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Olyoke
Olyoke, Tennessee is home to a Dollywood-like theme park, generations of troubled families, and the warnings of a dead architect turned conscripted prophet, who writes of a coming cataclysm.
As the fire nears, DARCY, a Dolly Parton impersonator, finds strange worms in the swamp and feeds them to her dog, who then speaks with the voice of her dead mother. Recently divorced LYLE KNOX is called through its dreams by a strange house, and through its investigation, discovers that Lyle Knox itself is not a person, but a structure. MAGGIE WARNER organizes a theater production to stave off her gnawing misery and becomes convinced that only the people she sees in her dreams are real. Moreover, the Whistler—the man Maggie becomes when she sleeps—welcomes the town’s impending Judgment with open arms.
All destinies converge in Olyoke.
None will escape unchanged.
As the fire nears, DARCY, a Dolly Parton impersonator, finds strange worms in the swamp and feeds them to her dog, who then speaks with the voice of her dead mother. Recently divorced LYLE KNOX is called through its dreams by a strange house, and through its investigation, discovers that Lyle Knox itself is not a person, but a structure. MAGGIE WARNER organizes a theater production to stave off her gnawing misery and becomes convinced that only the people she sees in her dreams are real. Moreover, the Whistler—the man Maggie becomes when she sleeps—welcomes the town’s impending Judgment with open arms.
All destinies converge in Olyoke.
None will escape unchanged.
160 pages, Paperback
First published March 24, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
November 20, 2025
Remarkably rich for such a compact story, Olyoke is a prismatic puzzle-box coyly interfolding the creepy and the melancholy. It unfurls not as a linear story but through episodes (some grisly, some eerie, some heavy with emotion) which feel like rooms in a non-Euclidian house connected by concealed extradimensional corridors. Olyoke is a town where you should never go and might never leave, a swamp of plagues which will infect you into lusting after infection.
April 26, 2026
A Tourist Trap Where the Souvenirs Bite Back
BWAF SINISTER SELECTION
BWAF Score: 8/10
TL;DR: Olyoke is a mean little scrapbook of a town that sells its own nightmares back to itself, then acts surprised when the nightmares start shopping. Endwell mashes folklore, internet ephemera, faux-archives, and stage directions into a sticky mythology about preservation, spectacle, and the slow approach of something hot and holy and wrong. It absolutely lands.
This is a Tenebrous Press joint and it has that Tenebrous vibe of “here is your elegant weirdness, now let me bite you with it.” Vincent Endwell is a multidisciplinary artist who originally hails from unceded Onondaga territory in Central New York, and their horror cred is already stamped in places like Dark Horses Magazine, Corvid Queen, and Tenebrous Press’s Your Body is Not Your Body. They write like someone with multiple creative outlets to offload the voltage: music for the raw autobiographical ache, writing for the digested, speculative version that can be sharpened into a blade. You can feel that cross-medium discipline in Olyoke, too. It has the collage brain, the comics sense of framing, and the pianist’s “I hate reading music, so I learned to improvise” swagger. The result is a book that’s formally playful but emotionally serious, a town-sized nightmare assembled out of images, textures, and dread, then pushed into motion like a ritual you can’t unsee.
Calling this “a novel” is accurate in the way calling a haunted mall “a building” is accurate. It’s a mosaic. You’re in and around Olyoke, Tennessee, a town pressed up against marshland and tourist machinery, where people keep trying to preserve things that should not be preserved, and where belief systems start acting like infections. You get specific POV anchors, like Beth-Anne in “The Modeling Resin,” who goes back into a rotting bar and into the gravitational field of a childhood memory, and a whole constellation of voices in documents, transcripts, and threads that orbit the same ugly star. The stakes are not “will the hero win,” they’re “what does this place do to you once it notices you,” and “how far can you go pretending the nightmare is just part of the attraction.”
