The Beast in Aisle 34

by Darrin Doyle

Sandy Kurtz has problems. He's got a baby on the way, his wife doesn't love him, and he's struggling to find passion or purpose at his big-box retail job. And, once a month, he turns into a werewolf.

In Darrin Doyle's deft hands, Sandy's story is a tall tale for our times, an absurd and darkly comedic take on toxic masculinity, small-town America, and the terror of not knowing who you are―or who you're capable of becoming.

Join us on the trip. Feel the power of the full moon as it turns you into a carnivore capable of ruling the wilds of rural Michigan. Taste the rich blood of a pulsing animal heart; feel it cascade down your face as you transform into what you always wanted to be. Enter...the wolf.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Werewolves, Paranormal, Humor, Fantasy

290 pages, Paperback

Published September 28, 2021

About the author

Darrin Doyle is the author of the novella Let Gravity Seize the Dead (Regal House), the novels The Beast in Aisle 34 (Tortoise Books), The Girl Who Ate Kalamazoo (St. Martin’s Press), and Revenge of the Teacher’s Pet: A Love Story (LSU Press), and the short story collections The Big Baby Crime Spree and Other Delusions (Wolfson Press), The Dark Will End the Dark, and Scoundrels Among Us (Tortoise Books). He lives in Mount Pleasant, Michigan and teaches at Central Michigan University.

Reviews

[Sadie Hartmann]

Review originally published in RUE MORGUE issue #204 Jan/Feb

Horror comedy tends to be the black sheep in the horror genre family. Humor is often overlooked next to its more serious cousins when it comes to award nominations and Year’s Best lists but it deserves more attention. Darrin Doyle is definitely doing horror comedy right.

The Beast in Aisle 34 zeroes in on this guy named Sandy Kurtz with a lot on his plate. He’s bored at his meaningless job, his wife is bored with him, and they are having a baby to complicate their relationship. Not to mention, Sandy is a werewolf.
This book wastes no time at all setting up conflict. Readers are dropped right into a hunting scene with Sandy in full-on lycanthrope transformation stalking prey but also thinking about his wife and neighbors. After the kill, Sandy wakes up in his marital bed with a full lycan bladder and feeling like he had “finished an Ironman fueled by whisky and candy bars.”

The striking contrast between the primal, animalistic, behaviors of a werewolf against the backdrop of the day-in-and-day-out grind of a middle-aged man feeling stuck in a rut never gets old.
As a human, Sandy doesn’t advocate for himself but during the change each month, he lives life as an apex predator, so there are strong themes of toxic masculinity and an inner conflict of identity. Is he Sandy Kurtz, plodding along as a bystander to his own life and circumstances
or a monster fully capable of controlling his own destiny and taking what he wants, when he wants it? A delicious page-turning drama that will keep readers wondering what will come of The Beast in Aisle 34. Fans of John Landis’s American Werewolf in London and Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones will enjoy this original, witty character study wrapped in the blood-soaked pages of a horror novel.

[Stay Fetters · Rating 2 out of 5]

"How simple it would be to open his mouth and insert the man’s head, and then pop! Like a tomato, it would burst."

Running Wild with Sandy Kurtz: Werewolf

Werewolf books are few and far between. I haven't read many and I don't see many being published. So I'm always excited to see a new werewolf book come out into the world.

What initially caught my eye was the title. It reminded me of some kind of straight-to-video b-horror movie released from the nineties. I was so sold. After this was brought to my attention, I started seeing reviews and praise for this everywhere. It's even mentioned in the new issue of Rue Morgue. And they would never lead you in the wrong direction, right? Oh, how wrong and foolish I was.

This started off okay. We were introduced to a crazy cast of characters, got to see the darker side of Lowe's, and we even dabbled in a little larping. Okay, so far so good. Then the last hundred pages happened. Where the fuck did these come from? I felt as if I was reading a different story. And I became so bored that my eyeballs started to bleed. Darrin jumped from one thing to another very quickly and I felt lost.

After completing this thing we call a book, I had this feeling of yuckiness. My brain kept going back to when Jerry and Ben were introduced to the world. They were not described in the best of ways and the author was skeevy for how he portrayed them. I didn’t appreciate the fat comments. The author had to keep reminding us that the nerdy guys were overweight and he added some other descriptive ways to insult them. And this is coming from someone who doesn't get bothered by much of anything and those things hurt this black-hearted bitch. It wasn’t what I wanted in a werewolf book.

