Another book that is PERFECT for Spooky Season! I am in love with this novel. I wanted more in the ending though. I wanted the story to keep going--not sure if that's a good thing or a REALLY good thing! Give this story a try, you won't be disappointed.

WOW.
Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for the chance to read this book!

A little bit Poe + horror + thriller murder mystery.
Ghosts
Atmosphere in abundance.
I never what was coming next. There were so many twists.
The characters were something else. Joey makes a lot of bad decisions, but they make sense. I can't help but feel there's something else going on under the surface of this book.

I'll be reading another one definitely.

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Ian Kirkpatrick and publishers!

It took me a bit to get into this book, I will admit, but once I did I really loved it. It is a spooky, horror gothic mystery style book set in a town where murder is neither a shock nor a surprise. The central characters are engaging and Joey is a great narrator! It is an easy read and good fun if you love the genre.

Three stars from me, which means "I liked it!" I enjoyed Bleed More, Bodymore and would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a creeptastic book outside of the realm of Stephen King. I do believe this was my first Ian Kirkpatrick book, and I will likely seek more. As I have expressed in my reviews (of other books), I have a bad habit of falling in love with protagonists, but that wasn't so much the case in this one as I didn't easily or readily connect with Joey, yet I wanted to understand her, to "get" her. This book is perfect for other readers like me, those who just want to read and enjoy the ride without analyzing what's underneath the surface.

Bleed More, Bodymore by Ian Kirkpatrick

As always I want to thank Netgalley and Steak House Books for giving me an E-arc of this title in exchange for a fair and honest review. I also want to say I will try and keep my review free of spoilers baring perhaps some character names. Originally the cover and genre of this book drew me in and I am so glad it did.
Our protagonist Joey is a mechanic. After receiving a call from her best friend one night asking for his car to be picked up from the infamous body dumping grounds of Baltimore; Leakin Park things start to turn weird. When she arrives, there’s nothing more than a stalled-out car and a couple of ravens (another point in my book for loving this!) so she leaves with only the car, hoping her friend found his own way out. Back at the body shop it doesn’t take long to find there’s something in a trunk, a rotting corpse. The cops, as usual, believe it’s case closed. Joey’s friend did the deed, ran and tried to implicate her and the body shop, the fact no one has seen him since just confirms this. Joey knows different. She will fine her friend and prove her innocence. Even with opposition from Jagger and the police.
But this is a fairytale-esque horror so things are never that easy. Something isn’t right in Baltimore. It’s not just the feeling of someone watching from the abandoned buildings or increasing sightings of ravens, it isn’t even the several deaths. In fact as we learn early on death is common place in Bodymore. It’s something much worse is below Baltimore. A ghost town, a reaper, regret. Suddenly, everything about Bodymore makes more sense and also no sense at all.

The writing style and narration is gripping and fast-paced. It’s also realistic. Joey speaks her mind and handles the situations she finds herself in rather well. The story is fast-paced and keeps you hooked. The descriptions are beautiful, vivid and sometimes visceral. The characters were all generally likable, I particularly liked Val as a supporting character. I would highly recommend this to any fans of fairy tale – esque stories, horror and imaginative settings. It’s definitely not one to be missed.

Bleed More, Bodymore will be out from 31st October and will be a perfect read for the spooky season!

I received a free advanced copy for an honest review!

Honestly, I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would at the beginning. It originally caught my attention due to the obvious inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe. With that being said, I knew it would be a pretty dark book. It reminded me of a much darker version of TJ Klune’s “Under the Whispering Door”. I want to say I loved it just as much, but the MC, Joey, was kind of insufferable. I understand she has been through a lot, but she drove me crazy at many points. The plot and my need to know what happened to kept me powering through. I finished it in a day! Her and Jag’s dynamic was refreshing too throughout the book. I really enjoyed them two.
Overall, I’d give it 3.5 stars! It was a quick thrilling read!

3.5 stars

this book was a rollercoaster, it had me on the edge of my seat so many times!! i'd think it was going one place then it veered off in another direction, and i love that it kept me on my toes!

i'm not going to lie, i don't read a full synopsis if it's over a certain length (in fear of potential spoilers) so i didn't necessarily know there was going to be a ghost town. this definitely contributed to the constant shocks for me but i'm glad i didn't know certain aspects about the book because it just added to the journey!

i'm not quite sure how i feel about joey and jag. i really liked jagger at the beginning of the book but towards the end he started to bother me, and i feel like joey is an interesting character but there's just something missing. but that's fine, they both have plenty of room for imporvement! my favourite characters in the book were definitely wayland and val though! there's just something about murderer and a raven that really intrigues me.

overall, i'm excited to see where this world goes and how joey and wayland navigate through the new life they've stumbled into.

