First I want to thank netgalley and the author for an advanced copy of this book for my kindle. This book started out really well but started dragging towards the middle and the end really disappointed me!! I enjoyed the depth of the characters and you could feel the pain coming from Ben. The story was about how Ben is living with the guilt of losing his brother while at the grocery store he can’t help but feel it’s his fault since he was babysitting him. So after so many years he decides to get a job at the grocery store that his brother disappeared from. I felt this book was in slow motion. Took me a little bit to finish and the ending was so disappointing for me since the story dragged. Bad man just wasn’t for me

Dathan Auerbach perfectly captures the horror of the Southern Gothic tradition in Bad Man. The grocery store where the protagonist's baby brother disappears takes on the role of the haunted house or the crumbling gothic mansion in its importance to the story. Having lived for many years on the Gulf Coast, I could appreciate the setting of the Florida Panhandle in all its sultry and yet foreboding majesty. The twists and turns of the plot are perfectly timed to keep the reader turning the pages well into the wee hours of the morning. The open-ended conclusion that allows the reader's imagination to keep working long after the book is closed is another hallmark of the Southern Gothic. Auerbach definitely knows his craft and readers of Stephen King and Joe Hill will find him a welcomed addition to their shelves.

This book started strong, then halfway through completely lost me. I tried to continue it, but it would not hold my attention. Such a great concept, but sadly was not what I was expecting.

this book started strong, but I was losing interest towards the end. I did end up finishing it, but I did not enjoy it as much as I thought I would.


Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the ARC

I had high hopes for this novel because I enjoyed the writer's No Sleep stories, but this lacked the tension and wow-factor that made those stories so memorable.

In Bad Man, a young brother vanishes in a grocery store, and the older brother becomes obsessed with finding him and uncovering clues. The tension was there, but nothing particularly grabbed me as far as the plot. I enjoyed the small town atmosphere, but unfortunately, this book fell flat for me.

Not my cup of tea. I tried several times to read Bad Man but it just never grabbed me the way I need to be in order to fully invest my time in it.

Read this in preparation of Dathan's guest post on LitReactor.com. PENPAL is one of the creepiest stories ever written, so this was highly anticipated. It's a lot harder to maintain tension over 400 pages than it is a series of short stories, which is why I think PENPAL is so effective and BAD MAN suffers. Still, it is an engaging read that gets plenty dark, and is well worth the time for horror fans. I look forward to Dathan's continued evolution and output.

This book was really interesting at the beginning, but it really lost me in the middle. I ended up losing interest, though I did finish it. Overall, it was just OK.

Dathen Auerbach became a must read author for me after I was scared to death by Penpal. The impending tone of Bad Man is more of a slow burn. Auerbach’s storytelling is one that causes the reader to have an almost anxious knowledge that something worse is sure to come. The beginning of the book drew me in and I thoroughly enjoyed the read. I can’t wait to see what he does next!

3.5/5 rating

I loved Auerbach's no sleep stories and was pretty pumped to get my hands on an ARC of his newest novel. I ordered his "Penpal" collection and enjoyed those enough that I felt prepared for "Bad Man."

I was wrong.

Bad Man covers every big sibling's worst nightmare, losing your younger sibling and it being your fault. Ben loses his little brother in a local grocery store, grows up and becomes so obsessed with the case that he takes a job at the very same grocery store that his brother went missing in 20 years ago.

I rated it pretty average because I want to give credit where I think he was successful: character development, small town life descriptions, and the push/pull aspect of giving/finding clues in mystery stories. However, I kept finding myself searching for anything to keep me interested just after the 55% mark. I thought I would find it in Marty or even Ben himself, but I found myself just getting.... angry(?) with Marty and frustrated with Ben. When I finally did finish the book, I was left feeling... dissatisfied, underwhelmed, and an increased longing for closure.

Weird and haunting all at once. The ending was a bit unresolved and I would have liked some more clarity. The closing horror factor just wasn’t clear enough to actually be scary and was more confusing and unsettling.

If horror but not gore is your cup of tea, then this book by Dathan Auerbach should be on your book list.
The story portrays Ben's nightmare when his little brother Eric disappears from a grocery store in the Florida Panhandle.
As the years go by, Eric's tragic absence has devastated the whole family, but it has torn at Ben in a way that also speaks of guilt. When the opportunity arises for a job at the same store from where Eric vanished, Ben hurriedly takes it, knowing that if he's on the inside, he may be able to find out what truly happened to his little brother.
Unexpected ending and enticing plot development, Bad Man does not disappoint.

This book was odd--in a good way. I wasn't really sure what was going on until really late in the story, which is unusual for me, and the ending was far different from what I expected. I will say that this is less horror than it is mystery, but I enjoyed it.