The Beast in Aisle 34 was a meh kind of read and I wouldn't recommend it. There were some interesting and funny parts. Everything involving The Squatch Cops was absolutely hilarious. Maybe he should have just stuck with that. I'm just going to act as if the last hundred pages don't exist. Between the jumping between things and the fat comments, it's going to be a no from me.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun!

[Lori]

I'm thrilled to be working with Darrin on the publicity for this title! Reach out if you'd like to review it, interview Darrin, or feature it in any way!!!

[Melissa Markle · Rating 2 out of 5]

You'd think a book about a regular guy who becomes a werewolf would be a good time, but I had absolutely zero fun reading this. It was a true slog and I'm super sad about it.

[Ndobe · Rating 2 out of 5]

i was promised something that was "widely funny" and i didnt get that. i think the story did well with themes of toxic masculinity and it definitely got absurd towards the end but overall it felt like it could have done much more in developing a fun/absurd writing style. also there were weirdly many fatphobic comments that didnt add up to anything?

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book leaps of the page from the very first paragraph into a relentless pace that sinks its teeth into you and doesn't let up until an utterly wild finale. A thoroughly entertaining ride that reveals far more depth and nuance than just a werewolf horror story.

Doyle's talents for prose are on full display here - the passages of the werewolf with his heightened awareness of the natural world while in full wolfman form - are spectacular in transporting the reader into the mind of a truly unique point of view. During these werewolf pov passages Doyle is riffing in a way that is part Herbert's spice omniawareness from the 'Dune' books, Carlos Castanada's Yaqui mystical revelations, Alan Moore's 'Swamp Thing' ecology symbiosis monster horror and Jenny O'Dell's rose garden zenple observations from 'How to do Nothing' but with the propulsion and intensity of say 'Run to the Hills' by Iron Maiden. That Doyle has cut his 'teeth' on three novels and collections of short-stories, this feels like a culmination, a confidence in one's abilities; he is clearly having fun and as a result so are we.

The different layers of the narrative elevate it from just being a horror/adventure yarn. Doyle mixes in ruminations on philosophy, the loss of societal imagination in the chains of capitalist haze, the inability to truly know oneself in a world that demands conformity to survive, a love letter to northern Michigan, 80s slasher flicks, the struggle of addiction/recovery, the duality of human nature, the longing for visceral experiences born from a primitive place yet essential place within us that we as a species maybe increasingly disconnected from, LARPing, Ancient Aliens/In Search Of supernatural tv shows, and what does it 'mean' to be human and the necessity of living a purposeful life. In whatever way you can, a bloodlust for life if you will. Or maybe not so extreme, maybe just...noticing things like the Upper Peninsula sunset Doyle described as being like 'melted pink ice cream'.

[charm_city_sinner]

Despite what follows, know that I don't enjoy writing negative reviews. The time and effort in these pages is more than I could ever muster. With that said, I was enormously let down by The Beast in Aisle 34.

The plot concept is simple enough. Sandy already has a depressing enough life, but now he's a werewolf and has to navigate that now too.

Sandy is the main character and most everyone else is ancillary at best. He is SUCH a milquetoast! He's a meek, weak willed man, who you'd like to see evolve and grow, but he never does. All in all a very unsympathetic and unlikable character.

The plot also just kind of meanders along from one mini point to the next with no real connecting thread aside from an unlikable MC. The ending also just reaffirms everything that made this book so tedious. It came out of nowhere (in a bad way), and makes you hate Sandy even more, offering no growth or redemption. I just wanted to reach into this world and smack the hell out of this guy.

Lastly, I feel like the presentation of the book is incredibly misleading. With the title and cover paired with the promise on the back of a darkly comedic tale, the book sets itself up for failure.

Here's a line lifted directly from the last paragraph: "The field was long and mined with turds."

Swap out field for book, and there you go.

What am I missing???

[Windy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sandy Kurtz is the most unassuming werewolf in Michigan. He’s got a plain ole job at the local hardware store, a couple of nerdy buddies, a run of the mill marriage and a baby on the way. Life is mostly humdrum and mundane, until the Full Moon that is.

I freakin’ loved this entire story, from its menacing beginning to its despairing end. I can totally see it as a one season Netflix series.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid 3.5 stars

[Leighanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sandy is new to this whole werewolf thing.

