The Hobgoblin of Little Minds

The hobgoblin of little minds by Mark Matthews.
Kori dad is in a mental institution. It is due for demolition. Can she save him before the demolition?.
This was a very good read. A little confusing but after reading it I found this dark on creepy. Good story. And some good characters. 4*.

First off, the cover of this book is amazing. A werewolf holding a heart. The blue and red’s were just beautiful together.

I ripped into this book without reading the synopsis because it was a book by Mark Matthews. I have loved all his books so far. He writes addiction horror that really gets under my skin. “The Hobgoblin of Little Minds” takes a departure from addiction and explores mental illness.

Kori Pershone Driscoll has suffered through her dad’s mental illness. She wanted him to get better but he does not seem to improve. One day, he disappears and Kori is determined to find him. She breaks into the abandoned hospital that used to treat him and is unprepared for what she finds.

Every character in this book was so well written that you have sympathy for them. Dr. Zita, suffered her own trauma, which in turn caused her to be the villain. Although her acts are horrific, I could see the driving force between these actions. I wanted all the characters to find peace.



This was a well written book about bipolar disorder. It touches on how medications and medical treatment can influence individuals with mental illness.

This was an incredibly unique and thoughtful take on mental illness, bipolar disorder in particular, with a twist on the traditional werewolf lore. Ironically, I think the word werewolf was only used once? And then shut down really quickly, which I thought was a nice addition.

The descriptions of what it felt like to go through a manic episode were some of the most haunting and beautiful I’ve ever read. Bipolar disorder has some very negative connotations attached to it, however there is beauty in the heightened awareness that both Peter and Maya observe, and later Lilith.

“She wanted to rip the walls down, wanted to sing her song of rage and pain.”

“Atoms in her brain and all the fluids lubricating her spine started to ooze like hot lava”

The characters were engaging and very fleshed out. I wanted Kori to find peace with her dad. I wanted Maya to find Lilith and be reunited. I wanted Hades the dog to be ok! And I suitably hated Zita. It seemed she justified her cruelty and her Frankenstein complex with her past.

I was drawn to the book by the amazing cover, but I kept reading because of the descriptive prose that Mark Matthews wrote. I felt like I was living a manic episode.

5 stars and will be buying a physical copy when it comes out!

The Hobgoblin of Little Minds is the story of Kori, who has been suffering through her dad’s mental illness for most of her life. He was in and out of hospitals, and his mood was unpredictable and changed in a matter of minutes. The last time she saw him was in a psychiatric hospital. The same hospital that is now closed and about to be torn down. Kori has been haunting the hospital halls for years, looking for answers and her father. Once she finds him it becomes clear that what lives in this empty building is no longer her beloved dad at all.

Looking at the cover of The Hobgoblin of Little Minds, you might expect a good ole’ werewolf horror story. Like myself, you might also not be a big fan of the werewolf trope. Well, let me assure you this book is so much more than that. What Matthews did here is amazing and deserves a much better review than I will ever be able to give. He combines the supernatural with the world of mental illness, and does a phenomenal job at that.

Now, there are still a lot of horror elements in the book. The creatures are creepy and gruesome. But at the essence, they are broken human beings that have been let down by the people they trusted the most to help them.

Mark Matthews truly is a special gem, and I look forward to reading a lot more of his works to come.

The hobgoblin of little minds is a modern day masterpiece.

It's brutal and uncompromising, and reading it made me feel as grimy as the underground hospital walls that appear throughout. I believe that was intentional.

Matthews definitely knows his stuff when it comes to psychology and mental illnesses and here he uses this knowledge to create a completely different take on the werewolf genre. It felt real and relevant. The afterword suggests that Matthews feared his readers may take offense in the way some medical ailments are used throughout, but I never felt that way. In fact I remained constantly fascinated.

It's only January but I believe this will be a contender for my book of the year. Its that good.

