Sometimes I like my horror to be edgy but this one was a tad much. Splatterpunk can be good but most of the time it comes off as try hard "look at how brutal I am" nonsense. That's what this book ends up being for me at least.

Got this book for review on netgally.

It was definitely a weird story. It's an easy read though, very humurous (a lot of below the belt jokes), and the characters are likable and easy to root for.
It did not 100% click for me but I still had a really nice time.

Definitely has a unique plot, point of view, and pacing!

Ripley and Bogart had great, funny interactions with one another, and it was interesting reading their stories intertwined as we unfolded the plot. There is quite a bit of raunchy, crude humor throughout the book, as the POV is more of a stream of thoughts directly from Ripley.
The plot moved quickly, had some gross parts, and the ending kicked it up.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC, all opinions are my own!

Chaotic and weird and I love that normally but here it fell kinda flat xomparatively ? Idek. 3.5ish rounded up thanks for the arc.

Got this book for review on netgally.

It was definitely a weird story but unfortunately not really working for me. It was interesting but it just felt off somehow and I couldn't really get invested. It was around 2.5 stars rounded up.

We jump right into the first-person narrative of Ripley – a less-than-motivated middle-aged white guy living in his estranged wife's pool house – just after he's been diagnosed with a rare degenerative brain disease and given only weeks to live.
Wow, that is one heavy kickoff! But you know what? Most of it is actually hilarious! It starts off like a murder mystery, then things get a little crazy, but we're still hoping for a second chance at romance. And before we know it, we're right in the middle of a battle for humanity, with only an earworm, burn-out, and conspiracy theorist as our allies.
Overall, this was a quick and fun read with a few perfectly timed WTF moments. The plot moves at a rapid pace, which I found mostly positive, but some scenes felt a bit neglected. And you know what? I couldn't decide if I enjoyed the sheer amount of pop-culture references. Seriously, they're so funny. But after a while, I couldn't tell if they were being used ironically, satirically, or for real.
If I divide this story into 4 parts, I'd say the first half is pretty solid, the final quarter wraps up nicely and gives enough closure. It's around the 3/4 mark where I started to feel like something wasn't quite clicking.
I vote ‘read it’ for this one!

Such a weird and quirky read!

'Earworm' has a lot of weird sexual / toilet humour, with a lot of crude refrences, something that just isn't really up my street, but I get why people would enjoy it– it's dark, a bit gross, and just all-round weird!

This is a wildly entertaining, funny, and dark novella about a man and his alien parasite who lives in his brain.

Our protagonist has been dealt a bad hand in life. He's separated from his wife and daughter, he works in pest control, and he's found out that he has a very rare brain disease that will leave him in pain and agony until he dies (which could only be days to weeks away).

Through a series of events, he "meets" Bogart, an alien creature who enters through his ear and bonds with his brain. And Bogart tells him there's going to be a race of big nasty aliens who will wipe out the human race.

Yes, this sounds like a "b" sci-fi movie but it's really a great story that serves its dark narrative with a tremendous helping of humor and heart along the way. The relationship between our protagonist and Bogart is shaky at first but it becomes apparent that Bogart might be his only true friend when it's all said and done.

It's easy to root for the protagonist here. He's a sympathetic character whose life has taken a severe downturn. His observations and insights are ones a lot of people will recognize and he does this with a sense of self depreciation and willingness to place the blame on himself when necessary.

This is the sort of horror weirdness I love and have a fondness for and I highly recommend this novella if you're looking for something sharp, funny, and different.

This is definitely the most unusual book I’ve read this year! I found parts of this book hard to relate to and was not very invested at the start. I did however enjoy the rest of the novel a lot more and the humorous parts along the way. I would recommend this if you are looking for something different and unexpected that I found aligned more with a sci-fi than horror genre like what I was expecting.