This is a short novella but there is a lot of wisdom and sadness and creepiness that I really found to be fascinating, hypnotic, and ultimately tragic. I love the way that characters are named by their type, and anyone that has ever had large extended family gatherings will recognize all of the types described in this story. A short, but really good and deep read.

Root Rot follows a collective of nine cousins referred to only by epithets (The Oldest, the Liar, the Crybaby, the One Who Runs Away etc...) who encounter increasingly sinister things while vacationing at their large family home.

My favorite choice in this novella was to write in first person plural. It reminded me somewhat of The Virgin Suicides and was unsettling but worked well for a novella with so many characters.

Unfortunately, where this novella lost me was in the actual haunts. There was creepy stuff, to be sure, but it didn't seem to be rooted (haha) in anything. The description of the book talks about family dynamics, but I'm not sure that this was actually demonstrated. The kids don't really interact with the adults in their family, and they barely interact with each other. Because there are so many characters, they all seem pretty flat and we don't get a good grasp on their relationships with each other. I think horror needs to be a metaphor for something else in order to feel thematically relevant. I'm left being unsure what this book was trying to pull off besides a few body horror scares amongst cousins.

Root Rot is a bizarre little novella that had me wondering what the hell I was reading page after page.

The story follows a family gathering at a Lake House, we’ve got the Adults and we’ve got nine unnamed children: The Oldest, The One Who Runs Away, The One with the Beautiful Voice, the Baby, the Cry Baby, the Secret Keeper, The Liar, and the Twins (Boy Twin and Girl Twin). Their Grandmother has recently passed and this family gathering is taking place for a reason they do not know.

What follows is a chronological kaleidoscope of scenes in which the different kids witness strange things they can’t explain and quickly forget, and how some of them don’t come back quite themselves from their solo strolls in the woods.

This was so bizarre and had so many clues about what may have been going on, it kept me interested. My toxic trait when reading is that I always try to guess the ending, so it was fun (the narration POV, the cover, the bloody tooth mushrooms, the word choices…).

Sadly, I found the theorizing more satisfying than the conclusion. I’m still not sure I got it. This book would have been a five-star read, even with the confusing progression, if 1) the imagery had been more unsettling, vivid, and/or bizarre (not asking for body horror but that would have been the cherry on top) and 2) the character “names” had been utilized for anything. I rarely saw the Liar lie, the Crybaby cry, or the Secret Keeper keep secrets (forget them, she surely did lol).

3.5 stars rounded up. The theorizing was fun and the writing was nice.

This was a very interesting story and I read it in one sitting. It constructed a great atmosphere and had me questioning everything that was going on.
It did take me time to wrap my head around all the characters however, because none of the characters are called by their names. E.g. the liar or the one with the beautiful voice, which did make the story hard to follow at times.