I absolutely loved The Nightmare Man by this author so I was super excited to try this new one by Markert. Unfortunately, this story fell flat for me. I ended up putting the book down at the halfway point because I was having a hard time following the different story lines. The premise had me intrigued but did not live up to the billing for me. I would definitely give this author another shot and I encourage others to try this one. But the story was definitely not for me.

I absolutely loved The Nightmare Man so I was so excited to receive an advance copy of this book! Just like my first experience with this author, I was quickly immersed in the ominous vibe of Harrod's Reach and the history of the train tunnel and its victims. The chapters alternate between different characters in the book, letting you experience the horror from different perspectives and giving small hints to the mystery as the drama unfolds. I was a bit disappointed by the abrupt ending but the hint of a sequel has me excited! I have a new favorite horror author!
Thanks to Crooked Lane Books through Netgalley for the advance copy of this book. The opinions in this review are my own and given voluntarily.

Occasionally, I felt breathless as the book is so fast-paced. I loved reading Mister Lullaby because it combined horror and fantasy elements.
As you would expect from a horror story, there is blood, violence, and a lot of suspense.
This author did a good job delivering the story, never holding back and keeping me on my toes throughout.

This definitely earned it's horror genre. It's definitely creepy and makes you think about what you might dream about. I did think there was too many characters that were important to know. I really had to think about who was who while I was reading. I do want to read his other book, The Nightmare Man, since it sounds like they are connected.

4.5 stars

Mister Lullaby by J.H. Markert is a horror novel about nightmares that come to life.

First, let me thank NetGalley, the publisher Crooked Lane Books and of course the author, for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.


My Synopsis:    (No major reveals, but if concerned, skip to My Opinions)
Deputy Sheriff Beth Gardner works in the small town of Harrod's Reach, a town with a history of the bizarre.  

When "Simple" Simon discovers two bodies just outside the old train tunnel,  Beth knows things are going to get worse.  That tunnel has a history, and it isn't good.  The entrances, once blocked up,  have recently collapsed.  Sully Dupree, a young boy, was injured in the tunnel, and left in a coma. His older brother Gideon, just back from war, is a little unhinged, and doesn't believe that the hero's welcome he receives is justified.

Theodore (Teddy) Lomax is listening to a "shell".  The voice coming from it has given him a list of names....telling him who to kill.  They are all "dead-heads" - coma patients, no longer quite in this world.  Teddy is obeying that voice, who he is calling Mr. Lullaby.

Maddy has awoken from her coma after being attacked by the Horseshoe Rapist, and is intent on reaching Harrod's Reach.  She wants to talk to Sully.  She knows all about Lalaland, which is where Sully is currently imprisoned.  Maddy knows all about the evil dream world that sometimes escapes into the waking world.  She too has a list of names, all coma patients, currently living in Lalaland.  Her mission is to save them.

Simon knows all about Lalaland too.


My Opinions:
First the yellow raincoat on the cover reminds me of the boy from Stephen King's IT, so this may have been part of the reason for choosing to read this book....that and I loved The Nightmare Man by this author.  Note that although similar topics, they are both stand-alone novels.

Again, Markert is writing about nightmares coming to life, and again using mythology from different countries to tell the story.  It's wonderful.  Basically the book is about the rather thin boundaries between the waking and the sleeping world.

The tale is told from different perspectives, one of which is a detective's journals from years ago.  I thought this worked well to show how long this has been happening.    The plot is intriguing, and the characters just stick with you (whether good or bad).  Be warned -- there are a lot of characters.

The overall tale is one of horror, and it does have blood and gore, but it is also a rather emotional read, dealing with patients in coma's and their loved one's anxiety.  Tension builds throughout, and I don't think we've heard the end of this world.  Well, if I'm honest, I hope not.

This author's imagination truly reminds me of Stephen King - powerful.

I have read several books from this author, both under this pen name and his other name. Mister Lullaby is definitely of the horror genre, with much gore and violence. It has a lot of adult content and profanity, both of which I usually stay away from when possible. However, the storyline was interesting and unique. There was non-stop action. It was hard to tell how much time had passed in the story -- maybe a couple of days? It was very intense and left me breathless in a couple of parts.
There were a lot of characters to keep up with, which threw me a bit, although I liked how the author connected them in the end. My biggest complaint was the major cliffhanger. From the author's note at the end, it seems that this is meant to be a series of sorts....but I really would have liked to wrap things up on the last page a little more.
I can see why people have likened the author to Stephen King. There is definitely a similarity in their writing styles. The world-building is one part of it, as well as the way that the characters are relatable, flawed people. I hope there is another book telling us what happens next because I'm going to be thinking about this one for a while!

Overall I really enjoyed this story. I loved the premise of the story and the world that was created. There was a lot of interesting imagery, I loved the colorful things from Lalaland and how things are so different. It was fun watching everyone come together to do what they were going to do. Some of the characters felt a bit off at times, but not enough to ruin it. Overall a fun read.

Creepy, and original this book had me hooked. I love anything that has to do with children going missing etc. It’s scary to reminisce on the days when we were children and had our own boogeyman. Definitely gave me NOS4A2 vibes.

If you enjoyed The Nightmare Man then you are going to absolutely love Mister Lullaby!
Murders, serial killers, monsters and the terrifying nightmares come to life, all combined in one small town, this is every horror fans dreams come true!
Things have been happening in the small town of Harrod’s Reach for years, terrible, unexplainable things, all centred around an old abandoned tunnel, and as with any old, scary tunnel surrounded by folklore the children are drawn towards it like moths to a flame.
One of those children was Sully Dupree who’s obsession led him to try running through the tunnel landing him halfway through resulting to him being in a coma ever since.
On the arrival of his older brother, Gideon back home, Sully suddenly wakes up and starts reciting names, names that have no meaning to anyone before slipping back into his coma. These names, they are names of other coma patients from all over the world.
One of these coma patients, Maddy Boyle, much to the surprise to everyone comes out of her coma with memories of being in a strange place, and a name, Sully. As she recovers from what put her in the coma in the first place she sets off to find Sully, unsure why, just that that’s what she needs to do.
What she, or anyone else doesn’t know is that these coma patients are all in danger. They are all being targeted by one Mr Theodore ‘Teddy’ Lomax.
Teddy has been hearing a voice from a strange blue seashell he found and this voice is sending him on a trip with a mission. To kill all the coma patients, or ‘dead heads’ along the way.
As good and evil come together in Harrod’s Reach the tunnel comes to life, letting through some of the nightmare creatures from Lalaland into the town with horrific consequences……
This book is packed to the brim with so much imagination, clever plot lines and unforgettable characters that reading it time just flys by and the rest of the world disappears as it transports you to Harrod’s Reach. As I’ve already said, this is definitely the best book I have read this year, if not longer.

A spiritual successor to The Nightmare Man, Mister Lullaby gives light to some of the worst nightmare creatures imaginable.
Harrod’s Reach has seen its fair share of tragedies with the majority of them centered around an abandoned train tunnel that the town was built around. Three years before the story begins, the tunnel takes its latest victim. Young Sully Dupree is injured and left in a comma. His older brother Gideon, being blamed for his brother’s accident by himself and his parents alike, joins the army and leaves his hometown. But he can’t run away for long and is sent back home after being injured in combat. Gideon arrives just as the police find two dead bodies posed by the tunnel. There are whispers on the wind of Mister Lullaby; a terrible being who will bring nightmares into reality. And somehow Sully is the key to these local events.
This book is not well written, and it took me a bit to get into it. But the slow burn that is the beginning pays off. J. H. Markert creates one of the most twisted tales I’ve read. The author doesn’t shy away from violence and deaths usually have meaning. There are random deaths, but he isn’t afraid to cut life short of characters that we know and care about. I even found myself rooting for a love story, with a somewhat of happy ending. And while that was unrealistic, I didn’t like what the author did with that arc.
I feel that Markert’s editor could have done better by this book and their client. Some places could have easily been tightened up and with the guidance of the right person, Markert could flourish and become a truly big name in horror. This story reminds me a lot of Dean Koontz’s Christopher Snow novel where the government is testing portals to other realities (wayyyyyyy before Stranger Things existed). While Koontz pulls back these days from straight-up horror, Markert takes this idea and goes full force making readers cringe in fear.
Mister Lullaby is a mixed bag: great and terrifying story but the technical aspects of his writing leave a lot to be desired. With a cover bringing to mind IT, Mister Lullaby is a scary look into the folktales of nightmares.

A soldier comes home and nightmares come to life in this title from JH Markert. I've been in quite the reading slump recently. I've DNFed multiple books in a row and have resisted starting anything new for a while. I'm incredibly glad that I picked this one up, as it managed to capture my attention and keep me coming back for more. So let's discuss what I did and didn't like about the book.

