I had started to forget what I liked so much about science fiction and apocalyptic horror, and Black Tide scratched a particular kind of itch. It is a nail-biting edge of your seat creature feature that sets off running and doesn’t let up. I genuinely didn’t know where the book would go and the feeling of claustrophobia elicited by the writing was palpable. I genuinely felt creeped out at various points while reading.

The cast of characters is well-realized and wonderfully flawed. The plot is a character-driven narrative done right in a sea of other character-driven apocalyptic fiction that is often bloated. The story strikes a good balance between developing these characters with fast-moving action and suspense. I really enjoyed the concepts that this book put forth for an alien apocalypse, it is unlike anything I had read and kept the story exciting.

Black Tide is a fantastic thrill ride perfect for the summer season. Reading the book felt like a summer blockbuster and I wouldn’t be surprised to see this book someday adapted to film.

I am a sucker for apocalyptic settings. Give me a natural disaster or mysterious invasion plot line and I'm a happy girl; so when I read the summary for Black Tide, I couldn't wait to dive in.

From Goodreads:

It was just another day at the beach. And then the world ended.

Mike and Beth didn’t know each other existed before the night of the meteor shower. A melancholy film producer and a house sitter barely scraping by, chance made them neighbors, a bottle of champagne brought them together, and a shared need for human connection sparked something more.

After a drunken and desperate one-night-stand, the two strangers awake to discover a surprise astronomical event has left widespread destruction in its wake. But the cosmic lightshow was only a part of something much bigger, and far more terrifying. When a set of lost car keys leaves them stranded on an empty stretch of Oregon coast, when their emergency calls go unanswered and inhuman screams echo from the dunes, when the rising tide reaches for the car and unspeakable horrors close in around them, these two self-destructive souls must find in each other the strength to overcome past pain and the fight to survive a nightmare of apocalyptic scale.

I really enjoyed this book.

Mike and Beth are entertaining characters. Both conventionally disastrous for different reasons, their voices were colorful and layered, and I was interested to see how they would play off each other once the conflict really found its feet. I wasn't disappointed. Sometimes in these end-of-the-world narratives, it seems like everyone is a born survivor. They know first aid and tactical maneuvers and how to remain calm in the highest-of-stress situations. Mike and Beth...did not read like that for me--and that was a good thing. They bicker and make mistakes. They lose key items and don't know how to organize a precise military mission at the blink of an eye. I loved seeing how their different skillsets and personalities came together as the situation becomes dire, and I think many readers will find their dynamic to be a breath of fresh air.

This is definitely an action-forward read, perfect for a summer vacation, and I finished this in just a few short sittings because I was engrossed in the moment. The chapters are short, propelling the plot, and the descriptions are visceral and terrifying.

Falling Skies x Cujo x The Mist, Black Tide is one you won't want to miss.

Big thanks to Tor Nightfire and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for honest review consideration.

*Thank you to Macmillan-Tor/Forge, KC Jones and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review*

Previously published at https://www.mysteryandsuspense.com/black-tide/

“Beware of the Blob! It creeps, and leaps, and glides and slides across the floor.” –The Blob circa 1958

I must confess that Science-fiction is not my usual genre but I love a good post-apocalyptic novel and Black Tide is all that and more. This book had me on the edge of my seat from the first chapter.

Beth, a self-proclaimed “hot mess” is a professional house sitter. She drinks, smokes and makes no apologies. When she meets Mike, the next-door neighbor of the house she is currently at, she sees someone who is maybe a twin soul, or maybe just a one-night stand. Mike, a former Hollywood producer, is mourning the loss of his wife and his career, drinking bottles of champagne like water. There is an instant connection, and when they wake up after spending the night together, the world is not as they left it. Beth wakes from a nightmare, and Mike tells her all about the meteorite shower she missed, showing her the odd ball he and Jake, the dog she is taking care of, brought back from one of the impact points on the beach. Together with Jake, the dog, they go exploring to find people and figure out what is happening. When they get to the ocean, they see people nervously waiting for a boat to come gather them up and take them away to safety. But what is dangerous? And where is everyone going in the boat? A police SUV arrives, begging everyone to disperse, to go home and lock their doors and await further instruction. An unearthly blob arrives, seemingly coming from the ocean, making chirping sounds and the man who is flagging down the boat is suddenly gone, swallowed by the big blob with tentacles.

