I was offered a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This review may contain spoilers.
Dirty Spirits is not like anything I’ve ever read before. It is full of really interesting and unique body horror without straying too far into splatterpunk/extreme horror territory, and is a brilliant example of high personal stakes. I firmly believe that all good horror has a bit of surrealism mixed in, but I’ve found more modern novels lacking. Dirty Spirits absolutely hit the spot for me.
The novel has a really interesting narrative structure to it. Despite the story focusing mostly on Michelle and her struggles with both addiction and her ex-fiancé Liam, her new partner Doug is our focal point. While this does make for an intriguing story, I felt it left the text itself a little unbalanced. Most of our flashbacks are from Michelle’s point of view, so those little interludes into Doug’s narration ended up being a bit disjointed from the rest of the story.
Despite this, I cannot fault the writing. The tension is tight, the pacing is amazing, and I was kept on edge the entire time. The book is very reminiscent of Jordan Peele’s Get Out, but with more of the paranormal mixed in. One of the most understated scenes is the motel scene – I won’t say much else to avoid spoiling it, but definitely give this book a look at.
Check out Dirty Spirits on Amazon and Goodreads.
About the book
The Fall of the House of Usher meets Evil Dead 2. Experience an offbeat occult ghost story from the twisted mind of Sawney Hatton.
They say you can’t choose who you fall in love with, and Doug believed it.
He didn’t expect to fall in love with an addict. Once he did, he knew the relationship would be challenging. He knew sometimes it would blow chunks and rain shit. He expected it. He prepared for it. But there are some things you can never imagine happening, crazy stuff you can never prepare for no matter how hard you try. All Doug can do now is hang on and hope the love of his life isn’t dragged back into hell by her ex-fiancé who can’t move on.
Because while Liam Fowlington may be dead… he’s far from departed.
Trigger warnings:
Drug & alcohol addiction plays a large part in the story. R-rated sex and violence.
About the author
Sawney Hatton is an author, editor, and screenwriter who has long loved taking trips to the dark side.
Weaned on a steady diet of paranormal horror and creature features, he quickly developed an appetite for all things macabre and monstrous. With early literary influences as tonally disparate as Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One, and Marquis de Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom, he enjoys fusing the sinister with the satirical, the abominable with the absurd.
Other incarnations (reincarnations?) of Sawney have produced marketing videos, attended all-night film fests, and played the banjo and sousaphone (not at the same time).
As of this writing he is still very much alive.
Writing Werewolf 