Black Tide was a cosmic horror novel and the premise was good! But overall, this book was just ok. I didn’t hate it but I didn’t love it either. I just didn’t really care for the characters safety throughout. I didn’t connect with the characters and I think that was the biggest downfall for me. I don’t want to say much because I truly think the less you know the better. Giving it a three stars because I did enjoy the premise.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

Wow! This is a summer blockbuster movie in book form! I laughed, cheered and cried and loved every minute I spent in these pages.

Beth is tired of being a fuck-up. Of living couch to couch trying to find the next drink, the next gig, to fund another day.

House and dog sitting seems like a perfect chance to live as someone else. A chance to clean up her life and stop disappointing her parents. Maybe sober up a bit.

This is the time she’ll turn everything around. Until her mysterious neighbour, Mike, appears. A man she’s only seen in the shadows of his home. Outside of his house! It doesn’t seem right to let him drink that bottle of champagne by himself.

One bottle turns into many and Beth wakes up in Mike’s bed to a broken world. A kaleidoscopic nightmare. An astronomical storm that created a fissure between two realms.

Two strangers forced to rely on each other to live another day. In a battle for survival on an isolated beach. With many forms of eldritch horror ready to consume them.

I’ve read and seen similar themes in books and movies but this had a truly unique claustrophobicness. It was absolutely action packed, and I loved the tension in the one-night stand turned apocalypse buddies story so much.

Thank you to Tor Nightfire and NetGalley for an arc of this title.

Black Tide was okay. The book lacked in something and I am not quite sure what that was. There were parts that had me creeps out but then some of the writing took me out of the story. Overall, this was at entertaining.

This book follows Mike and Beth, two strangers who become stuck together on a beach in a dangerous situation. It's hard to give more explanation than that without giving too many spoilers.

Overall, I found this to be an incredibly unsatisfying read for a variety of reasons.

1. I found the writing to be incredibly awkward to follow. There were several sentences that I had to reread several times to be able to parse them. Some of the phrasing was weird and inconsistent. I also noticed barely any difference between the two characters' inner monologues. Sometimes I would start a chapter, accidentally skip over whose POV it was, and would not be able to tell you who it was without searching out which pronouns were being used for the other person.

2. The backstories to Mike and Beth did not help the story in any way. In fact, I wish we had spent less time on their back story and more time on the situation at hand. Beth being a trainwreck had absolutely no bearing on the story other than her complaining in her inner monologue.. nothing she lamented about in the beginning of the book had any bearing on the ending. It also drew on a tired trope and made me not care to read about her character.

3. The pacing was absolutely glacial. This was a short book and it took me a long time to slog through. I did not find it to be very creepy so the scenes where they were waiting it out were more boring than high-tension. I wish we had more things that moved the plot and setting forward rather than the large amounts of exposition between small events.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the gifted eARC!

Overall this was a fast paced horror thriller, it did lose me for a very short time in the middle of the book, just too much too quick, especially with every object getting named within a chapter...don't know how else to say that without spoilers.
I think this book would make a great movie 🎬

Ahoy there me mateys!  I received this horror eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  So here be me honest musings . . .

The story begins with following Beth, who is a mess of a person.  If there is a bad choice, she will make it.  I had a hard time with the beginning of the novel because I didn't find Beth to be likeable at first.  I also didn't like the continuing analogy of her being a "car wreck."  I did find her job of house-sitting for the rich to be kind of fun.  Beth is bored and looking for trouble so she goes to seduce the neighbor, Mike.  But the one-night-stand happens to coincide with the end of the world.

Mike and Beth initially don't know what is going on because they were focused on other things.  I enjoyed that set-up.  The two (and the dog) go to the local beach to collect meteors that fell that night.  While there, they begin to learn what really happened and also end up trapped in the car.  For a story where the characters are stuck, I actually found a lot of tension and suspense.  Both the characters and the reader are learning as the day progresses and that was a lot of fun.  Plus I enjoyed the reason the world ended and how Beth and Mike deal with it.  The strangers have to rely on each other to survive.

There were some negatives.  Things do not go well for Jake the dog and really was the dog necessary?  He seemed added in to elicit sympathy and be a plot device.  Also a third character is thrown into the mix and that is where both the plot and especially the ending did not appeal to me.  The book is filled with unbelievable things that are still fun but when third character arrives, the unbelievability involving the human behavior is ratcheted up and I didn't like it.  It is personal preference though.  Others might enjoy that twist.  Oh and there is a random sex scene in the latter part of the book that could have been tossed out for the better.

Overall though, I really enjoyed the tension of being trapped in the car on a beach with otherworldly creatures.  The ending was vague and the characters seemed hopeful.  But I don't think things bode well for them.  Arrr!

A little dark and twisty. I give it 3 stars. I am so grateful for this ARC and I will deff buy this book to read again. I liked it a lot.

I really enjoyed this one. Very character driven and creepy. The sound that the creatures make I swear I keep hearing. Someone opened my door and it squeaked and I jumped, I was so into this book. It reminded me of that movie The Mist but with a much better ending. I loved the plot and the character development.
Duel POV between Mike and Beth and at the end Natalia. It was a bittersweet ending.

