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The Peripheral: What Lurks Beyond the Corner of the Eye
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 8, 2026
The Peripheral has a premise I wanted to like: a welder suffers a flash burn, his vision begins to fail and recover in strange ways, and something buried in his past starts returning through the damage. That is a strong setup for psychological horror. The idea of trauma coming back through the body — through light, shadow, metallic taste, blood, and broken perception — is the best thing about the novella.
The strongest scenes are the ones that stay close to Jake’s physical experience. The welding accident has a good technical specificity, and the early moments where he tries to function with damaged vision are effective. I also liked the way Tom and Marcy give the story a warm, ordinary counterweight. Tom’s friendship with Jake helps ground the book whenever the horror starts to drift too far into abstraction.
There are a few genuinely effective psychological horror moments here, especially when Jake’s fear becomes physical rather than simply explained. The scene with the bloody hands in the breakroom is the book’s sharpest moment because it keeps the outside world normal while Jake’s inner world collapses. That is where the story is strongest: when it lets horror appear through sensation and behavior instead of spelling everything out.
My main reservation is with the execution of the central mystery. The story builds toward a traumatic reveal, but the earlier flashback material felt too concrete to fully support the later recontextualization. I wanted the memory to feel more fractured, more unstable, and more carefully withheld. The shadow also becomes too flexible for me: guilt, memory, haunting, hallucination, and something more physically supernatural all seem possible at different points, but the book never fully commits to what it wants that presence to mean. Ambiguity can be powerful in horror, but here I wanted a firmer sense of the rules behind it.
Still, there is a real emotional core here. The Peripheral has a good premise, some strong sensory horror, and a few scenes that show what the novella could have been at its sharpest. I just wish it trusted its sharpest material more.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
The strongest scenes are the ones that stay close to Jake’s physical experience. The welding accident has a good technical specificity, and the early moments where he tries to function with damaged vision are effective. I also liked the way Tom and Marcy give the story a warm, ordinary counterweight. Tom’s friendship with Jake helps ground the book whenever the horror starts to drift too far into abstraction.
There are a few genuinely effective psychological horror moments here, especially when Jake’s fear becomes physical rather than simply explained. The scene with the bloody hands in the breakroom is the book’s sharpest moment because it keeps the outside world normal while Jake’s inner world collapses. That is where the story is strongest: when it lets horror appear through sensation and behavior instead of spelling everything out.
My main reservation is with the execution of the central mystery. The story builds toward a traumatic reveal, but the earlier flashback material felt too concrete to fully support the later recontextualization. I wanted the memory to feel more fractured, more unstable, and more carefully withheld. The shadow also becomes too flexible for me: guilt, memory, haunting, hallucination, and something more physically supernatural all seem possible at different points, but the book never fully commits to what it wants that presence to mean. Ambiguity can be powerful in horror, but here I wanted a firmer sense of the rules behind it.
Still, there is a real emotional core here. The Peripheral has a good premise, some strong sensory horror, and a few scenes that show what the novella could have been at its sharpest. I just wish it trusted its sharpest material more.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
May 12, 2026
Thank you to Peripheral Edge Publishing and Booksirens for the review copy. I am making this review voluntarily and my opinions are my own
Whilst at work, Jake, whilst using welding equipment, suffers from severe flash burn, leaving him to a strange recovery process, where he begins to see things out of the corners of his eyes.
I think on paper this sounds really engaging. I went into this with very little knowledge of the plot, which I think was for the best. The opening scenes seemed very technical and well written. His injury recovery likewise is very well written. I was gripped from the beginning, add the weird shadows and odd symptoms and it had all the ingredients to make a perfect psychological thriller.
Yet, I think this novella suffers from it's own ambition. I liked the quieter, creepier moments, rather than the action scenes we later get. The build up is slow and methodical, which is good, but it kind of jumped the shark - for me at least - towards the end. I wish we had more scenes like that. The last third wasn't my cup of tea, which is a shame because I was really intrigued by the mystery. I was also confused by certain points in the book, as the format seemed to change at certain points. Switching from this closed third person, to two different perspectives. This confused me, and I had to read a few times to understand that the two perspectives were happening simultaneously.
