When I read a new Eric LaRocca book, I think, "Okay, it surely can't get any more disturbing and unhinged than the last one?" Oh boy, I was wrong! "We Are Always Tender with Our Dead" is the first book in the Burnt Sparrow Series, a trilogy set in the eerie town of Burnt Sparrow. The story revolves around a brutal massacre that occurs on Christmas Day, uncovering dark secrets within the community. Seventeen-year-old Rupert Cromwell must confront themes of grief, identity, and supernatural horror in this haunting initial trilogy entry.

LaRocca effectively highlights that monsters are real, they sometimes wear the skin of our parents, neighbours, or friends, people we trust. They disguise their true intentions and extend their claws into us.
The splatterpunk and gothic writing styles blend beautifully in this novel. You will need time to process this reading, I took a week to gather my thoughts because it can be overwhelming. He elevates horror by exploring people's darkest moments and memories. His writing captivates you and makes it easier to navigate the rough parts of the story. These difficult moments serve a purpose, they help delve into the characters' motivations and experiences.

Before reading this, please check the trigger warnings!

Thank you to Netgalley for my ARC.

WHAT DID I JUST READ?

This book it's cruel and raw, I can't think right now how someone can come up with this ideas, Eric LaRocca surpirse me every single time. We are always tender with our dead it's the book that you can't missed if you love horror, and wretched characters.

Burnt Sparrow it's this mysterious town where weird things happen, but for some reason they are forgotten, Rupert a seventeen year old guy who's grieving his mother's dead and his father's desinterest and also a terrible massacre that just happen that killed a lot of people, so now he has to help to watch the bodies.

Why this happen? Who killed them? and why are they not being buried?

The novel it's very dark, and it starts with this triggering (warning) page with all the distorbious topics that you find in the story (Believe me, A LOT)

I just enjoy how the author finds the way to create such miserable characters and how he mananges to make it worse, not just the MC, the father for me was very hard to read, violent and sad.

The paranormal stuff it's there, and I can't wait to read more about it, this is the first book of a trilogy I think, so I'm waiting for more scary and weird things happen, Burnt Sparrow definetly a town that I wouldn't like to visit.

Thank you to NetGalley, Eric LaRocca, and Titan Books for a copy to review.

Content Warnings: Death, Murder, Mass Shooting, Death of Children, Homophobia, Transphobia, Body Horror, Gore, Animal Death, Disturbing Imagery, Necrophilia, Sexual Assault, Suicide, Physical Abuse, Mental Abuse, Toxic Relationships, Toxic Parenting, Underage Sexual Imagery, and Sex. There may be others, but I did not finish the book.

DNF at 50%

Unsettling. Disgusting. Weird. These are all words that can describe Eric LaRocca’s “We Are Always Tender with Our Dead.” I was fine with reading it until the necrophilia and sexual assault portions of the book, and I have a pretty strong stomach for the strange, violent, and challenging. There comes a point, however, when the content is used less to challenge the reader and more simply for the shock factor.

That is what this book felt like–a compilation of shocking activities. LaRocca takes the reader far into the world of the depraved, and once you think you are safe again, you are hit with something even more disgusting, something even more disturbing. Yet, like a train wreck, you cannot look away. Your eyes are glued to the carnage, the horror of it, the death and dismemberment, the feeling of dread rising in your bones as you stop and stare.

There were things within “We Are Always Tender with Our Dead” that I enjoyed, don’t get me wrong. The writing was very well done. Gripping. Yet the subject matters just gave me the major ick about halfway through. There are some lines I cannot cross.

If you like mind-melting, gruesome stories with a helping of body horror, then perhaps this book is for you. If not, I recommend staying far, far away from “We Are Always Tender with Our Dead.”

We Are Always Tender With Our Dead is a grippingly dark novel full to the brim with hard lines that you wouldn’t be expected to cross but Eric LaRocca pushes you too. This book was very gripping and packed a punch, it’s one of the best Horror novels I’ve read in a long time!! Not all horror novels affect me quite like this one but I was cleaning up corpses in my dream two nights running after reading this one.
Eric LaRocca’s writing definitely leaves a disturbing impression, pushing you into such a dark landscape of misfortune, grief and unease so early on and it never lets go as the story develops so does the intensity so buckle up.
We follow the story through the lens of a young queer boy Rupert, who’s lost his loving mother and is living alone with his father who’s becoming more estranged and distant.
Rupert’s dream of running away from the isolated town of Burnt Sparrow becomes impossible when a town tragedy occurs, leaving the Elders to make a strange decision, one that lures people into making unexpectedly hideous choices that impact everyone around them.
Eric LaRocca’s genius characters and world building leaves you feeling immersed, yet trapped in a nightmare that you’re unable to look away from. Powerful, tense and uncomfortable yet it’s so good you won’t be able to put it down and I’m already waiting for the second installment of the Burnt Sparrow series.

