this was a great horror novel, the characters were great and it had what I enjoyed about the horror genre. The author wrote another wonderful read and I look forward to more from the author.

I would like to say thank you to NetGalley, Silver Shamrock Publishing, and Ronald Kelly for my complimentary copy of "The Essential Sick Stuff". I am a horror buff and this genre is one of my favourites and this book did not disappoint. It's definitely not for the faint of heart though as it gets pretty gruesome and some of the stories contain creepy crawlies from your worst nightmares. I am terrified of spiders and there were a few stories about them that I did manage to get through entirely. It was after finishing these short stories that I found myself shivering as I was thinking about the spider stories. It's not often that I can still feel the heebie jeebies after I finish a book.

If creepy crawlers aren't your thing there are plenty of other stories to give you your jump scares. You will find everything from zombies, cannibalism, murderers, and demons. If I am being completely honest with myself I can honestly say that there were not really any stories in this book that I did not enjoy reading; although I did have a few favourites and they are "Old Hacker", "Consumption", "Exit 85", "The Thing at the Side of the Road", "Scream Queen" and it's a toss up between "Day UPS", and "The Nipples in Dad's Toolbox" as my ultimate favourite choices. It's hard to pick a favourite as I enjoyed the entire book.

This is the first time I have read any published works from Ronald Kelly and I am definitely adding him to my TBR. I love horror stories and I cannot wait to see what else he has to offer.

TW/CW: Child Harm/Abuse, Child Abduction, Child Death, Rape, Torture, Snakes, Spiders, Gore, Non-consensual Sexual Encounter

I am a big reader of short story collections. In a collection of a single author, you can sometimes see a range of writing styles, themes, and tropes, like trying on different hats. I have previously reviewed Irish Gothic by Ronald Kelly, a collection of different stories and folklore inspired by the home of Kelly’s ancestors. Beyond that collection, I wasn’t familiar with his writing and jumped at the chance to review The Essential Sick Stuff when it came up on NetGalley.

Growing up on 80’s slasher movies, it takes a lot to gross me out or creep me out. I read the foreword and learned the history behind the stories contained in this collection: a bunch of authors writing the sickest stuff imaginable to try to outdo the others. I was game and ready to go. And I was very wrong, Kelly’s The Essential Sick Stuff got to me.

The Essential Sick Stuff is comprised of two previous collections written by Kelly: The Sick Stuff and More Sick Stuff. This edition has the stories from those collections, along with new sick material. Some of my favorites in The Essential Sick Stuff are:

*Pins And Needles- A serial killer who kills via Halloween candy has struck again, but someone has gives him a taste of his own medicine.

*The Day UPS Brought Zombies- fun and gory story where UPS brings about a zombie apocalypse with a cameo from Brian Keene
*Snakehandler- A preacher comes to town bringing more to fear than just the snakes he handles during Sunday service.
*Suckers! - Scientist begins to experiment on local insects with dangerous results
*The Nipples in Dad’s Toolbox- A young boy helping with home repairs gets a grisly surprise that changes his life.

This collection was a wild, gory, and fun ride. I look forward to reading more of Ronald Kelly’s work in the future. There are a lot of potential TW/CWs in this book and I attempted to note them when I found them, but what may be a trigger for me may not be for you.

5/5 Stars
Thanks you to #NetGalley and #SilverShamrockPublishing for providing me with a copy of this book to read and review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

The Essential Sick Stuff definitely lives up to it’s title as being a collection of gruesome, sickening and horrifying short stories, and I really enjoyed reading it.

The stories contained within this collection involve parasitic spiders that drive their victims mad, zombies that are called upon from ancient tomes, prophecies and curses leading to the unfortunate demise of their targets, an array of bugs and beats that like nothing better than feasting on human flesh, and some very monstrous humans as well.

I really liked the variety of stories that were included in this collection. Some were quite frightening too which was great. There were a couple that I didn’t enjoy as much, which is less to do with the writing and more to do with my personal horror preferences, but overall I enjoyed most of the stories in this collection. The author did a fabulous job at writing these short
stories and making me feel sick and terrified (in the best sort of way).

If you are a fan of body horror, and are like me and like reading horror short stories before you go to bed each night, I recommend you add The Essential Sick Stuff to your collection.

Thank you to NetGalley and Silver Shamrock Publishing for giving me an ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this book, it is one of my favourite reads this year, a lot of fun.

I was a bit worried that these tales would be too extreme for me, but they weren't at all.
Don’t let the name put you off, sure there are icky bits, and blood and gore, but this is horror after all.

There are quite a few stories including a few different creature features, with creepy crawlies, a large ravenous dangerous but intelligent animal, a mad scientist tale, a few psycho tales, a lovecraftian tale, and some good old fashioned revenge.

