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Sleep Alone
For the past six years, Ronnie has worked selling merch for a perpetually touring band. Late nights, sweaty clubs, dingy motel rooms, endless roads—as rough as it’s been, there is no other way of life for this band of hungry succubi leaving bodies in their wake.
Until she meets the enigmatic Helene.
Helene is just as restless, just as lonely, and just as full of secrets. With Helene in tow, Ronnie and the band make their way across the Pacific Northwest, trying to outrun not only their mistakes, but the mysterious disease stalking the band, a disease that devours succubi from the inside out.
The hunger is as endless as the road, but maybe Ronnie doesn’t always want to sleep alone.
Until she meets the enigmatic Helene.
Helene is just as restless, just as lonely, and just as full of secrets. With Helene in tow, Ronnie and the band make their way across the Pacific Northwest, trying to outrun not only their mistakes, but the mysterious disease stalking the band, a disease that devours succubi from the inside out.
The hunger is as endless as the road, but maybe Ronnie doesn’t always want to sleep alone.
135 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 18, 2023
5 people are currently reading
1378 people want to read
About the author
J.A.W. McCarthy
41 books54 followersJ.A.W. McCarthy is a Bram Stoker Award and Shirley Jackson Award finalist and author of Sometimes We’re Cruel and Other Stories (Cemetery Gates Media, 2021) and Sleep Alone (Off Limits Press, 2023). Her short fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including Vastarien, PseudoPod, Split Scream Vol. 3, Apparition Lit, Tales to Terrify, and The Best Horror of the Year Vol 13 (ed. Ellen Datlow). She is Thai American and lives with her spouse and assistant cats in the Pacific Northwest. You can call her Jen on Twitter @JAWMcCarthy, and find out more at www.jawmccarthy.com.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 65 reviews
July 13, 2023
Ronnie is a succubus who, out of her wish to have companions and not be lonely, turns a complete rock band into her kind and starts touring with them perpetually. Like always, they never ever stop or rest or pause and live the full deal with vomiting, drugs, alcohol, pizza, sleeping in vans and cheap motel rooms, the whole nine yards. She takes on the role of the merch seller, but her actual intention is to satisfy her never ending hunger, and of course, all of them are usually hungry for human memories. One day she finds Helene, who is just like her and is hunting to feed also, so she tags along. But her joining the band marks a kind of change and when the guys start getting a mysterious illness, doubts come to Ronnie whether turning the guys ever has been a good idea at all.
Sleep Alone follows the not yet washed out concept of succubae, although in my head I imagined them as some sort of rock star vampires and the difference to vampires wasn’t really that obvious. The whole story was ultimately a little draggy and didn’t really satisfy me in the way that Ronnie never feels completely full either. Huh, maybe I was more influenced by this main character than I thought after all.
I don't know if I missed it, but scanned the book a second time for the name of the band and couldn't find it. I wish the band had a name.
Sleep Alone follows the not yet washed out concept of succubae, although in my head I imagined them as some sort of rock star vampires and the difference to vampires wasn’t really that obvious. The whole story was ultimately a little draggy and didn’t really satisfy me in the way that Ronnie never feels completely full either. Huh, maybe I was more influenced by this main character than I thought after all.
I don't know if I missed it, but scanned the book a second time for the name of the band and couldn't find it. I wish the band had a name.
March 28, 2023
A rock band. A merch girl. Starving Succubi.
One sitting. An enraptured reader.
Ronnie and her band of misfits. Life on the road can be lonely. She’s spent a life lonely, and she refuses to sleep alone anymore. When she meets the enigmatic band, she realises that they are everything she’s been searching for. They tour the pacific Midwest and their youthfulness and zest for life reminds Ronnie of a life gone by. She wants to tap into that once again, live carefree and they make her hungry for it. The only problem is that Ronnie is a Succubi, she’s hungry to feed and she wants these men around for the long term. How easy it would be to turn them…
McCarthy has created characters that are well developed and with enough layers that you just know that it’s going to keep you going through the winter. It’s exceedingly hard to develop characters worth caring about in a novella sized story but McCarthy has excelled where others fail. Oh, and that cover. Well, don’t ask me why but I got the Mystery INC feelings. I was totally here for it!