Endwell keeps changing the delivery method without losing the internal chemistry. The opening “Recovered Document” reads like scripture from a lunatic theology department, all raven-thinkers and proclamations, and it sets the tone: language itself is part of the curse. Then “The Modeling Resin” hits you with contemporary intimacy and dread you can taste. There is a moment where the resin figures click into focus and Beth-Anne hears the line, “They’re just like you,” and it’s so simple, so goddamn predatory, that you feel your spine try to leave your body. Later, “The Wandering Daughter” slides into an online thread about Hailey Land and its wax museum, and Endwell nails that confessional tone where someone is laughing while they are clearly still fucked up about what they saw. “On The Fire” turns into a manifesto about an approaching literal fire and a “Christmas pyramid” model of reality, and it sounds ridiculous right up until it doesn’t, which is the book’s whole trick. Then “Pyramid” becomes a podcast investigation that collapses into stage directions and audience reactions, like you’re listening to a true crime show about a cursed play and then suddenly you’re in the play and the play is in you. That formal pivot is not a gimmick. It’s the same theme wearing a different mask: performance as ritual, entertainment as summoning.
Endwell’s big strength is sentence texture and control of voice. The modern sections are clean, observant, and cruel in that empathetic way. The “document” sections are baroque and feverish, but they stay legible because they’re fueled by obsession, not just vocabulary. The internet bits feel lived-in instead of “hello fellow kids,” and the transcript material is confident enough to be funny without losing menace. Pacing is interesting because the book is both episodic and cumulative. You get these hard jolts of scene-based horror, then longer myth-building passages that feel like walking deeper into the marsh while someone keeps telling you it’s fine, it’s totally fine, look there’s a gift shop. If you hate books that ask you to assemble meaning, you’ll call it indulgent. If you like your horror ambitious and structurally weird, it feels like being handed a box of cursed artifacts and realizing they all belong to the same body.
The aftertaste for me is two threads braided together. One is preservation as violence. Wax, resin, documentation, “local history,” even memory itself, all become ways of trapping something living and calling it care. The other is spectacle, the way a town can turn dread into branding until the dread gets bored and stops pretending. The horror machinery expresses that through replicas that rot, rituals that look like shows, and shows that stop being pretend. The next day, what stuck in my ribs was the question of what Olyoke really is: a place, a machine, or a hungry story that found a town to wear.
Olyoke sits with the books that treat form as part of the haunting, not just a container. It feels like an author planting a flag that says, “I can do folk myth, I can do internet horror, I can do theatrical ritual, and I can make it all rhyme.” If this is where Endwell’s arc is headed, it’s a hell of a mission statement, and it’s memorable in a way that does not wash off.
Excellent and weird as hell. A distinct vision that turns a town into a ritual engine and then feeds it your fingers, lovingly, while it says it’s for preservation.
Read if you crave mosaic horror, dossiers, transcripts, threads, the whole cursed-scrapbook buffet.
Skip if you hate stories that demand you connect dots and trust atmosphere.
BWAF SINISTER SELECTION
BWAF Score: 8/10
TL;DR: Olyoke is a mean little scrapbook of a town that sells its own nightmares back to itself, then acts surprised when the nightmares start shopping. Endwell mashes folklore, internet ephemera, faux-archives, and stage directions into a sticky mythology about preservation, spectacle, and the slow approach of something hot and holy and wrong. It absolutely lands.
This is a Tenebrous Press joint and it has that Tenebrous vibe of “here is your elegant weirdness, now let me bite you with it.” Vincent Endwell is a multidisciplinary artist who originally hails from unceded Onondaga territory in Central New York, and their horror cred is already stamped in places like Dark Horses Magazine, Corvid Queen, and Tenebrous Press’s Your Body is Not Your Body. They write like someone with multiple creative outlets to offload the voltage: music for the raw autobiographical ache, writing for the digested, speculative version that can be sharpened into a blade. You can feel that cross-medium discipline in Olyoke, too. It has the collage brain, the comics sense of framing, and the pianist’s “I hate reading music, so I learned to improvise” swagger. The result is a book that’s formally playful but emotionally serious, a town-sized nightmare assembled out of images, textures, and dread, then pushed into motion like a ritual you can’t unsee.