I will defiantly be reading more by Ronald Kelly!

*Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a copy of the book in exchange for a honest review.*

This book is 3 of the authors short story books combined to give a complete collection of the southern tinged extreme horror tales

Some of the stand out tales were

Diary - the rantings of a deranged serial killer

Pins and Needles - Its Halloween and for one person its time to make it really scary for the children trick or treating

The Day UPS brought Zombies - a fun tale of a delivery gone wrong, features a guest appearance from Brian Keene

Snakehandler - Religious snake handling church, but twisted

Pelingrad's Pit - What lives in the burn pit on the old Pelingrad property

Devourer - WIlderness, Snow and a fabled monster

Overall I really enjoyed this and would recommend

I hadn't heard about Ronald Kelly before stumbling upon this collection of short stories. Or rather, a collection of three collections of short splatter stories - two already published ones and one with new material. A brief search online told me he is a pretty productive writer from Tennessee who specializes in what he calls "southern-fried" horror. What exactly is that, I have no idea but it seems like it isn't the type of splatter/body horror he's practicing in this tome.

What we encounter in this book is a series of very short and somewhat predictable old school gory stories with cannibals, serial killers, strange creatures, and such. All of them are filled with gory details that are supposed to shock the reader and "twist endings" that should surprise him, but, sadly, fail on both instances. The endings can't be more cliched and predictable and the gore seems to be there just for shock value, nothing else. Plus, it isn't that repulsive even, save for a few child murders and animal impales. The only thing that made me continue read The Essential Sick Stuff is the style of writing which reminded me of cheap 90's horror - over the top writing that wants too much to be "literature" but lacks any depth, pulpy, sudden, and illogical. If it weren't for the few mentions of Wikipedia and the Internet, I'd really think it was written then.

Full disclosure: I skipped the story “Housewarming” because of the spiders, so I’m not judging this story at all nor does it factor into how I feel about the rest of the collection. I didn’t read enough of it to have an opinion on it, I’m just too arachnophobic to not have the first couple pages having my skin scrawling.

I’m also not super into half-star ratings, but I think I’m going to round this up to 4 stars, but it’s more of a 3.5 for me.

Some of these stories definitely weren’t for me. Reading Kelly’s introduction, I understand why many of the stories were written in the way they were, having violence and bloodshed almost just for the sake of doing so. Keeping that in my mind, the stories were good for what they were. Sometimes I felt like they were lacking in substance or motive, and I did find myself desiring a little less ‘shock value’ and wanting more in terms of set-up and plot.

The first story I read that gave me both, that turned around my love of this collection, was the story “Mojo Mama.” I love this story. I love the idea of a cursed family and the way the backstory was given alongside the horrifying imagery of bugs eating away at certain family’s insides, and the only living female of the family experincing posssibly the worst version of a period I’ve ever seen described. As a person who menstruates, the absolute horror that Kelly brought to mind was absolutely wonderful, and I was left with chills.

The collection did take a little while for me to read, which may be a signal that the collection either wasn’t working for me, or that I had to be in the right mood for it. This may be the reason the first few stories felt flat to me, while others with the same sort of vibe ended up resonating with me. A few notable favorites in this collection were “Exit 85,” “Snakehandler,” “Pins and Needles,” and “Eating Hearty.” A special runner-up position goes to “Devourer” for making the hairs on my whole body stand on end.

If you’re not into extreme horror, I wouldn’t recommend this collection. If you are interested in dipping your toe into this world, this is a collection of stories I would highly recommend. It gives a range of stories within the subgenre, and gives an interesting look at the genre throughout the past twenty years or so.

Another great read from Ronald Kelly. Each short story was enjoyable. Seems like it would be hard to come up with as many different stories, but he does it easily. #TheEssentialSickStuff #NetGalley

“You see, perversity is my forte. It is normality that drives me insane.” -Jerry Weller in the story Diary

These are nice quick stories that make for easy reading with a small twist or unsettling gore to make each story interesting and fun.
Ronald has amazing creativity, I mean, one of the stories is called “The Nipples in Dad’s Toolbox”. His stories are unique and bring you into the southern backwoods. With a great variety of creatures, twists, tension, humor, and let’s face it, sick stuff, Ronald keeps you engaged and entertained

Ronald Kelly is well known in the horror community for several things:

1. Down-home horror stories set in the American South
2. His amazing artwork
3. Signing his books to fans "Many Happy Nightmares!"

I'm fortunate enough to have a signed copy of this book, complete with some fantastic RK artwork. I love it, and it sets proudly on my bookshelf.