Ronnie was an enigma to me. When you think of Vampires or Succubi, what immediately springs to mind? Dark and devious creatures of the night? Blood sucking beings that don’t care about picking off victim after victim. Bram Stoker’s Dracula? This was different. Ronnie taught the boys self-control, not only because if they went too far and left corpses in their wake some hotshot detective might put two and two together and get four. They feed to sustain, and Ronnie has taught them to take the victim’s negative memories from them. She sees it as a kindness whilst sustaining their unnatural lives.
When Ronnie spots the mysterious Helene at one of the band’s shows, she knows right there and then that she’s different. Her aura shines throughout, and she knows she needs to make some kind of contact with her. Her eyes…it’s all in the eyes. Little does she know that the connection she feels is something akin to home. They know each other on a deeper level, there is probably no-one that knows the other better.
Unfortunately, when you create something so unnatural, an abomination, such is what the boys from the band have become, it is an uncontrollable variable. Ronnie doesn’t know how they will turn out and so far in the six years that they’ve been together as this new dynamic, things have been good. However, one member develops this really nasty wound at his navel that only gets worse. Is this a sign of things to come or is it simply a feeding session that went wrong?
April 29, 2023
Succubus Ronnie’s driving force is working as the merch girl for her favorite band and keeping her boys fed, even if it means going hungry herself. But when she meets Helene and finds a connection she never before dreamed of, her focus shifts and the band’s hunger becomes an inferno of need.
I really liked the rock and roll world McCarthy created and her take on succubi mythology. Each band member has a distinct personality and relationship with Ronnie. The band’s issues with Helene and their voracious hunger drive the story forward, while the relationships between the characters create the novella’s heartbeat creating a satisfying blend of horror and LGBT romance.
I really liked the rock and roll world McCarthy created and her take on succubi mythology. Each band member has a distinct personality and relationship with Ronnie. The band’s issues with Helene and their voracious hunger drive the story forward, while the relationships between the characters create the novella’s heartbeat creating a satisfying blend of horror and LGBT romance.
March 30, 2024
Sapphic rock and roll succubus horror, what's not to like?? This book covers a lot of emotional ground and builds impressive depth to its relationships despite its short length. I really enjoyed reading about Ronnie and her boys, and I'm a sucker for any story with musicians at its centre.
March 14, 2023
Stop me if you've heard this one before -- a succubi rock band walks into a bar...
No? I hadn't either. A vampire rock band, sure, plenty of times, most recently in Alan Baxter's Tales from the Gulp duology and I'm sure there was at least one vampire rock band in Crystal Lake Publishing's music venue-centered anthology, Welcome to the Show. Even as sexualized as vampires are in horror fiction, the use of succubi in this scenario strikes an immediate chord and presents an opportunity to more directly explore the classic themes of sex, drugs, and rock & roll with a monster that's certainly more interesting and intriguing than the fanged bloodsucker of old, and which is far too often overlooked.
Succubi, most often presented as an alluring woman, need sex (and more traditionally, semen) in order to survive. This creature so constantly in need of a fix in order to feel alive makes for an immediate and natural parallel for addiction. And fronting as a rock band, well, what better way to get your groove on with some unsuspecting but very willing groupies? Oddly, even the male members of Sleep Alone's rock band are considered succubi, rather than incubi, and each have been turned by Ronnie, their merch girl.
They all tour the country together, going from one backwoods bar joint to another, feasting on their human snacks when it's safe. Some of the bandmates are tired of living like this, constantly on the move and jonesing for a way to scratch their addict's itch, lamenting that "It feels so fucking good, then it feels like shit right after." There's an unspoken desire to get clean in Jack's more overt desire to settle down and raise a family, to the point that his constantly asking Ronnie, "What do you think of this place?" has become a running joke. But when Ronnie meets Helene, another full-blooded succubus like her, and members of the band start getting sick, it's only a matter of time before their imaginings of an endpoint become closer to a reality.
For as promising as J.A.W. McCarthy's premise is, Sleep Alone is unfortunately every bit as familiar. Her succubi feel too much like vampires, to the point that I couldn't help but wonder if Sleep Alone began life as a straight-up vampire story but upon consideration of how saturated the market is with this tired entity McCarthy did a word search and replaced every instance of vampire with succubus instead. Whatever shades of originality a fresher creature like the succubus could have brought to the material is squandered. While sexuality does play a key role, and McCarthy writes about their feedings with quasi-erotic language (while kissing a victim, the "tunnel" at Ronnie's core opens to suck in their essence; the men, more straightforward in getting their fix as seen through Ronnie's first-person POV, offer up blowjobs in the green room, alleys, or filthy bathrooms, although the entire group is sexually fluid and eager to take whatever they can get from whomever they can get it), it never feels like anything other than a riff on a vampire feeding and it's all the more dull for it.