Calling this “a novel” is accurate in the way calling a haunted mall “a building” is accurate. It’s a mosaic. You’re in and around Olyoke, Tennessee, a town pressed up against marshland and tourist machinery, where people keep trying to preserve things that should not be preserved, and where belief systems start acting like infections. You get specific POV anchors, like Beth-Anne in “The Modeling Resin,” who goes back into a rotting bar and into the gravitational field of a childhood memory, and a whole constellation of voices in documents, transcripts, and threads that orbit the same ugly star. The stakes are not “will the hero win,” they’re “what does this place do to you once it notices you,” and “how far can you go pretending the nightmare is just part of the attraction.”
Endwell keeps changing the delivery method without losing the internal chemistry. The opening “Recovered Document” reads like scripture from a lunatic theology department, all raven-thinkers and proclamations, and it sets the tone: language itself is part of the curse. Then “The Modeling Resin” hits you with contemporary intimacy and dread you can taste. There is a moment where the resin figures click into focus and Beth-Anne hears the line, “They’re just like you,” and it’s so simple, so goddamn predatory, that you feel your spine try to leave your body. Later, “The Wandering Daughter” slides into an online thread about Hailey Land and its wax museum, and Endwell nails that confessional tone where someone is laughing while they are clearly still fucked up about what they saw. “On The Fire” turns into a manifesto about an approaching literal fire and a “Christmas pyramid” model of reality, and it sounds ridiculous right up until it doesn’t, which is the book’s whole trick. Then “Pyramid” becomes a podcast investigation that collapses into stage directions and audience reactions, like you’re listening to a true crime show about a cursed play and then suddenly you’re in the play and the play is in you. That formal pivot is not a gimmick. It’s the same theme wearing a different mask: performance as ritual, entertainment as summoning.
Endwell’s big strength is sentence texture and control of voice. The modern sections are clean, observant, and cruel in that empathetic way. The “document” sections are baroque and feverish, but they stay legible because they’re fueled by obsession, not just vocabulary. The internet bits feel lived-in instead of “hello fellow kids,” and the transcript material is confident enough to be funny without losing menace. Pacing is interesting because the book is both episodic and cumulative. You get these hard jolts of scene-based horror, then longer myth-building passages that feel like walking deeper into the marsh while someone keeps telling you it’s fine, it’s totally fine, look there’s a gift shop. If you hate books that ask you to assemble meaning, you’ll call it indulgent. If you like your horror ambitious and structurally weird, it feels like being handed a box of cursed artifacts and realizing they all belong to the same body.
The aftertaste for me is two threads braided together. One is preservation as violence. Wax, resin, documentation, “local history,” even memory itself, all become ways of trapping something living and calling it care. The other is spectacle, the way a town can turn dread into branding until the dread gets bored and stops pretending. The horror machinery expresses that through replicas that rot, rituals that look like shows, and shows that stop being pretend. The next day, what stuck in my ribs was the question of what Olyoke really is: a place, a machine, or a hungry story that found a town to wear.
Olyoke sits with the books that treat form as part of the haunting, not just a container. It feels like an author planting a flag that says, “I can do folk myth, I can do internet horror, I can do theatrical ritual, and I can make it all rhyme.” If this is where Endwell’s arc is headed, it’s a hell of a mission statement, and it’s memorable in a way that does not wash off.
Excellent and weird as hell. A distinct vision that turns a town into a ritual engine and then feeds it your fingers, lovingly, while it says it’s for preservation.
Read if you crave mosaic horror, dossiers, transcripts, threads, the whole cursed-scrapbook buffet.
Skip if you hate stories that demand you connect dots and trust atmosphere.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Once again, thank you to the fine people at Tenebrous Press, for providing a digital ARC of this title. All views and opinions are my own. The following is an excerpt of my full review. Link provided post-text.
-
The late Folk Musician, activist and Folklorist , Utah Phillips (1935-2008) spoke and wrote often about a concept he referred to as “The Long Memory”:
“Yes, the long memory is the most radical idea in this country. It is the loss of that long memory which deprives our people of that connective flow of thoughts and events that clarifies our vision, not of where we’re going, but where we want to go.”
