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U-Turns #1

The Girl in the Cellar

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From two of the darkest minds working in modern day horror: A new series of dark and disturbing tales!

U-Turns is a new series from Matt Shaw and a series of guest authors. The brain-child of Matt Shaw, U-Turns sees the two authors taking it in turns to both start and finish the stories. One author will write "Part One", and then the second author will come in and write "Part Two" - drastically changing the course of the story in the process, in an effort to shock, disturb and - ultimately - delight you.

With each book being a stand-alone story to haunt your nightmares and plague your waking moments. How many can you handle?

Book One: The Girl in the Cellar - Matt Shaw and Aron Beauregard

No matter what she does, Brooke cannot put her past behind her. Wherever she goes, whatever she does - he is never far from her thoughts. More specifically, what he did to her. Brooke knows the only way to rid herself of this nightmare is to ensure it can never happen again and, for that, she needs to take the law into her own hands. But, she also knows, once she goes down that path - her life will change forever. The question is - for better or worse?

Warning: This is an extreme horror. There are brutal, potentially upsetting scenes within. For those who are easily shocked or offended, please do not purchase this book.

68 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 31, 2022

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About the author

Matt Shaw

554 books2,276 followers
Biography

MATT SHAW was born, quite by accident (his mother tripped, he shot out) September 30th 1980 in Winchester hospital where he was immediately placed on the baby ward and EBay. Some twelve years later (wandering the corridors of the hospital and playing with road kill when he was on day release), the listing closed and he remained unsold, he was booted out of the hospital to start his life as a writer and hobbit – beginning with writing screenplays and short stories for his own amusement before finally getting published when he was twenty-seven years and forty-five seconds old.


Once Published weekly in a lad's magazine with his photography work, Matt Shaw is also a published author and cartoonist. Has to be said, can be a bit of a flirt and definitely, without a shadow of a doubt, somewhat of a klutz.

Favourite books
"Roald Dahl's Collection of Short Stories"
Tim Burton's Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy
Anything, really, written by himself. Because he is that good.

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5 stars
131 (30%)
4 stars
135 (31%)
3 stars
95 (22%)
2 stars
35 (8%)
1 star
27 (6%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 75 reviews
Profile Image for Mort.
Author 3 books1,660 followers
January 14, 2023
Full review available at The Mort Report:
https://www.uncomfortablydark.com/bla...

Yes.

This is about as much as I need to say.

I respect both authors, but what Aron Beauregard did with this story in the second part, elevated this bitch into the EPIC fucking stratosphere.

I LOVED everything about this story.

So, yes.

5 STARS!!!!!
Profile Image for Becks! .
428 reviews47 followers
January 18, 2023
Thank you Matt Shaw, and Aron Beauregard. I will never look at a spider the same way again. Unless of course I am running away from it, as usual.....
526 reviews52 followers
January 2, 2023
This is gonna be a wicked fucking series. I love this concept and I fucking dig the writing of the disturbing duo Shaw\Beauregard. What I like about this the most is that they are both so good at creating and putting the psychological horror right in your face, then they hit you with the grisly, sadistic horror and the you step back and think about it after you're done and go holy fuck this is fucked up.... and then want more. I highly recommend this. I can't wait for the next one.....(And FUCK spiders man )
Profile Image for Hail Hydra! ~Dave Anderson~.
314 reviews13 followers
November 28, 2023
But my genuine curiosity transformed after seeing what a little monster he’d become. I gave him a chance, just like I gave his mother a chance. But after seeing that he hadn’t changed a bit, the question suddenly arose; why not make him my monster? After all, the people in the outside world don’t understand monsters—they never will. And they don’t know how to appreciate a monster. But I certainly do.
Profile Image for Mique Watson.
442 reviews677 followers
August 2, 2023
That finale will live rent free in my head forever. 4.5/5

Profile Image for Kate Victoria RescueandReading.
2,094 reviews124 followers
May 7, 2023
LOVE the concept, but wasn’t a huge fan of the execution in this book. I kinda found to boring to be honest.
Profile Image for ⋆˚°✩*˖ Gohnar23  (•˕ •マ.ᐟ ˚⟡˖ ࣪.
1,143 reviews54 followers
March 12, 2025
Books read & reviewed: 1️⃣0️⃣1️⃣🥖4️⃣0️⃣0️⃣