McCarthy's writing is sharp enough to keep the pages turning, though, even if we know all the plot beats well before she gets there. We know that these creatures falling ill will lead to madness will lead to slaughter will lead to reckoning, but it's Ronnie's introspection in between that truly feels substantive. Her one clause in being with these men is that she sleeps alone (she's been sexually intimate with each of them at least once, in order to turn them, but has since become more like a den mother -- Freud would have a field day with this gang), at least until she meets and becomes involved with Helene. It's their relationship that really helps ground Sleep Alone and make it worthwhile, but I also admired Ronnie's relationship with nice guy Jack, which helps offset her increasingly tumultuous relationship with Cillian, particularly as Helene becomes a deeper wedge issue betwixt them all. Kudos, too, for McCarthy's intriguing disease cutting a swath through this surrogate family - it gets marvelously gross as it progresses and feels like a natural statement thematically on all that's come before.
Sleep Alone isn't nearly as unique as I had hoped, and there's sadly little here to differentiate McCarthy's depiction of a succubus from your more run of the mill vampire, but it does offer up a keen look at the humanity beneath the monster. McCarthy's writing is certainly promising and presents here as an author to watch out for. And whatever qualms I had about Sleep Alone aside, I honestly wouldn't mind revisiting Ronnie and Helene sometime later down the road.
No? I hadn't either. A vampire rock band, sure, plenty of times, most recently in Alan Baxter's Tales from the Gulp duology and I'm sure there was at least one vampire rock band in Crystal Lake Publishing's music venue-centered anthology, Welcome to the Show. Even as sexualized as vampires are in horror fiction, the use of succubi in this scenario strikes an immediate chord and presents an opportunity to more directly explore the classic themes of sex, drugs, and rock & roll with a monster that's certainly more interesting and intriguing than the fanged bloodsucker of old, and which is far too often overlooked.
Succubi, most often presented as an alluring woman, need sex (and more traditionally, semen) in order to survive. This creature so constantly in need of a fix in order to feel alive makes for an immediate and natural parallel for addiction. And fronting as a rock band, well, what better way to get your groove on with some unsuspecting but very willing groupies? Oddly, even the male members of Sleep Alone's rock band are considered succubi, rather than incubi, and each have been turned by Ronnie, their merch girl.
They all tour the country together, going from one backwoods bar joint to another, feasting on their human snacks when it's safe. Some of the bandmates are tired of living like this, constantly on the move and jonesing for a way to scratch their addict's itch, lamenting that "It feels so fucking good, then it feels like shit right after." There's an unspoken desire to get clean in Jack's more overt desire to settle down and raise a family, to the point that his constantly asking Ronnie, "What do you think of this place?" has become a running joke. But when Ronnie meets Helene, another full-blooded succubus like her, and members of the band start getting sick, it's only a matter of time before their imaginings of an endpoint become closer to a reality.
For as promising as J.A.W. McCarthy's premise is, Sleep Alone is unfortunately every bit as familiar. Her succubi feel too much like vampires, to the point that I couldn't help but wonder if Sleep Alone began life as a straight-up vampire story but upon consideration of how saturated the market is with this tired entity McCarthy did a word search and replaced every instance of vampire with succubus instead. Whatever shades of originality a fresher creature like the succubus could have brought to the material is squandered. While sexuality does play a key role, and McCarthy writes about their feedings with quasi-erotic language (while kissing a victim, the "tunnel" at Ronnie's core opens to suck in their essence; the men, more straightforward in getting their fix as seen through Ronnie's first-person POV, offer up blowjobs in the green room, alleys, or filthy bathrooms, although the entire group is sexually fluid and eager to take whatever they can get from whomever they can get it), it never feels like anything other than a riff on a vampire feeding and it's all the more dull for it.