Utah spoke of time as an “immense long river”, we all stand in it, are shaped by it. Our lives become part of it. The past is always with us, all you have to do is pause, reach into that river and grab a stone, reach for the the bits of what was, left by those who stood farther up, that great river.:
“... every song they created
And every poem they laid down
Flows down to me
And if I take the time to ask
If I take the time to seek
If I take the time to reach out
I can build that bridge between my world and theirs”
-Utah Phillips “Bridges” from the album “The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere”
That great river, time, is almost a character itself, in Vincent Endwell’s OLYOKE. A story, saga, prophecy, a warning. It is told through recollections, news clippings, online web postings, excerpts from books both known and long forgotten. Olyoke, Tennessee, like so many towns just like it, is a place where the forces of the present, of the future, struggle and push against the weight of the past, the force of that long memory. Olyoke brings a sense of being comfortably nestled next to literary places like Spoon River Illinois, and unsettling near the borders of the dread place, Carcosa. The menace, the strangeness, the doom that looms over Olyoke, is like the submerged dangers, in that flow of the long memory, that something in the great river that brushes your leg, as you hunt in the current for a morsel of the past.
... Endwell’s book is rich with echoes of the past. Similar to coming across a scrap book of yellowed clippings and journal entries, whose handwriting is nearly unreadable, yet leaves you pondering what is hinted at, knowing sleep will not find you, when night falls. The flow of the story rings on the mind and senses like some obscure folk tune, recorded to wax cylinder a century ago, then warped remainder heard digitized on archive.org. It is left to the reader to decide to what extent they can detect, the lifeblood, the heartbeat, of that which persists in Olyoke, whose reality moves both with , and the onward flow of times current.
Full review can be read here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/greasyg...
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
3.5 rounded to 3, Idk the writing style just didn't do it for me. It didn't feel cohesive and I struggled to stay connected to the story. The only other review right now is a 5* so it could definitely just be a "me problem", so I definitely suggest reading it if the synopsis resonates with you and make your own opinions.
As a native Nashvillian... I saw Dollywood and Dolly Parton who at this point might as well be our patron saint around these parts so I knew regardless of anything else on those grounds alone I had to give this story a chance!
Full RTC
As a native Nashvillian... I saw Dollywood and Dolly Parton who at this point might as well be our patron saint around these parts so I knew regardless of anything else on those grounds alone I had to give this story a chance!
Full RTC
March 26, 2026
Disclaimer: I received an ebook-copy from the publisher.
Olyoke is a town plagued with warnings of a coming catastrophe, a danger so imminent and disastrous that none can stand against it. A heat, the ever-hungry Pestulance, or maybe just an endless swarm of infectious frogs, either way, something threatens always. Told in various episodic short stories, from a podcast episode about a cursed theater play to a wax museum visited by a grieving customer desperately searching for something as well as a Dolly-Parton impersonator’s dangerous foraged meal (and much more), the story grows and wraps around the reader like choking vines.
While some of the short stories were unfortunately a bit too short to fully establish the characters well enough for me to really feel for them in the ways I did other longer stories in here, I did enjoy everything else that was presented here quite a lot. The atmosphere created was truly oppressive, juxtaposing the desire for isolation from disease-horror with the deep human desire for connection and true embodiment, both of which require a dangerous vulnerability. The narrative blurs time and reality, veils itself in dreams and dysphoria and always underlines how porous grief and loneliness make us.
Weird, strange, oppressive, haunting, Olyoke was a place I really enjoyed exploring, a place that terrified me and one I desperately wanted to dig into and get to know more. The short stories explore different places, times and characters and work together block-by-block to construct a terrifying and strange world filled with cosmic horror and intriguing characters.
My favorite short pieces were The Murder in the Marsh (a mystery of theft and murder on a construction site and the cult that lives in the swamp), Itch (a woman terrified of infection can’t stop scratching), Queller (Lyle Knox keeps dreaming of a house. Maybe it will find something there that will stop it from feeling so empty) and the Celebration (a woman on the run from her life through constant productivity and the man she can only allow herself to be in her dreams, delicious gender feels).