This is a stressful book. Everything that can go wrong, does. It is a hot day in October and they are stuck in a Subaru with Jake, because they can’t find the keys. They also can’t open the windows because they are surrounded by the little angry blobs with viny tentacles. They brought no water with them, just sandwiches and mimosas, so within hours Jake, the dog, is panting and dehydrated. Beth and Mike are constantly bickering about what they should do and they come close to dying many times. The atmosphere surrounding the car is a horror show, with torn bodies, moving “balls” with different colors and tentacles, a “queen” ball who stalks them. The ending very much sets up for another book, and while this is my first foray into science fiction, I can’t wait for more. It was just so much fun.

Black Tide starts with Beth house sitting for a friend. She sees the next door neighbor, Mike, and one a night he is outside drinking, she decides to introduce herself. Mike is a film producer and alone, so Beth asks to join him. While they get drunk and learn more about each other, things start falling from the sky. They think that it is a meteor shower, not realizing they are watching the end of the world. What starts as a fun night ends the next day in a world of terror and gore.

KC Jones does a lot of good things in his debut novel. I enjoy the characters he has created. Beth is someone who does not really had much going for her, someone whose mother has told her that she will ruin everything she touches, and someone who has fallen into a life of drug abuse and low self esteem. Mike is someone who is living through the sadness of the loss of his marriage and a career that is waning. Two sad and lonely people meet on a night and the next day the book has thrust them into the role of unlikely heroes. We genuinely want them to succeed, but Jones also does a great job of putting them into a situation that does not show very much promise. The synopsis says that there are tones of Cujo by Stephen King in this book, and I could not thinking this while reading. I read Cujo at a young age and remember the same feeling of the mother and son being trapped in the car with the rabid dog outside trying to get to them. This book spends a great deal of time with two of them being trapped, being stalked by these creatures, and trying to figure out what they are going to do before they die from the elements.

The biggest weakness in this novel is the monsters. I never really get a firm grasp of how they operate and their physical structures because it seems to progress every time they have an encounter with them. If we just had monsters with sharp claws, teeth, and were frightening to look at, we would not be so bogged down in the details. In the end, many of the characteristics that Jones gives them do not matter as much as they mattered in the moment. Claws and teeth, and speed are enough. If the monster design was a little more simplistic, we could have also gotten a better picture of them in our heads. Instead I really still do have have the clearest picture of what Beth and Mike were fighting.

Overall Black Tide is a fun, tense, horror novel, and even despite the monsters, it deserves to be read. The tension of the situation makes the second half of the novel just speed passed, and this is what we always want from any novel.

I received this as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Black Tide by K C Jones
.
Beth and Mike meet for the first time the night of the meteor shower.
But it’s not just any meteor shower.
It’s the end of the world.
.
My thoughts:
-It was very interesting just following these two people through an apocalyptic event. It helped me picture it really happening as opposed to reading several POVs and knowing everything going on everywhere. Because, obviously, in a real life event I would only have my own POV.

-Jake the dog is the real MVP of this book.

-I wanted more explanation on the event and how it happened. But again, in real life you wouldn’t get that. 😂

-Beth and Mike each had interesting back stories that made me want to know more about them.

-The ending left me wanting more!

This was a book that I’m not sure I would have picked up at the bookstore myself but it was good! I like reading outside of my comfort zone and trying new things.
Thank you Tor Nightfire and Netgalley for this digital copy to read.

BLACK TIDE features two almost-strangers suddenly trying to survive after a meteor shower that left behind very strange things on the beach.

Early on I realized what it's horror novel treatment of, and I don't really want to spoil it except to say that any of my fellow exvangelicals might find something you recognize. You don’t need to figure it out to understand the book, however, since it’s using that sequence of events as the bones in a wonderfully horrific creation. It's from the perspective of two characters who aren’t already familiar with the shape of what’s to come, who have no way to guess the truly twisted shit that’s going down.