Until six months ago he was just a regular guy - he had a job at Lowe’s, two drinking buddies, and a strained marriage. When an unexpected act of violence occurs, Sandy has to make a choice. Being a werewolf makes Sandy feel like a man for the first time in his life but, if he lets the beast take over, will he ever be able to return to the life he knew?

The Beast in Aisle 34 starts out as a fun, absurdist romp. We’re introduced pretty quickly to a trio of men calling themselves “Squatch Cops” who are trying to locate the source of some weird activity in the woods. I would love to read a little series about the adventures of the Squatch Cops. The dynamic between Sandy and this trio is great, the narration and dialogue are an absolute blast. And then Sandy is invited along by his buddies to a night of Live Action Role Playing. Naturally, Sandy’s character is a wolfman. This setup has huge potential but doesn't rise to the occasion.

About midway through, the novel takes a sharp turn and becomes much more serious. Human Sandy doesn’t have much agency over his life, he can’t even remember moving to the house that his wife and her parents picked out. Werewolf Sandy is all macho sensibilities. Both versions of Sandy are wildly unlikeable and I found it hard to root for either one. I actually found myself rooting against him which may have been the point but made for an unpleasant experience. I lost the thread of the multiple metaphors somewhere in the Upper Peninsula and never made it back.

Thank you Tortoise Books and Edelweiss for the chance to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Douglas Hardy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wild ride right up to the very end.

This book had a fascinating ability to take the concept of an unreliable narrator, examine that concept, then play around with it all well telling a cool and highly unique story. Additionally, it tackles themes of toxic masculinity and societal expectations. But does so with such a grace, using the fantastical elements to keep things interesting and add some perspective.

Heads up for anyone considering reading, there are a lot of Michigan specific locations and stereotypes in this book. Being from Michigan, I found the various references entertaining and at times even felt called out by them (in a funny way). They don't make or break the story but the sheer amount of them warranted mentioning here.

[Tucker · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The werewolf, whose name was Sandy Kurtz…”

While “he was bleeding his self—his personhood — into the universe,” the grandmother-to-be insisted they determine their fetus’s sex: “You have to find out what it is.”

Lupus Disastrous.

[Sara Habein · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly, 2 stars might be a little generous because, overall, I didn't like this, but I finished it. The first half had some promise — What if a werewolf was just some schlub who works at Lowe's? And what if he didn't know how to be a werewolf yet? And what if his two friends in the world are LARP-ers? Yeah, some of the writing was a little overcooked, but I was interested to see how it all shook out. And how it shook out was... a mess. And not even a purposeful mess, as one might expect from a character who eats raw meat. No, we've got Yooper sadists, a weird way of being fatphobic, a baby in peril for reasons that are not earned, and more shit just keeps on happening like a game campaign that has gone completely off the rails. If that was the point, I didn't care for it.

I do like the book cover though.

[Dennis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really great book. I was surprised what a page turner it was and I actually finished it in two days. Descriptive and super funny and surprising. I could see it being a Netflix series. I liked doyle's other book Girl Who ate Kalamazoo but this was even better.

[Dave Fitzgerald · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a passage near the end of Hunter S. Thompson’s classic outlaw travelogue Hell’s Angels which reads “The streets of every city are thronged with men who would pay all the money they could get their hands on to be transformed – even for a day – into hairy, hard-fisted brutes who walk over cops, extort free drinks from terrified bartenders and thunder out of town on big motorcycles after raping the banker’s daughter. Even people who think the Angels should all be put to sleep find it easy to identify with them. They command a fascination, however reluctant, that borders on psychic masturbation.” Though written over 50 years ago, it’s a quote I am reminded of often amidst America’s ongoing wave of populist antihero entertainment

(a trend that started gaining steam in the early aughts with shows like The Sopranos, The Shield, and Breaking Bad, and has shown no sign of slowing down since). As modern masculinity has evolved steadily away from both brute manual labor and patriarchal “head of the household”-style power, the idea of violent criminality as escapist fantasy has experienced something of a boom in the entertainment world – a still-expanding narrative bubble that seeks to capitalize on the latent, collective male desire to break free of civil society with all its oppressive rules and red tape – to abandon even the pretense of morality in favor of becoming “the one who knocks.” Enter author Darrin Doyle, whose newest novel The Beast in Aisle 34, takes one look at that swollen bubble, and then gleefully bursts it with a swipe of its massive, hairy claws.

