I voluntarily read an advanced copy of Black Forest by Laramie Dean. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to Netgalley for providing an ARC to review.

I will start with what I liked about this book. The atmospheric world-building was well done. I could feel the terror that the introduction of the deaders created, and I was on board for the first couple of chapters. However, I quickly realized that I don't like any of these characters and that Nathan is toxic. I was glad when the book was over, and I will not be reading any more in this series. I gave Black Forest 2/5 stars.

I love the concept that the main character could see dead people, but I just couldn’t connect with the story like I thought I could.

Nathan is not exactly thrilled when he's alone. For most of his life, he's seen what he calls "Deaders." These created are frightening, and disfigured. While they appear to have once been human, they now move around like hungry ghosts. After Nathan participates in a failed seance, he tries to escape from his high school nightmares and start a new life for himself in Montana at Waxman University. Young men start to disappear from campus, and the Deaders are back, more terrifying than ever. Unfortunately, something far more terrifying than the Deaders is hunting Nathan. With the help of a mysterious figure named Theo, Nathan has to discover what exactly Theo really is, before the universe around him crackles into chaos.

Laramie Dean's Black Forest is a fascinating read, and fun for fans of horror and a good mystery.

The premise of the story is what drew me in. However I don't feel like it was really a horror book, which is what I thought it would be after reading the synopsis, and overall just wasn't for me.
We follow Nathan throughout his life, and while he does encounter some deaders, some scarier than others, we don't spend much time on them. Instead, it's more about Nathans's life as a whole. We follow his journey starting as a child, through high school, then when he arrives at college and some weird things begin to happen. I found the story kind of chaotic. We jumped from past to present with no warning, and the story itself just felt all over the place, and I struggled at times to follow what was going on.

This book had everything I was looking for. An unreliable narrator, super intense imagery, and a very scary story. Nathan has always seen dead people, but this intensifies after going to college. Along with the trials and tribulations of growing up and dating men who are not good for him, Nathan is battling his inner demons. As students begin going missing, things ramp up around campus causing fear and a lack of trust when meeting new people. This book will leave you feeling uneasy and questioning whether anything is really happening the way Nathan portrays it.

Thank you NetGalley for this eARC in exchange fore honest review.

This book started off on a bad note with the racism talk against the Indigenous friend. I still wasn’t able to find any reasons for this to be in the book so it was down hill for me from there.

I didn’t connect with the MC and we didn’t get to anything of interest until we were over 3/4 of the way through the book and by that time I was so bored I didn’t care.

This book shouldn't really be marketed as a horror as it primarily focused on the MC, Nathan and his troubles. The writing style was great but the story wasn't at all what it was hyped up to be.

This was dark and harrowing in a way I hadn’t anticipated, and I was here for it. The story itself was interesting and engaging, adding a supernatural layer on top of a queer coming-of-age storyline, itself awash with questions about mental health and narrative reliability. The story just revels in ambiguity, leaving the reader constantly doubting the veracity of the experiences as they are presented, and even asking bigger questions and leaving them somewhat open at the end. The ending does have some sort of definitive answers, in its own way, but they could easily be interpreted differently than the literal words on the page, and I liked that. It never felt like the novel was trying to evade or outsmart the reader, it just wasn’t willing to handfeed answers. Also, it’s worth noting there is some explicit sex and gore, but nothing too extreme or heavy-handed, and it never felt tawdry or exploitative, but instead was fitting for the story and the tone.

I really enjoyed the writing style. It flitted back and forth in time, not in a way to confuse the reader, and never being sneaky about it, but in a way that allowed for an interesting narrative flow that contributed to the sense of being overwhelmed, of not being able to keep up to the world outside of yourself. And the central character around which the whole story spins was incredibly detailed, complicated and felt very real. Similarly, the secondary characters all felt really. Some leaned a little on secondary character archetypes, but they all had a specificity about them that let me feel like I knew each of them, where they fit in the world, in the often-painful social hierarchy of high school and college life.

I did think the first part (the novel is divided into four sections, the first one being set in high school and taking up about 40% of the page length) dragged a little. It leaned more toward the “coming-of-age” side than the “weird supernatural stuff is going on” side, and since that isn’t really my preference maybe I just *experienced* it as dragging a little, and your mileage might vary, but I do think it could have been tightened up a little. The supernatural element was peppered throughout, it wasn’t absent, and the seeds for what was to come were well-planted, but the section just wasn’t as compelling as the rest of the story, and I could have done with a bit less of it.