TW: body horror, death, illness, infection, fire, murder, parasites, skin-picking (compulsive, to the point of self-harm), suicide (considered), unsanitary conditions, unreality
Olyoke is a town plagued with warnings of a coming catastrophe, a danger so imminent and disastrous that none can stand against it. A heat, the ever-hungry Pestulance, or maybe just an endless swarm of infectious frogs, either way, something threatens always. Told in various episodic short stories, from a podcast episode about a cursed theater play to a wax museum visited by a grieving customer desperately searching for something as well as a Dolly-Parton impersonator’s dangerous foraged meal (and much more), the story grows and wraps around the reader like choking vines.
While some of the short stories were unfortunately a bit too short to fully establish the characters well enough for me to really feel for them in the ways I did other longer stories in here, I did enjoy everything else that was presented here quite a lot. The atmosphere created was truly oppressive, juxtaposing the desire for isolation from disease-horror with the deep human desire for connection and true embodiment, both of which require a dangerous vulnerability. The narrative blurs time and reality, veils itself in dreams and dysphoria and always underlines how porous grief and loneliness make us.
Weird, strange, oppressive, haunting, Olyoke was a place I really enjoyed exploring, a place that terrified me and one I desperately wanted to dig into and get to know more. The short stories explore different places, times and characters and work together block-by-block to construct a terrifying and strange world filled with cosmic horror and intriguing characters.
My favorite short pieces were The Murder in the Marsh (a mystery of theft and murder on a construction site and the cult that lives in the swamp), Itch (a woman terrified of infection can’t stop scratching), Queller (Lyle Knox keeps dreaming of a house. Maybe it will find something there that will stop it from feeling so empty) and the Celebration (a woman on the run from her life through constant productivity and the man she can only allow herself to be in her dreams, delicious gender feels).
TW: body horror, death, illness, infection, fire, murder, parasites, skin-picking (compulsive, to the point of self-harm), suicide (considered), unsanitary conditions, unreality
May 11, 2026
I've never thought an entire town can be a liminal space but here we are. I won't pretend to understand everything that happened in this book, this is just what I have to say after finishing it for the first time. It's like Welcome to the Night Vale podcast. It's this weird, liminal town and every episode is like a bulletin of odd happenings around the town of Night Vale. Olyoke is like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces that don't exactly fit together but they came from the same box. I don't know if I like the abuse!
That's not to say the writing isn't absolutely superb. I just think I need to do a re-read and preferably with a book club so we can discuss the different stories and different elements. This book definitely makes you work for it.
Is it brilliant? Absolutely. I just need more time with it. I need to spend time with the spaces, with the characters and re-occurring themes. I, also, have questions!
That's not to say the writing isn't absolutely superb. I just think I need to do a re-read and preferably with a book club so we can discuss the different stories and different elements. This book definitely makes you work for it.
Is it brilliant? Absolutely. I just need more time with it. I need to spend time with the spaces, with the characters and re-occurring themes. I, also, have questions!
April 25, 2026
Special thanks to Tenebrous Press for the ARC copy they provided.
Tenebrous never disappoints, even when their offerings are not quite to my taste. Olyoke is a wonderfully crafted and exceptionally well written book. Vincent Endwell surprised me with his ability to create not just one storyline that took me by the throat and creeped me out, but multiple.
Olyoke is a collection of fractured pieces that make a whole, like a mosaic. Each touches the others, but also remains independent of them. I fell in love with characters, only to have them disappear out of the book, not to be seen again. The fact Vincent Endwell was able to dredge up an emotional response in such short snippets of chapters is exceptional.
Yet, it’s exactly this structure that made Olyoke not quite to my taste. I’m not particularly a fan of fragmented storylines. And this is exactly what it says on the tin: my personal preference. Olyoke might not be something that made me go crazy, but I can’t and won’t deny the skill that went into writing the book.
And I won’t say there weren’t parts of the book that I didn’t enjoy. Several chapters and several characters resonated with me and made me relate to them. If you’re looking for twisted and odd and unexpected, Olyoke is for you. Believe me when I say, you won’t see that ending coming. I certainly didn’t.
The entirety of the book, everything and everyone appears to be trying to escape an impending occurrence. An event that is rolling inexorably toward them. It appears to be a something worth escaping. And yet… And yet when that final chapter unfolds and the celebration comes, you just might change your mind.