Sandy Kurtz is kind of a tool, in the most literal sense of the word. I mean, sure, the guy isn’t particularly likeable, but he’s also so innocuous that he doesn’t even quite rise to the level of being unlikeable. He’s just kind of there, a portrait of a man so deeply entrenched in routine – so utterly beaten down by the relentless mundanity of his life – that he functions as an actual tool; a cog in a really boring machine (one which he probably sells on the reg, as the Bathroom Fixtures Floor Manager at his local Lowe’s. Maybe a toilet fill valve, or a caulking gun. Something like that). His marriage to Pat, a wife who cheated on him in the not-too-distant past but is now pregnant with their first child, suggests a kind of dull-edged bear trap – a constant, grating reminder of both his past failures as a man, and his ever-shrinking options for any kind of a different future. His friends – fellow Lowe’s employees and hetero lifemates Ben and Jerry (they prefer Jerry and Ben) – are even sadder than him; middle-aged fantasy LARPers who seem to view even Sandy’s modest achievements as, at best, aspirational. What none of them knows about Sandy, however – and indeed, what Sandy himself is only just starting to get a handle on – is that an antihero lurks in all of us, somewhere beneath the skin, and that despite all the hair-raising crime spree adventures we enjoy via TV and movies, the IRL experience of throwing a wrench in your life’s own well-oiled machinery, however great it might feel in the moment, generally comes at the expense of whatever modest amount of control you had to begin with. And unlike Walter White, Sandy didn’t even make a conscious decision to “break bad.” He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time (ironically enough, taking a long walk after finding out about his wife’s affair) and got bit by a freakin’ werewolf.

The story that unfolds from there is a familiar one, but with a zanily gruesome bent, as Sandy struggles to balance his duties to Lowe’s, to his friends, and to his wife and unborn child, with his increasingly insatiable thirst for blood and carnage. Along the way he tangles with local vigilante Sasquatch hunters (or “Squatch Cops”), a sinister “Lycanthropy Support Group” that turns out to be anything but supportive, and ultimately actual law enforcement, in his quest to bring his own afflictive animal rage under control. But the farther he goes to protect his secret identity and newfound sense of power, the more he starts to enjoy it – even prefer it to the workaday schlubbery he left behind – and like all the amoral protagonists whose bad behavior we so love to watch, and judge, and gasp at (but also secretly root for, and maybe even get off on a little bit), in the end he is faced with the same stark choice: good or evil? Light or darkness? Man or beast? To paraphrase a well-worn sentiment, you either die an antihero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

To say more of the plot would do this delightful book an injustice – I will readily admit that the ending surprised me, and I shan’t spoil it here – but I will happily carve out another paragraph in praise of Doyle’s crisp, easy style and the clever details he brings to Sandy’s predicament. The inclusion of cluelessly emasculated, performative male stereotypes like Bigfoot obsessives and fantasy role-players to bridge the metaphorical gap between the old Sandy and the new is a stroke of sly comedic genius worthy of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Likewise, the time Sandy spends both in the wilderness and in captivity, learning practical survival skills by the skin of his teeth and improving his physical fitness for what may be the first time in his sedentary life, drives home the point that maybe if he’d just been a little more of a man to begin with, he might never have turned into the monster he is now. The fact that he works in a hardware store, but largely lacks even the basic tools to fix his life, kind of says it all. Sandy is inundated with masculinity signifiers every day of his life, but somehow remains relegated to helping suburban housewives and their henpecked husbands pick out the right faucets for their double vanity. He has the know-how. He just needs to grow a pair.

All of which is to say that, while Doyle may not have all the answers as to what Sandy woulda/coulda/shoulda done differently to avoid his antiheroic fate, he’s also not afraid to pose difficult, uncomfortable questions through his not-quite-unlikeable protagonist, and as I read, and judged, and gasped my way through Sandy’s darkly funny, grotesquely violent journey toward self-empowerment (alternate title idea: Eat Prey, Love), I found I didn’t necessarily have as many answers as I thought I did either. The Beast in Aisle 34 is by no means an apology for toxic masculinity, but it does have something fairly definitive to say about the repression of historically male hunter/provider/protector-type instincts, not by feminism, or homosexuality, or any of the other absurd, rightwing boogeymen the idiotic “men’s rights movement” tends to blame, so much as just by complacency; by drudgery; by the demands and compromises inherent to modern life. Independent, self-sufficient women still like a man who takes care of himself and knows how to change a tire. But more than that even, they like a man who likes himself; who feels secure enough in his manhood to not have to defend it, or hide it, or perform it all the time; who is comfortable enough in his own skin to keep the wolf inside at bay. Masculinity is not a static, all-or-nothing proposition after all, and it’s only when we decide it is that it becomes truly toxic, running around the woods ripping out throats and howling at the moon.

