What a bizarre creepy fever dream of a book. Aka a great damn time. lol. I didn’t always know wtf was happening the vibe was right for a creepy book called root rot.

It wasn’t very long and follows a family of kids that are on vacation with their families at the Lake House that sits next to a River and some weird adventures they come up on.

I enjoyed it.

Thanks to netgalley and creature publishing for an eARC.

This is a weird one. If you like strange little novellas I’d give this one a try for sure. I found the naming or more so not naming of characters to be hard to follow and confusing. However the ambiance and creep factors are top tier. I definitely found myself a bit uneasy during many parts of this novella. I need someone to explain this one to me.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for access to the e-arc

I dont know that this book was for me. Maybe it was that I couldn't connect because everyone only had nicknames. It was so hard to keep track of what was happening. A little too confusing for me.

Root Rot won’t be for everyone but it most certainly is for me - this is straight up a very weird book for very weird people (complimentary).

This is an unsettling little horror which makes use of lots of nature themes (gorgeous), scenes in which different children are experiencing different (aka bizarre) things and quickly forgetting them and then possibly returning from a walk on their own not quite like themselves. Mysterious, strange, at times I had no clue what was going on which added to the experience and I really loved it.

It’s a quick read (I read it in one sitting, I inhaled it, I genuinely loved the eerie vibes, this is exactly my kind of thing) with a lot of things happening that you won’t understand until you do, but that’s part of the fun. It’s a really fun read, it’s unique and the unsettling vibe is just perfect. Oh, I also really enjoyed the names used for the children, it just gives the book another unique edge. The ending (specifically with The Liar) was gorgeous and poignant in my opinion.

Highly recommend. Any author who uses the bloody tooth mushroom in their work gets a good rating from me. 5 stars.

A huge thank you to NetGalley for giving me the arc of this book!

Personally, this book was not for me, but I found the premise fascinating. The idea of writing a horror novella with archetypes as characters is super interesting, the execution just didn’t do it for me.

Root Rot is a hard book to review. Its a book that gives you little bits of information about the characters and builds up the setting with evocative writing. The setting is the main character, the atmosphere and tension are the stars of the show. Saskia Nislow does a wonderful job of bringing the forest and lake house to life.

The story is told through the point of view of the children. All cousins, they have come with their families to the grandfather's lake house. No character is referred to by their name, just a little nickname that happens to tell you a bit about who they are. Like The Liar, The Girl twin, The Baby. The parents are in the background, hardly mentioned.

From the moment they arrive they notice some things are off with the house and forest, they see things out of the corner of their eyes, feel uneasy, but no cousin wants to stand out, so they don't mention anything. They don't want to rock the boat. Slowly the forest seems to take them over. So much of this book is hinted at. Family problems, grief, and identity are themes that are never really openly discussed but they are all tied throughout the story. So much of this story happens internally. It was odd, and quite different to what i have read before.

I think the horror genre is hard for me to review because I rate them based of vibes. Root Rot brings the oppressive tension, the feeling of time running out, the sense of it all being inevitable.

Root Rot is an eerie and surreal novella that immerses readers in a strange, unsettling family gathering at a remote lake house. Told from a collective "we" perspective, the story follows nine children—each known only by descriptive titles like The Liar, The Secret Keeper, and The Crybaby—as they experience bizarre and disorienting events. The book blurs the lines between reality and nightmare, creating an atmosphere that is both claustrophobic and hypnotic.

Saskia Nislow’s writing is undeniably vivid, packed with unsettling imagery that lingers in the mind. The prose feels almost poetic at times, and the way she crafts the eerie setting is one of the novel’s strongest aspects. However, the unconventional storytelling style—especially the use of vague character identities and a fragmented plot—makes it difficult to fully connect with the story or its characters. Readers looking for a more traditional narrative structure may find it frustrating or too abstract to fully enjoy.

While the book succeeds in creating a haunting, dreamlike experience, it sometimes feels more style over substance. The lack of clear character development and resolution left me wanting more depth and clarity. Still, for those who like new horror movies that focus on mood and atmosphere instead of plot, Root Rot is an interesting but sometimes confusing experience.

This unique fungal horror is about nine children who go on a vacation to their grandfather's home. And it's so much more than that; it's a fever dream, nature is a main character and strange and uncanny things happen to all the children.