The characters have the kind of communication errors which completely fit people who met yesterday and have very little emotional energy to navigate interpersonal dynamics in addition to trying to stay alive. It's just enough to feel real but doesn't bog down the story. The worldbuilding is very good, with the characters slowly figuring out what's happening and some strategies to deal with immediate dangers, but lacking any ability to fix things more broadly. This is a very good horror novel and I'm quite pleased overall.

Black Tide is an Armageddon type story mixing horror and science fiction while following two strangers after a one night stand try and survive the end of the world/alien apocalypse/ I have no idea what. The heart of the story takes place over several hours in a car stranded by the beach. This book was super off brand for me, really aliens just aren’t my thing, and frankly I’m not even sure if they were aliens. Monsters maybe? Who knows. I was hoping for a little more forward moving with the plot opposed to high tense scenes that felt a little messy and dragging. The main characters were flawed and complicated and watching them form a trust and intimate relationship amongst the dark and twisted fear of death was definitely an added layer that I needed to finish the story. I think this could continue to make a great series and if you are into this type of genre, it is definitely worth checking it out!

I really liked this! I’ve read more horror in the past month and I’m happy to say this one delivered. The audiobook was also fantastic in my opinion and added a nice layer of humor. The narrators were great!

Jones combines my favorite elements of horror and sci-fi with this post apocalyptic, dystopian setting. I really like how everything takes place in a small area of beach essentially and over a short period of time.

The descriptiveness of the events that unfold is done well. I saw another review that mentioned this reads like a movie and I 100% agree. I’d totally watch an adaptation of this story.

I think what spoke to me most was the chaotic energy and hot mess Beth brought to the story. Mike’s character, while interesting as a contrast to Beth, was a bit more lackluster. When our aliens are introduced, it happens quite quickly and the differences between the creatures are a bit jumbled in the middle. But ultimately, it’s just a bunch of blood thirsty entities that are trying to hurt our MCs. Pretty straightforward.

Looking for a quick horror/sci-fi read? This one is a good pick.

TW: If you’re sensitive to pet injuries then I’d sit this one out. Some descriptions are especially gory. And there are a couple instances where suicidal thoughts are present.

End of the world, alien invasion type horror is not my usuals pick but I read this after being offered an ARC for an honest review. I’m glad I did. Strong writing, good pacing, and overall enough tension to keep me reading until the end.

I feel like this book had a good set up, but was lacking in the execution. The characters were literally stuck in place for a majority of the book. The terror and anxiety of the one setting could be drawn out for only so long before it stopped feeling tense but more treading water (pun intended?).

Sorry this one is just not for me. I really don't like Beth and I can't get into the story. I gave up around the 15% mark.

This was good! More than 3 stars good, but what can you do when you're limited by ratings? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This was a pretty tightly compressed story, taking place over approximately 24 hours and in very few settings. This only added to the tension, giving it an almost - well, not claustrophobic feel, but claustrophobia in the sense of limited places to go and everything closing in and a sense of dread.

Now, important part: There is a dog. As the third main character, if you will. So, important spoiler, if you want to know the dog's fate: <spoiler>He does not make it. Which, if I'm being honest, is probably the reason I rounded down to 3 stars instead of up to 4 stars.</spoiler>

Overall, a well-paced, tense sci-fi horror where our protagonists go through a lot of shit in a short period of time. What a day!

(2.5)

I thought this was only okay, which was a little disappointing to me. There was a lot of potential for this to really creep me out and K.C. Jones definitely nails the claustrophobic quality that lends itself to the atmosphere he seemed to be trying to capture. I think there were some weird things going on with the pacing for me where the story could have benefited from either a shorter or longer length and ended up in this mid range where moments either felt too dragged out or rushed. I also wasn't super fond of our MCs, so that didn't do my reading experience any favors. This book had a cinematic quality to it though that made it easy to visualize what was unfolding in the way you might watch a horror show or movie. I'd be interested in reading more of Jones' books in the future, this one just wasn't quite right for me.

Big shout out and thanks to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for an e-arc of this!

DNF at 60%. This book started out with so much promise and I absolutely loved it in the beginning. It felt like an episode of Black Mirror and I couldn’t wait to find out what was going on. However, when we begin finding out what was going on I lost less and less interest. I couldn’t picture the monsters in my head, couldn’t picture the action in my head, and couldn’t connect to these characters or care about them aside from the dog who is suffering the entire time and apparently dies. I ultimately lost interest and don’t have the attention span for this book to finish it.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC copy in exchange for an honest review.