I know, I did.
Come join me in the Tenebrous Cult, where you’ll never be disappointed. Even when the book isn’t perfectly to your taste. And if you want the weird, let Vincent Endwell take you to the swamp.
Tenebrous never disappoints, even when their offerings are not quite to my taste. Olyoke is a wonderfully crafted and exceptionally well written book. Vincent Endwell surprised me with his ability to create not just one storyline that took me by the throat and creeped me out, but multiple.
Olyoke is a collection of fractured pieces that make a whole, like a mosaic. Each touches the others, but also remains independent of them. I fell in love with characters, only to have them disappear out of the book, not to be seen again. The fact Vincent Endwell was able to dredge up an emotional response in such short snippets of chapters is exceptional.
Yet, it’s exactly this structure that made Olyoke not quite to my taste. I’m not particularly a fan of fragmented storylines. And this is exactly what it says on the tin: my personal preference. Olyoke might not be something that made me go crazy, but I can’t and won’t deny the skill that went into writing the book.
And I won’t say there weren’t parts of the book that I didn’t enjoy. Several chapters and several characters resonated with me and made me relate to them. If you’re looking for twisted and odd and unexpected, Olyoke is for you. Believe me when I say, you won’t see that ending coming. I certainly didn’t.
The entirety of the book, everything and everyone appears to be trying to escape an impending occurrence. An event that is rolling inexorably toward them. It appears to be a something worth escaping. And yet… And yet when that final chapter unfolds and the celebration comes, you just might change your mind.
I know, I did.
Come join me in the Tenebrous Cult, where you’ll never be disappointed. Even when the book isn’t perfectly to your taste. And if you want the weird, let Vincent Endwell take you to the swamp.
April 4, 2026
And I was filled with a dread so incomprehensible that I struggle even now to speak of it.
Operating on multiple levels, like one of those crazy-complicated architectural structures it describes, OLYOKE can be more simply enjoyed as a series of vaguely interlinked Twilight Zone-ish stories focused on the lore and population of this uncanny-valley dot of a town in ruin-Americana. But there is plenty of depth in these tales that Endwell places together, and I couldn't help but marvel at the individual bricks and the construction of the strange whole.
Beyond being a celebration of strangeness and dread, OLYOKE evokes timeless themes of creation, decay, infection, and our relentless thirst to find some manner of explanation or spot of static in a constantly evolving (and decaying) universe. The hunger (hunger is also a theme) for a prophet or creator with an Answer and the familiar, consuming feeling of Regret. One could easily draw comparisons to current issues, but they are also universal. Ambiguity is also a major theme---we are constantly bringing harm and being harmed and creating and inspiring. I loved how many of the stories ended on a note of uncertainty---was this hopeful or dreadful? Both?
The vignettes can stand alone well, but I was really impressed by the author's ability to pull them together in a satisfying conclusion, through the very last tale. Stand-out stories for me include:
Scratch [An aging woman with a shitty relationship to her own mother and daughter contemplates regrets and finds some strange worms....]
Love in the Time of Reem [I'm pretty sure the imagery of this story was not inspired by Jojo's Episode Death 13, but I could not help but think of that. VERY GROSS!]
Pyramid [A man shows his younger boyfriend a portal (?) to a Dead City in another dimension. Will they stay or return? Also, while I was pretty sure the younger and older man were supposed to be going out (?) other context cues implied to me they were family (and I was not sure this was a further ambiguity I had read in, or if I was misreading something.) Someone who read this have their own theory??]
Queller [Kyle Knox has never felt like it was a "man," and finally makes the move to fulfill its destiny as a crucial piece of ?????...]
The Celebration [An always on the move pillar of the community woman keeps having dreams as The Whistler, a charismatic man in green. Eventually, he starts to take over her waking hours, driving her to fulfill his/her/the town's destiny...]
