This is Clay McLeod Chapman's best work to date. While the main characters weren't overly likable, they were believable and well developed. I couldn't put this down, as I wanted to know what would to Erin. I hope someone opts this for a movie.

Want to get haunted? This book worked so well for me! 4.5 stars rounded up. This book tackles addiction and grief by looking into what someone would do to see a loved one again after their death. Would you take a drug if it could bring them back? What would be the cost of that? I think the pacing was perfect. It starts off with a bang, so you know what you're getting into with this book. Then you slow down and watch the descent into addiction. I can see how the middle of the book can be a bit monotonous for people. It's basically one long drug fueled trip. Time doesn't matter. It's hard to tell what is real and what is a hallucination. However, from what I've seen as a psychiatrist this is an accurate depiction of someone using. I think this book is the perfect mix of body horror, dread, and supernatural. Would definitely recommend!

I absolutely love this Author's writing style and the trip he just took me on! This is hands down of the best books I have read this year. I will continue to keep my eye out for future books from Clay because wow! This is was such a cool story and felt it was unpredictable. I have never read a story line like this one!

I thoroughly enjoyed reading GHOST EATERS by @claymcleod. Our protagonist Erin, has suffered a terrible loss, and on top of that, she’s a drug addict. But, did you know there is a drug called GHOST and it lets you see the dead? I’ll leave the possibilities of where this scenario can go, because *no spoilers*. This is a story of addiction, grief, and past remembrance. It’s still lingering in my mind.

This started off as a promising read. Most people can relate to having an unhealthy interest they have to eliminate from their life, and in that respect, it’s possible to relate to Erin. Relationships are tricky, and no matter how bad someone is for you, it can be hard to let go if you’re still attracted to them and feel that connection.

The thing is, it’s easy to see how uneven some of the other characters are. Given how close her friend circle was, it was surprising none of them made plans to go to Silas’s funeral with Erin, and it seemed like this was a deliberate effort to isolate her, making her seem vulnerable. The thing is, despite her on-again, off-again relationship with Silas, Erin was otherwise a fairly strong person and seemed to know her own mind. She had goals and she wasn’t swayed by invitations to move to New York or her mother’s efforts to marry her off. Erin knew what she did and didn’t want in her future. Considering how well she knew herself, she fell apart pretty quickly. Plus, there were some things that made me wonder. I mean, Silas trying to pimp her out wasn’t a total dealbreaker? Hello red flags screaming that this guy doesn’t respect you or care about you at all. Perhaps if Erin had seemed more lost, without career aspirations and ambitions, it would be easier to buy into that. But it felt like inconsistent characterization. Yes, people are messy, but this just didn’t track as consistent characterization for me. She quickly devolved and turned from a promising young woman with clear career goals into a mess, later referred to as empty, which made me wonder if the choice to have a female protagonist was deliberate because of some historical views about women being weak and needing a man to complete them, and falling apart without them. Since society hasn’t historically viewed men that way, would they buy this premise if the roles were reversed? I wondered about that more and more as I turned the pages.

There’s also a complete disregard that Erin was vulnerable because of grief, not because she’d always been this blank slate of a person who amounted to nothing on her own.

The second half of the book really unraveled for me. Erin had zero willpower, but the drug wasn’t even working the way she wanted and she wasn’t seeing Silas. And even when she thought she was, she questioned how wrong everything was, how unlike him.

The second part of the book also reads more like developing a drug addiction and all that goes with that, and less like a spooky paranormal story. Erin is also aware of what’s going on around her and not completely lost to the drug, at least, aware enough to narrate how the people around her start to lose weight and lose themselves.

Toby turned into a sexual harasser and I genuinely wondered why she stayed. There were so many points where she could walk out and get away, and chose not to. I can’t fully buy into that being about fear, because there were threats inside and outside of that house and she could see that.

There was also something about the ending that didn’t track for me, so please don’t read on if you want to avoid spoilers.