I read my first book by Mark Matthews, Milk Blood, 3 years ago and I was amazed by his talent. I had never read anything quite like it and I needed more. I went on to read his books On the Lips of Children and Body of Christ along with a few of his short stories in anthologies. He writes addiction horror and has a career in behavioral healthcare. I think his personal experience is what makes his stories so unique and thought provoking

His latest book lived up to my expectations and then some. I didn’read the synopsis but I assumed it was a werewolf story by the stunning cover. It IS a one but not like any other werewolf story you’ve read before. The main character, Kori, grew up suffering through her father’s mental illness. One day he disappears and Kori decides she must find him. She breaks into an abandoned mental hospital where he was treated and encounters him but in a different form than she ever could have expected. That’s all I’m going to say about that portion of the plot because I don’t want to spoil it.

There were many characters in this book that you immediately feel something for but the character that I really was the most intrigued by was Dr. Zita. She’s basically the villain of this book but I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her.

There was a really interesting afterword byMatthews where you can learn more about the connection between bipolar disorder and werewolves. It also gives the reader details about the real Northville Psychiatric Hospital, the hospital in the novel.

I’m giving this book 4 stars. I found it to be an informative and entertaining read. The release date is January 28th, 2021. Don’t miss this one!

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher Wicked Run Press for the review copy.

"She was going to find a way to fix bipolar disorder. To siphon out the worst parts, and make the best parts boil to the top. She had to try something new, because foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. The same efforts bring same results."

Kori has been suffering though her father's mental illness since she was a child. She witnessed his sudden mood swings and his pain until he was admitted in the Northville Psychiatric Hospital, and this is where she last saw him years ago. Now that the hospital is closed and its patients transferred to other facilities far away, Kori wants to visit his father and she finds him living in that very same abandones hospital. But he is not the person she expected, and he is not alone...

Let me start by saying that I was drawn to this book by its stunning cover, which caught my attention on bookstagram and brought me to Netgalley. And since there's scary werewolf holding a human heart in front of a huge red moon, I was expecting a nice horror story with hairy howling creatures. But The Hobgoblin of Little Minds turned out to be so much more: yes it's a horror story, but it also describes mental illness and bipolar disorder in a way that I personally found very respectful and real. There's action and tension, internal monologues and a very well written villain, which was also my favorite character.

I admit that I didn't immediately connect with Kori or the other characters, as I found the first third of the book a bit confusing (mostly because of the time jumps and my inability to remember names), but then I really enjoyed the story and loved the ending. I was also really happy when I found out that there is going to be a second book, I feel like this story has more to give and I can't wait to read it! 4 stars.

* Thank you to Wicked Run Press and NetGalley for providing this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

A unique and admirable werewolf story, written with genuine care and understanding towards mental illness.
Mark Matthews has done himself proud.
Believable characters. Great setting.
Everything was handled wonderfully.
Not much else I can add. It's all in the synopsis.
Five stars.
Buy it.

The Hobgoblin of Little Minds was about Kori Driscoe and the struggle her father had with mental illness. He ends up in a psychiatric hospital where a psychiatrist, Dr Zita, was using the mental illness of the patients to create monsters. Timing their mood swings and the cycles of the moon, the doctor was using drugs to create things which were no longer human. Kori is determined to find out where her father disappeared to and she enters the ruins of the hospital which has been abandoned and earmarked for demolition. She isn't prepared for what she finds in the ruins....

This was an unique way to look at bipolar disorder. The descriptions used to demonstrate what having a manic episode felt like were haunting. Linking it to werewolves made it even more fascinating.

I was a bit worried that the writer would exploit the very real issues mental health patients have and spoil the book. However, he described bipolar disorder with such profound respect that I felt like he opened a door for us to see what people afflicted with this disorder go through.

The character development was quite well done and left me feeling quite sympathetic towards the doctor at the end. But my favorite character would have to be Hades, Kori's dog. I just wanted her to be okay.