Set in the small town, Burnt Sparrow, We Are Always Tender With Our Dead is a horror murder mystery intertwined with the claustrophobic struggle of coming to terms with one's sexuality. The author successfully delivers a strong feeling of helplessness and hopelessness through various lenses. This book isn't chill or cozy, it presents the tough themes it wants to delve into unapologetically, as forewarned in the author's letter.

The story unfolds through the eyes of two characters, supported with smaller stories told through news articles, reports and even voice recordings left behind by the main character's mother.

It would have been better if the characters were more relatable and less dispassionate. Most of the heavy lifting to keep me turning the pages was done by the plot, which was disorienting at times.

Many thanks to Titan Books and NetGalley for a copy of the ARC.

thank you to Netgallery for the opportunity to read
"We Are Always Tender with our Dead"
really more of a 2.5 , I graded on a curve, due to the fact, this is less a book and more a short story collection tied together by a pilot of a story.

Not my favorite from LaRocca, but I still enjoyed it a lot. I wanted to learn more about the town, and I'm hoping we'll get that in future books. Excited to read the rest of the series

yeah not for me, i gave it a good chance to really grab me into the story but 30% in i am sadly still not. i was so excited about reading this and getting the ARC for it due to the blurb but idk it really did nothing for me. i could see this being a good series though.

the first 15% of this book felt really repetitive and yes it was introducing us to our main character but i felt as if we were learning nothing about him but just repeating how bad he wants to leave this

Something about this book was truly captivating. With the heavy trigger warnings there is a pervasive sense of unease and disquiet throughout, but this kept me engaged.

I really did feel for both, especially Rupert who seems destined to suffer. I would have liked to understand more about the town, but I’m presuming more will become clear in books 2/3.

This book will haunt me for a while.

Thank you NetGalley and Titan Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

We Are Always Tender with Our Dead Is not a summer read. It’s possibly as far from a summer read as possible.

It’s to be cradled and endured during the frigid midwinter, when the bleakness has started to feel like it’ll never leave.

We join the town of Burnt Sparrow after a horrendous Christmas Day massacre, and join Rupert and his father as they guard the dead whilst the elders decide what to do.

When the offenders turn out to be faceless humanoids, we find that despite the perceived modern day setting, Burnt Sparrow is a puritanical town with odd traditions and power struggles.

For the benefit of sensitive readers, I’d absolutely suggest in this case to read the content warnings, as there is a lot of darkness in the town of Burnt Sparrow.

I’m a huge, HUGE fan of Eric LaRocca’s writing, so it goes without saying that I freaked out with excitement when the galley became available for “Burnt Sparrow: We are always Tender with Our Dead.” LaRocca is one of the most dynamic writers of horror today. It’s billed as the first installment of a new triology of ‘transgressive literary horror’ from LaRocca. The lives of those who live in Burnt Sparrow (New Hampshire) take a turn for the worse when three faceless ‘entitles’ arrive on Christmas morning and do seirous violence that causes a tragedy. As everyone is dealing with the aftermath, a teenager Rupert goes on a disturbing journey. And yes, there is a trigger warning at the beginning of the book from the author, because the subject matter he’s dealing with is very disturbing but also needs to be handled with the utmost care, which I think he has done. I think it was definitely an interesting choice to make a teenage boy the center of such a disturbing and graphic piece, and I think it lends an interesting air overall. There’s a vibe of ‘Turn of the Screw, but make it modern, but also preserve the literary-ness of it’ about the work that really had me wrapped around its finger. It’s small town horror at its best. And it’s disturbing AF. Shades of Shirley Jackson and 'House of Leaves'; Highly recommended!

2.5⭐

I went back and forth on this book and whether my criticisms were just down to personal taste. I can't say that I enjoyed it or would recommend, but I think I can see what it's trying to do. I'm just unsure if it does it well.

This one isn't for the faint of heart, and to be fair, LaRocca is very upfront about that (assuming their author's note stays in the finalised version). There's a long list of content warnings, and there are very few breaks in between the potentially triggering content. The story follows the inhabitants of a small town in the aftermath of a brutal murder, through the perspectives of Rupert (a teenage boy) and Gladys (a middle-aged(?) woman). The novel plays a little with form, as interspersed there are diary entries from Rupert and news articles about the town from the time the story takes place (2003) until years later (present day). Some of them, including a rogue police report, are completely unrelated to the story in this novel, though as it's supposed to be a trilogy may be setting up for events to come.

The horror is mainly centred around real-life and the horrifying things people do to one another, but there are supernatural horror elements throughout. None of it is really explained — it's all left to imagination and interpretation, and in some instances (the family of murderers having no faces, like they could be anyone) they feel like a commentary on their own. The best way I can describe it is heavily reliant on the 'uncanny', with things that are mostly real and familiar having unusual and thus horrifying elements.

