TL;DR: Absolutely wild, with a lot of poop.
Source: NetGalley, so many thanks to the publisher!
Plot: Three cousins get trapped in a deal that quickly goes badly, and it’s very gross.
Characters: No one here is likable in any way at all.
Setting: Primarily the real world with a few stints in an off-kilter TV world.
Horror: I didn’t find this scary. I did find it to be simply… over the top and too much.
Summary:
Cousins Cindy, Yangyang, and Mandy’s hot, tedious summer unfolds in their grandmother’s hauntingly familiar house. Mandy, the eldest, seeks connection online and exchanges emails with a stranger. Yangyang, the youngest, retreats into her own imagination in search of meaning. But every morning Cindy wakes with strange objects in her mouth: a button, a berry, a coin.
One night, a starved figure with a mouth the size of a needle-tip appears at Cindy’s bedside. She is hunger-afflicted, a demon with no descendants to feed from: she is Needlemouth. Part vampire, part hungry ghost, Needlemouth forces the girls into a grim task to end a man’s life.
Cindy, Yangyang, and Mindy are plunged in and out of the demon realm, where they are called to break out of the indifference and numbness of their claustrophobic worlds, and where they are met with the most rageful and resistant parts of themselves. In a quest to satisfy the demon’s hunger, they unravel their shared grief and reckon with the cyclical violence that shaped their family. For readers of Akwaeke Emezi and Carmen Maria Machado, K-Ming Chang has crafted a reimagined coming of age novel that asks: what does it mean to become the monster instead of slaying it?
Thoughts:
Needlemouth had a lot of promise, I was really excited for this. A three PoV story about cousins being caught in a deal with a hungry vampire/ghost. Looking at generational trauma and family relationships? Let’s go! I was excited! Unfortunately, I was quickly left going ‘Ew?’.
The first issue I had and what presented quickly was the writing. The prose is so purple it descends into nonsense. The overwrought writing leaves so much in the air, it’s not clear what’s happening at times even as the author waxes on and on. I can push through that, but then we get to the poop. And you might say – surely it doesn’t need to be addressed. Oh but it does. One character is so fixated on actual feces that she smears it on herself. She talks about eating it, and this is a little bit of a theme. We get a whole chapter dedicated to it and little references are thrown out throughout the book. No one in this book is likable but actual poop? Come on now.
Horror should be utilized to look at or talk about things. And while I think Needlemouth tries to, it looses itself in the actual poo and the metaphor heavy writing. This was not a hit for me, I’m not entirely sure who it could work for so perhaps go in with care?
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