Nick Cutter

The Saban family are the first ones to move into a new, unfinished development community. Rita Saban is a successful lawyer. Trent Saban, her husband, is also a lawyer, but currently on paid leave (significantly less than he used to make) due to an incident that happened in the recent past. They have one child, Milo, who has a pet turtle named Morty.

When they first move into their new home, Trent's biggest complaint is that the beautiful lawn he was promised doesn't exist yet. The house show more itself initially looks perfect...until Trent takes a closer look and sees the large crack in one of the closets. He can fix it, he's sure, even though he's never previously been very handy. His ego has taken a bit of a hit lately due to his work situation, and he's determined to prove his worth by taking care of the various little issues around the house, starting with that crack. With the help of "Handyman Hank" videos he finds on Youtube and frequent trips to Home Depot, he begins to feel more confident and capable. But there's something darker behind those videos, and before he knows it, Trent finds himself caught up in it.

I went into this expecting Trent to be a decent guy who was gradually influenced by toxic aspects in his "Handyman Hank" videos, which included a pretty strong thread of "real men know how to fix things themselves" from the start. Instead, Trent was pretty bitter and awful right from the start, and it was pathetically easy for the "Handyman Hank" videos to get him to embrace openly toxic masculinity. I hated his internal voice and the way he thought about and talked to his wife and son. My dislike was so strong that, if this had been a longer work, I doubt I'd have finished it. As it was, I wanted to DNF it pretty early on, and unfortunately Trent only got more repugnant as the story progressed.

Something I didn't expect: pretty much every character in this was horrible and off-putting, by the end. I started off with a certain amount of sympathy for Rita, but that evaporated as I found out more about her. The one character who 100% didn't deserve what happened to them was Morty the turtle (by the way, content warning for gruesome and graphically described scenes - pet death, self-harm, amateur surgery, and probably other things I'm forgetting).

All in all, this was an unpleasant book about largely unpleasant people, and I was glad when I finished it and could move on to something else.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

What a nightmare read that was. I got physicality sick during three different parts. I quit it many times but had to know the ending. Uggg, it was so awful, so realistically frightening, I wish I never picked it up. I feel sick now just trying thinking of some of the horrors between the pages. It was a great horror book, it was pure horror and left me ill at heart. Stephen King said it was a story of nightmares and he was so right. It took me 9 days to read this black souled book. I feel show more like I'll never be the same as I was before, damaged and scarred. One word review-SICK
I gave it 4 stars, as horrible as it was it was exactly as it should have been, no fluff from this author .It starts out slow, even a bit dull, then it slowly builds from slight horror to absolute nightmare during the last 20 % show less

An epidemic threatens to wipe out humanity, and three scientists have descended to a high-tech lab at the bottom of the Mariana Trench to capture and study the substance called ambrosia, which might hold a cure. Then communications with the lab are disrupted, but video suggests that something has gone horribly wrong down below. A cryptic message leads the team on the surface to summon the brother of one of the scientists, a veterinarian who is taken down to the lab, where things immediately show more get strange and terrifying. Like an undersea haunted house, the lab presents visions of its inhabitants' buried fears. The first part of this book was a white-knuckle page-turner, but it lost momentum for me toward the end as the visions became repetitive and somewhat silly. As with many horror books, the revelation of the source of the horror underwhelms the building suspense. I was also disappointed that some of the more promising threads, such as of the apocalyptic disease, weren't tied together. show less

A trio of mismatched mercenaries—Micah Shughrue, Minerva Atwater, and Ebenezer Elkins, colloquially known as “the Englishman”, are hired by Ellen Bellhaven for a deceptively simple task; check in on her nephew, who may have been taken against his will to a remote New Mexico backwoods settlement called "Little Heaven", where a religious cult holds sway. But shortly after they arrive, things begin to turn ominous. There are stirrings in the woods and over the treetops...and above all show more else, the brooding shape of a monolith known as the "Black Rock" casts its terrible pall. Paranoia and distrust soon grip the settlement. Escape routes are gradually cut off as events spiral toward madness. Hell...or the closest thing to it, invades "Little Heaven".
I’m one of those slightly weird people who loves horror movies and books. Somehow, I've got it in my head that being scared is a form of fun. Of course, I want a sturdy, closed door and four-solid walls around me:) Sadly, I've read so much of the paranormal and horror genera, that very little actually scares me anymore...so when I found a Nick Cutter book I hadn't read, I thought this might do the trick...and it certainly did. I have a slightly overactive imagination, and I don’t really like being in the dark by myself. My husband just says, "I'm weird". In spite of being "weird", I was confident that I could close the cover. put this book down, and keep my sanity, in spite of being alone, and there being strange sounds going on somewhere. This is "just a book", and a book isn’t as scary as a movie, because it doesn’t have pictures that can be replayed over and over in my mind, right? Well, I held onto that theory, until.... I discovered that. guess what... this book DOES comes with PICTURES!!! Who would put scary pictures in a book like this??? Well. Stephen King says right here in the front, that he liked it...so who am I to argue with "THE KING" of Horror?

Nick Cutter used a well-feared tactic to start to scare us...the dreaded "possessed children"!!. I ask you, who, in their right mind, doesn't find weird kids creepy? Nick Cutter begins the book with a weird kid who is being abducted by a supernatural being, so he’s also now thrown into the mix, the most common fear of all parents the entire world over: "the kidnapped kid".

However, we do get a few moments of relief in the form of some often-laughable dialogue between the three men, who are, of course, all hired killers. They may be killers but their dialog among themselves is funny, and their back stories are.... well, let's just call them "something else". This unlikely gang of three accompanies a woman into the backland of New Mexico to try to find her nephew, who has been brought to a Christian Survivalist Camp with the very, very misleading name of "Little Heaven". It’s in the "middle of nowhere" in order to help their members "find God among nature", away from the evil world’s many temptations.... Yeah, that's what they all say! When did God say to start kidnapping kids? I must have missed that one somewhere. This aspect of the story probably gives an entirely different meaning to the word "horror" to some readers. Can you hear the music from the movie "Deliverance" in your head after you learn about the village in the woods and realize that things are not quite "Heaven" in "Little Heaven"?

I really, really liked everything about this book even though, I warn you...it's gory...very gory, as well as to some it will be quite..."disturbing", for lack of a better word. I know there are many folks that not only want, but that look for "actual...real...in their face. horror" in a horror novel, nothing wrong with that....to each his own. So, if you're a member of the "Over-the -top - in- your- face horror club"...welcome home, "my child...you've come to the right place". Nick Cutter's Little Heaven is a well-written book that is well worth your time. Just leave the lights on and you'll be okay in a few weeks. show less