Kayak

by Kristal Stittle

For eighteen-year-old Keith—floating alone on a series of lakes and rivers, lost and without supplies—his kayak is his means of survival. Solid ground means certain death at the scissor-claws of vicious invading creatures.

What he needs is to find more people; but terrible guilt anchors him in solitude. A year earlier, when the creatures first appeared, it was Keith's choices that brought disaster to the island community that took him in.

Now, it's time to take responsibility for his actions, heal his scars, and survive.

Told in two alternating timelines, Kayak is a story of family, the strength we draw from others, and the strength we learn to draw from ourselves.

"Deceptively unsettling, smart survival horror…grips you by the throat and [doesn’t] let go."

Max Booth III, I Believe in Mister Bones“A riveting, fast-paced, genre-blending story.”

Laura Cranehill, Wife Shaped Bodies"Hypnotically suffocating and immersive. I caught myself holding my breath.”

J.Krawczyk, It Looks Like Dad"Impressive and gripping."

Sonora Taylor, Without Condition“An original and surprising apocalyptic tale.”

David Moody, Autumn, Hater

Genres: Horror, Fiction

379 pages, Kindle Edition

Expected publication February 17, 2026

Reviews

[RoseDevoursBooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Told through two alternating timelines of past and present, Kayak follows a teenage boy named Keith as he struggles to survive after Earth is invaded by vicious creatures known as Dirt Devils. These intelligent predators burst from the ground and devour anything on land, but water repels them. As a result, humanity is forced to retreat to lakes, islands, and boats in a desperate attempt to survive. Cramped and alone in his kayak, Keith scavenges for supplies by looting lakeside cottages during rainstorms, and hoping he’ll encounter other survivors rather than fall prey to the Dirt Devils’ scissor-like claws.

The novel starts off strong. I especially enjoyed the “Then” chapters, which show Keith spending time with his friends, the mounting dread surrounding the meteor, and the panic that ultimately leaves him isolated. The overall world-building is immersive, atmospheric, and at times claustrophobic. Every time Keith leaves the safety of his kayak to scavenge or sneak past the Dirt Devils, the tension is palpable. The creatures themselves are well done and very cool - slightly reminiscent of Tremors, but with limbs.
However, there were a few things that didn’t work for me, like their weakness to water? It just wasn’t the most convincing choice. Why would they invade a planet that’s mostly water? It inevitably brought the movie Signs to mind 😅. Still, this vulnerability is what makes the novel’s water-based survival concept work, so I understood the logic behind it.

Unfortunately, the present-day chapters begin to drag after a while. The pacing becomes repetitive, with several mundane stretches where very little happens. This is very much a slow-burn, and I found myself wishing for more action involving the monsters. I was also hoping for a different ending, the conclusion felt a bit too neatly wrapped up for my taste.

While Kayak wasn’t especially memorable overall, I did enjoy certain aspects, particularly the creature design and atmosphere. I’d recommend this to readers who enjoy slow-building, post-apocalyptic YA horror that focuses on guilt, responsibility, and survival.

Many thank to Tenebrous Press for an ARC of this title.