[A.M. (ᴍʏ.sᴘᴏᴏᴋʏ.ᴡᴀʏs) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why must books based on the Universal Classic Monsters be so hard to find? Take this book, for example: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐀𝐢𝐬𝐥𝐞 𝟑𝟒 by Darrin Doyle is a hidden gem that I never would’ve known about if I hadn’t spotted it in a bargain bin several years before I started my Bookstagram. The cover caught my eye, and already being a big fan of horror and the Universal Classic Monsters, I knew I needed this book just because. Fast forward to today. I finally read the book and enjoyed it. It was fun.

Honestly? 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐀𝐢𝐬𝐥𝐞 𝟑𝟒 is exactly the kind of grimy, offbeat horror-comedy I live for. It’s packed with werewolf chaos and that specific ‘my life is falling apart and I’m just going with it’ energy that I can never resist in a horror book, or in any book, for that matter.

We follow Sandy Kurtz, a middle manager at a Lowe’s store in northern Michigan whose life is already circling the drain. His wife despises him, he’s got a baby on the way, and his job is… pretty much the equivalent of a pile of 💩. And on top of all that, he’s been bitten by a werewolf. Now he sneaks into the woods to feed (on deer, mostly), hoping nobody notices. Of course, things spiral once his secret bumps up against Squatch-hunting pseudo-crazies and something about chaotic LARPing. From there, the story tumbles from funny to genuinely bloody.

Darrin Doyle’s writing is quick, sharp, and somehow manages to balance humor and horror without fault. The tone shifts a lot, sometimes tender, sometimes monstrous, sometimes creepy or strangely introspective, but it all feels intentional. Sandy makes such a fascinating ‘loser protagonist’ because he’s messy, selfish, and honestly terrible at being a person AND a werewolf, and that’s exactly what makes him interesting. I guess you can say the book digs into toxic masculinity, compulsion, and identity, but never in a way that feels heavy-handed, which is somewhat of a plus for me in any genre.

One of my biggest gripe would have to be the tonal shift in the second half. The book starts strong, but it eventually tries to juggle horror-comedy, character study, and almost an addiction-like parable where the transition is anything but smooth. A few ideas could’ve been pushed further, or tightened up.

Overall, 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐀𝐢𝐬𝐥𝐞 𝟑𝟒 is weird and more thoughtful than I expected. If you love dark humor, flawed/unhinged characters, and classic monster stories with a modern twist, pick this bad boy up. For me, this book is a 3.5-star read, rounded up.

[Rae · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book up at the Printer's Row Lit Fest in Chicago - the small imprint that publishes it was there and I was interested in the cover, then further sold by the review from Booklist comparing the writing to author Grady Hendrix.

Overall, it was a unique and interesting take on the classic werewolf story. There are interesting and unusual characters and the story goes down several unexpected paths. It broadly felt like the internal scream that seems to be hiding in many middle aged men - it felt towards the end that the parallels between clinical depression and lycanthropy were pretty obvious. There was major emphasis on men, machismo, perceptions of manliness, male friendships, physical strength, authority, financial success, I could go on... essentially all of toxic masculinity.

I think this is where the book lost me a little. When it diverted from plot into metaphor, it was less entertaining to read. Some of the plot twists are pretty unbelievable, but hey - it's a book about a werewolf so it may not be fair to expect it to stay grounded in reality.

It's also pretty gruesome, I would not recommend to readers who are sensitive to descriptions of violence and gore. Recommend to people who like their horror blended with comedy, men going through a mid-life crisis, and fans of cryptozoology.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

BEST BOOK I READ THIS YEAR

completely ignoring the message of this book: i wish i was a werewolf

[Janaya · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book sucked. I have no words.

[Not Sarah Connor Writes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this book from The Next Best Book Club in exchange for an honest review.

