Wretch: or, The Unbecoming of Porcelain Khaw

by Eric LaRocca

From rising horror star and award-winning author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke comes a nightmarish, haunting, tech-Gothic thrill ride about sorrow, memory, and the unabashed complexity of love as a transgressive act.
After his husband dies, Simeon Link finds himself overcome by grief and seeking comfort in an unusual support group called The Wretches, who offer an addictive and dangerous source of relief. They introduce Simeon to a curious figure known as Porcelain Khaw—a man with the ability to let those who are grieving have one last intimate moment with their beloved...for a price.
Hallucinatory, fiendish, and destructively beautiful, Wretch transports us to a world where not everything is as it seems, and those we love may be the ones who haunt us most.

Genres: Horror, Queer, Fiction, LGBT, Adult, Thriller, Gothic

288 pages, Kindle Edition

Expected publication March 24, 2026

About the author

Eric LaRocca (he/they) is a 3x Bram Stoker Award® finalist, a Shirley Jackson Award nominee, and a 2x Splatterpunk Award winner. He was named by Esquire as one of the “Writers Shaping Horror’s Next Golden Age” and praised by Locus as “one of the strongest and most unique voices in contemporary horror fiction.” LaRocca’s notable works include Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, Everything the Darkness Eats, and At Dark, I Become Loathsome. He currently resides in Boston, Massachusetts, with his partner.

Reviews

[Court Zierk · Rating 5 out of 5]

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Weirdness emanates from these pages like a wafting fragrance of sinful ooze. That’s LaRocca’s speciality, a promise to make the reader squirm in their seat, and he certainly delivers on every last word of that promise in this one.

Prosaic and provocative. Surreal and spellbinding. This book never allows you to feel comfortable, constantly shapeshifting into new forms of astonishment and beguilement.

A story of longing and desperation, of self-reflection and self-deceit. It asks whether the people we love are capable of loving us back with the same fervor, but also whether the way we love others is genuine or invention. It cautions us to avoid losing ourselves in pursuit of perceived ideals. It warns us to open our eyes and see what’s in front of us.

I expected to like this book, but I didn’t expect it to be one of my favorite books of the year. LaRocca really delivered something special with this one.

[Matt Milu · Rating 5 out of 5]

A “reverse haunting” is just brilliant! And that twisted ending keeps me up at night! 5 Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️!

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

ARC for review. To be published March 24, 2025.

3 stars

Simeon Link’s husband has died and he is caught in a horrible grief spiral. He comes across an unusual grief support group called the Wretches and hopes they will be able to offer solace. They introduce the possibility that he could have one, final contact with his beloved.

So, is Eric LaRocca under some sort of blood oath contractural provision to put out a novel every month? I JUST read a new book from him (WE ARE ALWAYS TENDER WITH OUR DEAD, releasing September 9, 2025, and now, another? Maybe slow that roll (I don’t even know what that means) and focus on quality. . I liked this book better than TENDER, but neither is as good as the book before both, AT DARK, I BECOME LOATHSOME.

And I get that this is LaRocca and all, but, um, love is not sex, right?

[Lychee · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are some of LaRocca’s works that I’ve loved, but recently they have felt like misses. This one included, unfortunately.

Soooo many words, dense descriptive language for EVERYTHING. Superfluous descriptive language, as if the author is trying to hit a word count. And yeah the book was a little unsettling? Mostly just uncomfortable and awkward, but none of it was scary horror at all. All the squirm just came from secondhand embarrassment.

Thank you to Saga Press and NetGalley for e-book ARC.

[Papillon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this novel. All my thoughts and opinions are my own.

Real rating: 1.4

I get that this is meant to be grief-driven horror. I also get that not every character is meant to be likable. However, if I am meant to experience this genre through the eyes of a character that recently dealt with profound loss, is it too much to ask to at least make me care about said character? Like, at all?

I did not feel an ounce of empathy towards him. In fact, all I felt was weirded out, uncomfortable, and annoyed.

It is a mystery to me on why the author chose to hold off on starting the main plot of the book until the eleventh hour. It is even more of a mystery to me on why this novel is so sexual. It is perhaps the greatest mystery of all that the author chose to use that same eleventh hour to finally turn this nothing of a book into a vague semblance of something.

None of these mysteries should exist. And I have no desire to solve any of them.

[Ryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eric LaRocca is an author that I always find myself gravitating towards. I'm not sure why considering that a lot of their most recent endeavors have been either fine or just plain bad--but there are a few shining examples that I actually really enjoyed and own copies of.

This however was another mis-fire... and keep in mind that's about 3 in a row now.

The idea of a "reverse haunting" sounds cool. The idea of being so locked up in your grief that your desperate to manifest their image because that's what you are training yourself to see in order to cope--haunting their spirit and their peace just for your own comfort. And being indoctrinated into a group that feeds on each other's misery and grief by tasking you with taking picture of these 'hauntings'?

There's a lot that LaRocca could've done with this idea but it's wasted on a story that starts off on the wrong foot and drags on, is unengaging for the most part, cringey characters, and on top of that feels like a Cassandra Khaw book with how 'thesaurus-y' it feels.

I will say that the experimentation with mixed media in this book was interesting. I love to see books incorporate unconventional styles. And part three and the epilogue (the book is split into a prologue, three parts, and an epilogue) flipped the book on it's head and I found myself interested in seeing it to the end. But getting to that point was such a slog that I'm not sure I would recommend the whole book. It would be so much better if it was condensed and added as a short story in one of LaRocca's short story collections.

I'm trying so hard to stay on the bandwagon but I feel like I'm being dragged behind it. Please Eric LaRocca... slow down a little bit and focus a little more on storyboarding instead of trying to meet a two-per-year quota.

*Thank you to Netgalley for providing me an ARC copy of this book. All opinions expressed are entirely my own*

[AndaReadsTooMuch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Billed as a horror novel, I found myself wondering if the horror was the deep well of depression I was falling into while reading this. Make no mistake, it’s authentic in the rawness that grief leaves our psyche. It doesn’t hold back any punches there. The yawning absence of someone that should be there does indeed bring its own horror in loss. But this…ain’t it. I tried. I really did. But I grabbed this ARC because LaRocca was known for his splatterpunk. And what I got was an intense need for a Prozac prescription. By the time I was halfway through I still couldn’t figure out what made this horror or where it was headed. I was honestly starting to be too depressed to find out. Right about the time we got to the shared delusion/cult thing, I was out. I saw what LuLaRoe and essential oils did to people. No thank you. Hard. Pass. I really did try in this one but unfortunately it just wasn’t a good fit for me.

Thank you to Saga Press for the gifted eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

[Brandy Leigh · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book introduces Simeon, a man grappling with suicidal thoughts following the death of his husband.

While Simeon is painted as a tragic figure, I felt no sympathy for him. It’s not that unlikeable characters are inherently bad, but in a story centered around grief, you should at least want to feel something. Instead, Simeon's presence becomes grating, and I found myself more irritated than moved.

Then there's the Wretches support group that barely gets any attention. Which it’s the name of the book so that’s alittle surprising…

In the end, this novel reads like it’s trying too hard to be profound, but ends up lost in its own prose, leaving its characters and readers stranded without connection.

Thank you for the publisher and NetGalley for the eARC.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eric Larocca at his Eric Larocciest - i feel like i say the same thing about his books, if you liked one you’ll probably like at least most of his others; if you didn’t like one he probably isn’t for you.

He’s cemented himself as one of my fav horror authors from the past few years and i’ve given most of his stuff 5 stars, Wretch is possibly his darkest novel so far. He writes gruesome, dark, detailed horror that usually revolves around queer or queer-adjacent characters, and touches a lot on sexual identity and grief. This book is best going into blind, but like i said if you’ve enjoyed other works from Larocca you should like this one too.

[LX · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you so much for the proof

This isn't like what I was expecting and this might not be for everyone, but give me grief horror!!!