This book has no single narrator but is written as "we" and differing perspectives. To me this echoed the mycelium beneath the rotting ground- a hive mind, a web of thoughts..I don't want to say more in case I spoil anything - although to be honest I think it's impossible to spoil this kind of story. You go in it just to experience it and come out of it with lots of ideas and speculations and I loved that.

Thanks to Netgalley and Creature Publishing for the ARC.

A strange little book that left me feeling a bit lost and confused? I honestly don’t know if I liked it or not

This is a botanical horror featuring a family holiday to a lake house. There is no physical descriptions of our characters or names.

This story his the potential to be so freaking good but I honestly have mixed feelings. While the writing style is beautiful it is also a little bit difficult to understand what’s happening all the time. Not in a oh wow what’s happening but more of a confusing jumble.

I think it was meant to lean to the story’s confusing and disorienting atmosphere but it pulled me out of the story too much, trying to get a grip on what was going on.

The concept is really interesting and the descriptions are vivid and imaginative and it definitely gets points for the atmosphere.

I think I would recommend this story to certain people but not to a wider audience it’s not what you expect going in.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Creature Publishing for the ARC!

4 stars!! My rating was originally lower but after thinking about the whole no name just title part DAMN IT JUMPED BACK UP

Okay this was written SO well and certain scenes were so eerie and creepy, it was fantastic! And for a short story I got well involved in what was happening even if I felt somewhat lost I was invested in this bizarre story. The only problem for me was keeping track of characters as they aren't not named but are given titles to their characters, it took some time to get used to because I was trying to keep track on who was who. But I guess this was also a very clever move as it kept me wondering what was happening, who was who which mirrored to what the characters were experiencing and what was happening to them. Damn

But the scenes in this are so creepy, especially the dinner table scene with the legs for one and I could name a few more but would prefer to not spoil it here.

I love fungal horror, so just off the title, I knew I had to read it. I know this isn't an original thought about this book, but a fever dream is definitely the best way to describe this reading experience. The writing was so well done. There were so many sentences that I thought were just pure poetry. It wasn't super easy to follow and will definitely make you question what you are even reading, but I think that was a bit of the vibe it was going for. I love the themes of life, rot, and death. Just be prepared for super surrealism, and it's just weird.

I can understand how the unconventional naming of the characters could be difficult for some (the liar, the one who runs away, the secret keeper, etc) but it actually worked for me and even made me like it even more. This definitely isn't going to be a story for everyone. I also really enjoyed the conclusion, I thought it was interesting

If you enjoy unconventional books who take risks, then I think you definitely should check out this novella!

Root rot by saskia nislow caught my attention right away. While the general aesthetic and vibe caught my attention most, the characters dynamics within one another kept me focused.

Came for the cover and name, stayed for what it represented. A very poignant novel and not afraid to say what it is all about!

What just happened? I'm not sure that I really understood this one.

I loved the descriptiveness, The way Saskia Nislow constructs an environment is intriguing. Points for the bleeding tooth mushroom.

The synopsis mentions predatory family behaviour but I didn't pick up on much of that until right at the very end, and even then it was only hinted at. That said I'm not 100% sure that the children weren't preying on each other in places, the way one would slyly spirit another off somewhere with a lie or a trick of time. And then maybe afterwards they were disappeared.

The narrator seems to be untethered to a specific person, though the synopsis suggests its always the liar, sometimes it's all of them. And to me it felt as though switched between individual children. I do not feel like the liar made sense of much of the stuff she was supposed to.

I feel like the fungus is an allegory for the loss of childhood innocence but why and what happened to them I'm very unclear. They all seemed to succumb to different things?

The lack of names for nine main characters, and assorted adults, made it feel a little impersonal. I both liked the lack of names a lot and specifically found it made things harder to follow.

Root rot could be really atmospheric but it just didn't hit that for me because I was confused and on the back foot the whole time. I had to flip back and forth a few times to see if we had switched character, location or try to make sense of what was going on. I found I had to repeatedly reread whole paragraphs because I didnt have a clear grasp on who was where, which characters were present or why they were doing what they were doing. I do think a lot of that was deliberate.