This was such a different read than I was expected. It was a bit of whodunnit, a bit of dark fantasy, and a whole lot of death.

To start I will premise with I am from Baltimore. A lot of the themes and feelings related to the city the main character grapples with I can completely relate to. There was also a bit of nostalgia since I haven't lived in Baltimore since I was 14 years old.

I'll begin with Joey, the main character. She is hardened and she has attitude. She has the attitude of someone that has been screwed over one too many times. Her upbringing was hard, and her personality reflects it. She has a very deep seeded distrust for the police. So, when she picks up her friend's car that needs a tow and finds a body in the trunk she's none too thrilled about the attention from the police that brings her. And the attention it brings her friend after he cannot be found for questioning. The longer he's missing the more it's assumed he caused the person in the trunk’s death. To everyone other than Joey. She believes wholeheartedly that her friend could never do such a thing. And when she goes finding answers she finds way more than she bargained for.

This is where things get a little crazy. The beginning starts off strong. We're introduced to the characters, the setting, and the mystery that surrounds Joey's friend Wayland, the body found, and the suspicious substance that was found with it. As she's digging, we start getting more into the fantasy part of the book. And then halfway through the book things start to really get weird. Which, I love weird. Except this was kind of confusing weird. When everything was said and done, I was left with more questions than answers. I did enjoy the premise and the ending, but I just wish some of the plot holes were tidied up a bit better. Most were left unanswered or answered so briefly you could almost miss it. There is one twist that I thought was clever but again was a bit confusing for a lot of the book.

The writing was also a bit difficult at times. Sometimes it would be sped up and get confusing. Almost as if it was rushed. Which I think may have had something to do with Joey’s state of mind at times, but it was hard to tell.

Due to it being a bit confusing and some questions going unanswered or not being answered thoroughly enough I gave it a lower rating. However, overall, I felt the premise of this was very interested. If you like a book that's weird and dark, I suggest this one.

I was really intrigued straight from the synopsis of this book! It's one of those books that asks a lot of philosophical questions and ultimately changes how you view the world after you finish it. It's a really neat Edgar Allen Poe-esque mystery/thriller that keeps you on your toes.

From beginning to end, this book was excellent. The characters are all unique and well-rounded. The book is dark and gritty, but once you get into it and start to absorb the story, it moves very quickly. There are a lot of twists to this tale. The ones you should not miss.

As a fan of Ian Kirkpatrick's writing I was excited to see what new story and characters had created, and I was not disappointed!

Bleed More, Bodymore follows Joey, a mechanic who has had a not so pleasant life which doesn't get any better when she's called to tow in her best friend's car. She hasn't spoken to him in days and when she finds a body in the trunk and an odd substance that burns her skin, her already sh*tty life is sent into a tailspin. Stumbling onto bodies left and right, seeing dead people, trying to find her friend, visiting the afterlife, she does what she has to do in order to survive her godforsaken town.

The book gives us a great cast of characters, each unique in their own way. Joey, Jag and Val were my favorites. Joey was scrappy as f*ck, she knew how to get herself out of sticky situations, and she's literally a ride or die friend when it comes to Wayland. Wayland, I'm not sure how I feel about, I think I pity him but hopefully in future books his character becomes more solid for me. Next there's Jag, Joey's I want to call him her boyfriend but they definitely aren't the type of people to label things like that. Jag grew on me quickly as he stuck by Joey and tried to help her when he could, even if he didn't understand what the hell was going on. Last but not least, there's Val who I won't go into details about because he's a side character who I latched onto for some reason and I just looked forward to every time he landed on the page.

Story wise, I was engaged from the beginning and invested in figuring out what all was going on. There are more than a few creepy scenes, especially one in an old abandoned fort that gave me some serious anxiety and freaked me out. I'll be honest, I was confused for a bit around the halfway point because I had more than a few questions that I was trying to figure out before the book had made all its reveals. Thankfully, by the end it all came together, and my questions were answered.

Bleed More, Bodymore is an entertaining dark journey involving reapers, the afterlife, and not so dead a**holes. I am very much looking forward to what else Ian Kirkpatrick comes up with for the characters, because it ended with the promise of interesting things to come.

I have received a free advanced review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Ian Kirkpatrick, Steak House Books and Net Galley for this opportunity!