McCarthy's writing is sharp enough to keep the pages turning, though, even if we know all the plot beats well before she gets there. We know that these creatures falling ill will lead to madness will lead to slaughter will lead to reckoning, but it's Ronnie's introspection in between that truly feels substantive. Her one clause in being with these men is that she sleeps alone (she's been sexually intimate with each of them at least once, in order to turn them, but has since become more like a den mother -- Freud would have a field day with this gang), at least until she meets and becomes involved with Helene. It's their relationship that really helps ground Sleep Alone and make it worthwhile, but I also admired Ronnie's relationship with nice guy Jack, which helps offset her increasingly tumultuous relationship with Cillian, particularly as Helene becomes a deeper wedge issue betwixt them all. Kudos, too, for McCarthy's intriguing disease cutting a swath through this surrogate family - it gets marvelously gross as it progresses and feels like a natural statement thematically on all that's come before.
Sleep Alone isn't nearly as unique as I had hoped, and there's sadly little here to differentiate McCarthy's depiction of a succubus from your more run of the mill vampire, but it does offer up a keen look at the humanity beneath the monster. McCarthy's writing is certainly promising and presents here as an author to watch out for. And whatever qualms I had about Sleep Alone aside, I honestly wouldn't mind revisiting Ronnie and Helene sometime later down the road.
March 12, 2023
A unique take on a monster you won't see tackled much in horror fiction - McCarthy is an incredible author.
July 8, 2023
Succinct, well written novella that blew me away. The depths of imagination in McCarthy's writing was just phenomenal. She makes an implausible/impossible situation seem real and I was totally wrapped up in the story of this band and their merch girl. I hope she writes a sequel!!
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March 18, 2023SLEEP ALONE has ample sex, drugs, & rock'n'roll but amidst the debauchery is a story of longing, loss, and love. J.A.W. McCarthy's vivid writing brings nuance to this gory story of a woman who tries to outsmart her loneliness and the reckoning that occurs when her gift becomes a curse.
April 9, 2023
I read Sleep Alone in a few hours, I enjoyed it so much. Maybe it was the nostalgia of grimy punk shows, but I kept turning pages to find out what happened next. It came off a little vampiric, but it was fun to read which is sometimes all that matters.
April 13, 2023
I’ve been looking forward to this novella for a while now—and it lived up to my very high hopes! I started reading it a few nights ago and…welp, kept on reading until it was done. I could not set this brilliant, emotionally devastating book down.
McCarthy tackles so much in a brief space: hunger, what we do or don’t owe family, loneliness, desperation, regret, aging, the weirdness of bodies—all in a stunningly entertaining package. If you’re up for a queer horror story of sex, drugs, and rock & roll with succubi, you won’t regret picking up Sleep Alone (out now from Off Limits Press)!
McCarthy tackles so much in a brief space: hunger, what we do or don’t owe family, loneliness, desperation, regret, aging, the weirdness of bodies—all in a stunningly entertaining package. If you’re up for a queer horror story of sex, drugs, and rock & roll with succubi, you won’t regret picking up Sleep Alone (out now from Off Limits Press)!
February 19, 2023
McCarthy’s all grunge, sex, and distortion in her latest offering Sleep Alone. You feel the bass reverberate through your bones, smell the sweat and sensuality of the downtown club buzzing with anticipation, and there—the eyes of someone, or something, coaxing you in as the van door slides open, but by then it’s too late.
March 18, 2023
True to all things McCarthy, Sleep Alone brings a mesmerizing beauty to the grotesque. It is a study on identity and intimacy, how hard they are to square, and all the pain that lies in the gap between the two. Sleep Alone confronts the inextricable connection between hunger and heartbreak, and will leave you wondering whether it was you who consumed the book or the other way around.
May 19, 2023
Sleep Alone hits like a searing guitar solo. Gorgeous, raw and full of emotion. You can feel every beat, every syllable rattle your heart and mind as you become immersed within the story of Ronnie and the band. The prose is exquisite and the story is full of heart and soul. I loved reading this story, and won't ever miss a story from this author moving forward.
April 1, 2023
A rockin ride I read in one sitting. This is a queer, sexy story full of horror and hunger.
November 30, 2024
What I loved the most about this book was that I felt like I knew the characters right away, right from the very first page. I did not know what succubi were before but I loved the way this folklore entity was brought into this world or, more specifically, to the world of rock bands and music. We can feel Ronnie's pain and loneliness throughout the book, and see how she feels like everything is always her responsibility. Would she have met Helene if she hadn't turned the band? There is one other question we are left with: Why did Helene's partner get sick right away and the band only six years later?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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June 7, 2023Are you a fan of rock n' roll and lesbian succubi? Then this novella is for you!