Bonus: I loved the black and white illustrations!! This is my first book from Tenebrous Press and this author, but I will definitely be coming back for more. <3
Operating on multiple levels, like one of those crazy-complicated architectural structures it describes, OLYOKE can be more simply enjoyed as a series of vaguely interlinked Twilight Zone-ish stories focused on the lore and population of this uncanny-valley dot of a town in ruin-Americana. But there is plenty of depth in these tales that Endwell places together, and I couldn't help but marvel at the individual bricks and the construction of the strange whole.
Beyond being a celebration of strangeness and dread, OLYOKE evokes timeless themes of creation, decay, infection, and our relentless thirst to find some manner of explanation or spot of static in a constantly evolving (and decaying) universe. The hunger (hunger is also a theme) for a prophet or creator with an Answer and the familiar, consuming feeling of Regret. One could easily draw comparisons to current issues, but they are also universal. Ambiguity is also a major theme---we are constantly bringing harm and being harmed and creating and inspiring. I loved how many of the stories ended on a note of uncertainty---was this hopeful or dreadful? Both?
The vignettes can stand alone well, but I was really impressed by the author's ability to pull them together in a satisfying conclusion, through the very last tale. Stand-out stories for me include:
Scratch [An aging woman with a shitty relationship to her own mother and daughter contemplates regrets and finds some strange worms....]
Love in the Time of Reem [I'm pretty sure the imagery of this story was not inspired by Jojo's Episode Death 13, but I could not help but think of that. VERY GROSS!]
Pyramid [A man shows his younger boyfriend a portal (?) to a Dead City in another dimension. Will they stay or return? Also, while I was pretty sure the younger and older man were supposed to be going out (?) other context cues implied to me they were family (and I was not sure this was a further ambiguity I had read in, or if I was misreading something.) Someone who read this have their own theory??]
Queller [Kyle Knox has never felt like it was a "man," and finally makes the move to fulfill its destiny as a crucial piece of ?????...]
The Celebration [An always on the move pillar of the community woman keeps having dreams as The Whistler, a charismatic man in green. Eventually, he starts to take over her waking hours, driving her to fulfill his/her/the town's destiny...]
Bonus: I loved the black and white illustrations!! This is my first book from Tenebrous Press and this author, but I will definitely be coming back for more. <3
April 3, 2026
let me start by saying i wish this had been marketed as the collection of short stories it is. i typically prefer more linear story telling and wished for if not an additional chapter to wrap things up maybe shuffling the order of the chapters as they are. seeing the publisher’s note at the end that one of the stories was previously published elsewhere was unsurprising as that one read the strongest in the collection. (i’m still torn on whether or not that is a further demerit for me.) this entire thing struck me as a metaphor for deeply rooted evangelical religion, body horror to represent the monstrosities these people appear as to reader and those they traumatize.
i super enjoyed in the first half the way endwell bounces back and forth between using a classic steinbeckian cadence with cronenberg level imagery to transcriptions of outlets of modern entertainment à la a subreddit and a live podcast recording. that unfortunately dropped off as the book progressed. overall the imagery is delightfully horrifying (special shout out to the excellent work done by both cover artists, jenna cha and echo echo) and most of the stories are rife with potential to explore. ultimately i think i like the idea of this book more than the execution and i truly wish that weren’t the case. it may have worked best as a graphic novel? i might have to give it another read now that i know the perimeters of what i’m in for.
i super enjoyed in the first half the way endwell bounces back and forth between using a classic steinbeckian cadence with cronenberg level imagery to transcriptions of outlets of modern entertainment à la a subreddit and a live podcast recording. that unfortunately dropped off as the book progressed. overall the imagery is delightfully horrifying (special shout out to the excellent work done by both cover artists, jenna cha and echo echo) and most of the stories are rife with potential to explore. ultimately i think i like the idea of this book more than the execution and i truly wish that weren’t the case. it may have worked best as a graphic novel? i might have to give it another read now that i know the perimeters of what i’m in for.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
This is the fourth book in a row I’ve read with yellow in its cover. Just a funny coincidence, but honestly, the cover for this one really fits. Olyoke is bright, bizarre, and a little blinding in its strangeness.
As we enter Olyoke, we find that it's a strange town filled with strange people connected by very strange things. Most famously known for its Dolly‑Parton‑esque theme park, it also carries a dark, unsettling history that refuses to stay buried.