The book from start to finish kinda felt like one time when I had the flu, hallucinated on my sofa for six days and remember a total of about three hours.
Have you ever had a concussion whilst on acid? I imagine this is similar, sort of fun but also vaguely unsettling.
The writing is good, I didn't hate this but I'm still not sure what I just read.

I want to start by saying that I have nothing against high-concept, abstract horror. On the contrary, some of my favorite reads from the past year have completely ignored the concept of linear storytelling in favor of something less traditional. That being said, Root Rot was not for me. I think it absolutely has an audience; I am just not part of that audience.

The basic premise of Root Rot is simple - a group of cousins visit their grandfather's vacation property and odd things start happening. While these odd things are surely symbolic, I didn't have the patience to crack the author's code simply because I was never invested in anything that was happening. Reading this was a chore for me, and that's a problem because, at the end of the day, I want to read for fun. I actually considered giving this a 3 because I appreciate the author's goal, but the more I thought about how much I dreaded picking it up, the more I realized that I can't try to rate it with any kind of objectivity.

The nightmare-like imagery is fascinating at first, and then it just keeps happening. I understand that it's supposed to be dreamlike, but my dreams don't last the length of this novella, and I'm grateful for that. Maybe some reflection will help me appreciate this more, but at this time, I'm left feeling indifferent at best.

a creepy story that has it's own style through and through. I loved the formatting and style the author chose to tell this with. I did find the amount of characters hard to keep track of, but the story as a whole was worth the pauses I had to take :)

🍄🌳🏡Fever dream🏡🌳🍄


This was a fast-paced nightmare horror-mystery, with the protagonist being heavily unsupervised children in the woods. I read this mostly in one sitting, I needed to know what was happening to the children. And where the hell are their parents?! Something sinister is afoot. And that ending was perfection 👌

Heaivly atmospheric, felt like Alice in Wonderland gone wrong, for an entire family, unable to trust what's real and what's not, with things making sense, then not. This felt like a twisted Fairytale, there were definitely some folkhorror and eerily uncanny valley vibes here.

I had a lot of fun reading this one, and I recommended it to anyone who loves a folk horror book.

If you liked T. Kingfisher What Moves the Dead, you will absolutely love this one!

Also, can we take a second and appreciate that book cover? 😍

I want to thank NetGalley, Creature Publishing, and Saskia Nislow for the opportunity to read and review this e-book ARC. Can't wait to see what else they come up with!

I really wanted to like this book more. It may have been my own inability to track what was happening with all of the very vague character titles. I really love gothic, folk, and fungal horror so I thought I’d be a bit more invested than I was.

An extended family gathers at Grandfather’s Lake House for a weekend reunion. Nine cousins, eager for some fun away from their parents’ watchful eyes, quickly find that something is amiss after the oldest cousins secretly drink from a confiscated bottle. As their bodies begin to shift unnaturally and strange mushroom rings sprout across the lawn, things quickly spiral into the bizarre. And then there’s The Baby—here, gone, and back again.
Nislow’s novella is a masterclass in eerie atmosphere, where dread lingers on every page. The children’s transformations are unnerving and visceral, with a constant sense of unease as the Lake House seems to claim them, one by one. The tension builds, leaving readers questioning what’s real, what’s imagined, and what is being controlled by forces beyond the children’s control. It’s a propulsive story that keeps you hooked until the last chilling page.
The collective narrator, speaking as "we," "us," and "our," offers a strange and unsettling perspective, adding depth to the mystery. This narrator knows every character’s thoughts and feelings, but their true role and connection to the horrors remain unclear until the startling conclusion. By the end, readers will be left with a sense of disorientation and a haunting discovery that lingers.
Perfect for fans of weird fiction, this novella will appeal to those who enjoy the eerie journey more than a neat resolution. The unsettling atmosphere and unresolved ending may frustrate some, but the growing sense of dread and tension keeps the pages turning. Readers of David Mitchell’s Slade House will find similar vibes here, with a sense of doom and disorientation that builds as the story unfolds.
Verdict: A beautifully strange and horrifying read, Root Rot will leave readers gripped from start to finish. The unsettling transformations and mysterious forces at play will make you feel like one of the cousins, lost in a nightmare that’s impossible to escape. Highly recommended for those who enjoy deeply weird, atmospheric horror.