Black Tide is unlike any kind of apocalypse novel I've ever read before. Some of them really sound the same at this point--a disease, zombies, warfare. What about perfectly circular meteorites that grow vines, invisible monsters with mouths full of razors, and jellyfish clouds?

Beth is currently house sitting at a beach in Oregon, where she meets the next door neighbor, Mike. After a quick affair, she has a strange dream. Mike, wanting to end it all after losing his wife, sees meteors start to fall from the sky. Beth believes she's had too much to drink, until Mike comes to the house with a perfectly round ball. It burns his hands, so he drops it. They think nothing of it, until they decide to go to the beach, where they see a group of people desperately trying to leave the island. Something strange is happening at Strawberry Dunes.

This book had me hooked from the beginning, lost me a bit in the middle, and got me back at the end. I enjoyed learning more about Beth and Mike, while also watching them try to figure out how to survive this weird event. Both people seem to be notorious for fucking things up, and they don't want this to be their last fuck-up. They both lean on each other to try to survive.

I'd love to see more of this world, or possibly a different location. Is it happening world-wide? How are other people handling it? How is the government handling it? I don't believe this is a series, but I would love to see a spinoff book.

CW for blood/gore, suicidal thoughts, suicide attempt, animal death

This is a translated review from the original review posted on Goodreads in Spanish

Score: 2.6 Stars.

First of all I want to thank Tor Nightfire for sending me the arc of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Black Tide is a novel that belongs to a subgenre of which I have not read much: Sci-Fi Horror, or in Spanish, "horror de ciencia ficción". In this case we will witness the arrival of the apocalypse and how Mike and Beth, our main characters, try to survive a cataclysm of unthinkable levels.

Apocalyptic stories are not really my "Cup of tea", I do not read many novels with this theme and, the few that I have read, have not been entirely of my liking.

Unfortunately, Black Tide has not been the exception. However, before we talk about the negative aspects of my experience, let's start with the positive parts of this review.

Black Tide is a novel whose narration is focused on its characters. I feel that if one day the apocalypse comes, it would be as K.C. jones propose in this novel. It would happen at any moment, while we sleep. Can you imagine waking up one morning and seeing that the apocalypse has begun?

This made it easier for me to step into the characters' shoes. The apocalypse caught them off guard and I think that could happen to all of us. Now, from there to whether they have made the right choices is another matter.

Another element that I liked about Black Tide is that its narration is very agile. In a single sitting I advanced more than 40% of the book. However, this is all I enjoyed. Unfortunately, there are more negatives than positives in my experience with this book.

I will start with something that I had previously mentioned. Although the situation that the characters were experiencing felt very real, I did not feel identified with them at all. This is because I didn't feel like they were making the right decisions. Also, their interactions are very awkward, so much so that I felt the cringe jumping off the page as I read the book.

This triggered another element that added to my experience with the book: Feeling no connection to the characters, I didn't care if something terrible happened to them. You don't know how much I expected something horrible to happen at some point (After all, I'm reading a horror novel).

But if there's one thing I didn't like about this book, was the ending. The worst of all is that it cannot be called the end because the story does not end. The last page of this novel left me with more questions than answers, it looks like there will be a sequel (which I don't think I'm going to read).

Unfortunately, Black Tide was not a novel that I enjoyed. It has aspects to highlight, however, the negative elements weighed more in my reading experience. Personally, I don't recommend it, however, if you like apocalyptic stories with touches of science fiction, you may be interested in this book.

First things first: the dog DOES die (off-page, but there are on-page injuries). If that's a dealbreaker for you, best to know it now.

Anyway, I was really digging the irreverent tone. Beth especially feels exactly like what would happen if a millennial was confronted with the apocalypse. Bad puns, sarcasm, and just a rapid-fire toggle between rage, exasperation, and despair. I was really getting Kingfisher vibes from her character and dialogue.