The Beast in Aisle 34 started is bizarrely funny, I loved seeing the strange ways Sandy would convince his wife or himself to be out of the house on a full moon, especially joining a LARPing group. But the book loses it's humour and became very dark in the second half. I love some good dark horror, I loved dark humour, but this book felt like it had two different tones going on. But parts of it were fun, I think werewolf lovers will really enjoy it!

Read my full review on my blog!

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meet Sandy Kurtz, a 31-year old married man, soon to be father, history major, with a voracious albeit unique appetite. To put it mildly, Sandy is somewhat content in his dull life as an assistant floor manager in bathroom fixtures at his rural Michigan Lowes. But like many other people, Sandy struggles with finding meaning in his drab life: his sex life is minimal within the struggled marriage, he feels emasculated, and his small Midwest town is filled with Sasquatch fanatics, coworkers trying to get him into LARPing, and a bad case of unfulfilled small-town living. Oh, and I almost forgot, once a month—on a full moon—Sandy’s body stretches, contorts, tears open, pops tendons, distends its jaw, and grows a thick layer of fur and matching razor sharp teeth and claws as he transforms into a bipedal hulking 7 foot tall, behemoth of a werewolf, prowling the woods near his home for wildlife to consume. The thing is, like with his everyday boring life cycle of Lowes kitchen sales, lack of friend circles, and a marital life in shambles, wildlife just isn’t cutting it anymore; Sandy craves tastier meat, hungers for more than rodents and deer, needs more…deserves more so he thinks.

Darrin Doyle’s dark comedy werewolf horror story packs a whole lot of wit and juicy gory detail into each of his sentences. There’s an entertainingly fulfilling pleasure to his prose, making for quite a page turner—a popular literal appraisal I don’t use liberally. I couldn’t wait to sit back down and open up this beautifully covered book—seriously, the vibrant yellow cover with a prominent blood red man-wolf on the cover begs to be pulled off shelves—sinking my teeth in to feed my ferocious appetite. There’s a really fun dichotomy to Sandy’s struggle, stuck on autopilot within his own body throughout his dead-end job and lacklustre domestic life, contrasted with his momentary bloodthirsty apex power trips as the unstoppable lycanthrope. But Beast in Aisle 34 isn’t all violence, blood, gore, and fur, Doyle does a great job at adding complex depth to his protagonist, while also painting a strikingly fervent depiction of cold rural Midwest life. I’ve already bought one of Doyle’s prior books, The Dark Will End the Dark.

I highly recommend The Beast in Aisle 34 to any fellow fan of dark wit and werewolf tales—no surprise to see Doyle thank an early childhood viewing of An American Werewolf in London in the end. Beast in Aisle 34 would make for a great film, and I’m picturing Jesse Plemons as Sandy.

[Mackenzie Lloyd · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked up this book because it has an interesting take on a modern-day werewolf. I enjoyed the first half of the book, and it was picking up steam only to have an extremely disjointed ending. The first half of the book is okay and has minimal humor for that to basically to be tossed out in favor of horror twist after horror twist that literally haulted all character development for Sandy. The author tries to give an edgy take on personal identity but ultimately misses the mark by asking the same questions over and over again without providing the reader a resolution.


Overall, the book literally could have ended about 40 pages sooner, and that cliffhanger would have been a more satisfying than the actual ending.

[Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Never judge a book by its cover! Because this cover made me want to read this book. It is kitchy in all the right ways. Who ever decided to use this cover and the graphic designer who made it deserves a bonus.

The book itself is all over the place. It can't decide what it wants to be. Is it an allegory? A straight horror book? A fun tongue in cheek romp? The answer is Yes. it's a muddle of all these things and suffers for it. It has elements of what could be a great story, but just can't find it's way.

I'd give this one a pass unless you are willing to overlook it's huge shortcomings. It is a short book so it has a minimal time commitment. So it has that going which is nice.

[Faern · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bizarre, but not in a good way. There were so many times I cringed reading this book that it's almost laughable. It started out fine, but the story never really came together in a cohesive way, and everything felt immensely disjointed and flat. Definitely not worth the time spent.

[Madison · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to wait to write a review because my immediate thoughts were not super kind. They haven't aged any better, but I am going to give it my best shot.

I was really excited for _The Beast in Aisle 34_ because I was expecting more horror comedy or something campy. The blurb on the back really developed that expectation for me and that might be why I am so disappointed.