This didn't go exactly how I thought it would but it was an enjoyable summer read. I was hoping for more of the sci-fi horror and less of the character driven drama, but I still really enjoyed the concept for this story. I think this would make an excellent sci-fi horror movie!

Black Tide is a book about an alien invasion, sure, but it’s first and foremost about people. Beth and Mike’s paths cross early on in the story, and both are complete messes in different ways. Beth, for her part, can’t keep her life on the rails. Mike, on the other hand, is a stable guy on the outside, but he doesn't have much interest in this little thing called life.

These two characters are the kind that you don’t particularly love, but you do find yourself rooting for. You want them to be better. The fascination is in seeing them thrown into the apocalypse as complete strangers and watching them learn more about each other—and, more importantly, about themselves.

This book lives by Murphy’s Law: If anything can go wrong, it will. Every chapter brings forth a new life-or-death problem. It seems like these characters can never catch a break, and even when they did, it felt like they took one step forward only to take 10 steps back. The aliens themselves are living nightmares, and the stakes were incredibly high throughout. We see real consequences to people’s actions.

Not everyone will love Black Tide because of the ending. I enjoyed that it was open-ended, that those left standing still had a journey ahead of them, but that doesn’t mean everything works out for the good guys. But if you’re into the kind of horror/sci-fi movies that scare you and make you think, the kind that remind you we’re fragile creatures with a whole lot left to lose, then Black Tide is for you.

This is the perfect book for readers in the mood for a creepy creature feature. After meeting over the fence and sharing a bottle of champagne, two strangers become trapped on an isolated stretch of coastline. Something happened the night before and the world has changed. Things are shrieking in the dunes that separate them from the road. The tide is coming in. The book gets off to a slow start but when things started to really happen it had me holding my breath and crossing my fingers for the characters.

Black Tide by K.C. Jones is a poignant, introspective novella about two strangers adrift in life who are trying to weather a storm (or in this case, an alien invasion) together. It’s a really beautiful metaphor about not “swimming alone” in life or else you risk drowning.

While the story excels as a character drama, it’s the sci-fi components that unfortunately didn’t work for me. Without getting into too many spoilers, there are multiple alien species invading and some of the far-flung sci-fi elements felt rushed and half-explained, and the implausibility of it all broke my immersion from the story.

Perhaps this can boil down to an issue of length, but I felt either the aliens should have more subtle or the novella should have been expanded into a full novel in order to flesh out its more intricate concepts.

I enjoyed this book as a whole, though I had a couple moments where I had to step back and take a breath because it was stressing me out how stuck the characters were in a very small and very dangerous situation. Looking back on various details now that I'm done, I do wish I knew more than I was allowed to know about the overarching theme, and also I could have used a tiny bit more closure on one of the characters, but I'll leave it at that. The conclusion of the book feels open-ended enough to warrant a sequel, but I get the impression that's not the plan, so oh well. I was entertained and would read another book in the same universe if there were to be one.

Beth takes a job house/dog sitting in an upscale beachside neighborhood in the PNW. The only other person braving the fall season is the mysterious neighbor, Mike. One evening Beth sees Mike outside drinking champagne and invites herself over. Neither knew the next morning would be the beginning of the end of the world.
Mike, Beth and Jake (the dog Beth is watching) venture out on the beach to check out the damage of what they think was a meteor shower. They get stranded on the beach and all hell breaks loose. They end up taking in a young girl, Natalia, and Jake proves we really don’t deserve dogs. There is an open ended ending, which aren’t my favorites - I like to know how things end. Overall, I enjoyed the book.

Summary:
Beth is house/pet sitting and ends up at the neighbor, Mikes house. They drink a lot of champagne and end up in bed together. That night, Beth has what she thinks is a weird dream and Mike watches a meteor shower. The next morning they find they don’t have electricity, so they decide (along with the dog Jake) to take a drive to the beach to see if they can find more of the “meteorites,” only to get stranded and then that is when the real horror begins.

Review:
I loved that this book was told from the POV of both Beth and Mike. Both of the main characters were flawed, but likable, and I was rooting for them throughout the book. The book was fast paced, and it definitely something I can see being a movie.

The nitty-gritty: Relentless pacing and a unique apocalyptic event make Black Tide a standout horror debut.

Just in time for summer beach season, Black Tide is a nail-biter of a thriller that will assure you’ll never want to step foot on a beach again. Jones’ tale is a creepy and often terrifying survival story with cosmic horror influences, and I had an absolute blast with it. Not only is it entertaining, but there’s also quite a bit of depth to the characters and even a bit of humor. This is K.C. Jones’ debut, and I was very impressed!

Beth is housesitting on the Oregon coast when she meets next door neighbor Mike, a movie producer who is celebrating the completion of his latest project. The two hook up after a few too many bottles of champagne, but during the night, everything goes to hell when a meteor shower ushers in an apocalyptic nightmare. At first, Mike is puzzled by the odd “meteor” he finds after an early morning walk. When he shows it to Beth, they decide to pack a picnic and go to the beach to see what else the cosmic event has left behind.