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Her parents let her have access to the family lawyer in exchange for keeping their names out of the papers. Erin would have no control over that, first. Second, her parents should have been subject to an investigation because she called them begging for help, and they denied her. They could have prevented a lot of deaths if they’d listened to her, and any lawyer or cop doing their due diligence would have found out about that phone call. It would have come up in court. And then reporters could have written about it. So the notion they let her use the lawyer in exchange for keeping their names out of the paper didn’t make any sense at all. And why would Erin want a family lawyer more concerned with protecting the person paying their bills than protecting their actual client? She was smarter than that. And that’s part of the reason sometimes it felt like she was turned stupid and needy just to serve the plot.

Plus, she needed a criminal attorney. The family just happens to have a criminal attorney on retainer? Given how important their image was to them and what little we are told about their status, that seems doubtful. This book would have been so much stronger if it had ended with her burning it all down. Instead, it circles back to the real world to try to tie things up with a neat bow. And it completely unravels because of a lack of accuracy about the legal system and criminal investigations.

Plus, a note about the alleged connection between Erin and Silas that was supposed to be so powerful. I didn’t buy it. Silas treated her like garbage and took advantage of her all the time. He wanted to pimp her out to help his friend. He’s total trash, and he treats everyone around him like trash, and I don’t think he cared about Erin any more than anyone else. I don’t think she was needed at all for this connection; after all, Silas was screwing her friend behind her back. The person most connected to Silas was likely Toby because he bought into everything and worshipped him to the point of murder.

For me, the second half of this book pulled down a 3.5 star read that had an interesting premise with some problematic execution to 2.5 stars.

Oh my goodness! I absolutely adored GHOST EATERS! It was a profound and thoughtful look at addiction, grief, and the nature of hauntings. I always knew mushrooms were terrifying!

Clay does a great job of weaving trauma and addiction through this horror story. The fact that he based it in his and also my home town of Richmond Va and the surrounding areas made it even more special for me to read this past spooky season. Everyone’s had someone in their life pass on whether that be from addiction or even natural causes. If you’ve had someone pass on you’ve probably even asked yourself what would you do to see them again. How far would you be willing to go just to see them one more time. The question brought up in this novel is really are you will to deal with the consequences of once you do see them again.

So, I went into this read thinking it was a horror. I don’t read blurbs and go into stories blind. I like to be surprised and this book really did that! This is more like a psychological thriller to me.

I can say that this is unlike anything I’ve ever read and when I think about it more, there are some metaphors to life in this story.

What I take away from this story is addiction comes in not only substance abuse, but the addiction we can have to people. And not the right kind of people. How easily we can be influenced by another if we are infatuated by them in some way. We can hang onto their every word and believe everything they say because they have a hold on us. No matter how much we try to escape, they somehow can always reel you back in. It takes some self awareness to truly understand what it takes to unbind yourself from them. Even then, they can still haunt you.

Not only is it about addiction, but if you aren’t facing your own trauma and/or demons, they will come back to plague you and your mind. Do we sometimes just fill our lives with distractions so that we don’t really face what we need to? Do we make excuses so that we don’t really overcome that particular trauma/issue? After losing Silas, I felt like Erin didn’t face her grief and guilt, so she distracted herself with drugs in order to not face it and get consumed with the notion that he was still alive in some way.

I can see why this read isn’t for everyone. It definitely isn’t your typical read and Clay’s style of storytelling goes beyond just scare and shock value.

Still catching up on my October reads book reviews. I truly loved Clay McLeod Chapman’s novel, Whisper Down the Lane so I was terribly excited to read his newest one, Ghost Eaters.

I can’t make up my mind about this book. The beginning really hooked me and I was absolutely loving it and I thought the premise was extremely creative and I wanted to see where it would go. Unfortunately, the style of writing changed abruptly about midway through and I found it very disconcerting. I realize Chapman was wanting the reader to be experiencing the events through the eyes and emotions of someone in the thrall of drugs and addiction but I felt it really detracted from the story. It mad me feel uncomfortable and disoriented and perhaps that was the point, but I did not enjoy it.