I would definitely try more books by this author based on this offering.

This book has very graphic sex scenes and a heavy dose of violence. For these reasons, this book should be read by adults only.

NetGalley and the publishers provided me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The first thing -- the very first thing -- that struck me about The Hobgoblin of Little Minds, before I even started reading it, before I even looked at the cover or researched the author Mark Matthews, was its title. The phrase is mentioned quite a few times in the text, and it is by no means a throwaway title. It means something to every character in this engrossing horror novel. It was coined by the poet, essayist, and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, taken from his 1841 essay Self Reliance. In it, Emerson states that "foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." A quick search on the internet explains this in layman's terms for me: basically saying that just because you've thought the same thing for most of your life, or performed the same actions, it doesn't absolve you of the importance of critical thinking, and the necessity of changing your mind and opinion when better information comes to light. (Sounds like a lot of politicians could use this advice here, but we won't go there.)

Emerson's metaphor takes on new life (literally) during the course of this novel. Told in a somewhat non-linear way, beginning in 2002 and ending in 2018, The Hobgoblin of Little Minds centres around five main characters. Kori Persephone Driscoe, who's father Peter has been in and out of psychiatric institutions, serves as our introduction to Mr Matthew's insane and dangerous world. Kori's mother is about to hightail it out of Detroit and set up home with her new partner in Florida. Kori doesn't want to go, and instead visits the hospital where she last saw her father. Anyone from Detroit will be familiar with Northville Psychiatric Hospital in Northville Township,Wayne County, and former Governer Engler's closure of the hospital for economic reasons. Patients and staff were moved on elsewhere. Kori visits the abandoned building, already the subject of blogs and videos which suggest it's haunted, and finds that nothing is what it seems anymore.

Peter has been the subject of genetic medical experiments by his doctor, the mysterious Dr Ziti. She is an expert in mental illness, and because of her own family trauma as well as a God Complex, she invents a pharmaceutical that she hopes will harness Peter's bipolar disorder into something she can use. Basically she Dr Frankenstein, Psychiatrist. But Peter isn't her first attempt at harnessing this disorder. Her previous failed attempts are chained up in the tunnels under the hospital, and when Kori finds them and her father, the narrative takes a number of strange and disturbing detours.

Maya, a Black woman, traumatised by her mother's suicide, and subjected to heinous treatment by her local pastor, lands on Dr Ziti's doorstep, and is partnered up with Peter in a bizzare and horrifying experiment; the result of which is the book's fifth character, whom I will leave for you to find out more about. I've gone far enough into spoilery territory, and wish to go no further.

Over the last few years or so, there has been a plethora of vampire and zombie novels, movies, and television shows, but few if any on what we call werewolves. I want to point out that Mr Matthew's monsters aren't classic werewolves in the Lon Chaney, jr. vein; they are their own creation, but follow similar patterns of behaviour. The Hobgoblin of Little Minds is as much about how mental illness affects the families of those who endure bipolar disorder as it is about the victims of this illness themselves. Dr Ziti sees that classic attempts to treat sufferers of bipolar disorder don't work anymore and that it's time for something new, something extreme. She sees the foolish consistencies of those in the field who preceeded her. But she has an agenda of her own, a deeply personal one.

The Hobgoblins of Little Minds is at times a violent novel. There is one scene that literally had me crossing my legs, but the victim in question deserved their end. Hat's off to the author, though, who had me enthralled from the first page, and I finished the novel over two nights. (This is a book to read in the dark, trust me.) It's the terrifying offspring of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and H.G. Well's The Island of Doctor Moreau. It also raises questions on medical ethics, and how it can be that sometimes the people we trust to help us won't always have our best interests in mind: which is something equally as terror-inducing as anything you'll read in these pages.

It's worth reading the author's Afterword at the end of the book. Mark Matthews offers us his experience in the field of mental illness and treatment and how he came about to write his book. I found this very informative. If you want to learn more about Northville Psychiatric Hospital, you can check out the links here and here.

