What do you think?
Rate this book
Something Awful
343 pages, Paperback
Published June 9, 2025
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 9, 2025
Magnificent!! I've been following Ricky for a while now on Youtube, and when I found out that he had written a new book, I hit the buy button post haste. The characters felt like real people, the prose...phenomenal. and that ending??? No spoilers, I'll just say it was most assuredly not... something awful. A must read in my book, I'm hoping we haven't heard the last from Ricky.
June 18, 2025
Full Disclosure: I worked on this novel as a line editor and partial developmental editor.
Now that that's out of the way, I feel confident leaving this review because Something Awful (unrelated to the online forums of the same name) is a unique, finely tuned, and ultimately explosive page-turning novel. The tagline is simple: Andrew, a retired serial killer in a small town, one day notices the same signs in his daughter's new boyfriend, who's desperate to have Andrew take him on as an apprentice. Where the book goes from here, though, I certainly won't spoil.
Far from being a gross-out fest or the kind of book that will give you actual nightmares, Something Awful is ultimately an exploration of character, of the darker side lurking behind the mask, how we deal with our inner rage, how we hide secrets from the world, and how we navigate family and romantic relationships when darkness intrudes. The novel's power is ultimately more psychological than body horror mixed with more than enough humor to create a fun balance, particularly in the Dagny scenes.
All told, definitely check this one out if you're looking for something fun, not too dark, and not at all awful.
Now that that's out of the way, I feel confident leaving this review because Something Awful (unrelated to the online forums of the same name) is a unique, finely tuned, and ultimately explosive page-turning novel. The tagline is simple: Andrew, a retired serial killer in a small town, one day notices the same signs in his daughter's new boyfriend, who's desperate to have Andrew take him on as an apprentice. Where the book goes from here, though, I certainly won't spoil.
Far from being a gross-out fest or the kind of book that will give you actual nightmares, Something Awful is ultimately an exploration of character, of the darker side lurking behind the mask, how we deal with our inner rage, how we hide secrets from the world, and how we navigate family and romantic relationships when darkness intrudes. The novel's power is ultimately more psychological than body horror mixed with more than enough humor to create a fun balance, particularly in the Dagny scenes.
All told, definitely check this one out if you're looking for something fun, not too dark, and not at all awful.
June 11, 2025
A macabre, thriller with a Sherlock Holmes style protagonist. Andrew is clever, vicious, and the balance between his compassionate attachment to his daughter and contrasting violent ID is equally chilling and compelling.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews