A riveting story of love, guilt, and survival. Auberdine is a place where trauma and secrets refuse to stay buried.
Many thanks to Auberdine Press and to Netgalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

This was fun. Definitely out of my comfort zone and took me a while to get through, but glad I read it. It starts off rather slowly, and takes its time introducing you to characters—which felt repetitive at times, but paid off in the end as you got understand everyone’s motivations. I likely would not read this author again, but would recommend this to others.

This book was fabulous. It's a slow burn , but in a very good way. Has horror elements but also about humans and how humanity truly can be, at it's core. I absolutely loved it and the ending was wow.

3.5 ⭐️
I struggled a bit getting into this at first, the writing feels a bit clumsy at points and the descriptions of the dialogue between characters were a little strange.
However, the landscapes were very well built, the story itself is interesting and dark, and the overall tone works well!
Thankyou to net-galley and Auberdine Publishing for the arc copy!

I enjoyed this book at the beginning and thought the whole set up with the author and his gregarious brother who should have ran the Inn but died at war was a good one and was a pretty good horror story however I kept finding similarities to Camelot whether it be their names or circumstance maybe that is just me reading more into what the author intended but either way distill was a great horror story there was great character distinction and development and I thought the ending was a good one. I wanted thank the publisher and net galley for my free arc copy please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.

The Innkeeper and the Cannibal is a horror novel about three men who come back home from a war much like WWI, to a place much like parts of the UK. They return to a wife, a mother, and a father, children, disease, and addiction, and they struggle to overcome the madness caused by jealousy, pride, grief, trauma, and abuse. It's a bit of an odd book--the kind of thing where readers have to puzzle things out about the world and its people and customs on their own, which I always enjoy--but fatally flawed by some storytelling shortcuts and sloppiness. The character development is good, as are the descriptions of places and many events. But the characters are always smiling or smirking or giggling or snorting at weird times and in strange circumstances--it happens almost constantly, and takes the reader out of the book immediately. For other characters, the author uses phonetic writing to communicate an accent, but this only ever appears in characters we're meant to understand as uneducated or otherwise mentally or morally unfit or questionable; the same holds for characters who are fat--apparently being fat is a moral failing. And forcing the title as the last line of the book, in a way that is jarring and not in keeping with much of the rest of the story, isn't a satisfying ending. Nonetheless, horror fans who like a slow burn will enjoy it.

I do believe that 'The InnKeeper and the Cannibal' must be among the greatest books available without sollicitation on NetGalley right now. Joseph Sadler's Arthur is pretty much Red Dead Redemption II's Arthur, constantly walking the line between good and evil. The novel, besides some phrases that read like a mysterious voiceover that could have been edited, is extremely well crafted, the stakes are those of countries at war, of a town riddled with alcohol, and of honor in general. It has elements of medieval storytelling and of Independance War lore, intertwined with dark fairytale motifs. The novel is intelligent, pessimistic and deeply moving, since there is very little hope left for everyone. Each character is facing shame, secrets and dilemmas more that one can handle alone, exactly as do great characters from westerns such as 'Killers on the Flower Moon' or 'Brimstone". An truly amazing piece of writing.

I really liked the writing style and the premise of the story. However, it didn't hold my attention for most of the book. I enjoyed the last few chapters; things kept escalating, which was done really well, and the conclusion was very tragic. It's just that the journey there wasn't always super interesting to me personally. Some chapters went on for too long and were a bit repetitive. I still think this is a good thriller and I could easily see it as a movie.

I’m continuing my hunt for the perfect spooky season reads;) Based on the description, I thought that this would be a quick read full of dark and twisty turns. Instead, it reads more like a slow burn Game of Thrones-esque horror. I really wanted to love this story, there are so many unique subplots woven together and the complexity of the characters is well developed, but in the end it was a bit of a slower read for me. The first 1/3rd of this story mainly consists of world building, which always takes me forever to get through regardless of the book. Then things start getting creepy…this storyline would definitely make a killer HBO series.

This book wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. While it isn’t my personal taste, it is a very well written book and an intriguing story plot. I actually enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to.