Rupert and Gladys are interesting choices for POVs, because while they witness most of the action, they aren't really part of it. As characters, they are fairly inactive, though not one-dimensional (their minds are strange places). This can be seen as plainly boring, but I think I understand the reasoning. The point seems to be that they don't do much, aside from Rupert's intervention come the end. For the most part, they are bystanders to atrocities. They see it, and don't feel they can stop it, so most times, they do nothing. This seems to be a critical point LaRocca is trying to make. The large question within the story seems to be asking who are the true villains — those who enact a singular, terrible act of violence (with unknown, though I feel regardless of, reason); those who seek revenge and therefore perpetuate that violence; or those who do nothing at all? (The answer in this case seems to be all of the above, honestly.)

It's, in this way, an excellent social commentary. It presents and forces you to face many of the evils within humanity. I suppose the question and my criticism is whether or not it is enough to comment on it. All the evil-doing is of course presented as such — there is awareness and acknowledgement of the wrongness of things, as well as bouts of shame, particularly within Rupert's POV. The thing is, it feels uncomfortable in the sense the characters' shameful actions and desires do feel a bit glorified. The violence and abuse is predominantly enacted against women and children, always enacted by men, and constant. It isn't harsh or blatant criticism, it teeters on the edge of brutally honest commentary, and starts to feel a bit like it's just an outlet for fantasies. Which, in this case, is a very uncomfortable thought, and what I think put me off somewhere around the midpoint.

It might be just personal taste and that it was too much for me, but by the end I felt like it was too much in general. I think it could have been improved with 'less is more', and the instances of extreme violence etc would have felt more impactful if they were more isolated. However, one of the main points is that everything in this town is horrible (and this is largely ignored by the outside world), so I can acknowledge that maybe this is why LaRocca felt the constancy of the horror was necessary. It is horror in the sense of all the worst things you can imagine between people, all in one place, all of the time, with no escape.

This had really dark themes but I really enjoyed it despite being really body horror worthy and parts with Rupbert were gross and things his father did .
The whole story set around Christmas was interesting and I'm really excited for the next book.

This felt like half of it was just for shock value. It wasn’t what I’d been expecting at all. I’m sure some folks would like it. Splatterpunk fans. But for me? This was too much

I once again I really appreciated Larroca's individual voice in the horror genre. I particularly like how he can write scenes of utter humiliation, depredation and grotesquerie in a story, that suits so well the general tone and feeling. Where there's a genuinely curious eye by the author it makes it hard for the reader to turn away?

I've felt for a long time that although I enjoy Larroca's writing, I do sometimes struggle with the justification to buy a full priced book for collections of short stories that are in themselves less that 200 pages sometimes. That's not criticism of the writing or Larroca's output or anything of that nature. Really an observation in the context of book buying as an industry and a common theme in horror. I just think it's worth considering.

That being said, I was very excited to hear that Larroca was writing a novel as his longer and more constructed stories in his collections are, in my opinion the most memorable. In terms of the structure of the novel. I always enjoy a mixed media layout with articles and micro stories.

Within the main narrative I found it challenging initially to get into the world, but being introduced to the male protagonist helped as I found him to be by far the most well-fleshed out character. His identity stands clearly on the page and I felt very deeply for him throughout the story. I did feel the town and it's inhabitants were well built. My only real issue is that it was very clear that was part of a series throughout and my preference would have been to read a longer novel that focused more on the characters and setting. It very much reminded me of Stephen king's It, where there are multiple narratives going on in a small town and I think it is a good example of how fleshing all of that out and taking a bit more time with that can really have a good payoff. I think if you are writing is Saga type horror very difficult to do that in less than 200 pages.

I wrote this review as I was fortunate to have the opportunity to read an arc copy. I felt incredibly grateful to have been able to do that, having read much of Larocca's work in the past, I was very excited to see as I say what this novel was going to look like. If you are looking for typical Larocca squeamish, uncomfortable horror, genuine identity searching and difficult but eloquently expressed feelings that you sometimes cannot even share with yourself, I highly recommend as clearly Larocca is a master of this. I look forward to the next one.

2/5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Titan Books for an ARC! Comes out September 9th.

Welcome to the disgusting town of Burnt Sparrow, New Hampshire! You’ll get weird blood rituals, unexplained tragedies, violence en masse, and torture! How fun. Will it ever be explained what’s happening here or why? Do we ever get more insight into the brief intermissions in this story about random gory tragedies occurring years before/after the events of this story? No <3 I know this is book 1 of a trilogy but throw me a bone, man.

This book was a lot of bleh. It follows Rupert Cromwell, a 17-year-old boy who has been tasked – alongside his father – to guard the massacred bodies of over 100 of the town’s residents. The perpetrators are a faceless family of 3, who then get imprisoned by the richest man in town.