Overall, though, this had a really great build up with an ending that wasn't my cup of tea. I think for some, it will work and others it won't. This was only short so it's easy to get through and enjoyable for the most part.
Whilst at work, Jake, whilst using welding equipment, suffers from severe flash burn, leaving him to a strange recovery process, where he begins to see things out of the corners of his eyes.
I think on paper this sounds really engaging. I went into this with very little knowledge of the plot, which I think was for the best. The opening scenes seemed very technical and well written. His injury recovery likewise is very well written. I was gripped from the beginning, add the weird shadows and odd symptoms and it had all the ingredients to make a perfect psychological thriller.
Yet, I think this novella suffers from it's own ambition. I liked the quieter, creepier moments, rather than the action scenes we later get. The build up is slow and methodical, which is good, but it kind of jumped the shark - for me at least - towards the end. I wish we had more scenes like that. The last third wasn't my cup of tea, which is a shame because I was really intrigued by the mystery. I was also confused by certain points in the book, as the format seemed to change at certain points. Switching from this closed third person, to two different perspectives. This confused me, and I had to read a few times to understand that the two perspectives were happening simultaneously.
Overall, though, this had a really great build up with an ending that wasn't my cup of tea. I think for some, it will work and others it won't. This was only short so it's easy to get through and enjoyable for the most part.
May 18, 2026
I received an advance review copy for free from BookSirens, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
This book hooked me immediately with a terrifying premise: the sudden loss of sight and the claustrophobic fear of operating blindly. Mangru builds atmospheric dread around this concept, especially in moments where the protagonist senses a looming presence lingering just in his periphery.
However, the narrative style takes an unusual approach to pacing. The narrative frequently skips over the predictable mechanics of a scene to get straight to the next step of the plot, making the lack of detail in certain places feel somewhat arbitrary. For instance, the text might linger on a character's action - going to answer the door, say - but then completely omit the expected interactions that follow once it opens. This minimalist choice, paired with some noticeable copy-editing typos (like "Jake's eyes never l the doctor's"), can occasionally disrupt the story's immersion.
Ultimately, anyone looking for a traditional, visceral horror novel might find the book's focus shifting in unexpected directions. It shines best as an exploration of deep, unreleased trauma, offering a decent and thought-provoking look at how a person copes with extreme stress.
Verdict: Great concept and a solid look at trauma, though held back a bit by its abrupt transitions and a need for tighter editing.
This book hooked me immediately with a terrifying premise: the sudden loss of sight and the claustrophobic fear of operating blindly. Mangru builds atmospheric dread around this concept, especially in moments where the protagonist senses a looming presence lingering just in his periphery.
However, the narrative style takes an unusual approach to pacing. The narrative frequently skips over the predictable mechanics of a scene to get straight to the next step of the plot, making the lack of detail in certain places feel somewhat arbitrary. For instance, the text might linger on a character's action - going to answer the door, say - but then completely omit the expected interactions that follow once it opens. This minimalist choice, paired with some noticeable copy-editing typos (like "Jake's eyes never l the doctor's"), can occasionally disrupt the story's immersion.
Ultimately, anyone looking for a traditional, visceral horror novel might find the book's focus shifting in unexpected directions. It shines best as an exploration of deep, unreleased trauma, offering a decent and thought-provoking look at how a person copes with extreme stress.
Verdict: Great concept and a solid look at trauma, though held back a bit by its abrupt transitions and a need for tighter editing.
May 15, 2026
This speculative fiction story fit all the bullet points. I felt real compassion for Jake. Something awful had happened in his past so he thought moving to a new area would help him cope. He was able to cope until an accident brought those feelings back. Once they returned, Jake felt he was losing his mind. The quickness in which he was affected was mind boggling. How awful to have such a horrible event return after an accident… or was it? I thoroughly enjoyed this quick read and I think you will enjoy it. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews