"At Dark, I Become Loathsome" is a deeply disturbing, yet intriguing, examination of the lines between grief and sexuality, all told through the lens of a flawed individual with their own ideas of how to help those in grief. LaRocca's writing is smooth, but is poetic and beautiful at the same time. The subject matter can be quite difficult to take on, but this is such a unique way to examine one's queerness, as well as grief. This is my first read from LaRocca, but it won't be my last.

Eric Larocca truly is a master of queer horror. At Dark I Become Loathsome shows that yet again. This book is unsettling, nauseating, disturbing, and may actually make people feel seen. Sometimes being a part of this community isn't all rainbow capitalism and quipper one liners. Sometimes it's pain, and suffering, and feeling loathsome. Sometimes it's the joy of others making you feel sad. This book is most assuredly a horror novel, but it's also a love letter to the loathsome ones.

Loved this! Eric continues to put out books that are scary and off-putting in new and surprising ways. Another great book!

At dark, Ashley Lutin becomes loathsome. In the wake of his wife's death to cancer and his son's disappearance, Ashley begins to perform fake funerals (complete with burial) for clients on the verge of suicide. He advertises his services as a "second chance at life". Interwoven with this storyline is an online correspondence with a potential client featuring a horrific tale of torture, Ashley's search for the truth of his son's disappearance, and his self-hating issues with his sexuality.

With so much going on, in what is essentially a novella, nothing much comes together in a satisfying way. The most disturbing parts of this book are the multiple interspersed vignettes told by various supporting characters. However, most of these stories never connect back to the main plot and function more as horrific diversions and side quests that go nowhere. The main storyline is rather dull and predictable, and Ashley Lutin as a character is boring, unsympathetic, and annoying.

A story about grief, depression, self-identity, coping skills or maybe the lack thereof, and depravity interwoven with the intense love between a child and their parent. How does one continue in life when the only reason they feel alive is now missing? Ashley resorts to trying to find solace through the Internet and believes he is providing a much needed service to those who answer his call. The call for what? The author puts forward a twisted dark tale of obsession, animal abuse, murder, sexual-abuse, homosexuality, and many other themes intertwined throughout.

I do feel the abundance of shame and horror he rests upon piercings is over the top. I mean the whole story is over the top so it may just continue the level of story-telling.

Thanks to Netgalley for this advanced ebook. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

After losing his wife to cancer and having his young son kidnapped, Ashley becomes a sort of underground grief counselor, creating a ritual the daring pay good money to participate in. Said ritual involves being buried alive for 30 minutes in a “fake death” exercise where people’s lives are guaranteed to change.

But things take a wicked turn when Ashley’s purpose comes into question, and his own world is challenged by an unusual client.

LaRocca’s latest is as dark as it gets, and will surely not be for the faint of heart. But as disturbing as it is, I saw the twist coming early on and felt things may have been more effective had the third act gone in another direction.

AT DARK is well worth the reader’s time, and most readers of stronger horror won’t be disappointed despite the obvious twist. Can easily be enjoyed in one sitting.

This novella is not for the faint of heart and I will say this book won't be for everyone. That being said, fans of LaRocca's work and similar ones will be very excited to read this. Our main character, Ashley Lutin has created a ritual. A rather ... unique ritual that people can seek him out for and pay to participate in. This book addresses topics of grief, remorse and pain. As always, heed any trigger warning as this tale IS bleak and heavy. It also includes parts where different traumatic events take place, in much detail. Thank you so much to NetGalley & Blackstone Publishing for the ARC. This book publishes January 28, 2025.

What really makes us a monstrous being?
At dark I become loathsome is a new novel by Eric LaRocca that asks if we don't fit into the norms are we monstrous? Well exploring the concepts of loss and grief being able to make us into something that is monstrous and dark?

Goodreads activity notes
Arc ebook copy sent by publisher courtesy of Eric LaRocca - because I have a fan girl problem on social
Genre :
- horror
Novel
General adult fiction
LGBTia fiction
Repetition of sentence throughout entire first chapter 'At dark, I become loathsome"
First person narrative
"I think people should remain protected when nighttime approaches, almost as if twilight were a cancer that could rot us away until we were threadbare, tattered, and broken things, never to be repaired again."

"It's just that l become different at night.... I believe most people change considerably when their environment shifts. Darkness is a substantial change to our environment when you consider the implications that nighttime brings. Some things can only happen at night for this reason. People's inhibitions are lowered-their wants, their needs, their desires become paramount."