A dark and moving look at mental health through the lens of horror.

When Kori Driscoe heads to the now abandoned mental institution, the last known place of her father, she finds far more than she expected. Peter Driscoe has suffered from mental illness his whole life, and his family suffered along the way. After Peter is admitted Northville Psychiatric Hospital, a doctor offers him a new kind of treatment. One that would put a new meaning to his cycles of mania and depression, one that will forever change him and others at the hands of the doctor during the facilities last days.

This book affected me so deeply, I could feel it in my core. Having dealt with mental illness in both myself as well a parent, I could easily identify with the characters. Framing the subject in the world of horror, likening the cycle of bipolar disorder to a werewolf, was a perfect fit. The writing was so deep and dark, I found myself reading slow, savoring each line of prose, and highlighting the hell out of it. It is haunting and intimate, beautiful and depressing, disgusting and wonderful, and exactly what you want in tackling a subject such as this. Yeah, I liked it!

All that aside, the horror in this truly are terrifying. Its got the bloody and disgusting parts us weirdos crave, all while putting a new twist on it so it doesn’t feel like any other werewolf story.

I loved it, I will be rereading it, and I’m excited to read more from Mark Matthews.

Thank you to Wicked Run Press and Netgalley for an ARC of this novel.

When I first saw the cover I wasn’t really sold. Out of all of the famous monsters I’d have to say that werewolves are my least favourite and I never really search them out. Yes, I’ve seen all the most lauded films (The Howling, Dog Soldiers, Ginger Snaps,) but I have avoided the novels. Even just now searching the best werewolf novels all of them look more like erotica than horror. (Which is not a judgement in itself, erotica has it’s place, it’s just not on my bookshelf.)

When I started seeing people on horror bookstagram raving about this book, I knew I needed to check it out. I’m really thrilled I did. I genuinely haven’t seen a new and fresh addition to the werewolf canon in A LONG TIME. So thank you so much Mark Matthews!
Stop reading here if you want to avoid spoilers!

TLDR: You should read this.

The Hobgoblin of Little Minds creates a world where lycanthropy is intrinsically tied to bipolar disorder. Taking the most common symptoms, hyper-sexuality, extreme mood swings, suicidal ideation, and all the other manic/depressive states and tying it into the moon cycle. Where our subjects undergo a violent change that is outside of their control. They turn into fricking werewolves, duh!

The patients/werewolves in our story are institutionalized, and are undergoing a series of experiments in the hope that they’ll be cured. Instead, we have Doctor Zita who believes that bipolar disorder is a superpower, and through drug therapy, isolation and breeding they can distill a perfect specimen. A human who is completely in tune with the workings of the world and history, that will be powerful and perfect in every way. She believes that bipolar disorder has been wrongly maligned, and when it’s at it’s purest, strongest form that you get a new Messiah.

At it’s core this is a novel about how mental illness can demonize a family, but that core is absolutely splattered in viscera. There is SO MUCH BLOOD in this story, and deformed vamp/werewolf hybrid babies, and, well, I’m not going to spoil the bloody bits, because that’s obviously where the real fun is.

I think this was a supremely difficult novel to write, because you’re treading along a minefield of people interpreting this either as romanticizing mental illness or the opposite damning the mentally ill and calling them monsters. I think that Matthew’s day job in behavioural medicine would lead me to believe that it’s way more nuanced than that. I think it more so a critique on how we interpret psychological illnesses and the people who experience them.

This was an interesting new (and perhaps darker) take on the classic werewolf trope. I really connected with the characters, and the themes of family and acceptance stood out. At first I was confused and almost a little offended at the authors use of a psychiatric facility and mental health issues, but by the end of the book (and in reading about his own background and work), it was clear that those themes were not meant to offend, but to bring awareness. Overall a quick, fun, and sometimes shocking read. Highly recommend!