Morsel by Carter Keane

TL;DR: A little frustrating and dull.
Source: NetGalley, thank you so much!

Plot: Venturing out into the woods, Lou gets targeted by something that wants to devour her.
Characters: There was some potential here but the storytelling itself didn’t work for me.
Setting: I love a good woodsy horror, and that was fairly well drawn.
Horror: I don’t love the comparisons on the pitch here, it’s not very accurate. It wasn’t particularly well executed.

Summary:

Lou did what the children of parents with back-breaking, poor paying jobs are supposed to do: pulled up her bootstraps, went to college, and got an office job with coworkers who won’t stop talking about their multi-level marketing scheme disguised as self-betterment.

Determined to lift her ill mother out of poverty before it’s too late, and in the spirit of climbing the corporate ladder, Lou accepts an assignment in the rural hills of Ohio. She quickly finds herself stranded in the middle of nowhere with a sabotaged truck, a dog she’s determined to keep safe, and something stalking her through the ancient Appalachian woods.

If she can’t escape the woods in time, she’ll come face to face with the fact that her job isn’t the only thing that wants to eat her alive.

Thoughts:

Morsel was a bit of a let down for me, and I’m not entirely sure where to pin that on. The idea was interesting enough and when you take the pieces out it should be great. Unfortunately something in the storytelling failed this book and I was grumpy every time I remembered I needed to pick it up.

Perhaps one of my issues to begin with is that Lou is incredibly dull as a character. That’s a shame considering information we get later on. They go from nothing but a voice to a possibly interestingly flawed character for about 10 pages before the story ends. Worth it? Maybe not.

The ‘horror’ part of this as well was a bit oversold. The Blair Witch comparison on the pitch can be easily explained in that there are symbols hanging in the trees. That’s about it. It’s not folksy in the way you’d expect, in fact far more corporate horror.

Ultimately I liked what it was trying to do. I liked the idea here. But I was bored for 175 pages of this 200 page novella. Would I recommend it? Maybe? Probably not? Would I advise against reading it? Probably not, just go in with low expectations.