Progress
3%
"But though humanity doesn't escape us when it's dark out, l've learned that human decency only exists when it's convenient. The rest of the time, we're feral creatures tirelessly spinning against the whitewater current of rapids bearing us down and carrying us toward an infinite black sea."
1 Like


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4%
"I'm something monstrous, something unspeakable, something appalling, something to hide away like a shameful secret. That's what I am—a secret to be kept, away from everyone, in a dark room."
1 Like

Interesting imperfect protagonist- Ashley
Wife dead from cancer
Son missing from abduction
Lost - helps people who want to kill themselves w his 'fake death' ritual where he buries them alive for half hour than digs them up for. A rebirth
-reflect on life and desire to live or die while in coffin
underground

Progress
7%
...a woman who had seen all the wonders of hell and knew keenly of the nothingness, the oblivion, that waited for her there."

Eric LaRocca is one of my favorite authors and I will, without a doubt, read every single thing they publish. That being said, 𝘈𝘵 𝘋𝘢𝘳𝘬, 𝘐 𝘉𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘓𝘰𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 didn't full work for me.

Our story follows Ashley, a man who has experienced considerable loss in his life. His wife passed from cancer some years ago, and his son went missing from a storefront while Ashley was inside. Battling with his gender identity and sexuality, suicidal ideation, and desperately clinging onto the smallest sliver of hope that his son is still alive somewhere has led Ashley to one repeating thought in his mind: At Dark, I Become Loathsome. Striving to work out his greater purpose, Ashley has begun to perform one odd and specific ritual for other people also suffering trauma and suicidal thoughts. After prior coordination online, Ashley meets up with his clients in the dead of night at a secluded location where he buries them alive for 30 minutes before unearthing them once again, leaving them 'reborn' with a new sense of life.
His odd side jobs eventually lead him to a man named Jinx, someone who puts Ashley's dark and perverted thoughts to the ultimate test.

This book took me for a ride. At first, I couldn't stand it - it felt over the top edgy to the point of almost being cringeworthy. But slowly, it grew on me, as the reader gets pulled deeper into the stark and dangerous world of the characters. This may be LaRocca's most gruesome and perverse novel yet. However, it didn't make me feel too much towards it. I never felt any certain way towards the characters, some things were predictable, and some points had me questioning what I was even reading. A signature characteristic of LaRocca's books is that he often incorporates stories within stories, and this was no exception. There are two points within the book where we go off on a tangent and learn about new people in a new fucked up situation, and I struggled to see how everything fit together with the main piece.

Overall, I enjoyed the writing and themes explored: sexuality, identity, loss & grief, death, and finding where you fit in. TW for descriptions of animal abuse.

At Dark, I Become Loathsome by Eric LaRocca is definitely one for readers who like their horror dark and unsettling. The story follows a grieving man whose strange ritual takes him down a very disturbing path. It’s intense and emotional, but at times it feels like it leans too much on shock factor over substance.

If you’re into horror that really pushes boundaries and dives deep into grief and identity, this might work for you. Just don’t go in expecting subtlety—it’s a heavy read.

Where to begin!
Simple but effective prose that forms the dreadful reality Ashley lives inside. The small peeks you get of how truly loathsome he has become to the outside world is fascinating and deeply sad given the tragedies of his life. At the same time, he is not an easy person to empathize with through a majority of the story.
I found the most impressive part to be the perverse stories written within the story, particularly the chat room where this mysterious man is spilling his innermost feelings to a stranger. I won’t forget about that any time soon. Overall it was an engaging read, but not one I can see myself re visiting.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and the publisher for sending me an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

At dark, I Become Loathsome by Eric Larocca is about a man named Ashley Lutin who has had many thoughts in his life since the loss of his wife and disappearance of his son. One striking phrase: “At dark, I become loathsome”, is repeated in his head throughout this book. He thinks that during the day while doing his normal life routine, that he is a decent person; but at night these thoughts, like how he wishes he could have enough gall to end someone’s life or how he could enjoy other peoples suffering, comes into his head and won’t leave.
Ashley has found a way to help others and satiate his need to be gruesome in one fell swoop, calling it the ritual: bury bodies in a coffin, alive, and then save them 30 minutes to an hour later. The goal of this is for his “client” to realize there is more to life than suffering, and death is not the solution. Most of his clients turn away with a renewed sense of purpose, until one day he meets Jinx. Jinx has quite the story to tell Ashley, and over the course of the book we see Ashley’s own “purpose” of the rituals he performs go down the drain.

In this book, we get one main story, but also a few smaller ones about other people who have also had gruesome thoughts. We hear about male couple, Tandy and Victor, from Ashley himself, and also a story from Jinx about a man named Emil Dubois, a young man who makes a deal with another man. What some of these young men do and think in the stories are considered horrendous; “At dark i become loathsome”, indeed.