╔⏤⏤⏤╝❀╚⏤⏤⏤╗


3️⃣🌟, Aron, u ruined a perfectly good story
——————————————————————
➕➖0️⃣1️⃣2️⃣3️⃣4️⃣5️⃣6️⃣7️⃣8️⃣9️⃣🔟✖️➗

u know on my pre-read i basically just said that the part two of this story is going to be written by Aron Beuaregard, an author that i tremendously loved because of how he writes his characters? Will in this book, he wrote it like it is more focused in the plot while the first part being focused on Brooke as a character, the sudden change is more apparent and pretty match may be realized how Aron is primarily just a splatterpunk author, he writes gruesome things gruesomely. It is probably only on "playground" that he made a more character focused approach and writing. Crane is such an infuriating character, he's like one of those typical fucked up characters that you see on horror films and is not well written, his personality boils down to "im fucked up and i want to kill people". I love brad but the ending just, i hate it you could have written a really better ending but you just had to rush it so Crane just kills brad at the end, it's so damn rushed. I really thought that there was going to be more things, maybe we can learn more about the two of them as father and son relationships but nah, Crane just kills brad

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Date Read: Wednesday, March 12, 2025
Book Length: 18k words: stop looking at me short books.
Disturbingness scale: its just spiders uwu out of 1️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ potatoes 🥔: 2️⃣0️⃣

My 15th read of splatterpunk march ✨

✧・゚: *✧・゚:*Pre-Read✧・゚: *✧・゚:*

Part one was made by Matt Shaw, Part two was written by a different author,. AND ITS ARON MOTHERFUCKING BEAUREGARD. I LOVE ARON'S CHARACTER WRITING,. WILL IT ALSO BE PRESENT HERE???
Profile Image for Diane .
402 reviews14 followers
February 16, 2025
When Matt Shaw and Aron Beauregard get their heads together all hell breaks loose and this book is the result of two extraordinary sick minds.
Part One written by Mr Shaw and Part Two by Mr Beauregard...each was excellent and mind blowing.
I never had much time for spiders and after reading this I care even less for them!!

It has to be 5 Big Hairy Spider Stars From Me...🌟🕷️🕸️🌟🕷️🕸️🌟🕷️🕸️🌟🕷️🕸️🌟🕷️🕸️

Excellent and well worth reading.
Profile Image for Victoria.
455 reviews168 followers
January 16, 2023
This book gave me a book hangover so bad.

This was half written by Matt Shaw and Aron Beauregard, each of them telling a part of the story.

I have to tell you that the second part of the story took a complete uturn and made me ask what the hell.

It honestly was amazing and I’m not going to lie but Matt and Aron can write all the rest of their books like this.

Please check triggers before reading.
Profile Image for Faye.
91 reviews8 followers
February 4, 2023
Not too sure how I feel about this.

Trigger warnings should be more specific than just 'this is an extreme horror. Brutal, potentially upsetting scenes within. For those who are easily shocked or offended, please do not purchase this book.'
Profile Image for Rachel M.
431 reviews20 followers
January 3, 2023
some U turn!

I love the concept of this series, two different authors with two very different ideas of story. Matts half built up a back story with a few flashbacks and Aron half certainly took a U turn! I can honestly say I would never have guessed the direction this story took!
Profile Image for Alex.
336 reviews13 followers
June 15, 2025
Matt Shaw and Aron Beauregard? I absolutely had to check this one out!

This is an unique concept of books where one author writes the first half of the story while the other writes the second half with a crazy twist, and I was all for it!

The first half is build up for our characters, but the second half...I was not prepared for that! Let's just say I won't be able to look at a spider the same ever again! This was an engaging story and very disturbing!

4/5
Profile Image for Khurshid Ali.
910 reviews1 follower
February 13, 2023
Matt and Adam - two of the best horror writers team up to bring a book that definitely gets a reaction from the readers.

