C. V. Hunt

Book source ~ Kindle Unlimited

Sonya and her partner Callie are going out for their date night when things go horribly wrong. Men, all men, are behaving incredibly badly. They are spouting terrible pickup lines and sexually assaulting women. Sonya and Callie take refuge in the restaurant where they were going to have their date, but there are men raping a woman there. Gathering their courage they take care of the assholes and rescue the woman. But this is just the beginning of a terrible show more nightmare made real.

Wow. How scary is this? There are plenty of men out there in real life who behave like these assholes all the time. In this book, ALL the men are doing it and out in the open. They’re like walking dick zombies. All they can do is fuck women and they don’t care if the woman is dead either. Ewwww. What starts it all? An announcement by the President over all air waves. Well, isn’t that just peachy? The Prez just started an apocalypse. Totally something his predecessor didn’t do. What a bigly “winner” that fucker is. I feel bad for guys who aren’t assholes getting sucked into the deranged idiot’s apocalypse just because he has a Y chromosome. I wish there were pockets of resistance taking out the ones doing all the damage. Oh, well. In the end, the ones responsible get what they deserve. show less

The main character of this book is an ass! Sorry, I had to get that off my chest before saying anything else. Now, onto the book itself, it is intense. If you are easily offended, then definitely look elsewhere. However, if you are a fan of extreme horror, then you're going to like this book.

The story is about Nick Graves and his wife Eve. Nick is frustrated with his marriage and is just about to tell his wife he wants a divorce when Eve announces she is pregnant. Nick never wanted kids and show more is pissed that she got pregnant. At the same time, he doesn't want to be known as the one that left his pregnant wife, so he decides to stay in the relationship instead. A choice on his side that makes both of their lives miserable. And that's just the first chapter or two! I never like giving any spoilers and I won't here but expect the rest of the book to be along those lines.

What keeps me engaged with any book is the characters; I need to feel for them and associate myself with their lives. The problem here is that the main character, the one that we see the entire story from his point of view, is a total ass. He cares about how others see him. He cares about getting what he wants. And he cares about not getting infected by germs, to an extremely obsessive and compulsive level. That's about it. It's hard for me to empathize with someone like that: someone who enjoys making his spouse's lives miserable so long as he looks good to his non-existent friends. I found myself yelling at Eve to "just leave him already!" because it was obvious that he wasn't going to change and things weren't going to get better. But then I couldn't stop. I was too engrossed. I had to see the story through to the end. Because at that halfway point when the story pivoted, I knew things were going to be different. The first half was the background and setup for the second half. I thought I had a general idea of what was going to happen. I was so incredibly wrong! Nothing could have prepped me for that climatic scene. The whole book is great and very memorable. The atmosphere throughout the story is filled with dread and paranoia and fear. While I still hated Nick at the end of the book, I have to admit that he triggered a lot of emotions in me. If someone can be pulled that much into the characters' lives, then the author did a good job. show less

This review first appeared in scifiandscary.com
‘Halloween Fiend’ is one of those books that leaves you thinking. Like CV Hunt’s excellent novella ‘Cockblock’, ‘Halloween Fiend’ is an intelligent slice of horror that’s quite different from most of what’s on the market at the moment. It lacks the raw, emotional punch of ‘Cockblock’, but makes up for it with great atmosphere and a memorably creepy monster. It’s a simple tale that gets under your skin and stays there. The show more brilliance of it is that there isn’t an obvious reason why it does that – it isn’t graphic or shocking, it’s just a well-written, subtle, small town horror story.
The town in question is Strang, a messed-up community haunted by a creature the locals call ‘Halloween’ that preys on local animals and occasionally people. The narrator is an inhabitant of the town, an older man who is convincing and sympathetic even if he isn’t always likeable. He is an effective protagonist, starting to question the relationship between the town and the fiend for the first time as the story progresses and more of the town’s secrets are revealed are revealed to the reader.
At only 100 pages, this isn’t a long book by any means, but Hunt packs a lot into it. I can imagine many any author spinning this concept out into a 500-page monster (looking at you, Mr King). Hunt keeps things brief and doesn’t waste a word. She wrings all the meaning from the story without exhausting the reader.
What makes the story as effective as it is, is that Strang is a believable community. For all the strangeness of its situation, the town’s inhabitants and their reaction to the problem they face is convincing. The story drags to the surface humanity’s willingness to put up with bad shit for a quiet life. Like so many of us, the people of Strang would rather maintain their town’s terrible status quo, than recognise their own complicity in it.
Most of all though, ‘Halloween Fiend’ is great horror. It has a superb monster and reads a bit like the unholy offspring of HP Lovecraft and Shirley Jackson. I enjoyed every page and it reaffirmed the sense I had after reading ‘Cockblock’ that Hunt is a very talented writer. show less

‘Cockblock’ is a disturbing, angry, graphic, hypnotic mind fuck of a book that takes a simple concept and runs with for just the right number of pages. The story is a bare bones affair that will be familiar to anyone who has ever watched a zombie movie - the world starts falling apart with large swathes of the population turning on their neighbours and a group of survivors banding together to get through it. What’s different here is the nature of the aggressors, all male and attacking show more sexually more than physically. What follows is often graphic and unpleasant but always effective. The attackers shout cheesy chat up lines as they stalk their prey in a manner that seemed odd at first but increasingly becomes really chilling. This is clearly a book with a message, and a very current one at that - America’s misogynist-in-chief Donald Flump even gets to make an appearance. It’s laid on pretty thick but the book is no worse for that, even if Hunt’s writing can’t always keep pace with her passion and polemic. The book is never subtle, and it’s often too horrific to be entertaining, but I don’t think I’ll be forgetting it anytime soon. show less