What made this a 4.5 star read for me was afterwards and the days after where I went over the points in the story that linked, that interconnected, the subtle horror from non-stop of grief and what it does to us and changes us. Do we haunt the dead? We do. More than they do us. What levels would you go for one more moment? Currently I'm loving grief horror and it seems to be helping me in ways - Simeon isn't a perfect character, there are thoughts and moments he has that makes you want to swing at him, but he is also human and flawed and haunted. You root for him one moment and in others you're staring him down thinking WTF? - totally different, to me, from Eric LaRocca's other work but it just worked.

[Steven]

Review to come upon release

I need to ponder my star rating.

[Anna Dupre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Refracting the bleakest of lights upon ourselves, Wretch by Eric LaRocca reads like a jagged, fractured mirror, its shards digging deep into the truth of ourselves, not just the parts we wish to hold true. In the context of grief, depravity directed towards others and the self seems to run rampant, a raging bull in a fragile shop filled with gleaming porcelain and delicate mirrors. This is very true for Simeon Link after he loses his husband, a loss with seemingly unending reverberations through Simeon’s life. Enter The Wretches, a grief “support” group that searches for meaning in the mundane now tainted by loss. But Simeon needs more than what The Wretches have to offer, a fact that leads him to the doorstep of the puzzling Porcelain Khaw, a man who can allegedly bring the departed forward for one last encounter. Driven by an all-consuming desire to rid himself of sorrow and fill himself with his beloved, Simeon finds what unsettling reality lies at the end of this macabre road, one paved in anguish and suffering.

Eric LaRocca pens Wretch with an incredible amount of poetic precision, unraveling the story of Simeon Link with an atmosphere of subjective realism through unique perspective. From the very first page, readers are made to feel drawn in to Simeon’s struggle for closure amidst a sea of grief, an experience that is wholly universal to the human condition. Yet, as the chapters progress, the realities behind Simeon’s state become known at the perfect times, layers unfolding to create deep dread and undoubted unsettledness. With such unease spreading like wildfire, it’s hard to fathom a conclusion that ends in neatness.

However, LaRocca delivers one of the most complete, horribly harmonious endings made possible through a cacophony of stark revelations, cycles with no end, and concentrated horror. Any sense of footing within this plot is absolutely obliterated thanks to the way this novel unfolds, an artful decay of notions previously believed to be fact. Wretch is the kind of novel that asks looming questions regarding hunger, desire, entitlement, and contaminated perception. LaRocca provides answers in earnest, taking the form of all we wish to push away.

Penned with prose that aches with hurt and desire, Eric LaRocca explores the demented repetition of despair perpetuated by grief with Wretch. Such a story elicits deep contemplation surrounding the endless nature of sadness, the contamination it seems to so easily breed under the best (worst) conditions. Possession no longer only belongs to demons or the dead in these pages; no, the living are more than capable of this kind of ruthless hold with little regard for care. Gruesome, gutting, and grotesque, Wretch is a harrowing union of possession and grief, forming a monstrously gorgeous modern horror story.

[Megthereader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eric LaRocca does it again! This was wild, grotesque, emotional, disturbing, and such a fun ride! I had an incredible time reading this and THE ENDING!! This book has topics of grief, loneliness, obsession, self-reflection, trauma, hopelessness, suffering and so much more. It was soooo good! I highly recommend this to anyone who likes horror!!
Thank you to Netgalley and Saga Press for sending me an e-arc to read and enjoy!

[Paige Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another fantastic piece of work from LaRocca! I was fortunate enough to score an ARC through NetGalley and the author and boy did this book exceed my expectations and then some. This book wrecked me much like the authors previous works.

Wretch is a terrifying decent into uncertainty. The reader is left trying to piece together what’s real vs what isn’t. This is perfect for fans of psychological horror with grief and those who love a sharp and poetic prose.

Highly recommend! Wretch releases on March 24th, 2026. Thank you to NetGalley and Eric LaRocca for this ARC.

[Azhar · Rating 3 out of 5]

a short novel (under 200 pages) that manages to overstay its welcome. verbose, heady and titillating with the promise of an uneasy, culty horror. it sounds fantastic but somehow larocca fumbles the execution, and i was just left wanting.


thanking the publishers & netgalley for the ARC.