[Books For Decaying Millennials · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to generous comrades at Tenebrous Press, for the early Paperback ARC. All views and opinions are my own.
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How a person will react in a crisis, an Emergency, and Extreme Situation, is not necessarily cut and dry. Movies and Television will have you believe it's a simple "Fight or Flight" and that a switch will be flipped, unlocking someones deep seeded skills and strengths. If only it were that simple, but it's not. Humans by nature are complex, and messy. Deep seeded traumas may arise, throwing everything askew or the little lizard brain hidden inside you may force to take a adrenaline bath and go full bore. Your person, your sense of self becomes threadbare. It's the time for the shadow-self to rear its head, for ugliness to be laid bare. Indeed, sometimes circumstances force you to truly face what you are capable, be that for good or ill. Readers who have themselves, lived through emergencies, Major Crises etc, will understand what I mean.
Children, meaning through Teenagers, are given both a blessing and a curse. To an extent, they are still forming that broader structure of self, or finding the language and means and navigate it all. Adults are locked into a closed system, Teens and younger, are still able to adjust, craft an open source vision, to use a broad computer OS analogy. Not having all the fancy tools, but also being open to new ideas, making difficult choices.
Shakespeare is quoted as saying "the past is prologue", Kristal Stittle's "Kayak", shows us that the past can be both prologue, as well as a part of the present, driving desire, feeding anxiety and the stoking the flames of terror, even during sleep.
Kayak felt like a return to sub-genre of books I often read, during my own adolescent and tee years. Stories of young folk surviving in some post-apocalytpic landscape, Alien Invasion or some such existential crisis, but from the perspective of youth, people still finding words for who and what they are. Kayak felt like all of that, but so much more. Seeing the past and the present, through Kieth's eyes feels like seeing into the mind of living breathing person. The true scope of what makes people messy, complex creatures, comes through in each and every character in this book.
In Kayak, you feel the isolation, the grief, the desperation, the pain. A testament to the author's craft.
"Day of the Triffids" by John Wyndham, Gary Paulsen's "Hatchet" and Robert C. O'Brien's "Z for Zachariah" , were three books that sprang to mind, periodically throughout my reading of this book. Less for direct thematic or story points, but more for how Kayak made me feel. This is a book I hope to see both Adults and Teenagers reading. It's most definitely a book to watch for, when it drops in Feb of 2026.

[The Blog Without a Face · Rating 4 out of 5]

BWAF Score: 7/10

TL;DR: A lean, vicious lake-apocalypse coming of age story where a burned out teen in a kayak tries not to die, physically or morally, while dirt-eating monsters own the land. Great survival texture and gnarly set pieces, a little repetitive on the guilt spiral, but it absolutely kills.

Kayak by Kristal Stittle takes the end of the world and shrinks it down to one kid, one boat, and a whole lot of water. A meteorite impact quietly smuggles something awful into the soil, and within months the land belongs to the “dirt devils,” spiky, intelligent predators that erupt from the ground and shred anything that dares to touch dry earth. Humanity retreats to lakes, islands, docks and floating shacks, clinging to shorelines like mold. In the “Now” timeline, sixteen year old Keith is alone in a too-bright green kayak, sore, half sunburnt, half feral, paddling into unknown channels after the winter house community is destroyed. In the “Then” chapters we watch his life collapse: watching the impact on a livestream, the first Russian monster videos, the power outage, the panicked run to the neighbor’s pool, then the slow-building lake settlement that becomes home long enough to really hurt when it goes to hell.

Stittle has a good feel for the kind of middle class, Canadian-ish cottage country kid Keith is at the start, and for how that kid gets ground down into a survivor. He is not a prepper, not a chosen one, just a comics nerd who likes fantasy series and has a decent dad who builds fancy tables. The book sticks close to him in third person and refuses to expand the camera much beyond what he can see from the waterline. That choice gives Kayak a tight, claustrophobic focus. Even when we finally glimpse the larger operation reclaiming islands with military science and electrified monster traps, it still feels small and human, filtered through a kid who is exhausted, guilty as shit, and convinced he deserves whatever punishment is coming.

The plot is simple and sharp. In the present, Keith is trying to survive alone on the lake, scavenging cottages, dodging dirt devils that prowl the shore, and trying not to fall apart in his stupid little boat. In the past, we see how the monsters spread from Russia and Brazil to everywhere, how his neighborhood flees to the lake, how a winter house community forms on an island under the gruff leadership of Mr Steel and the practical guidance of older survivors like Jan. Those chapters do the heavy lifting of building the rules: monsters control land when there is bare dirt, people are safest on water, rain and deep snow change the balance and let humans raid. Event by event, tragedy by tragedy, you feel how they whittle down numbers and hope until Keith finally makes a catastrophic mistake that gets a lot of people killed, and he bails, literally, in that kayak.