This is an incredibly fun book of extreme short stories, most of which were written in the 1990s. They're gruesome. They'll make you distinctly uncomfortable...and will, most assuredly, send your stomach churning.

Standouts for me included Diary, Mojo Mama, Cell Number 9, Scream Queen, Traps, and Eating Hearty. I'm a sucker for a good revenge story, and many of these cover deeply diabolical retribution.

One thing I do have to mention - because it took me right out of so many of the stories - there is a significant amount of dog torture/death. If not for that, this would be a 4.5 star read for me.

AVAILABLE NOW!

Well, well, well.... this was something a little different from Ronald Kelly! #netgalley

I have become a big fan of Mr.Kelly’s short stories. I can’t speak to his novels, as I haven’t read one yet, but his short story collections are excellent. The stories I read previously were quite tame, but would always entice me with superb writing and storytelling skills, while also containing a great deal of Tennessee culture. Many of the stories I read also took place in the good old eras between the 1940s and the 1990s, which allowed for charming horror. I read a review that said that Kelly’s stories are all the same and I strongly disagree. In fact, although there was certainly some stories that hinted that they were written by Kelly (eg: recurring location), Kelly bounces back and forth in time, and provides very diverse plots and themes. Also interesting is the layout of the stories in this collection....the mildest stories are at the beginning, the middle section has a Tennessee backwater theme, and the end is a blast!

Most exciting, this was the “sick stuff”, bad-as-I-wanna-be, splatterpunk edition of Ronald Kelly!

The whole book was terrific and all the stories worth reading, but I thought I would mention my favorites:

1. Pins & Needles (did you ever think of the kind of person who puts razor blades in candy on Halloween?)

2. The Abduction (Creepy story with a twist)

3. The Day UPS Brought Zombies (An homage to Keene and Matheson. Hilarious and fun.)

4. The Thing At The Side Of The Road (I thought of “curiosity killed the cat” just before I read it, but “let sleeping dogs lie” was absolutely brilliant)

5. Cell #9 (There were a couple spider and snake tales in this collection. This was the best!)

6. Scream Queen (Excellent storytelling)

7. Traps (Wow! Don’t piss off the exterminator!)

8. Eating Hearty (Great title and storytelling)

9. The Nipples in Dad’s Toolbox (Okay. Don’t tell me you don’t already want to read this just by seeing the title!)

Reviewed on Amazon and Goodreads.

Different levels of sick and scary. A thing on the side of the road is not quite as dead as believed to be. Trick or treating leads to revenge.A toolbox better left unopened. These and other horrors await.

As a slightly obsessed horror fan I cannot believe I did not run in to Ronald Kelly's mastermind until now. While Kelly is mostly known for his Down-home horror stories set in the American South this is a whole new level. Fun, twisted, and grotesque in the best way possible. The writing is fantastic, and each story will bring out a whole new fear.

If you're a fan of slasher films this book is for you! Grab this book, get comfy, and turn down the lights...if you dare.

Thank you to Netgalley and publisher for providing me with an advance copy for me to provide my honest review. Ronald Kelly is sure to be a cult fiction icon

The Essential Sick Stuff by Ronald Kelly was received directly from the publisher and I then chose to review it. While I have never read Ronald Kellly, as far as I can remember anyway, he is one of the few horror authors who write's horror in a "non woke" sense. This book is a short story collection, and those who read my reviews know shorter stories are my favorite, and you know I don't get into plots of the books. It seems other reviewers do that in nauseating detail. If you, or someone you buy gifts for enjoys this author, or is interested in reading some horror in the style of gruesome and/or funny short stories, by a good author who pulls no punches, give this book a shot.

4 Stars

Great collection of short horror stories. This is a new to me author and I look forward to reading more of his writing.

I love a good anthology! An anthology that is short horror stories, even more so. I went in reading this not knowing the author however knowing that he wrote around the same time as one of my favourite horror authors, so I knew it would be good. Each story was entriguing and smart, but with a little bit of horror and gore. Some stories did turn my stomach a little but that is how you know a good horror story. I must admit that a few of them were a little too graphic in the sexual front for me, however it was needed for those perticular short stories. I also found that with a few of the short stories I could predict the ending, however this was towards the end of the book when I had got used to how the author had written them. It did take me a few more weeks than planned to finish this anthology but I really did enjoy it and would look at reading alot more by this author.

Ronald Kelly is awesome! These stories are filled with southern horror, which is great for someone who is from the south and can relate to settings. Would definitely recommend.

Thanks so much to NetGalley for this eARC in return for an honest review.

I love Ronald Kelly's work. ALL of it. This collection is a brilliant example of how great this man writes. My southern horror king!