[Emily Poche · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to Saga Press for providing this ARC for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Wretch by Eric LaRocca is a transgressive horror title that deals primarily with the desperation that accompanies grief. Following the loss of his husband, Simeon is suicidal, unemployed, and deeply unhappy. When a mysterious support group leads him to someone who could help him reconnect, he’s willing to do anything to have one last connection.

Having read a handful or LaRocca’s other books at this point, I do think that this title is pretty in line with the language and themes he’s used in other titles. If you really got into it in the past, then this may be for you, but if you’ve found him to be wordy or convoluted in the past Wretch is in no way a departure from that style. Personally, like in or the instances, I do think the author errs on the side of being verbose to the point of losing some meaning. It feels at time if there’s a lot of language that’s meant to convey depth and introspection but which really just feels like someone to hit a word count.

The story is characterized as transgressive horror; in some ways I agree, in some ways I’m not sure that’s the fright clarification. In the traditional sense, this doesn’t exactly read as a horror story. The tension and pacing make it so that it feels so measured and linear. Even the horror elements are more unsettling and transgressive than horrific or shocking. The book is transgressive, however, in its theming at times. There are very casual mentions to torture, trafficking, suicide, and child abuse that come across with so little fanfare that it’s somewhat surprising. LaRocca consistently pushes the envelope of just how messed up a discussion can be without it really even seeming to raise alarm bells. Case in point, there’s a whole section about a father fantasizing about throwing his infant to an alligator pit that’s somewhat positioned as shocking, but which is really just par for the course.

At the end of the day, I can’t recommend this novel, except maybe for readers who are already fans of the author’s work and who are going through some form of loss. Maybe that’s the cathartic target audience. In my persona reading I found the book vacillated wildly between torturously slow self-masturbatory whimpering from Simeon, who isn’t even a “good” bad protagonist and mentions of sadistic yet disinterested interactions with medium/cosmic prostitute Porcelain Khaw. It just really didn’t have a very robust plot, characters that felt compelling, or pacing that kept my attention. I’m giving this book a 2/5 out or 5. I have liked this author’s works previously, but as other reviewers have pointed out, there has been a breakneck pace of publishing. The last two titles have failed to really live up the way earlier works did.

[Cris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Apparently, my comfort genre is just grief and rot now, because Wretch delivered both.

Simeon is lost after his husband’s death and joins a grief support group called The Wretches. There he learns of Porcelain Khaw, a man who says he can help people see their loved ones again. At first, it feels like something that might actually help him, but it slowly turns into something a lot darker and more unsettling.

This one hooked me from the start, and once things began to fall apart, I couldn’t stop reading. It starts off dripping in grief before sliding into something strange and almost dreamlike by the end. At one point, the story takes this turn involving beetles, and what happens to Simeon there was pretty wild. It’s trippy and honestly one of my favorite parts of the book. I love when a story leans into that kind of surreal, mind-bending space, and Eric nailed it. It’s disturbing, but in a way that really gets you thinking. It made me sit with the idea of control, loss, and what happens when you stop being yourself.

It’s pretty emotional and definitely unnerving from start to finish. Check the trigger warnings, because it gets dark, but if that kind of story’s your thing, it’s so worth it. Five stars, easily one of my favorites this year.

[Wyetha · Rating 3 out of 5]

THANK YOU! Net Galley and Saga Press for a copy of this title.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around the story of this title.

In the first few chapters, it seemed like it was simply about a man grieving the loss of his partner. But then there’s also mention of a woman having a strange encounter while going through something similar, and I couldn’t quite figure out what was what. After a few beats, we realize the main character, Simeon, is reading post threads where he comes across this story—and that’s when things start to shift.

Early on, it becomes clear that this is about more than just grief. It’s about the kind of grief that consumes you so completely that you feel like you can’t go on.

I don’t know the loss of a partner, but I do know the loss of a parent. Depending on the circumstances, grief can grip you and keep you in that place of remembering and mourning over and over again. But at some point, you have to ask yourself—when do you pull yourself out of that state?