October 22, 2023
3.5 ⭐️ - this caused me to dream I was a succubus and I somehow turned Paul Mescal into one too
July 27, 2024
Fantastic novella that works as a love letter to touring bands who never quite “make it,” but are out at dive bars and small clubs in your city, coming and going in a single night.
June 29, 2023
Perfectly paced, fully engaging, and I love the main character so much! FINALLY someone writes a book about a woman who isn't some young thing. Hooray for us middle-aged broads!
June 6, 2023
CWs: body horror, animal death, sexual content
This book had a really interesting concept that got me invested really fast! I don't usually read horror, but I really enjoyed this book. If you want a short queer horror experience, I would highly recommend it!
This book had a really interesting concept that got me invested really fast! I don't usually read horror, but I really enjoyed this book. If you want a short queer horror experience, I would highly recommend it!
May 31, 2023
Come for the rock and roll succubi (who can resist that?), stay for the amazing characters and heartbreak. This book drew me in and kept me reading, highly recommend!
April 30, 2024
SLEEP ALONE
by J.A.W. McCarthy
This one took me a bit to get through. I wasn’t sure where it was going but once I got about 30% in, I couldn’t put the story down. (Ask the poor people sharing a table with me at the indoor playground as I gasped numerous times over an hour.)
Ronnie tours with the band. She’s not a groupie, no. She’s the Mother hen, the glue that holds the band together, the reason for their being… the way they are. When she meets Helene, not only does she fall for her but they share a very deep, dark secret that will test Ronnie’s friendship with the band as well as her decision to make them what they are.
There is a loooooot happening in this book. From jealousy to LGBT+ representation, McCarthy wants us to question things as she writes. And I wasn’t prepared for the amount of emotion I had at the end. What lengths are we willing to go to to not — SLEEP ALONE.
Amazing! 4.5/5.
by J.A.W. McCarthy
This one took me a bit to get through. I wasn’t sure where it was going but once I got about 30% in, I couldn’t put the story down. (Ask the poor people sharing a table with me at the indoor playground as I gasped numerous times over an hour.)
Ronnie tours with the band. She’s not a groupie, no. She’s the Mother hen, the glue that holds the band together, the reason for their being… the way they are. When she meets Helene, not only does she fall for her but they share a very deep, dark secret that will test Ronnie’s friendship with the band as well as her decision to make them what they are.
There is a loooooot happening in this book. From jealousy to LGBT+ representation, McCarthy wants us to question things as she writes. And I wasn’t prepared for the amount of emotion I had at the end. What lengths are we willing to go to to not — SLEEP ALONE.
Amazing! 4.5/5.
April 5, 2023
One of the best books I've read in a long while. Engaging from page one and difficult to put down.
May 3, 2023
First job, Google succubi, so it's a female demon who appears in dreams to seduce men, usually through sexual activity, drawing energy from the men to sustain themselves, often until the point of exhaustion or death.
OK I'm there, and the angle of the story, well our succubi is Ronnie, a merch girl for a touring grunge band. Ronnie, rather selfishly, has turned the whole band into succubi minions. They play gig to gig, sleeping in the van or the occasional motel, very often leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. The minions however don't have the same powers of restraint that their mother has and there's something else, they're rotting from within. Not ideal.
Ronnie then bumps into Helene, another succubi and pretty soon she's toying with emotions as allegiances wane.
OK first off, big fan of the authors writing style and I'm a fan, she writes fantastic short stories. Unfortunately this novella just didn't grab me, the characters were well written but the story wasn't for me. It was the whole succubi thing, it was like knocking on horrors door only to be told your names not down you're not coming in.
The succubi mother’s feeding is described as opening up a tunnel during a kiss and then taking anything from specific memories, talent, feelings, energy, right up to everything, leaving just a sack of bones. Even giving back aforementioned items but for me it wasn't enough, it didn't feel dark or horrific, if anything it was more romanticised. And that opening up a tunnel malarkey, to me opening up a tunnel is either a tunnel of love or something that's going to get me home quicker, sorry but it was a bit cheesy.
Tip of the day.
If someone's about to open up a tunnel on you, go the long way round.