Doyle could have had a really cute story with the main character navigating being a werewolf in a modern world like having customers ask why he's so furry while he's just trying to stock shelves or something like that. We get a little bit of plot like this with him trying to come up with reasons to get his wife out of the house during the change, but not much was done here. He used similar reasons that someone might use when they are cheating so we could have had a mini conflict there but no. This side plot could have been a great opportunity to introduce a fair amount of comedy.

*spoilers*
There are a lot of women in this novel, and normally I would be all for it. BUT. They are almost all villains. Sandy's wife, Pat, cheats on him with another woman, allegedly gets pregnant with Sandy's child to promptly leave him and raise the child with the affair partner. The woman who comes to inform Sandy about a werewolf support group leads him to a trap where another woman imprisons him and tries to kill him (have him kill himself cause she couldn't possible kill someone, she's a frail woman!). Like all the women introduced into the story are either actively trying to hurt Sandy or aid in someone else hurting him.

There was also a weird comment about Sandy's sister being defiled or something by worms ? I'm not exactly sure what was going on or trying to be communicated with that, but it pulled me out of the narrative real quick and I never recovered. Overall, the language just came across as really misogynistic and woman hating. Doyle seems to have some unresolved angst with a woman in his life.

All the men in the story are tragic characters. You get Sandy's two best friends , that we're constantly reminded are "fat and disgusting" (not my words, Doyle only describes them eating, sweating, bellies testing the structural integrity of their shirts, etc), and one of them is dying, the other one is overly emotional. Sandy is the oh boohoo character. One of Sandy's captors is this tragic werewolf who was forced to capture Sandy and he just wants to run free in the fields or whatever. It just reeks of toxic masculinity.

Doyle could have created a fantastic allegory for masculinity in the modern world and made a supportive aura with his novel but it's just gross.

[Janice Kidd · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Review of The Beast in Aisle 34 by Darrin Doyle

What’s notable about any work of fiction by Darrin Doyle is his endless invention. He doesn’t recycle what has worked in his previous books; instead, he brings true vision to each character, to each meditation on this hamstrung world, and to his stories as artworks. His novel The Beast in Aisle 34, despite its use of the werewolf trope, is no exception to his innovation. It’s wonderful to see Doyle’s virtuoso talent for writing gore—sequences of violence and bloodbath elevated to such pitch perfect art—at work in this novel. But he’s also created a complex, restless man-beast, his protagonist, Sandy Kurtz. It’s pure pain-pleasure to witness Sandy’s struggle with identity and how it plays out in his marriage, friendships, and adversarial bonds. This novel is a rewarding read with its study of human failing, our faltering attempts at being ourselves, and stepping into one’s truth.
Doyle writes with his signature humor, dark and absurdist, as he spurs Sandy through a wringer of identity shifts and desperate choices. More than once, I sat up and shouted, “What is he [the author] doing?” The narrative is effortlessly surprising, yet solidly earns my trust as a reader.
At times, this is an escapist read: Who wouldn’t want to shrug off work-a-day burdens to assume Herculean strength and gorge to satisfy their basest desires? But there are stark reality checks, too, as the consequences of freedom become clear and other characters’ fates, affected by Sandy’s power and choices, weigh heavy on him.
Even in the darkest moments of this book, there is euphoric momentum. There’s a beautiful play-within-a-play that frames one of the book’s darkest moments. The collective glee of the costumed players in the woods under the full moon recalls the staged otherworld and slipshod identities in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But Doyle’s version has the stark morning-after reality that deepens Sandy’s descent into awakening to his true nature and following a road of peril.
Doyle’s characterizations are rich and explore a hilarious obsession with conspiracy hunting, from Sasquatch to other mythic beasts, that acts as a clever cover to Sandy grappling his literal inner demons and those demons that come out from the shadows to hunt him.
This is a satisfying, gritty read for its artistic and narrative heights and inventions, and for the complex journey of the protagonist, a man-beast who’s relatable and tragically familiar. This story is fresh and transportive, the best kind of reading.

[Chelsea Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to start off by saying I knew nothing about this book or author when I purchased this book. I bought the book because the cover was just amazing, it caught my eye and I loved the title, I read the synopsis and thought I have got to get this book.

I mention this because I always talk about on my channel how I totally judge books by their covers and have found numerous good books just because the cover caught my eye or the title was really cool. This is I believe the first book on my channel to show this. If you want to see my video review link to my channel is on my page.