Simeon—let me just say it—was a miserable SOB. He hasn’t been able to function since losing Jonathan. His work suffers. His relationships suffer. He can’t seem to find solid footing anywhere. Yet, in the midst of his grief, he slowly begins to understand the true depth of their relationship. In his sorrow, he had been missing the bigger picture of what they actually shared.

When he stumbles across a thread promising the possibility of seeing deceased loved ones again, he pulls at it—hoping for one last glimpse of Jonathan.

But is it ever really just one last time for someone who’s suffering that deeply?

My immediate thought was: let the man rest in love. By constantly seeking him out, you’re making his spirit linger. The story even suggests that it’s the living who haunt the dead—not the other way around. I knew the moment Simeon caught that first glimpse that one time would never be enough. He would want more. And that need ultimately leads to his own demise, in a way.

I truly believe that if the dead could speak, it wouldn’t be to ask you to wallow in their memory. It would be to celebrate what you had, carry it with you, and move forward.

The ending felt strange to me and never fully wrapped up in a satisfying way, which is why I ultimately gave it three ✨ stars.

[Braden Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eric LaRocca's WRETCH is for the depressed, gay, thirty-something guy that has ever asked himself, "Why am I so accommodating of everyone else’s needs but my own?" While this book is marketed as a horror, and there are certainly disturbing moments, this is really a psychological exploration on grief, identity, suffering, loneliness, self-hatred, and the role memory plays in our lives. LaRocca illustrates how the living can haunt ghosts because they can't move on from the absence of that person, so they obsess over memories or photos or anything they can hold onto from the past. The dismal atmosphere mimics Simeon's internal world, and the additional anxiety of what is a factual memory and what is a warped memory enhances the paranoia.

In my darker moments, I hate to admit that I relate all too well to Simeon's grim outlook on life. There was a sort of catharsis I had reading another character say the exact thoughts I've pondered before, no matter how icky or depressing they may be. LaRocca holds up a mirror to the reader and shows us that we all have messy parts that leave us feeling incomplete, undesirable, and inadequate. I think most of us have felt used, left behind, or silenced by our own fears or insecurities at one point or another, we just don't like acknowledging any of those things. That's why people rely so much on illusion to survive. It's why we cling to seemingly happy photographs that might be masking painful experiences.

I also related to a lot of the gay trials and tribulations so I was a perfect target audience for this. WRETCH feels like a bleak book, but it also feels like one that A24 producers would salivate to get their hands on because the aesthetic is a match. Personally, I'd never trust a man named Porcelain Khaw, but I understand that a person will do anything to win someone's love or approval, even if that person is dead. That ending tho! Special thanks to NetGalley and Saga Press for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. I'm obsessed with the cover btw.

[Sierra| HooksxBooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wretch is a super and I mean super slow burn, following the POV of Simeon Link, a widower. Simeon, although he is grieving, I personally found him hard to like - and it wasn't his grief that it made it this way. It was just Simeon being Simeon.

The more the book goes on, and the more you get to know and SEE Simeon for who and what he truly is, you understand exactly how he ended up in the situation he is in. I shook my head so much, side eyed and just shuttered so much reading this book. AND I JUDGED, HARD!!!! When it got to the 77% mark, and I said "Oh, brother"; I just knew it was going to go downhill from there and it did. Everything that came next was wild.

Now, even though this book started slow, and I mean slow, it was worth continuing. Because the way this book explained every question I had and ended on such a cliff hanger that left me STANDING with my KINDLE in HAND!!! LaRocca HOW DARE YOU!!! I would read a part two. I NEED MORE OF Porcelain Khaw. That's a POV I would clock in for.

Overall, the book was worth the read. I would def suggest it to friends.

I received a copy of this ARC from NetGalley.