I do think the ending wrapped up nicely and I finally experienced all the thrills and terror I had been hoping for all along. Even though this one was a mixed bag for me, I still think Chapman is one of the most interesting and talented horror writers around and I will eagerly anticipate his next book. Thank you to @netgalley and @quirkbooks for an arc of this book.

When Erins best friend/highschool boyfriend shows up high and asks her to bail him out from jail, she has had enough, and cuts him off. But when he turns up dead from an overdose just days after his release from rehab, Erins world just falls apart. Hoe is she supposed to live without him?
Until a friend tells her about this new drug, named Ghost, that makes you -haunted- see the dead. Erin is grieving her lost love and doesnt think twicebefore taking the pill, hoping to see him one last time.
But the drug has unfathomable side effects—and once you take it, you can never go back.

"We carry these ghosts with us, whereverwe go. By giving them a house to haunt, we know where they'll be. We can always visit. All it takes is a key. That's what I'm offering. "

This is a grief horror with a dash of the supernatural and the horrors of drug addiction masterfully wowen in to the story. The first half of the book was really slow for me, but it really started to pick up with the creepiness and ghosts after a while. The scene with Erin and the ghosts at her office was just so creepy! I didn't expect the level of creepiness that from this book.

"There's a figure partially eclipsed by the water cooler. What's left of his clothes seem baked into his body. I can make out his mottled flesh from where I'm sitting. " "A coworker leans over to refill his water bottle, inches away from the mans crisped skin, charred bones piercing throught his chest. He just cant see."

I haven't read anything from this author before but I've seen this book everywhere lately so I was excited when I got approved for an eARC of this! This is unlike any book I've ever read before but I really loved it, the writing is impeccable, and he does an amazing job at describing the scenes, I had no problem immersing myself into the story. I also liked the characters, Erin as the main character struggles with the loss of her dead boyfriend and best friend and on top of that has to handle the demons of drug addiction, abusive and toxic relationships and literal ghosts. It is written in a way that perfectly captures the broken mind of someone who is falling apart by grief and addiction. This makes it easy to connect with her, and feel her sadness and horror. And also Lonnie, I love him but he is also so fxing creepy!

And also, the cover is stunning! This gets a 4,5 stars from me!

Thank you to the publisher, author and Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read this arc! This review will be published on NetGalley, Amazon, GoodReads and instagram.com/jodinelinnea

I liked the plot and Chapman is great with descriptions and painting the scene. I struggled to connect with the cast of characters, not one seemed to have redeemable qualities.

I was hopeful for Erin to be a hero, she kept tricking me by acknowledging how she wanted to start her life, start a career, cut ties with her toxic friends and then would make every decision to do the OPPOSITE of what she *wanted* to do. The one day she was "haunted" while at work + her parents dinner party + Amara's going away party = Erin swearing to herself "I'm never doing that again!" and then she immediately dives head first into full-blown destroying her life.

Understanding this book is probably more about addiction and it's hold than it is about a paranormal story I'm cutting a lot of slack for how the storyline kept jerking me all over the place.

Also I felt there was a missed opportunity with the historical ghosts around her city. For how knowledgeable she was about the history/tragedies/massacres of her town I felt that could have been a huge storyline. It would have been a lot more interesting than her spiraling out in Toby's "haunted house" for half of the book.

Clay McLeod Chapman’s name is one I’ve heard mentioned often in discussions about up-and-coming horror authors that seem to bounce around social media and horror-based websites, yet I'd never read anything by him prior to this novel. Accordingly, I wanted to get my hands on a copy of this to see what the buzz around him was and is all about. I was not disappointed at all—Ghost Eaters is a haunting examination of addiction, blind loyalty, abusive relationships, and dealing with historical trauma in the context of present-day America, and it's all bundled neatly into a distinctly twenty-first century ghost story.