Along with Jake, the yellow lab that Beth is taking care of, they pile into Mike’s Subaru and drive down to the beach. But once they arrive, it’s clear that something isn’t quite right. Other people are there milling about and looking worried. The skies are full of weird, dark clouds, and the beach is covered with round bowling ball-like objects, just like the one Mike found. No one can get a cell phone signal, and even Jake seems nervous about something. When the police arrive and tell everyone to go home, Mike and Beth discover that their car key is missing. Something monstrous has arrived with the meteor shower, and now Mike, Beth and Jake are trapped in their car, with no way to leave. 

Black Tide was one of the scariest books I’ve read in a long time, and I was so worried for the characters that at times I had to skip to the end of the chapter to make sure everyone was ok, it was so stressful! The tension is so well done and the pacing was near perfect. There’s a bit of set-up in the beginning when we’re introduced to Mike and Beth, but it doesn’t take long for the action to pick up as the author immediately throws his characters into the deep end—so to speak. I won’t go into too much detail about what they find on the beach, but I will say the creatures they come up against are strange and otherworldly and pretty damn scary. Jones gives us just enough description but also holds back a little, so that each reader will draw their own conclusions about what these nightmares look like.

I also thought the setting was perfect. I’m not familiar with the Oregon coast, but the beach in the story has large sand dunes, which the author uses to his advantage to ramp up the tension. I also loved the way the characters slowly come to the realization that they’re trapped. At first it’s just a normal day at the beach, but little by little threats pop up and before you know it, Mike and Beth are wondering whether they’ll actually survive the day. This creeping terror is so well done, and the author throws in small events that show the threat isn’t just confined to the beach, but it could be everywhere. And I loved the explanation of why it all happened, it was pretty cool.

The characters are great too. Jones gives both Mike and Beth interesting backstories (and past traumas) that come into play during the story. Mike is mourning a loss, and Beth is still trying to come to terms with the toxic relationship with her mother, who called Beth a “human car wreck” throughout her childhood years. At thirty-three, Beth has fully embraced that moniker and can’t seem to get beyond it. The dialog between the two felt authentic as well. Beth has a mean streak and isn’t very nice to Mike at times, but I thought it worked. They’re basically strangers thrown into a terrible situation, forced to work together to stay alive, and the tension between them was fantastic.

I did have a couple of negatives, though. First, you all know I’m a big dog lover, and word of warning: things do not go well for poor Jake. I really didn’t like the way the author handled his scenes, and at one point I almost threw the book against the wall. It took me days to calm down and write this review, so sensitive dog people, do beware. I also didn’t care for the ending. A new character is introduced late in the story and it wasn’t my favorite plot twist (although other readers will probably enjoy it). And the ending is rather vague and even leaves the possibility for a sequel, although I don’t think that was the author’s intention.

But aside from these things, I can’t stress enough how much fun I had with this book. If you’re looking for an edge-of-your-seat survival story with otherworldly creatures, Black Tide is hard to beat.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.

Real Rating: 2.5 / 5 Stars

What’s unfortunate is this book had a lot of great potential but not enough follow-through, and what was turned out is something lesser than it should have been ruined by a deus ex machina way to resolve the plot.

There was something about this book and its weird, dimension-colliding, apocalyptic plot I kept hoping would amp me up and draw me in as I kept reading. I kept hoping to fall in love with the characters, or to be horrified by the descriptions and imagery the author was trying to paint with words across the page, but somehow the words never came close to inspiring the horror they aspired to.

It’s like the book was, in a way, not baked well enough. It just wasn’t done in a way you expect a finished and polished horror novel to be.

Thanks to NetGalley, Macmillan-Tor/Forge, and Tor Nightfire for early access to this book in exchange for a fair and honest review. Due to personal policy, this review will not be posted on social media or on bookseller websites owing to the 3 star or lower rating.

This is my kind of Sci-Fi horror!! Loved it, but I do have to knock it down a star for some of the cheesier moments and the one part that happened at the end, why must we keep doing this in horror!!!! (If you know you know, I don’t want to spoil anything). Either way, solid story and I’d definitely read more from this author!

Black Tide is a thrilling adventure of a book that will keep you flipping pages. The comparisons to Cujo and a Quiet Place are what drew me in, but as others have pointed out if you’re a fan of Stephen King’s The Mist you will enjoy this as well. I really had fun reading this and once I kind of knew what was happening I easily finished it in two sittings.

This book was incredibly atmospheric and though the setting is quite limited/simple, the author spares no attention to detail and really makes you feel like you are on the beach with Beth and Mike. At times it was a bit claustrophobic sitting in that car with our main characters which just adds to the urgency of the story. I loved the ambiguity of not knowing what exactly has happened and who the bad guy/monsters are. This was a very strong debut and the author did a great job of blending science fiction and horror. The only part I didn’t totally love/believe was the love story (though now that I think about it - what would I want to be doing while the world is ending?).

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for an advance copy. I can’t wait to check out what’s next from this author.