[Mackenzi · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book fell flat for me in multiple places. It felt.. cringey in a way. For about 2-3 chapters all you read about is how the main character continuously wants to take a razor and end it all and whereas I get why and the sentiment for it it really affected the way the book read. He refused to get out of his grief and even at one point fucked his ex wife thinking that was going to help. Obviously grief makes people do weird things but the way Simeon was written I didn't feel pity or sadness for him at all. I found him totally annoying. Especially when we got a chapter talking about how he could only think about throwing his child in the alligator exhibit????!
Some chapters were extremely long, and I love a chapter as good long chapter as much as the next person but in a book like this it made no sense to have entire chapters dedicated to blog posts, I feel it could use some trimming because it felt like filler at some points and the plot was being overrun with it.
I wish I could've enjoyed this more then I did.
Thank you to Netgalley and Saga Press for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

[Risshan Adele · Rating 4 out of 5]

As always LaRocca does grief horror like no other.
The lines are reality blur as the possible truth leaks out. The mind is such a powerful place even in a broken state. Our main character finds out just how far the rabbit hole goes while searching for answers he just doesn’t want to see. It’s dark, beautiful, and poetic. Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the arc copy

[dessie*₊⊹ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rounding up the rating because I do enjoy Larocca’s writing. This just …eh. I was uncomfortable at times, but that’s really the extent of my reaction. Just didn’t live up to the picture I had in my mind after reading the description. I think I would’ve liked it more as a novella with less padding. 2.5 stars.

[Victoria · Rating 2 out of 5]

~thank you to the author, the publisher & NetGalley forgiving me a chance to read & review this book~

I don’t get it. I didn’t even understand half of what was happening. Reading the excerpt, I was expecting to find out more about that but …. Idk. I felt like the book was just random writing and all jumbled and didn’t make sense. I’m just confused.

[Dave Musson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ah, Jeez, this was not good.

Overwritten, waffling, meandering and repetitive…the prose here is so purple even Prince would have said it was too much. The Clive Barker influence is obvious for all to see, but it’s like Barker being written by a desperate person on Tumblr trying to create something meaningful and failing miserably.

This is such a massive drop-off since last year’s At Dark I Become Loathsome and two in a row now from La Rocca that have been massive misses. I don’t get it. Is it just a direction that doesn’t click for me? Or is this a social media hit author being pushed for quantity over quality by their publisher?

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the review copy.

[Andrew · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me an advance review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Frankly, I found this to be a waste of time. It wasn't scary, it wasn't thought provoking, and it wasn't a good allegory for.. anything. Just a slog.

Simeon's husband Jonathan died and he's really torn up about it. He has an ex-wife and kid that he's understandably neglecting spending time with because he's grieving. He gets introduced to a kind of support group called The Wretches, comprised of people who have lost loved ones. They take pictures of random things that they think they can see the faces of their loved ones in and present them to the group. Through this group, Simeon learns about a mysterious guy who can apparently summon the dead to talk to their loved ones, so he does that.

I don't think there's a single thing this book did successfully. Let's talk about it. As a queer horror book, at best it was a failure. At worst, it was plainly offensive. Simeon has an ex-wife and a kid, but he's always been gay. He leaves his wife and marries Jonathan who he then badgers for a baby. Sorry but that shit bothers me. Obviously gay couples can have babies, but it is very.. idk straight person writing queer person coded to me to have the presumably gay character want to complete his family with his husband by having a kid. But more egregious, he fucks his ex-wife in this. The point was clearly to illustrate that grieving people do self-sabotaging things for no good reason, but that just bothered me. He could have fucked the only other gay guy in the book to illustrate this point, but it feels like bury your gays dialed up to 11 to not only kill the husband, but then have the gay guy (yes, he is explicitly gay and not bisexual) then have sex with a woman. And then die in the end by the way lmao

As a horror book, it wasn't scary. 90% of this was Simeon just saying how much he missed and loved Jonathan. The only parts that made an attempt at being scary were in the final 30 pages of the book, and it failed. Not scary, not eerie, not horrific. Just tedious and boring.

As an allegory for grief, you have to be confident in your writing skills to pull that off in the horror genre. Just about every third horror book is an allegory for grief, so you better be good at writing to stand out, and this book wasn't it. As previously stated, most of this book is just Simeon reflecting on how much he loved and misses Jonathan, but that's all it was. Just a bunch of telling. I never once felt the torment that Simeon was apparently going through. The writing just wasn't strong enough to evoke anything. The prose was so formulaic, I struggle to see how this got through basic editing. Just about every sentence started with "I" making it a tiresome reading experience.