The story is simple on the surface—we follow a group of college-aged friends who are dysfunctional in every sense of the term (sleeping with one another and then regretting it; constantly doing drugs together; trespassing in cemeteries for the thrill of it; manipulating others to go against their best interest for selfish needs, etc.), and readers learn the place of each individual friend very quickly. There’s Silas, the undisputed leader of the group and master manipulator, and the three others, who are essentially his blind followers, bending to his every whim.

We focus on one of the three followers, Erin, throughout the novel, and we soon transition into post-college adulthood with the friend group after an enthralling prologue, one that’s set in a cemetery and features breaking into a crypt, tombstone-set sex, and heavy drug use (in other words, the perfect kind of horror mixture). Over the course of the first third of the novel, we learn where the four friends end up during the first few years out of college, and it reads like a typical millennial set-up—none of them seem happy with their jobs, some of them are still being supported by their their parents, and one of them is spiraling in a world saturated with hard drugs and alcohol. We see that Silas seems to have gone even further down the addiction pathway than when he was in college, including to the point where he’s homeless in the present day of the novel, and we watch as he seduces Erin into giving him a place to stay after he's evicted from his apartment due to drug-related issues. Soon enough, Silas succumbs to his addictions, and he passes from our world to the next--and, that’s when the novel really gets going.

From there, it’s a deeper dive into Erin’s personal world, and we watch as she starts to succumb to the same issues that plagued Silas in the last days and weeks of his life. The novel becomes extremely dark, both literally and metaphorically, very quickly, and we watch as Erin’s life crumbles to pieces, her sense of reality unclear at times and fogged with the haze of madness that comes from consuming a new drug that Silas had found prior to his death. But that’s the catcher—it’s not just any kind of drug, one that gives you a high and then leaves you out to dry. No, this drug is something else entirely—it allows you to see ghosts, and not just the ones that you want to see, but every ghost lurking nearby. Erin soon learns that Richmond, Virginia, the primary setting for the novel, is full of many angry, vengeful spirits, and she starts to slowly lose her mind as she battles both the spirit of Silas and her inner demons, struggling to right the ship of her life and stop the downward slide her path has set her on.

The plot of the book is highly entertaining, and it kept me engaged the entire time. The story was clear, easy to follow, and packed full of moments and imagery that were genuinely creepy and unnerving. I’m one of those people who gobble up horror fiction but who also aren’t that scared by most of it, but there were scenes in this that gave me genuine goosebumps, which I attribute solely to Chapman’s stellar prose and descriptive abilities.

That leads me to the real highlight of the novel—Chapman’s characterizations of the four main friends seem so real and fully-formed that, even if I found every single one of them despicable for varying reasons, I still wanted to read on and know what ended up happening to them. Erin is the stereotypical white millennial twentysomething, living off her parents’ money and only getting a well-paying job because of Daddy’s connections, and Silas is the typical burnout. The other two friends fall into rather cliched roles (one of them ‘just wants to get out and make something of herself’ in New York City, and the other one is blindly devoted to Silas even after his death while working a menial full-time job to pay the rent and nothing else), but Chapman somehow makes us feel connected to them in such ways that we care about what their trials and tribulations. Even if I thought Erin was a selfish, repulsive character throughout most of the novel, she still had depth to her and a well-roundedness that so many other horror anti-heroes seem to miss, and I never once was bored following her journey. We see her struggle with the fact that she knows she needs to flush Silas and his influence out of her system, and the very fact that she can’t do so makes her all the more real.