The one other thing to say is that there were a handful of different pieces, whether they be subplots or secondary characters or whatnot, and at times it did feel very piecemeal, like things were dropped and ignored and then came back again somewhat arbitrarily. An ungenerous reading would suggest that the author was juggling lot of different ideas and wasn’t always successful at integrating them, so instead of the different pieces naturally working together and weaving in and out of one another they were just kind put side-by-side with the hope that the thematic continuity would hide the seams. However, a more generous reading would say that this entire story came through the lens of its main character, an emotional unstable teenager who is not only navigating what it means to finish high school and start college, itself a huge upheaval for many people, but is doing that while living with supernatural trauma that he has no understanding of or control over. So we experience the story the way he does, not in a linear or coherent fashion but one made up of vignettes, one looking at disparate pieces and slamming them into each other in the desperate grasp for meaning and value. There may be friends who are really important for a week and then you don’t think about them for a month, and so on, a lot of little pieces that are still learning where and how they fit. The writing does work toward this, as I mentioned, with the way time moves back and forth, and the way even the protagonist questions his own sanity and the reality behind his experiences as they are happening, not leaving us feeling comfortable in trusting the narrative as more than one of experience, if not fidelity. Considering the overall enjoyment I got from this story I am going to go ahead and adopt this second, more generous reading. But ideally this experience would be more seamless, I wouldn’t have to wonder if the author intended to evoke a certain thing or if the seams just weren’t as flush as they should be. Since that doubt was in my mind while reading it felt useful to mention.

Overall, this novel was a really fun ride. It was dark, it was visceral, and it was uncomfortable. The characters didn’t feel like tropes but like real people, even when they were behaving in stereotypical ways. And the writing and narrative styles were enticing, they really worked with the story. It definitely made me excited to check out Laramie Dean’s other work!

I want to thank NetGalley and Inkshares, who provided a complimentary eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a book that was just ok for me. It took a lot of the book for me to really get interested in the story. Others may find it more interesting.

Thanks to Netgalley for a e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. The synopsis of this book really drew me in but unfortunately the book itself really wasn't for me. I was expecting a story more focused on the idea that the main character, Nathan, sees the dead and other creatures. I was eager to experience a creepy tale but instead I felt the book was much more focused on Nathan as a person and the struggles he dealt with on a whole. Plus i didn't warn to him as a character, I felt he was pretty whiney and frustrating for majority of the book. Even thought his book wasn't what i was expecting I did like the authors style of writing.

I think this one started out good enough but quickly at about 30% I lost interest. The thrill fizzled out for me.

Black Forest by Laramie Dean was just... not for me. It fell too flat and I DNF at about 70%. I couldn't get myself to keep going.

The main character, Nathan, is unsympathetic in the worst ways. He doesn't seem to care about much more than getting laid (which is fair, he's a young man, but still). The horror aspects were weak. There was little in this story that grabbed at the heart of me, to be honest.

It's disappointing because the premise of the story has so much potential.

I struggled to get into this one. The synopsis was really interesting, but getting into the story, I found it cluttered and chaotic and not in a good way. The pacing was distracting and hard to follow. Overall I just found myself not interested in the story.

Thank you, NetGalley, for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Nathan has always been haunted by what he calls “deaders,” frightening, disfigured creatures—once human but now hungry and relentless ghosts. After a séance to banish them goes awry, Nathan escapes high school to start over at Waxman University in idyllic Garden City, Montana. But when young men begin to go missing from campus, Nathan finds that the deaders have returned, more frightening and hungrier than ever.

Here's the reason I requested this book - it has a brilliant premise. Queer Horror with the main character having a power that can potentially help other people. But, "Black Forest" falls flat on two main aspects. The first one, admittedly, is the main character, Nathan. Nathan cannot be sympathised with. He cares about his love life more than anything and does not do much in terms of driving the plot forward. The second one is the theme. The horror elements in this book are severely overstated. It also has a problem with pacing in the first part of the book, which messes up the rest, considering that the last two parts are actually good at several areas.

There are scenes in the latter two parts which hit really hard and are realistic. The tone is also maintained rather well without it being confusing. It has a justifiably good ending, too. The last two parts are consistently well done and has moments of sheer brilliance that left me wanting. The quality of writing improves midway through the book.

Black Forest, is a book with tremendous promise and potential, which falls flat due to its subpar execution.