"I walked to the sink. I thought about how Jonathan was in this bathroom. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to stifle the tears. I left the bathroom to make a meal. I pulled out my phone to text Evelyn, but I second guessed myself...."

It was just awful. I'd love to say that the book could be improved with some heavy editing, but I don't think the plot was there to be honest. Maybe if this were a short story, but so much of this felt like filler or didn't make sense. What was the point of the Wretches as a group? Just as a vehicle to ultimately deliver Simeon to Porcelain? Why is the book called Wretch if that group isn't actually super important? The "twist" ending also was eye-rolling and felt pointless. I didn't care about it but was also confused by it, both in terms of motivation and logistically how it came to pass. But whatever, I can't wait to forget about this reading experience entirely.

[Amanda · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've always had a mixed response to Eric LaRocca books, but no matter what I know I'm going to have a time. So when I saw he had a new book coming out I was so excited to get an ARC for it. But then this book was the most boring thing I've read in a long time. I don't know how a book less than 200 pages can be this slow! Every thought was repeated for PAGES.

Wretch is about Simeon, who after the death of his husband is having a hard time adjusting. He's searching online for any connection and is led to a group called the Wretches, and eventually a man named Porcelain Khaw with the promise of being connected to his dead husband.

Besides the incredibly slow and honestly bad writing, there were so many issues with this book. There were so many moments I had to put it down to look around and see if anyone else had read the same thing as me. While the story is about a gay man, it felt so incredibly homophobic - making comments like only heterosexual people can be monogamous, gay people are built different? And it wasn't just our MC, every queer relationship in this book seemed so problematic.

There are so many things I could go on about, but the I'm going to stick with this as my final thought. The ending? I see so many people going on about how amazing the twist is. But it was dumb! The reason no one could guess it is because the character in question was so flat and had no personality that no one expected him to do anything except stand there (what he literally does for 95% of the book).

Thanks to Netgalley and Saga Press for giving me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Ley Taylor Johnson · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'll be honest, this book was not for me. I'm becoming quite the avid fan of queer horror, especially the kind that features unlikable characters suffering through a slow, agonizing build of tension on the way to confronting (and possibly falling victim to) the manifestation of their trauma; the premise of the living haunting their dead loved ones using the twisted relief Porcelain Khaw offers, therefore, sounded right up my alley. I'm admittedly not typically into the splatterpunk subgenre LaRocca is known for, but even then, I don't mind some gratuitous violence and ickiness if it's in service of the larger story.

The problem is, the book delivers on exactly none of this. The only thing promised on the tin that actually makes it into the book is the "queer" part—the horror elements are sparing and only appear in real earnest in the last few chapters, the main character isn’t unlikable so much as he is endlessly whiny and self-absorbed, and the pacing itself is so slow that any building tension is lost in the wake of needless, overexpository filler.

Seriously, you could cut this book in half and there would still be too much padding. We’re well halfway into the book before the titular Porcelain Khaw shows up, only to have his appearance and purpose in the story feel rushed and inconsequential compared to how much he’s been propped up by hearsay and internet rumors up to that point. He’s treated by the story as a unique creature of horror that sustains itself on grief, but any threat he poses is immediately overshadowed in the latter half of the book by how completely obsessed with himself Simeon is.

