“Spent trying to avoid the inevitability of becoming glazed in the living mountains ejaculate?”
This is where I realized this book was a lost cause for me. Just didn’t see myself getting into the store after reading that. I mean the concept was nice I guess. The concept of hell dogs & monsters was appealing but the thought of a enjacuting mountain & the mention of glands just completely lost me.

There was about this book, I just couldn't get into it. I don't know if it was the writing, the striking style or what, but it fell pretty flat for me.

Hell Spring is one of those books that keep on giving horror after horror while also engaging you in the characters. It takes some tropes of the genre and the author completely makes them his own, adding twists and turns that keeps the reader wanting to learn more.

Eight people trapped in a general store during a "storm of the century" type disaster is bad enough. Add to it a creature from hell masked in human form and things go from bad to worse. And this creature is hungry and needs to feed.

We learn about the characters and each one feels shameful of some supposed "sin" of theirs. These feelings of guilt, shame, and regret are the food this creature needs to survive... with horrifying bloody results.

I entirely enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it to others.

I have a feeling that this will be one of the more difficult reviews that I write this year. Not because I didn’t like Hell Spring (I did), and not because I have a million things to nitpick (I don’t). No, it will be difficult because I am not certain how well I’ll be able to convey a sense of “could have been” with my words and descriptions.

I’ve been penning amateur reviews for over a decade, but this is my first NetGalley ARC, and I picked it because it’s from a smaller publisher. As a writer for a small publishing house myself, I wanted to share the indie love. It also just sounded appealing; I love horror that takes place in bygone eras. Especially when the stories take real historical events and weave them into the narrative. It builds more connective tissue between the reader and the novel, infusing the tale with an air of relatability.

I confess that I’d never heard of Isaac Thorne prior to selecting his book. Turns out, he’s won some accolades and recognition for his debut novel The Gordon Place, and my hat is off the fellow. Getting attention is hard these days; fiction is a flooded market and then some. To receive kudos for a debut novel is truly a feat.

As with all my reviews, I will attempt to keep spoilers to a minimum. My reasoning for this is two-fold; first, I firmly believe that books of any and all genres are simply more enjoyable when the reader goes in blind, stripped of all preconceived notions and expectations; and second, out of respect for the author, who put countless hours of time and effort into crafting spine-tingling tales. Robbing the stories of their intended impact, in my opinion, is a great disservice to the person who penned them. So, if it’s not mentioned in the official synopsis, I will do my level best to avoid mentioning it here.

Let’s get the technical aspects out of the way first: Hell Spring is a multi-POV horror story, told in third-person past tense, and clocking in around 98,000 words. It needs to be said up front, and it’ll be referenced later; Isaac Thorne can WRITE. The dude clearly loves words of all shapes & sizes, and fills the pages near to bursting with them. And I’m on board with that…except…well, like I said, we’ll get to that later.

First, the good:

It’s a hell of a concept. The single town setting works well for horror stories (this one included), adding a claustrophobic feeling to the narrative that only heightens the tension radiating from the pages. The villain of the tale (the monster, if you will) was unique, and the individual characters (main & supporting) were fleshed out well. The vernacular was era-appropriate, and motivations were believable and relatable. Hell Spring is also a pretty low-stakes affair, which I can appreciate. Not every story needs to be an “end of the world” type of tale. With only a handful of characters and a largely single-location setting, Mr. Thorne kept the story intimate and small-scale.

The story is also PoC and LGBTQ+ friendly, which I applaud. The queer romance within is believable and grounded in the reality of the time. Regardless of Mr. Thorne’s orientation, I was glad to see him stepping out of the traditional confines of small-town horror. Again, my hat is off.

And it must be stated that I did not find a single grammar or punctuation error within Hell Spring. Which is a level of quality that is hard to find, regardless of whether the book is from a well-known publisher, or a small up-and-coming brand.

The bad:

So, here we are. The dreaded moment of dissention. The showdown at the NetGalley corral. The reason that I cannot give the book more stars.

It’s too wordy, and overly purple-prosey.

I know, I know, as readers we want detail. I get it. Also, I say it’s too wordy, knowing full well that I am someone who, with my own writing, tends to go a little overboard. It’s only natural as a writer to want to fill the page with every single thing we can, in order to give our readers the maximum amount of immersion within the story. We come up with some pretty cool passages. Some great descriptors. Some awesome combination of words that really hammer home the EXACT feeling or image. And we want to use ALL of them.

However, just because we want to doesn’t mean we should. At least not all the time.

And why is that? Well, I suppose I’d liken it to waterboarding.

Water is good, right? Life-giving and refreshing. Rejuvenating and cleansing. But too much water? That’s bad news. It can wash things away (like the flood in this book) or choke things out. And that’s what happens within Hell Spring. There is so much narrative, so many excessively large descriptors and passages, and so many reminders of what just transpired a few pages ago, that the overarching story gets drowned within the particulars. It goes from being benign to malignant.

For example, when one of the characters is in a vehicle, we are treated to the driving process in excruciating detail. Like, which gear he’s in. Why he’s in that gear. Which gear he’s shifting to next. It’s all very well written…and all very unnecessary. This same level of specificity extends to nearly every action taken by every character in every chapter. When the minutiae of each character’s basic movements and actions are described in just as much detail as the main interactions and plot-progressing events, it grinds the whole affair down to nearly a halt.

And that, to me, is a shame. Mr. Thorne has talent. It cannot be denied. But instead of crafting what could have been a taut and tight little horror gem, we instead get inundated with so many details that the story’s impact is diminished. There’s a whole lot of showing AND telling, and not enough trusting of the reader. Hell Spring is 98,000 words, but would have been much more effective at 70k-80k words. Purple prose is effective in small doses, but when it hijacks much of the word-count, that’s a problem.

So, I’m left being stuck in the middle. I wanted to love Hell Spring. I really really did. But as the words kept piling on, and as we kept getting reminded of the same things over and over and over again (quite unnecessarily), I was left feeling frustrated, longing for what could have been. It’s doubly frustrating because this was clearly a labor of love for Mr. Thorne, and so much work went into it. So, I am left with this bittersweet feeling.

3 out of 5 stars.

This quenched my thirst for what was left void after reading "The Night Stockers" even though TNS was more of human atrocities this focuses on Satan being in your neighborhood store. All in all its a recommended read for cozy rainy afternoon or evenings.

I won't insert any spoilers but recommend reading this!!

A thrilling tale of sin. One that takes you back in time. Murder, guilt, lust are just some of the sins a demon could feed from in this small town horror. I enjoyed the book. It was my first one from this author and I’m looking forward to reading more from them.

3.75 stars
This was such a good and fun read! It hit all the genre notes perfectly. I will definitely be in the lookout for more by this author.