We have Necrophilia and arachnophile. Combining both gives us a book of pure horror.

Brilliant.
35 reviews
December 10, 2023
I really enjoyed the first part of the book, but when the other author took over the story and twisted it to their vision it all got too much for me. I was expecting gore and absolute horror when I read this, but it just ended up being completely ridiculous. I was not even disgusted, only disgruntled.
Profile Image for Leah M-S.
57 reviews
March 20, 2026
Promising first part, but devolved into absolute madness. I would have rated it higher if it wasn’t for the random animal violence (I get it, it’s extreme horror but that can be done without this crap easily) Overall I’m left with the lingering feeling of “what did I just read?”

I still love the premise of two authors each writing one half, and the concept in here weren’t bad. Just overall not for me.
Profile Image for Leanne Pert.
96 reviews4 followers
January 3, 2023
Not too shabby

Having read both authors before I thought this would be a totally didsyterbing read, however although a bit gross it wasn't as bad as I expected. You can defiantly distinguish between the two authors sections. I think as a new concept this came together really well.
Profile Image for Allyssa Monteith.
10 reviews1 follower
June 23, 2023
This book was disgusting but somehow I still loved it! Now I’m off to read the second book in this series
Profile Image for luckykarmatx.
286 reviews5 followers
March 19, 2023
Not for tenderonies!
I need a moment to process what I just read because WTF was that?! Normally, the subject is not my cup of tea, but the writing was good, and I found myself robbed of my ability to look away. It was definitely a sick, sick mind that crafted this. This was a really short read (68 pages), so I highly recommend not reading it before bed if you wish to sleep soundly.

🛑 TW: S/A, Child Abuse, Animal Abuse (bird) 🛑
Profile Image for Alice NRoses.
11 reviews
March 2, 2023
2 writers, 1 cup

Wow! This was really great. Short and sweet, but so many beautifully horrific things. I love both writers styles, the two halves of the book flowed nicely into one another. If you like either of the authors, you will enjoy this book!
Profile Image for Elizabeth Gonzalez-Collazo IG - Shereadswithcoffee.
171 reviews20 followers
January 17, 2023
What in the world did I just read?! I don’t even have the words but know this; this screams extreme horror!! Co-written by Matt Shaw and Aron Beauregard, we have several POVs in this novella; Brooke, Crane and Brad!

Part One – Brooke (Written by Matt Shaw)
The agonizing trauma suffered from her kidnapping and torture
Part Two – Crane and Brad (Written by Aron Beauregard)
Centers on the gruesome mind of Crane. Brooke’s tormentor and the eerily disturbing mind of her son Brad.

This is the first story in Matt Shaw’s U-Turns series, highlighting other guest authors. I anticipate these being so amazingly disturbing (you’ve been warned) that you may want to read these on an empty stomach! A story so inherently disturbing and traumatizing in many ways you won’t look at things the same way again.
Profile Image for Amber  Comer.
154 reviews9 followers
January 11, 2023
I mean it's super dark exactly as expected

These two together can make any stomach knot and heave. This story was no different. I really wanted to see what Matt Shaw and Aron Beauregard would come up with and this one is nasty. Extreme horror is all about the shock value and this one was gory, gross, gruesome and did its job perfectly. I don't know how these two come up with these stories and why I keep going back but they truely are some of the best!

Warning this is dark, twisted, and could be upsetting to some. Head my warning if you are not prepared for extreme horror. It is not for the light hearted!
Profile Image for Michelle.
88 reviews10 followers
January 29, 2023
I am debating between a 4 or 5 rating…. So I guess this is a 4.5 read.

The first half of the story was good, but not quite as gruesome as part two. And now I understand why they are calling this a U-turn series. Just when you think you have the story figured out, it takes a hard turn. Everything you thought you knew is false.

This book is full of triggers so please be cautious before going in.
Profile Image for SugarC.
163 reviews13 followers
January 25, 2023
I will never look at a spider the same again

Amazing! For one both authors are talented as f*ck! To see the different perspectives told, gave this an awesome feel if you're into horror definitely give this gem a read. You won't be disappointed!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 75 reviews