well, you'll find out what kind of people they are when you read. 

I loved Darker Days. It's told in part from the kids' perspectives, which gives it a shadow of coming-of-age feel, something I very much appreciate. And it balances out the adults' perspectives as well, giving the reader a chance to see who's really getting the short end of the stick. 

I don't want to spoil it in any way though. If you like horror about the human condition you should definitely pick this one up. And if this is your introduction to Thomas Old Heuvelt then congrats! You have a fun ride ahead of you!

Huge thanks to Random Things and PRH UK for having me on the tour!

Darker Days is out now in the UK and will be out shortly in the US.   

Pre Pub Book Buzz: Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Holy cow, readers! Thomas Olde Heuvelt's US novel debut, Hex, sounds absolutely amazing! It's been on my radar for some time but considering it's not due out til April it's been drowned out a bit by more recent releases. Now that we're at least in the same release year, though, I'm starting to get SUPER excited! And you should too.

Here's a bit about the book from Goodreads:

Whoever is born here, is doomed to stay 'til death. Whoever settles, never leaves.

Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a 17th century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Muzzled, she walks the streets and enters your homes at will. She stands next to your bed for nights on end. Everybody knows that her eyes may never be opened.

The elders of Black Spring have virtually quarantined the town by using high-tech surveillance to prevent their curse from spreading. Frustrated with being kept in lockdown, the town's teenagers decide to break their strict regulations and go viral with the haunting, but in so doing send the town spiraling into the dark, medieval practices of the past.

This sounds uber creepy and I can't wait to get my hot little hands on a copy!

If you haven't yet, you should check this guy out. His Goodreads profile calls him a "...prodigy of the fantastic genre in The Netherlands..." and says his first book sold when he was just nineteen. More recently, his short The Day the World Turned Upside Down won the Hugo for Best Novelette! 

Hex is due out in April from Tor.