I would say this book is supernatural in nature but it feels so disjointed that I honestly cannot tell for sure. There are many stories within this story, which meant I could never really connect to Rupert. I was always being distracted by some misc townie being subject to the worst horrors known to man. All for seemingly no reason, as it never ties back into the main story or characters.

Speaking of characters, Rupert is honestly a sick little fuck that I do feel bad for, but I do not want to read from this kid’s POV anymore. Through his eyes we witness A LOT: death, torture, sexual assault, necrophilia, paedophilia, incest THE LIST GOES ON. It felt like the author was throwing everything at the wall and hoping it would stick, but it just didn’t. And none of it seemed to endear me to Rupert.

I needed more backstory, more context and world-building, not a 20-page description of Rupert heading into town with his father, ruminating on every aspect of his life. Burnt Sparrow is a creepy town and I wanna know more about it, but not like this.

A generous 2 stars because I can’t bring myself to rate an ARC 1 star and because it definitely isn’t as bad as Throne of Glass. <3

Eric LaRocca’s newest novel is disturbing, visceral, and anything but tender. I loved my time with it though and read it over a period of 4 days. Engrossing and fast paced, the town of Burnt Sparrow is devoid of kindness and revels in cruelty.

Following a massacre enacted by humanoid creatures, this town, riddled with strange social politics, attempts to preserve their dead and enact revenge on the those creatures. We spend most of our time with Rupert, a queer kid seeking to find any semblance of hope amongst this bleak and dead end town.

I was not prepared for how emotionally jarring this novel was going to be. Intense emotions around themes of queerness, absolution, freedom, otherness, and cruelty jump out of the page in intense detail. Rupert is heartbreaking and I want so desperately for someone to save him.

If you love stories about towns that are essentially evil, this one is for you.

Full review on my booktok: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8hKb5ev/

Before you pick up this book, in case it is not abundantly clear, this book is definitely within the realms of splatterpunk. You are supposed to feel uncomfortable as you read.

Things I liked:
Despite the very graphic subject matter, there's also so much beautiful uses of language used throughout the novel. Not everything is dark and grim and disgusting.
Queer characters are a focal point which is always a plus. I was especially drawn to Gladys and her portions of the tale.
I just couldn't put this book down. I kept wanting to know more, the why behind the faceless humans amongst all of the other mysteries.

Things I disliked:
It is part of a series and you can tell. This one leaves you with more questions than answers. I don't need everything wrapped up, but this one just left me wishing I hadn't read it yet because of all the loose ends.
The news stories that are interjected at this point felt unnecessary. Maybe they'll make more sense as the trilogy expands, but at the moment they seemed like wasted space. You didn't need these to understand Burnt Sparrow is a bad place.

Giving this one a tentative three stars. This is meant to be the first in a trilogy, and I think it part of the problem for me is that this book sets up a lot of stuff without, obviously, concluding anything. I finished this book with way more questions than answers. I am not someone who needs things tied up in a bow, nor do I love when the ~interpretation~ of the book is extremely obvious of heavy handed. That being said, I also don’t love when I feel like a book just dumps a lot on me and leaves me feeling perplexed about what I am meant to glean from any of it. Again, I suspect (hope) that things will be more clear as the trilogy continues, but reading this for now as a standalone was a bizarre experience.

That being said, as always, Eric LaRocca manages to write absolutely grotesque topics in prose that is really beautiful, and I am always so so impressed by his ability to do this. The writing and style from a purely linguistic perspective is very good. He is an incredibly talented writer and despite feeling a little confused overall by this book, I will still be reading the next one, lol.

There are many trigger warnings for this but a few off the top of my head include: rape, necrophilia, incest, graphic violence/torture, domestic abuse, animal cruelty.

We Are Always Tender with Our Dead by Eric LaRocca drops us into the aftermath of a horrifying Christmas morning massacre in the town of Burnt Sparrow, where three faceless figures are responsible for these deaths. Among the few left are Rupert and his father, who watch over the bodies until Rupert’s father commits a disturbing act that leads to his execution, leaving Rupert alone. He’s then sent to live at End House with Gladys and her cruel husband Cyril, who is keeping the three faceless perpetrators locked in his basement. Meanwhile, Gladys is trapped in a nightmare of her own, abused by Cyril and quietly in love with their servant, Veronica, but unable to escape.

This is the first in a planned trilogy, and it does not hold back. The graphic violence and disturbing acts aren’t just for shock—they’re central to the book’s exploration of grief, power, and the nature of cruelty. LaRocca isn’t interested in cheap scares; he shows us what real monstrosity looks like, both supernatural and painfully human. It’s the kind of horror that leaves a mark—not just because it’s bloody, but because it stares into the darkest corners of what people are capable of. I’m both horrified and deeply intrigued to see where the trilogy goes next.