OK I'm there, and the angle of the story, well our succubi is Ronnie, a merch girl for a touring grunge band. Ronnie, rather selfishly, has turned the whole band into succubi minions. They play gig to gig, sleeping in the van or the occasional motel, very often leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. The minions however don't have the same powers of restraint that their mother has and there's something else, they're rotting from within. Not ideal.
Ronnie then bumps into Helene, another succubi and pretty soon she's toying with emotions as allegiances wane.
OK first off, big fan of the authors writing style and I'm a fan, she writes fantastic short stories. Unfortunately this novella just didn't grab me, the characters were well written but the story wasn't for me. It was the whole succubi thing, it was like knocking on horrors door only to be told your names not down you're not coming in.
The succubi mother’s feeding is described as opening up a tunnel during a kiss and then taking anything from specific memories, talent, feelings, energy, right up to everything, leaving just a sack of bones. Even giving back aforementioned items but for me it wasn't enough, it didn't feel dark or horrific, if anything it was more romanticised. And that opening up a tunnel malarkey, to me opening up a tunnel is either a tunnel of love or something that's going to get me home quicker, sorry but it was a bit cheesy.
Tip of the day.
If someone's about to open up a tunnel on you, go the long way round.
February 27, 2023
Ronnie has traveled alongside a touring indie band for six years as their merch girl. But she’s much more than a road weary hanger on. That’s because Ronnie is a succubus, and she also happens to be responsible for making the boys in the band just like her. When she was lonely and vulnerable, turning the band seemed like a good idea. But now that a mysterious and ruthless disease appears to be making its way through the band members, threatening to destroy everything, things are coming undone. Ronnie is struggling to hold it all together.
When Ronnie meets the mysterious Helene, she shares a close bond with her that only the two of them can fully appreciate. As tensions and jealousies over the newcomer build among the group, Ronnie must decide how to handle their frustrations, and at the same time, juggle the coming reckoning she knows is always around the next corner.
The book is fast-paced and tightly-wound. McCarthy wastes no time getting down in the touring muck. And has a knack for creating interesting three-dimensional characters gleefully hurtling towards oblivion. I like the focus on what it means to be family in a world that has no time for good intentions. I also enjoyed the relationships between Ronnie and Helene, and Ronnie and the band members.
At right around 130 pages, Sleep Alone is a quick read, which suits the rapid pace of the narrative. There’s always another show to get to, more beer to drink, more drugs to take, more sex, and more young lives to consume.
When Ronnie meets the mysterious Helene, she shares a close bond with her that only the two of them can fully appreciate. As tensions and jealousies over the newcomer build among the group, Ronnie must decide how to handle their frustrations, and at the same time, juggle the coming reckoning she knows is always around the next corner.
The book is fast-paced and tightly-wound. McCarthy wastes no time getting down in the touring muck. And has a knack for creating interesting three-dimensional characters gleefully hurtling towards oblivion. I like the focus on what it means to be family in a world that has no time for good intentions. I also enjoyed the relationships between Ronnie and Helene, and Ronnie and the band members.
At right around 130 pages, Sleep Alone is a quick read, which suits the rapid pace of the narrative. There’s always another show to get to, more beer to drink, more drugs to take, more sex, and more young lives to consume.
September 4, 2023
Sleep Alone is an odd and disgusting little story about a band that is made up of succubi. They travel around in their van playing gigs at different bars so they always have a fresh group of uninhibited people to feed from. We follow this story from the perspective of the "merch girl" Ronnie. The book is quite short at only 130 pages so the major plot line of the story picks up pretty quickly.
Throughout the novella you find out that some succubi are born and some are made and only born succubi can create other succubi. You find out about 2/3 of the way in how the merch girl and the members of the band came to be succubi and the reasons behind it. There is also a sickness that develops but only seems to affect made succubi and that is where the story gets disgusting. When you're following around a bunch of grungy band mates and the bars they play at there isn't much that isn't innately gross- even the way the author describes things is in a manner designed to make you think "ew"... but the development of this sickness really takes the cake.
Sleep Alone is definitely a unique story which is always refreshing and even though I don't love the grungy vibe in which the author chose to tell this I would definitely read something else written by them- the writing was well done and I'd be interested to see it displayed with a different sort of tale in mind. I found this novella to be a quick read that kept my attention and I'm not likely to forget it for a while but its not a book I would want to revisit.