Chapman’s exploration of Richmond and its historical roots, both pre- and post-Civil War, add even more depth to this story that I think a lot of novels in the Southern Gothic subgenre miss entirely, and it helps elevate it to an entirely different level. Instead of just bombarding us with information about Richmond and all of its historical atrocities (Chapman touches on Native American displacement and genocide at the hands of White Europeans, slavery, corrupt business owners, etc.), he finds way to weave the stories and individual histories into the action of the story itself. For example, in one scene, we see Erin arrive for her first day of work at her new job. Unbeknownst to her, the building sits on the site of a factory that burned down with many blue-collar workers stuck inside it, and their spirits now roam the building seeking some kind of vengeance, a form that’s virtually impossible because of their invisibleness to the material world. Silas’ drug gives Erin the ability to see them, even if it’s the last thing she wants, and we learn about the tragedy accordingly as they haunt and assault her. A version of ‘show not tell,’ Chapman includes these kinds of historical examinations throughout the entire story that adds a richness to it to such a degree that Richmond itself seems to become a character.

One last thing—Ghost Eaters fits neatly into the fungal-horror subgenre, and it explores tropes of the subgenre much better than even a heavy hitter like Mexican Gothic does. I won’t say anymore at risk of spoiling some of the plot, but if you’re into this subgenre, know that you’re in for a treat with this one.

Overall, Ghost Eaters is a tremendous novel, and I tore through it in two sittings over the course of two days. The plotting is perfectly paced, the characters are three-dimensional, and the explorations of addiction and how individuals struggle to wash their systems of toxicity, both emotionally- and physically-based versions, is next to none. Chapman has created one of the best horror novels of the last few years with Ghost Eaters, and he’s now become an automatic-buy author for me whenever his next book comes out.

Thanks to NetGalley, Quirk Books, and Clay McLeod Chapman for the digital ARC of Ghost Eaters in exchange for an honest review.

This one was definitely a great read to include in my spooky season TBR - it was haunting, descriptively gory in some parts and explored some social elements which I always love in horror.

Overall I enjoyed this one but it was a rather middle of the road read. A few parts had me in a choke hold where I could not stop reading, but the rest of it was just okay for me. Somewhat frustrating to have a main character who repeatedly makes the same bad decision while saying she doesn’t want to do that exact thing, so that got a little old.

Thank you so much NetGalley and Quirk Books for my copy in exchange for a review!

An original ghost story. TW addiction, overdose. Finished this book in one sitting which always shows how much you enjoyed a book

Thank you to Netgalley & the publisher for an advance readers copy in return for an honest review.

Description: Ever since their on-again, off-again college romance, Erin hasn’t been able to set a single boundary with charismatic but reckless Silas, who’s been chasing the next big high since graduation. When he texts her to spring him out of rehab, she knows enough is enough. She’s ready to start a career, make new friends, and meet a great guy—even if that means cutting Silas off. But when Silas turns up dead from an overdose, Erin’s world falls apart.

When Erin learns that Silas discovered a drug that allowed him to see the dead, she doesn’t believe it’s real but agrees to a pill-popping “séance” to ease her guilt and pain. When she steps back into the real world, she starts to see ghosts from her Southern hometown’s bloody and brutal past everywhere. Are the effects pharmacological or something more sinister? And will Erin be able to shut the Pandora’s box of horrors she’s opened?

With propulsive momentum, bone-chilling scares, and dark meditations on the weight of history, this Southern horror will make you think twice about opening doors to the unknown.

Definitely worth recommending to your favorite readers of horror/supernatural/spooky tales, I always love to read Clay McLeod Chapman's books and this was no exception. The ending lost a little momentum for me....or it would have been a 5 star review. This one was 4.5 for me!

Low brow American schlock that tries to be way cooler and trendier than it is. Almost read like it was self published. Sorry not for me.

I seen an article about "Ghost Eaters" in the current Book Page and I just knew I had to read it. It did not disappoint!

I was so excited for this book The premise was intriguing and unique: take a drug, see a ghost. The more I read, the more disappointing the story became. I didn't connect with the characters and I just wanted Erin to do better.

This truly complex novel was both hard to read and also felt like a breath of fresh air. Go into this one with nuance, and enjoy.

I was really looking forward to this book based on the title, cover and description. However after picking it up, I realized it just wasn’t the book for me. However, I do feel like it will be well loved by fans of the horror genre.