Liked (or loved)
- Character building. The character building was excellent. Truly. Markert did a wonderful job of making the characters into people not just tropes. As someone who reads for characters, this was a major bonus for me.
- The atmosphere. While the horror elements were a bit weaker, I did find that the atmosphere was eerie and unsettling enough to put me on the edge of my seat in spots.
- The writing style. Markert's style flows so beautifully. It's a joy to read.

Disliked (or hated)
- Multiple timelines that meet at some point. This is totally a personal preference thing so I don't hold that against the book. I just get easily confused.
- Pacing. I think this might be related to the timelines, but I found that the pacing was a bit sporadic. Too slow in one spot, too fast in another.
- The ending >:( there better be a sequel (pls)

I loved The Nightmare Man and this was a great second book from J.H. Market.

In a small town there is an infamous tunnel that always seems to have disaster and tragedy associated with it. It was collapsed in after a young boy, Sully Dupree, was injured and remains in a coma. We get introduced to some key members of the town that all have connections to Sully as well as some people that have never been to the town or even have met the boy but still have strong connections to him. As bizarre murders start happening and bodies are showing up at the tunnel and a brief moment where Sully wakes up with a warning members of the small town of Herrod’s Reach start to learn that there are two worlds and the sleeping world is starting to come into the real world.

This book is very entertaining but does take some concentration to follow along. There are a lot of different story lines that are all intertwined but it takes some time before you see how. As someone with night terrors I’ve always found folklore around dreams intriguing and especially loved the use of it in this book. If you read The Nightmare Man you would have already gotten a taste of this world from J.H. Markert. This book is a standalone though and you don’t have to have read The Nightmare Man to read this one but there are bits of the story that overlap and there is even a part where the setting and plot of The Nightmare Man is specifically talked about.

The way the book ended has me very hopeful that there is going to be a sequel where we’ll get more answers. If there isn’t then it’s a disappointing ending but an entertaining read.

Very good premise with multiple pov's to keep the story flowing. I really liked the inner workings of the discovery of the tunnel and the horror it inflicted when they came into contact with it at certain times. I did feel it a bit hard to keep track of all the characters and it felt like too much was covered in such a short time. Overall I did enjoy it and hope for more in the future.

*Awaiting amazon review approval

"In the vein of T. Kingfisher and Christopher Golden, the boundary protecting our world from the monsters on the other side is weakening—and Mister Lullaby is about to break through."

Imagine if Freddy Krueger lived in real life and not just nightmares, that's the kind of horror that @jamesmarkert74 writes. Terrifying, creepy, and so unique I absolutely loved returning to the Nightmare World in Mister Lullaby. Told through multiple POV's the story is complex and can feel a little confusing at first. The different POV's were so well written that I felt like I knew the characters, and the story comes together brilliantly as the characters gather for the final show down. My only complaint about this book is that I didn't want it to end - I need more of the Nightmare World!

I started 2023 reading (and loving) The Nightmare Man, started 2024 with Mister Lullaby, I cannot wait to see what @jamesmarkert74 has in store for 2025!

Thank you to @netgalley , @dreamscape_media and @crookedlanebooks for the gifted copy of this book.

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC, in exchange for an honest review!

I found out after starting this book, that it is actually a “standalone sequel” to the author’s novel ‘The Nightmare Man.’ Basically, it can be a standalone novel but contains a lot of information from the first book. I had to do some digging to found this out, because it wasn’t described as such. If it was, I wouldn’t have picked it up yet because I have not read ‘The Nightmare Man.’ I stopped reading at this point, so that I could read it in ‘order’ and be able to pick up on these intended tie-ins. I just wish it was advertised as a sequel, so that I wouldn’t have to stop part way through, read the first one, and then continue this one for a more complete story.

Diving into the realm of "Mister Lullaby" by J. H. Markert was like stepping into the shadowy corridors of a haunting dream. From the very first page, an eerie atmosphere gripped me, sending shivers down my spine. The cover alone, reminiscent of Stephen King's IT, set the tone for the chilling journey within.

Markert, often hailed as the heir to Stephen King, weaves a tale that blurs the lines between nightmares and reality. The decaying train tunnel in Harrod’s Reach, where the story unfolds, becomes a conduit for all things macabre. The discovery of two bodies, each marked with unsettling lullabies, catapults Deputy Sheriff Beth Gardner into a mystery that defies the laws of both dreams and waking life.