Nathan is a teenager who is having a difficult time. He's a senior in high school, he's gay, and he sees dead people. It all began at an old antique shop in Garden City where a boy without a shadow started teasing him and a woman with rips and shreds in her face chased him down the stairs. Ever since then, he's been able to see what he calls "Deaders" and hears these voices within his head. Black Forest is a story about Nathan's time trying to deal with the Deaders, while also trying to find love and maybe a little bit of sanity.

I had high, high hopes for this book and maybe it just wasn't for me. I quickly grew tired of Nathan and his inner ramblings. I know the book was intentionally set to jump through memories at times but found those times extremely annoying. It would have been better if there was just a beginning, middle, and end, not beginning, the past, the past again, the middle, the past, the past, and then the end. The horror parts weren't all that scary and were sometimes confusing. Nathan didn't seem to know what he really wanted. Did he want to stop the Deaders from coming? Did he want to find "The One"? Did he want to help solve the mystery of the missing boys?

I just wasn't feeling this, unfortunately.

Thank you NetGalley and InkShares for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to Netgalley and Inkshares for an eARC in exchange for my honest review.


This was almost my first DNF. The horror elements fall too short. The premise of the book was what it had going for it. It started out like it would be a good read but it dragged on and the main character became annoying.

"We have to make our own realities because we live in so many of them."

Black Forest by Laramie Dean is a gothic queer horror in which Nathan can see ghosts, the outsiders, the lost boys, and the demon. Nathan is the worst kind of character. At first, there were things which made him interesting, but as the story progressed, his character grew vexing. Nathan is an insatiable creature. Nothing ever seems to satisfy him. He constantly denies the evil within him, and this denial comes out as sexual frustration and other bad things. Nathan, in his eyes, is always the victim. The first half of the book was a constant pity party with him complaining about how he was in love with his best friend, and how he let a straight guy fuck him. I was so relieved when his mom told him, "The world doesn't hang squarely on you, you know. The world, little man, it isn't all about you." 39.60% of the book's content was unnecessary and drawled on a narrative that held little relevance to the current story.

There was nothing visceral in the story in terms of horror. All we had was recurring sex scenes and Nathan's dislike of every other character except the bad ones. Everything else was pushed aside in the narrative.

The missing boys were not cared about, only the killer mattered. After Seb's death, Nathan was so happy it was cruel and made me want to slap him. As for Deborah, hers was a token death. She had done nothing bad, and yet the narrative made her look like an insignificant person. There was no mourning of her death. It was the worst thing I have read.

The narrative read like a fever dream, with no linear development. The author tried so hard to keep the reader from understanding the narrative that when it all came together; it had little impact. Not to mention the ending, the plotline was revealed in the synopsis itself. Overall, this book had no mystery, no appeal, and no one other than the main character was given space. Laramie Dean tried hard to hint to the themes of alcoholism, schizophrenia, manipulative relationships, folklore, and mental health, but it failed. The premise was interesting. The story could have done much better, but it did not, which is a shame.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me an ARC of Black Forest in exchange for an honest review.

DNF - Truly, this was a book I realized very early on was going for me & by that I mean I am not the intended reader. I suppose it has its specific audience in mind & that's wonderful, but I felt like I was disconnectedly making my way through this & that's not why I read. I look forward to this book finding its ideal/target audience!

I voluntarily read and reviewed a copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. I have received this book by NetGalley and Inkshares, and I am voluntarily leaving an honest review. The Pub date of the book is 1st November 2022.
I don't think this book was for me.

I'm not going to say the story isn't good, but it was not for me. I realized that there was a specific narrative, and it had not reached me at all.
There's a lot of interest between Theo and Nathan - and maybe a little 'obsession' - but I didn't imagine there would be such a big focus on it and not on the story. It didn't make me fully understand this book.

I don't want to imply that it's not a good book and you shouldn't read it, far from it. I don't think I'm the "target", so I advise anyone interested to read it. Surely there will be someone who will appreciate what I didn't understand and will be able to enjoy it much more than I did - thus giving it the stars it deserves.

I had higher expectations given the synopsis, but other than that, it didn't raise me much more than a bit of curiosity, and then I got to the end of the book.

I liked the author's writing, though.

Thank you Netgalley for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

"Black Forest" by Laramie Dean follows the story of Nathan who is haunted by mysterious beings.

I would give "Black Forest" by Laramie Dean a 2-star review because, 1; while the premise was seriously intriguing the story for me failed the premise 2; the horror was not really horrifying for me 3; a lot of the things were left confusing and 4; everything was really boring to me.