My thoughts: (Disclaimer: this was my first Eric Larocca book) Overall, I enjoyed this story more than not. I do think, however, being a horror book (and after hearing about other Eric Larocca stories from others that they have dubbed “scary, grotesque, horror, etc) it would have been more…. Gruesome. I thought some of the thoughts the young men had were “bad”, but honestly, not “bad” enough. I think this was rather tame for a horror novel, at least out of the ones I have read in the last couple of years.
This book was more sad to me than it was scary. Trauma and death and tales of grim life are the primary focus on this story rather than the splatter punk that I thought I was expecting to be in this novel.
I think in general, this book is decent enough, but not the greatest horror book that I have read, and it was not what I was really expecting, which leads me to my 3 ⭐️ star review.
Thanks again to Netgalley and the publishers for the early copy!

This series of interconnected stories follows Ashley who has lost his wife and son. That experience sends him into the darkest recesses of his mind as he deals with his grief.

I really enjoyed the writing here and the grossness just kept building in such increasingly creepy and nasty ways. My biggest critique is that while many of the sentences are so lushly disgusting there are some that are a bit overwritten and end up wrapping around to being silly.

This is the second LaRocca book I've read (after Things Have Only Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke) and both are excellent nasty books. Major credit to the titles and covers as well. What the fuck is the cover here?

Thanks to NetGalley for my ARC
4.5⭐️

Eric LaRocca has done it again. This was twisted and brutal, and I loved it.

Thank you so much to netgalley and the publisher for the arc of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Unfortunately, this book was not for me. I should have read the description closer so it is more my fault than anything. Any book that is splatterpunk is just not for me. I know there is an audience out there for it but that is not me.

I just really didn't understand this one and it was just too much for me.

I hope people who like this kind of stuff love this one!

Content Warnings: Child Abduction, Sexual Assault, and Murder; Gore; Animal Abuse & Animal Death; Burying Alive, Terminal Illness (Cancer), Terminal Illness as a Kink, Cannibalism (Off Screen), Suicide Attempts & Suicidal Ideation

For the sexually averse, there are two or three scenes I remember as being explicit, as well as in depth discussions of terminal illness as a kink. They are not super well telegraphed.

I always feel conflicted reading Larocca's work. On the one hand, his skill as a writer is evident in his strong, vivid descriptions, and the psychology behind his characters is often interesting. This book is no exception. Main character Ashley has a story that I wanted to watch unfold, and his twisted psychology was well done. The main plot I found very absorbing.

On the other hand, I often find his books contain a lot of the details and descriptions that are unpleasant -- not necessarily scary or horrific, but just gross. I can admit that's a me issue; gross horror just doesn't do it for me. Relatedly, at least in this book, it feels so repetitive. The phrase "at dark I become loathsome," for example, is repeated to the point that it loses both meaning and power. I do recognize that the repetition and style of the narrative are purposeful, but it more made the book feel long than offer the intended resonance.

This book is a quick read, so if the premise sounds interesting to you (and the content warnings not an immediate turn off), then I see no harm in giving it a try.

I really wanted to love this one, as I am already a big fan of Eric Larocca, but this one was just really slow moving for me. I didn’t love the pacing, but it did have the creep factor that Larocca is great at.

As much as this book had a lot going on, I had to see it through to the end. I feel like this was icky just for the shock value, rather than adding to the overall plot.

At Dark, I Become Loathsome by Eric LaRocca
4.5/5

I’m obsessed with Eric’s works, so it was an absolute honor to get the chance to read this ARC copy of his newest novel. The writing is hauntingly beautiful, almost poetic even in the most grotesque moments. I love it.

I was hooked from the start, as I always am, by his ability to make a character that you can’t help but connect to for one reason or another, even in spite of every increasingly unsettling thing you learn about them. Ashley is… well, he’s doing his best to cope in the only way that works for him. He’s suffered unimaginable losses and that drives a gut instinct of compassion from the reader.

Even if he is burying people alive. But don’t worry, he digs them back up… usually. Because grief does funny things to people, and sometimes all it takes is one piece of information to send someone into a spiral that effects everyone around them.

Everything changes when Ashley meets Jinx - someone whose own morbidity fascinates she draws Ashley in beyond the professional boundaries he normally sets. But what happens when the secrets Jinx has to offer are more personal than Ashley ever could’ve imagined?

You’ll have to read to find out.

Well-written, but even as a horror fan, this one was not for me. The content was a little too extreme, especially being a parent.
Thanks for the copy to read and review!