I was so disappointed in this one. The premise was genius. I went back and saw all the Reddit hype and couldn't wait. I loved the place and time of this story and the feeling of something always lurking. The story was okay but the ending irritated me. Things didn't make sense and I was more confused than anything after it was done.

Good read. Kept me guessing until the very end. Looking forward to sharing this with my customers and future titles from this author as well.

This book was hard for me to get into but Auerbach does a great job of making the characters feel real.

I have never read Dathan Auerbach and was really excited to receive a copy of Bad Man from Doubleday and Netgalley. I had heard so many good things about Pen Pal that I thought surely Bad Man would be on par or better. This just book just left me lacking.

Auerbach started off great. I loved his knack for creating a creepy, tense atmosphere and feel in the book. I also thought the plot was very unique with the main character losing his brother and basically going back to the scene of the crime by working at the very same grocery store his brother was abducted from . I don't know when but the author lost me somewhere in the book. I finished the book but I just couldn't get into it. This book was a slow burn that never really caught fire.

I thought the book had a lot of issues that never did get tied up. If you like reading books where the ending is tied up in a nice little bow this one isn't for you. I would get worked up thinking the plot was going somewhere only to be left hanging. The ending just left me wanting.

I am not bashing the author I just had a hard time finishing. I thought Auerbach was a master of atmosphere and character development.

This book is for people that don't like their stories tied up in neat little bows.

Thank you Doubleday and Netgalley for my free review copy

The author of the legendary creepypasta Penpal has come out with his first all-original novel – or, since Penpal has itself now been officially published, his second novel. Penpal isn't one of my all-time favorite creepypastas, personally, but it was creepy enough and well-written enough to make me want to seek out more by Auerbach.

Bad Man is the story of fifteen year old Ben who, while babysitting his three-year-old brother Eric, runs an errand at the local grocery store. Ben turns his back for a few seconds and Eric disappears, never to be seen again. There's no record of him leaving on the store's security cameras, no real suspects, and a police search turns up nothing.

Five years later Ben's parents are still lost in grief and Ben himself has become obsessed with finding Eric, continuing to hand out missing-person flyers, visiting any newcomers in town, and constantly harassing the one detective still assigned to the case. This has given Ben a reputation that renders him more-or-less unemployable, and he ends up taking a job as an overnight stock boy at the very grocery store where Eric disappeared, after the owner doesn't recognize him since Ben hasn't been back since that fateful day. This actually proves to be a mixed blessing for Ben: he becomes good friends with the other employees (and I absolutely ship Ben/Marty. Where is that fanfic?), giving him some of his first real connections outside of his family. He also becomes convinced that the secret of what happened to Eric is hidden within the store, as he seems to discover clues suggesting that Eric's still alive and his captor is deliberately taunting Ben.

I enjoyed the book. It's slow to get started – which was surprising, because if there's one thing creepypasta does well, it's getting readers hooked from the very beginning. As with all internet writing, it's a constant battle to keep your readers from clicking away. But Bad Man's sleepy beginning works to set the rich atmosphere of the hot, humid small town in the Southern US where Ben lives, and his claustrophobic existence. The small hints that Ben's narration is not entirely reliable are also very well-done. I gradually found myself sucked into the story; Auerbach's writing was more than suspenseful enough to keep me turning the pages. And there are some excellently creepy scenes of the empty store at night, and of Ben's disturbing neighbors.

On the other hand, I can't entirely recommend Bad Man, and it's all because of the ending. I think I understand what Auerbach was going for and it's not a bad idea for a twist ending, but it ends up not matching the majority of the preceding book. Major plot threads are dropped without explanation, while the explanations we do get just open up more questions. I still think Auerbach has a lot of potential, but maybe his next book will be a better showcase of it.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2580479985

I have very mixed feelings about this book. There was enough interesting about it that it kept me reading, but I also found it a bit confusing. I felt invested in the character of Ben. I felt sorry for him that his brother was missing and the guilt he felt. I actually liked the side characters of Ben's coworkers better than Ben or his family. I found a lot of the narrative somwehat confusing. The amount of time passing was entirely vague and the timeline was difficult to follow at times. The ending both surprised and frustrated me. It left me with more questions than answers. Overall, it was ok but not great.

Thanks to NetGalley for a copy of this book.

When I first read the synopsis, I initially thought this sounds a good thriller. and at the beginning it was. It wasn’t as good as I thought it would be. Some parts didn’t make s sense to me. Characters where not sympathetic. All so distant and cold. I couldn’t really warm up with their personalities. I wouldn’t want to spoil it for anyone but I some event didn’t add up to what happened towards the end. I wouldn’t think it needed to be shared because it served no purpose. It was a semi fast novel, just towards the end it kept dragging to get to the finale and. Don’t get me wrong, the whole story was catchy but the plots and twists wasn’t much of an attention grabber like I thought it would be. I may have a high standards with these plots and twists so check it out yourself.