The residents can feel something coming — something catastrophic, something calamitous, something that's testing the boundaries of place and time. And here we are, being pulled along for the ride, helplessly strapped in as Endwell drags us through this rollercoaster of interconnected stories, dreams, reddit posts, and podcast episodes.
I can’t pretend I understood everything that was happening. The book is weird, tangled, and sometimes hard to follow. But it’s not without its charm, and I never outright hated the experience.
Still, if Olyoke were a real place, it wouldn’t make my travel list. To hell with this town.
As we enter Olyoke, we find that it's a strange town filled with strange people connected by very strange things. Most famously known for its Dolly‑Parton‑esque theme park, it also carries a dark, unsettling history that refuses to stay buried.
The residents can feel something coming — something catastrophic, something calamitous, something that's testing the boundaries of place and time. And here we are, being pulled along for the ride, helplessly strapped in as Endwell drags us through this rollercoaster of interconnected stories, dreams, reddit posts, and podcast episodes.
I can’t pretend I understood everything that was happening. The book is weird, tangled, and sometimes hard to follow. But it’s not without its charm, and I never outright hated the experience.
Still, if Olyoke were a real place, it wouldn’t make my travel list. To hell with this town.
February 25, 2026
Olyoke is a fever dream of Southern gothic creepiness, where spectacle and damnation braid together beneath the glitter of a theme park skyline. Set in a Tennessee town haunted by generational rot and the prophecies of a dead architect, the novella unfolds like a hymn sung slightly off-key. It is beautiful yet deeply unsettling. Endwell populates Olyoke with characters who feel both fractured and mythic. Darcy, a Dolly Parton impersonator, feeds swamp worms (yes they are as horrific as they sound) to her dog and is answered in her dead mothers voice. This is a grotesque miracle that captures the story's obsession with grief and hunger. Lyle Knox's unraveling is particularly striking. He is called by a house that insists he is not a man at all, but a structure and his storyline bends reality in ways that surpass strange and become existential. Meanwhile, Maggie Warner's descent into dreamlike logic and transformation into the Whistler pulses with apocalyptic inevitability. The town itself becomes the true protagonist. It waits and festers. Endwell's prose is strange and theatrical, balancing the absurd and genuine dread. Olyoke is about identity dissolving in the heat and under prophecy. It is bizarre, ambitious and haunting. Thank you Tenebrous Press for sending me an ARC. You can pick up this book when it publishes on March 24th, 2026!
March 29, 2026
Reading Olyoke felt like stepping directly into a Lynch film where the logic is fuzzy, but the atmosphere is undeniable. I’ll admit I didn’t fully comprehend every twist and turn of the plot, but I quickly realized I was just there for the ride. The eerie vibes were masterfully crafted and kept me in a constant state of unease. There were a few specific chapters that genuinely freaked me out and lingered in my mind long after I put the book down. If you enjoy surrealist dread and don’t mind feeling a bit lost in the dark, this is definitely worth the experience.
April 2, 2026
Genuinely unnerving. Humorous at times and dark throughout. I wouldn't pick it up looking for a simple story that's easy to follow. But, if you're excited to read a book of creepy short stories, or better yet are excited to piece those stories together in your mind into something somehow both sweet, yet more disturbing, then you'll enjoy it. Also, having grown up in the southern Appalachians, the idea of a haunted Dollywood is just fun.
March 27, 2026
Wonderfully weird and creepy.
You will spend a majority of this book wondering wtf is going on...and that's ok!
The prose is rich and the stories are strange; all connected by a common thread.
Great Queer rep throughout, with diverse and, ultimately, unnerving characters.
thank you to @tenebrouspress for the early review copy!
You will spend a majority of this book wondering wtf is going on...and that's ok!
The prose is rich and the stories are strange; all connected by a common thread.
Great Queer rep throughout, with diverse and, ultimately, unnerving characters.
thank you to @tenebrouspress for the early review copy!
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
This is one strange fever dream of a story.
Pick it up if you are in the mood for something highly weird and challenging.
Pick it up if you are in the mood for something highly weird and challenging.
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