Simeon himself was the greatest obstacle to me in finishing this book. Take away all the aforementioned padding, and the plot boils down to a short story about a man who is so self-concerned (in a way that’s somehow simultaneously faux-edgy and self-hating and egregiously masturbatory) that he’s signed his own death warrant before the story even begins, only to not actually learn his lesson at all by the time it ends. Which could be interesting if the manifestation of that conceitedness had any direction to it, such as being treated as an actual character flaw in any way, but it’s scattered in a way that doesn’t have any apparent intent and just results in him generally being a piece of shit about nine thousand different unrelated things, including (but not limited to):

- Considering throwing his infant child into the alligator pit at the zoo to shield him from the horrors of misanthropy (not just an intrusive thought, he actually admits he was about to do it).
- Neglecting that same son well into his teenage years and actively avoiding spending any time with him despite simultaneously being convinced that the kid’s life revolves around how much he desperately wants to hang out with his dad.
- Lying to his ex-wife and sleeping with her under false pretenses to manipulate her into giving him money he can spend on sleeping with a simulacrum of his late husband.
- Waxing poetic across multiple chapters about how gay men are inherently shallow and incapable of monogamy, as apparently evidenced by the rejections he received during his own serial cheating behavior.

There is the tiniest message here about how there are consequences for ignoring the living in favor of the dead, but considering how little Simeon himself confronts or even considers that lesson (surprise: the poor ex-wife is left footing the bill yet again after Simeon decides to have his cake and eat it too), I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s the underlying message of the book. That would suggest there was some kind of point to the story, underlying or otherwise.

There’s a world in which WRETCH is a better book, but it’s certainly not this one. After reading additional reviews of this and LaRocca’s other books, I’m not entirely surprised—I imagine it’s hard to deliver quality releases when you’re focused on quantity, and especially when they’re so burdened by blatant misogyny and internalized homophobia.

1/5

[AlyciaRunsandReads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ahhh! The end of this was so good. I binged the last 40 percent in a few hours this morning. This is queer transgressive fiction/horror with themes of grief, memory, and identity.

Simeon is having trouble dealing with his grief after the loss of his husband Jonathan. His workplace has put him on unpaid leave indefinitely and his ex-wife is frustrated by his lack of interest in their son’s life. Longing for connection and a way to see his love again Simeon attends a grief support group that claims to be able to help people see signs of their loved ones around them. This leads Simeon down a rabbit hole culminating in him meeting someone who claims he can give you time with your lost loved one for a price.

This was weird and thought provoking as I have come to expect from LaRocca. Simeon is highly unlikable but I was still intrigued by his journey. I liked the themes of memories and how losing someone warps the memories we have of our time with someone. After someone passes are we keeping their spirits alive through these memories or are we haunting them rather than their ghost haunting us? I we preventing them from moving on when we are unable to move through our grief?

This pacing of this is slow at first but it does pick up for those who are patient. It slowly spirals into horrific and creepy. The ending was wild and quite fun to read. The reveals toward the end I did not see coming and I think it would lend itself to a reread as what didn't seem that important of a detail on a first read may reveal itself with a re read. The first half of the books feels piece meal at times but if you trust the process all the little bits come together in the end.

This was my first full length LaRocca and I look forward to reading more full length novels of theirs in the future!

The E-arc of this book was provided to me by netgalley and I am reviewing this work honestly.
Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for access to this work.

[Arielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Simon and Schuster/Saga Press for this ARC, all thoughts mentioned are my own.

In this novel, we follow Simeon, who is grieving the loss of his husband, and finds a nontraditional way to do so. He joins a group called the wretches, who then leads him to Porcelain Khaw, who can allow him to have an experience with his husband one last time.

I liked the setup of this story. You feel bad for Simeon, of course, since he lost his husband. But then as the story progresses, you really see Simeon’s flaws, which begs the question of if we should really be liking or rooting for him. I found his lack of empathy to be hard to read. I understand the basis and why this was done, but reading about a man who cannot show up for his son, makes false promises to him as well, just created a distaste in my mouth that stuck with me throughout the book.

This was one of the most unique premises I have ever read in a book, I give Eric LaRocca 5 stars in uniqueness. There were parts of this book that were downright disturbing, and they were written amazingly, even though I was not having a great time reading those things in detail. I think overall, I had a really hard time getting behind Simeon when he was such a terrible, selfish person, but I have to say, he wasn’t supposed to be likable, so I land at 4 stars for my rating. The twist on the end had my jaw on the FLOOR, I was not expecting that in the least, and I eat up a surprise twist.

I had a good time reading it and am excited to venture into LaRocca’s other works eventually.