The texture of survival is captivating. Stittle is weirdly good at describing gear without turning it into a manual. The opening inventory of the kayak, paddle, lifejacket and emergency bucket is both functional and quietly terrifying, because you know that thin layer of plastic is all that sits between Keith and a monster that can chew through rock. The book is full of these tactile little problems: how to pee without turning your back on the shore, how far away from a dock you need to float to feel safe, how cold you get after hours in wet clothes, how long you can go on shit sleep and lakewater. When the dirt devils do show up on page, they are nasty in a restrained way. The white irises, the cross-shaped pupils, the way they study humans rather than just charging in, all of that makes them feel properly alien without a huge lore dump.

This is very readable, very Tenebrous, and just voicey enough to keep you locked in. The prose is clean, mostly invisible, with occasional sharp images that slice through: snow as a protective blanket trapping monsters underground, a lake turning into a highway of canoes and paddleboats once a big safe zone is reclaimed, a kid screaming into empty water because there is literally no one left to answer. Dialogue feels natural, especially in the early school scenes where everyone is joking about Russian hoaxes right before the world goes to shit. The alternating “Now” and “Then” chapters are handled well, each chunk usually ending on a small hook that makes you want to see both what happens next and how the hell they got here. If there is a downside, it is that Keith’s internal guilt loop gets a bit repetitive in the back half. We absolutely get that he feels like a coward. Sometimes the book hammers that feeling one or two times more than it needs to.

Underneath the monsters and the kayaks, this is a story about guilt, responsibility, and the thin line between self preservation and abandonment. The dirt devils are terrifying, but the thing that really curdles in your gut is the moment Keith realizes he did what he had been told to do, survived exactly the way adults taught him, and still feels like he fucked up beyond repair. That theme continues to be pushed: ice that melts too soon, exposing people caught mid plan; snowmobiles that expand their reach but also expand the radius of risk; a monster that may or may not be clever enough to stalk specific humans. By the time Keith meets May in her paddleboat and sees the island network with electrified monster traps and judges and something like a future, the impact is complicated. There is hope, sure, but also the sick understanding that any rebuilt society is going to need scapegoats, stories about blame, and someone like Keith to stand there and say, yeah, I did this, now what.

Kayak sits comfortably beside other tight, one character survival nightmares. Think Bird Box energy, but filtered through Canadian cottage country and stripped of spectacle in favor of wet clothes, busted shoulders, and a kid who cannot forgive himself. It is not the flashiest end of the world book out there, but it is one that sticks like lake mud.

Strong, well crafted, and distinctive enough that whenever you see a lone kayak on a quiet lake, you are going to think of this shit and feel just a little less safe on shore.

Read if you like small scale apocalypse stories with real logistical brain, if you crave creature horror that feels like it could sit one bad summer away from your actual cottage, if you can handle a protagonist who is a mess and does not get a clean redemption arc.

Skip if you need sweeping global stakes on the page instead of hinted at, if repeating guilt spirals drive you up the wall, if you want your monsters explained down to their fucking mitochondria.

[RedReviews4You Susan-Dara · Rating 4 out of 5]

A slow‑burn YA horror novella that understands the scariest part of the apocalypse is what it asks a boy to become.

Kristal Stittle’s Kayak is a haunting, atmospheric coming‑of‑age novella wrapped in quiet horror. It follows a teenage boy who has already survived more than most adults: separation from his parents and friends, the uncertainty of infatuation versus first love, and the collapse of the world he once recognized. All of it unfolding under the shadow of unnamed beings called simply “Dirt Devils,” whose arrival has reshaped the planet and everyone left on it.

The brilliance of this story is how small it feels — one boy, one kayak, one stretch of water — and how enormous it becomes once you understand what he’s carrying and the new limitations of his world. The water isn’t just a setting; it’s a threshold. A place where grief, memory, and fear churn just beneath the surface. Stittle uses the kayak as both literal vessel and emotional metaphor: the fragile thing that keeps him afloat when everything else has sunk.