Throughout the novella you find out that some succubi are born and some are made and only born succubi can create other succubi. You find out about 2/3 of the way in how the merch girl and the members of the band came to be succubi and the reasons behind it. There is also a sickness that develops but only seems to affect made succubi and that is where the story gets disgusting. When you're following around a bunch of grungy band mates and the bars they play at there isn't much that isn't innately gross- even the way the author describes things is in a manner designed to make you think "ew"... but the development of this sickness really takes the cake.
Sleep Alone is definitely a unique story which is always refreshing and even though I don't love the grungy vibe in which the author chose to tell this I would definitely read something else written by them- the writing was well done and I'd be interested to see it displayed with a different sort of tale in mind. I found this novella to be a quick read that kept my attention and I'm not likely to forget it for a while but its not a book I would want to revisit.
July 29, 2023
So good! Great little short novel if you love horror, lgbt themes, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. If you’re a fan of the movie Jennifer’s Body and trying to get (back) into reading like me it’s a great start!
Short enough that there’s no useless information or storyline’s that go nowhere, but long enough to feel like a fleshed out enough world and story.
Ronnie’s relationship with Helene sort of starts out rushed/forced but with such a short story it kind of has to be, and I’m a sucker for romance so it’s forgivable.
I wish the tension between Ronnie and Cillian had been expanded on, but it also was written well enough that it didn’t NEED to be.
There are some open ends which I think is awesome because it could lead to spin offs, sequels, or series which I would love to see, though it definitely holds up as a stand alone story.
If the author ever released an extended edition, I would snap it up, I both crave more and the author has definitely left room for characters and conflicts to be built up more. Literally my only gripe is that it could and should be longer. The tension between Ronnie and Cillian, the tender unrequited love from Jack, and just any sort of relationship with Sylvan. I would have loved more romance and flirting and build up between Ronnie and Helene rather than just a Love at First Sight moment.
Short enough that there’s no useless information or storyline’s that go nowhere, but long enough to feel like a fleshed out enough world and story.
Ronnie’s relationship with Helene sort of starts out rushed/forced but with such a short story it kind of has to be, and I’m a sucker for romance so it’s forgivable.
I wish the tension between Ronnie and Cillian had been expanded on, but it also was written well enough that it didn’t NEED to be.
There are some open ends which I think is awesome because it could lead to spin offs, sequels, or series which I would love to see, though it definitely holds up as a stand alone story.
If the author ever released an extended edition, I would snap it up, I both crave more and the author has definitely left room for characters and conflicts to be built up more. Literally my only gripe is that it could and should be longer. The tension between Ronnie and Cillian, the tender unrequited love from Jack, and just any sort of relationship with Sylvan. I would have loved more romance and flirting and build up between Ronnie and Helene rather than just a Love at First Sight moment.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 4, 2024
Sleep Alone isn't just about succubi--in a way, it's also about motherhood, about the obligation to life once it is created, and about the difficulty of self-sacrifice for your community, whether that community be created or found more naturally. But it's also about desire and passion and the responsibility to those things as it subsumes other people and their interests.
The big narrative question I think the book posits is whether or not lust or desire can ever be truly unselfish. In Ronnie's rush to find community to help assuage her loneliness, she creates a literal band of monsters that cannot be sated or cowed. If nobody asks to be born, if nobody asks to be saddled with desire, how then do we manage our issues? How do we resolve ourselves into our lives knowing that hunger can never be sated, that our very existence is predicated on a terrible burden of need?
The book is horror so of course it isn't going to resolve neatly, but McCarthy's story is an intelligently crafted exploration on the topic of desire, perfectly evocative of its roots in rock and its politics of desire. It's an easy book to recommend.
The big narrative question I think the book posits is whether or not lust or desire can ever be truly unselfish. In Ronnie's rush to find community to help assuage her loneliness, she creates a literal band of monsters that cannot be sated or cowed. If nobody asks to be born, if nobody asks to be saddled with desire, how then do we manage our issues? How do we resolve ourselves into our lives knowing that hunger can never be sated, that our very existence is predicated on a terrible burden of need?
The book is horror so of course it isn't going to resolve neatly, but McCarthy's story is an intelligently crafted exploration on the topic of desire, perfectly evocative of its roots in rock and its politics of desire. It's an easy book to recommend.
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