Cool Ghouls Book Club

Stuart Bray and Jason Nickey have been on my radar for a while now. I own some of each of their books, but have thus far been thwarted by my ever expanding massive TBR. When the Mockingbird Sings is my first taste of both authors and it is delicious. And by delicious, I mean completely and utterly vile and disturbing. There were points where my jaw dropped and just stayed…dropped.

Johnny is a gangster tasked with picking up a special package for his boss. The package is a little girl, so naturally(?) Johnny assumes the don has nefarious intentions because isn’t that always the case with this sort of delivery? Or maybe Johnny is just the worst kind of person because his assumptions come from his own perversion. What should have been a simple pickup job turns into a huge fiasco that puts a target on Johnny’s head, not only from his boss, but from the rival gang’s boss. The series of fuckups would almost be funny if Johnny hadn’t already proven himself to be a vile person. You come to understand why he is the way he is, but it doesn’t make him a sympathetic character. I wanted to see him get his comeuppance very early on and that never changed.

Let’s talk about the audiobook for a moment. Todd Waites really nailed this performance. I almost believed he didn’t understand why all the other characters were so shocked at every word that came out of his mouth. I’ll be reading more of Bray and Nickey for sure. When you read as much extreme horror and splatterpunk as I do, you get a little desensitized. So when I find a book that gives me visceral reactions and even makes me put it down for a little bit before finishing, I eventually go back for more.

I was gifted an Audible code from Fright Night Audio. All views expressed here are my own. I think I was cringing the entire hour and a half due to the descriptive language emphasized by Waites’ performance. Extreme horror is meant to make you uncomfortable and this book achieves that in leaps and bounds.