I read a few excerpts aloud to My Guy, and he was genuinely moved — he saw so much of himself in the way Kevin experiences his altered world and the sense of responsibility he carries on his own shoulders. He said something I found so beautiful: that the ending — the reunion, the accountability, the companionship, and the empathy — felt emotionally aware and exactly right for Kevin’s journey from young teen into young man. That reaction alone speaks to how deeply this story understands the emotional interiority of young men.

There’s also a distinctly Jack London undercurrent here — not just in the survival elements, but in the way Kevin must learn to navigate people with the same wary intuition he uses to navigate the water. The emotional stakes of dealing with others feel as perilous, and as formative, as any physical threat.

And that’s something rare. I haven’t read many stories written exclusively from a male perspective that allow this level of vulnerability, fear, tenderness, and self‑reckoning. I think getting this book into the hands of mothers, wives, girlfriends, and librarians could spark meaningful conversations about being seen — especially for young men who don’t often encounter this kind of emotional nuance in fiction.

The horror here is quiet, but it’s relentless. This book isn’t about jump scares — it’s about the dread of being young in a world that no longer makes sense, the terror of realizing you’re the last witness to the life you used to have, and the muddled, aching task of facing tomorrow alone.

If you’re drawn to stories that blend:

atmospheric horror

emotional interiority

post‑apocalyptic tension

and the raw ache of adolescence

…Kayak delivers something quietly devastating.

This is a story about a boy trying to stay afloat — literally and emotionally — in a world that has already taken too much from him.

[Lori · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this one. The premise had me hooked: a meteor crash-lands on Earth, scattering dust filled with alien seeds. As the wind carries this dust across continents, the seeds take root, and what grows from them is monstrous. These creatures are brutal, relentless, and hungry for human flesh.

Like any good alien invasion tale, there’s a weakness. Water. Once that’s discovered, humanity scrambles toward the nearest lakes, rivers, oceans — anything that might offer safety. In the chaos, Keith loses his parents at the beach, and the story follows his fight for survival as he searches for his friends and family out on the Canadian lakes, alone in his little kayak.

I was really excited to read this one. It should have been gripping. The setup was eerie and cinematic, and I was ready to be swept into the horror. But the execution just didn’t deliver. The pacing felt flat, the writing was somewhat stilted, and the narrative voice never quite settled. If I didn’t know better, I’d have assumed this was a debut. It reads like Stittle was trying too hard to channel what she imagined a sixteen-year-old boy might sound like, and the result felt forced and awkward.

I kept hoping it would find its rhythm, that that the tension would build, that Keith’s journey would pull me in. But instead, I found myself wanting to DNF more than once — and regretting that I didn’t. Cool concept, but disappointing follow-through. Which is upsetting, because I really like what Tenebrous has been putting out lately!

[Phillip Keeling · Rating 3 out of 5]

One part The Walking Dead, one part Alone, this might be the most mainstream piece of horror fiction I’ve seen from Tenebrous Press. There’s a lot of great stuff here: some genuinely horrifying moments, excellent world-building, and moments where the reader can catch their breath that are downright cozy. Definitely something worth reading for people interested in YA-style survival horror.

I think what sets Kayak apart is its level of detail. This can be very interesting in a survivalist/dungeon crawl sort of way. However, it can also get tedious at times. And for all that detail, I’m pretty disappointed with how abruptly and neatly the whole thing ended. It felt like there was as a whole lot more to get into that was just dropped by the end in favor of a neat bow of a happy ending.

Having said that, there’s plenty here that horror fans can enjoy. Hell, I didn’t even mind the teenage crushery that filled our protagonist’s thoughts half the time. Well-written characters, interesting monsters, nicely executed settings.

I received a complementary ARC from the publisher for the purpose of a review. I promise that my opinion hasn’t been adulterated by earthwalking predators or the horny teenagers they’re hunting.