Sully Dupree's coma-induced messages from Lalaland, a nightmarish world populated by malevolent mythical entities, are both fascinating and spine-tingling. The convergence of his narrative with a man haunted by the enigmatic Mr. Lullaby adds layers of suspense and terror.

Markert masterfully crafts an atmosphere that lingers like a haunting melody. The tension escalates with each turn of the page, and the boundary between the dream world and reality blurs into a nightmarish dance.

In the shadowy recesses of "Mister Lullaby," the boundary separating dream and nightmare is tested, and Markert's narrative prowess leaves an indelible mark. The dread, the mystery, and the impending darkness are expertly interwoven, creating an experience that will linger in the recesses of my mind.

I was stoked to receive an Arc of this book after reading and loving Markert's previous book, The Nightmare Man! I had pretty high expectations after that one and Mister Lullaby didn't disappoint. I actually went into this one blind, only knowing the author and what I had previously read, and while in a similar vein as The Nightmare Man, this definitely was a beast of its own. I was thoroughly delighted when I stumbled into that little passing connection though. That being said, there's A LOT going on in this book. Some of it worked for me and some of it not as much. I really enjoyed the baddies and the imaginative otherworldly concepts here. In comparison though I found the heroes, namely the main characters Gideon and Beth kind of one dimensional. It was hard for me to connect with either of them and ultimately while you want good to conquer evil I typically also want to feel for or invested in the MCs. I just couldnt get much of that here. The sheer amount of creativity in the otherworldly stuff was aces. It helped in a big way make up for the connectivity I was missing elsewhere. All in all it was a fairly solid read and I'll still be keeping my eyes peeled for more from this author.

Alright, let's dive deep into the core of this tale:

So, out at Harrod's Reach, there's this wicked mystery playing out. Corpses left chilling in an old train tunnel, each one leaving behind these eerie calling cards etched with old lullabies. The cops stumble upon Sully Dupree, a kid zonked out in a medically induced coma, but get this—he's got a message straight from LaLaLand, some nightmarish dimension where his mind is stuck. And in this messed-up place, there are mythical creatures itching to bust through the barrier into reality, stirring up trouble for the entire town.

Now, we've got two heavy-hitters stealing the spotlight: Maddy, the sole survivor who shakes off a coma, dead set on putting a stop to these creepy creatures messing with her hometown, and Teddy, a dude haunted by a dark past and a mysterious voice gabbing away through a seashell. Teddy's got a plan that's chilling to the bone, something that could rewrite the destiny of the whole dang population.

"Mister Lullaby" ain't no walk in the park; it's got brutal descriptions and scenes so real, they'll give you goosebumps. But listen up, horror nuts with a penchant for the classics like King, this book's your jam.

Big shoutout to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for tossing me a digital review copy. Much appreciated, y'all! These thoughts are straight from the gut, no holding back.

I wanted to love this book. The cover was amazing, the reviews even better. Alas I just could not get into this one. I had trouble following the timeline and characters. I found myself struggling to get through. I really loved the concept of Lalaland and how there might be this other world people are living in - kind of another timeline. I liked that it was cyclical - something that kept coming back around. This is just one opinion and lots of people loved this one so definitely give it a try.

Terrifying and Bone Chilling.......................

Mister Lullaby by J. H. Markert brings to you a terrifying tale of Harrod's Reach town. I had it as an audiobook on Netgalley. The narrator's voice was so chilling that it created an atmosphere of pure terror while listening. Ted's character was absolutely terrifying. I loved the concept of tunnel and other worldly beings. The story goes back and forth in time so that the readers feel relatable to the events. Past secrets revealed, action, and a little bit of romance make it perfect for a movie plot. I would love to see the characters come alive in a movie. Lalaland's concept was so unique that it is still fresh in my mind.

With every page, the terror gains momentum. And after Ted's arrival in Harrod's Reach, it was pure insanity. The book is so absorbing, and I would suggest everyone listen to the audiobook, especially at night. The voice of the narrator is definitely going to chicken you out. If you are looking for real terror, then this book is not to be missed at any cost. Also, the author has spelled out some hints about his previous book, which came as a shock to me. I would not be a spoiler by revealing that twist. Definitely, the book deserves 5 stars.