So, what is this book about? Well this about a guy named Sandy who was attacked by a werewolf and almost died and now he too is a werewolf. Sandy has a very complicated life, you could say a boring or even sad life. Sandy is married to a woman who cheated on him and the whole situation was never settled, he has a job he hates as a manager at Lowe's, and his wife is pregnant, then to make matters worst he is trying to deal with being a werewolf. Every month he finds some way to get him or his wife out of the house so he can change. He hunts and eats game in woods behind his house then goes back to normal life until next month. This is working for Sandy until a group of bigfoot hunter show up in his woods and start scaring all the wildlife away. When a werewolf doesn't eat it is like having an unbarable hangover. This leads to Sandy having to deal with this and the baby on the way, all this leads to a very unexpected climatic ending.

This was such a fun short read, it is not a book that I would tell people "OMG you have to read this!" but it is a really fun entertaining read that is less than 300 pages long. I enjoyed the way the author tells the story, it moves along at a great pace and there is never a dull moment. This would make a great movie, the whole time reading this I kept trying to think who could play Sandy and how awesoem this would be as a movie. It is sort of a horror comedy, it is not really scary but it has some very shocking and gory parts. There is nothing I didn't like about this book, I really tried to think of something and I got nothing. 5 out of 5 on this one!!!

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a preface — I don’t have much background in the werewolf genre, especially not in a comical sense. I think King’s The Silver Bullet might be my only actual exposure to literary werewolves before now.

So in terms of advertisements, this was indeed about werewolves, comedy, and the concept of man vs nature (in both senses of the word). And it’s enjoyable! It gets me interested to read others in the genre and maybe (very much MAYBE) more by this author.

Don’t get me wrong, the author loves storytelling and has a knack for it, with a consistent narrative voice, what I assume are very good jokes about midwesterners (as a New Englander, I feel like most went over my head, but I’m sure a local would get a real kick out of this), and a solid set of plot lines.

But at times, the writing style could get a little tiring (how many synonyms can we find for gushy when describing entrails?) and a lot of interesting concepts were set aside as the novel rushes to a close. The lesbian wife (who hunts but gave it up apparently because of sandy but also had access to the gun from her wedding — did she RECENTLY acquire bullets)? The Squatch Cops who never had solid evidence but were also brave enough to face down a werewolf?

And the LAA and fellow werewolves felt very underdeveloped. I think they should honestly have taken the foreground, with the book starting about a month later than it did, so we could focus on their motives a bit more. Instead, a lot of supporting characters were introduced for only a few chapters and I wound up a bit confused as to why are so many werewolves in the Midwest? Are they across the US, or just this region? Is Sasquatch actually a werewolf?

Another thing I wish the author had addressed — the lore behind werewolves and what is true/false. Did Sandy ever test these things? Do any research?

For example, does he have any fear of the condition being passed down? That would explain a return to Sandra when…. Sandy hasn’t really shown any interest/desire/skill in being a potential dad and probably should have left years ago.

I liked it. Glad I picked it up off the shelf and don’t regret reading it.

[Asha Churchill · Rating 1 out of 5]

One star because there was simply not enough "in" this story to warrant a novel. This is a series of thinly connected vignettes. The main character, Sandy, has no concrete goal, and so bounces from place to place and thing to thing without direction. That's not even mentioning how every single side character changes motives seemingly at the whim of whatever the author thought would be interesting for that particular chapter. Most damningly, Sandy is saved by random strangers ex machina numerous times for no reason. The scenes themselves might have been exciting, except there was never any clarity on what to hope for or why to root for Sandy at all. The random strangers who help him for no reason also completely dull the tension by the end. I know Sandy's never in any real trouble because the plot always comes in clutch. It gets to the point that even the humor here is exhausting because I wish I cared, but I'm just never given a reason to, so the Marvel-esque quips are teeth grinding by the final pages. I never grew to like Sandy because I never watched him struggle for anything.

The editor also clearly gave up by the end. My favorite line in the final chapter is "... giving the woman a wide birth to show he meant no harm." If the editor didn't care, why should I?

That's not even touching on the completely asinine addiction theme, which might have been compelling were it not so thrown in your face. And I'm not going to give the frankly insulting LGBTQ metaphor the time of day except to mention that it's a dogshit take.

If you want a great werewolf book, read Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones. If you want a horror novel that deals with addiction and which actually has something to say, read Misery by Stephen King.