However, unlike Kingfisher's books, the prose isn't poetic. The descriptions are clunky and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how the various cars were situated (how was one submerged in water up to the windows and the other totally on dry land?) There's so much chaotic movement in the same small place with no real landmarks that I just couldn't figure out what was happening.

But hey I read it in two sittings, so I guess that's a win?

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥I am a big fan of H. G. Wells and the first thing I thought from the synopsis was War of the Worlds. This got me interested. So I looked into getting the book and saw that it was available in NetGalley. And that's where I have read it. I have gone ahead and ordered a physical copy for my collection.

As much as the synopsis made it sound like War of the Worlds, it isn’t quite, but there are some similarities. There is an invasion. They seem to be unstoppable. The story focuses on the plight of three people and a dog in the midst of the chaos. And they only slowly learn what is going on. That’s where the similarities end really, though I still felt a lot of Wells vibes from this. But if you are afraid that means it will seem outdated, , don’t worry. This is very contemporary with well-developed modern characters and situations. The invaders aren’t Martians. I won’t say more about them than that and the fact that they prove to be very difficult to deal with.

The story then is about the two main characters and later a young girl trying to survive against these invaders. It gets extremely suspenseful, with the characters getting deeper and deeper into their jam. You don’t know if they are going to make it. That kept me glued to this book, reading through it faster than most books I read because I just couldn’t put it down!

Now I’m not a literature professor, just an ordinary reader and I am fairly new to horror. At this point I have only read Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll, lots of Poe and Lovecraft, a handful of King just recently and even more recently my first Dean Koontz. So I’m not a horror expert. I will say that as terrifying as the creatures were, there wasn’t a lot of graphic description, and there was only one sex scene which didn’t go into much detail. So if you don’t like graphic horror or a lot of sex like you find in some of today’s horror you won’t have to worry about this. If you do really want that sort of thing you will be disappointed. I felt there was just enough blood and such to make it terrifying without grossing anybody out. What you get instead is damn good storytelling!

This is a terrific way to do a character-driven, self-contained horror. Just enough of an introduction to Beth and Mike at the top, then nonstop mayhem to the finish, played out almost entirely in realtime on an Oregon beach.

Loved how the characters have deep, complicated flaws; loved their very real, very funny banter in the face of death; loved how Jack the dog is as much a protagonist as his two human protectors; but most of all, even in the face of apocalypse, I love that the novel ends on such an incredibly hopeful note, so true to the human spirit.

But most of all, BLACK TIDE is FUN. And KC Jones understood the assignment.

I should start out by saying that I generally don't like sci-fi, but something about this book made me want to give it a try, and I'm so glad that I did.

Beth is a chronic screw-up, doing her best to keep afloat in life as a housesitter/petsitter/whatever-people-need-sat-sitter. Right now she's got a pretty sweet job taking care of a lovable dog named Jake in a fancy house on the beach. To make things more interesting, next door lives a mysterious recluse of a man--Mike-- that has caught her eye. One night, over a campfire and champagne, the two get to know each other. And then they 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 get to know each other.

And then the world ends, more or less.

Overnight, a hail of asteroids crashes to the earth, and with them come alien life forms of all shapes and sizes. Trapped on lonely stretch of beach with nowhere to run, in a vehicle they can't get started, with Jake the dog growling up a frenzy in the back seat, Beth and Mike face down the most insanely intense twelve hours you can possibly imagine. There's multiple deadly aliens to contend with; some are invisible, some can bite your leg clean off, some wrap their tendrils around you and infect you, some snatch you up into the sky faster than you can scream,"Giant flying jellyfish!" Add in unseasonable heat, hunger, dehydration, blood loss... and the fact that eventually the tide is going to come in and flood the car if they can't figure out a way to get safely to some kind of more permanent shelter.

I swear, these two are brave as they come but everything seems to go wrong for them. Everything. But they keep at it, determined and with nothing to lose, pushing through until the end--whatever that may be.

Author KC Jones is apparently a screenwriter, and that makes sense because this book reads with the crazy immersive intensity of a sci-fi action movie. You can feel the panic, hear the screams, feel the grit of the sand in wounds you're afraid to look at, smell the awful stench of the aliens and the tang of blood. This book is one seriously good thrill ride of sci-fi horror. (And I don't even like sci-fi.)