4/5

The sky in Baltimore, Maryland is never serene. Even on a seemingly sunny day, there's always a tinge of gloom in the air, and the smell of death and rot plagues the town. It's not like the denizens of Baltimore actually mind though, and if they do, they've probably buried that discontentment deep down and just accepted the twisted laws that rule the land as a way of life. In Baltimore, passing by streets littered with black plastic bags knowing there's a 50/50 chance of finding either some trash or a corpse inside is as normal as seeing a hot dog stand on the side of the road (not that Baltimore seems to have any of those). Cops have thriving careers in these hoods, since high crime equals high frequency calls for work, but don't be fooled into thinking they're the bastions of fairness and honour. Overall, Baltimore isn't the type of town you'd want to live in if you have thin skin, and our main character Josephine, who goes by Joey, is luckily anything but that. She needs all the skin she can get, since after finding a mutilated corpse in the trunk of her friend Wayland's car after being asked to pick it up from the town's body dumping grounds, Joey's life takes a drastic and chaotic turn.

Where is Wayland? Why the hell would he leave a dead body in his trunk and ask for it to be picked up? Was he the one who committed the crime, or is he a victim of someone else's twisted agenda? Joey finds herself drowning in all of these questions and her life spirals down out of control the more she tries finding answers, as she unwittingly comes across the dark secrets that lurk underneath Baltimore and are the breeding grounds of all the horrors, deaths and darkness that have haunted the city ever since Joey could remember.

This is my first time reading Ian Kirkpatrick's work, and I went into it expecting a dark and twisted tale. That I did indeed get, but what I was not expecting was the heavy dose of absurdist writing style that flavoured this entire work, reminding me of Christopher Moore's "A Dirty Job", with heavy doses of introspection as we read the story from the first-person perspective of Joey, whose mind is anything but dull. From the very first chapter, I was instantly drawn into Josephine's world, her perspective on life tinged with the intensity of her angst and her surprising wisdom, being painfully aware of life's harshness, with zero sugarcoating and refreshing honesty.

This is where Ian Kirkpatrick shines as a writer, her writing style being very beautifully descriptive, not shying away from portraying Joey's damaged life as authentically as possible, being vulgar in all the right ways to make all the right impacts. The world building was pretty good and the atmosphere was beautifully crafted. I could nicely visualize the locations in Baltimore and the lands beyond, with the dark skies and the blackened moon and stars and the way the lights shine purple on the leaves at nighttime, and the cold fog that mutes out all the surrounding sounds when it spreads around you. The presence of ravens that symbolize death added a nice gothic touch to this world that's teeming with spooky delights.



With all of its darkness and grit, Bleed More, Bodymore is also a pretty funny read. Joey's blunt humour is probably her coping mechanism for surviving life at Baltimore, and she uses it here in spades. Her wit and her bombastic comebacks alongside the reactions of other characters to her strong personality will at the very least provide you with amused chuckles.

Storytelling wise, the plot is fast moving and Ian Kirkpatrick spares us from the details of the little things like commuting and the spaces between intense moments. You won't have to wait 2 chapters for your characters to get from point A to B, it's fast and the pace favours action. If you like your books a little bit more drawn out with these aspects, this might irritate you, but I found it to be a relief, because this is the kind of story I'd wanna be in the middle of the action of.

The character work was alright, though I would have preferred for certain characters whom we spend a while wondering about to have been a bit more fleshed out and have had more of a personality. Since the main focus was on the first-person perspective of Joey, some other characters felt a bit underdeveloped compared to her. I hope the next installment in this series gives a little more depth to the rest of our cast.

This book is a perfect Halloween read, which is awesome since it's coming out on the 31st of October later this year. If you'd like to have a spooky read this Fall season, with a good amount of humour to accompany it, make sure to pick this book up and plunge into the broken and spooky world of Baltimore!

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"I don't know what it is about this place that makes people desperate. Desperate for a future. Desperate for money. Desperate for someone else. It's always everything we don't have that's going to solve that desperation."

Review will appear on my blog
https://reviewsofyabooks.blogspot.com/ and Goodreads on September 30. 2021

Introduction

Baltimore smells like rot, like corpses, like death. It always has. But ever since Joey was called to collect her friend's car in Baltimore's infamous body dumping ground and found a corpse in the trunk, and her friend MIA, it's been getting worse. The city feels more grim. Ravens seem to be watching her. And where is Wayland? As she tries to find him, she's also finds out just how sinister Baltimore can be, if you just look close enough.

Writing Style

Something about this writing style missed the mark for me, There was a lot of telling, not showing, and because of that, it was very choppy and made it hard for me to feel immersed in the story.

Joey

I didn't connect to Joey as I hoped I would. Mostly because a lot of her dialogue made me cringe and made her come off younger than she was supposed to be. For example, when she is being questioned by a detective and she asks what they found on her record, the dialogue goes like this:

"What do you think I found?"
I shake my head. "Nah fam, not playing."

The insertion of the words "nah, fam." makes her feel so young to me and it was hard to take her seriously during her scenes like this. Additionally, it was hard to take her and the detective scenes seriously at all because she always acted so nonchalantly. It's like it never actually dawned on her that she could be getting herself in trouble. I understand that she's supposed to be tough and edgy and untouchable but at times it was very unrealistic.

Romance: Joey and Jag

Romance wasn't a central theme in the book by any means, but I wasn't really interested in any of what Joey and Jag had going on. I liked Jag individually, but the scenes where he and Joey were acting physically affectionate felt so out of place to me because there was never any foundation established for any kind of intimate relationship. Occasionally they kiss quickly, the moment passes, and Joey never thinks about it. As a reader you just have to accept that that's something they do without ever having any substance to go with it. This might be because their situation is so casual that Joey has no reason to think about it beyond the moments of the affection, but to me, as a reader, the relationship fell flat. I'm hoping that in the future books, if they continue to be involved in some way, it's developed a little more deeply.

Ending

The ending came together really fast. It felt like it took a little bit of a left turn from the rest of the plot in order to drive itself towards a sequel. That being said, I really liked the way it ended, it's probably my favorite aspect of the book.

Conclusion

This book was an okay introduction. Although I had trouble connecting with Joey the plot was interesting enough to keep me going through the book and I am looking forward to seeing how the plot continues, should I read the sequel.

"Even if I'm dead, my life isn't over yet."

This book is one of horror, but it excels at keeping the horror vague and creeping. The horror elements are of the more psychological variety - more often than not the creepy things are heard or felt, but not seen. This is the difference between a shocker that heavily relies on it's own images to scare you - and true horror that instead relies on the images you create in your own mind. This book is off the second variety, and it does this kind of creeping uneasyness really well.

You can easily identify this book as being about horror by the raven with it's bloody eyes on the cover. (By the way, the raven is male and his name is Val. You might be going to like him.)

Lores of old often associate ravens with dark things, with blood and murder. That has to do with the fact that ravens are completely black - and that they're carrion birds, often found on battle fields after the mayhem, picking at eyes and bits.

So ravens are often used in literature to signify dark things (just ask Edgar Allan Poe). Then again, other parts of mythology associate ravens with things not so dark, just think about Hugin and Munin. (For those of us that don't remember their Nordic Folklore: those are the names of Odin's ravens.)

Of course, I keep talking about ravens because they are playing a role in this novel.

The atmosphere is well written, and Ian does a great job blending different elements together: There's a journey reminiscent to Alice in Wonderland (in an American Horror Story style), Norse mythology (I mentioned the ravens already) and Greek mythology (who would have thought the Styx runs under Baltimore?).

What's really a letdown for me is the heroine. I can't get behind her, as her actions and reactions are quite often of the kind that makes you slap your forehead. It's like some of these movies where the first idea of the stupid teenagers is always - and with utter reliability - to split up.

What Joey does is often the equivalent to that. I'm sure Ian intends for her to be a Rebellious Young Lady With An Attitude, but Joey's taking the RYLWAA too far. I mean, come on: When Charon tells you not to stray from the path - or not to touch the waters of the Styx - then you simply do it. Rebelling for rebellion's sake is just stupid.

And the way she behaves around the people in her life makes her attitude bordering on asshole levels. There's a line between being flippant and being outrageous, and our girl Joey here is walking firmly behind that line. In fact, she's so far out, she might not even recognize that line anymore. That being said - this does not diminish the entertaining part of the novel, but those moments of cringe are making it harder for me to identify with her, which meddles with the immersion.

I've already mentioned Baltimore, so it's confession time: I have to admit that it took me quite a while to get the Bodymore joke in the title. At first I thought it had to do with the body shop Joey is working for, but I think it's just a word play with the word Baltimore. Having never been to Baltimore myself, I might be doing this book injustice by describing it's horrors as preternatural. Maybe Baltimore really is like that, with the Styx running underneath it.
Who knows? Not me. But the murder rate is actually way up high.

Another thing that keeps me from a higher score is the fact that this plot is kinda slow paced. I think we actually spend a little too much time in Joey's head, and there are really lengths in the plot. This story would work better if it were cropped a little. And the ending was, well, I'm not going to tell, but as endings go, I find it mildly irritating.

After all is said and done, I can recommend this book for genre fans. Just be prepared for the attitude and the occasional waiting periods.

I'll rate it 3.5 out of 5 stars, rounded up to 4 where half stars are not applicable.