Bad Man — Dathan Auerbach

August 12, 2018

Bad Man

TITLE: Bad Man
AUTHOR: Dathan Auerbach
RELEASED: August 7th, 2018; Doubleday Books
GENRE: Horror
AGE RANGE: Adult

SYNOPSIS: Eric disappeared when he was three years old. Ben looked away for only a second at the grocery store, but that was all it took. His brother was gone. Vanished right into the sticky air of the Florida Panhandle.

They say you’ve got only a couple days to find a missing person. Forty-eight hours to conduct searches, knock on doors, and talk to witnesses. Two days to tear the world apart if there’s any chance of putting yours back together. That’s your window.

That window closed five years ago, leaving Ben’s life in ruins. He still looks for his brother. Still searches, while his stepmother sits and waits and whispers for Eric, refusing to leave the house that Ben’s father can no longer afford. Now twenty and desperate for work, Ben takes a night stock job at the only place that will have him: the store that blinked Eric out of existence.

Ben can feel that there’s something wrong there. With the people. With his boss. With the graffitied baler that shudders and moans and beckons. There’s something wrong with the air itself. He knows he’s in the right place now. That the store has much to tell him. So he keeps searching. Keeps looking for his baby brother, while missing the most important message of all.

That he should have stopped looking.

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As a long-time browser of r/NoSleep and fan of Dathan’s work, when I learned that Bad Man was being released, I was so excited. To learn that he was coming out with his first ever full-length novel—and his first new work in way too long—had me rushing to request this one, and I was beyond excited when I was approved for an ARC. That said, the end result left me with some very mixed thoughts about the execution of this story.

He’s not coming home. It was the only echo that seemed to get louder over time, and Ben couldn’t deny that it had changed him, worn him down.

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First, let me say that if you find yourself particularly susceptible to stories about child abduction, proceed with caution on this one. As a mother to a two-year-old, I rarely pick up books about kidnappings because they tend to wreak havoc on my emotional wellbeing, but since it was Dathan writing this one, I decided to give it a chance. While I never felt like I needed to DNF it, there were a few times where I had to put down my e-reader and do something else for a while, and I definitely shed a few tears (and cuddled my kiddo a lot in between chapters). The best execution of the entire storyline is the grief, and it is just written out so flawlessly that you can’t help but feel your heart break right alongside Ben’s.

The sound was what Ben noticed the most. There was so much less to hear now, but Ben still listened.

The rest of the book’s various facets left me feeling ambivalent, frankly. It seemed as though every individual aspect to the storytelling just took things a little too far: the atmosphere was magnificently immersive until it became too repetitive, the red herrings were a whirlwind until they became too unreliable, and the unreliability of Ben’s narrative was a tremendous source of suspense until it began to feel like plot holes. More than anything, the slow burn of the story’s buildup was perfect for creating a nauseating sense of dread, until it reached a length at which I found myself simply ready for it to hurry up and end. Each of these complaints boil down to one thing: if this book had been 50-100 pages shorter, I bet it would have been a perfect 5-star read for me.

Every person has a day that transforms trust into a choice, when he learns that people lie for reasons all their own.

All of that aside, it was obviously still an enjoyable read; that 3-star rating is more of a 3.5, and there were a lot of lesser aspects that I thought were great touches of detail. Ben is disabled and overweight, and while there is a bit of fat-shaming and ableism in regards to both of these things, I enjoyed the complexity it lent to his overall struggles and the back story he eventually came around to giving, explaining how he received his injury, and what that lack of mobility did to the rest of his daily life experiences.

I’ll never leave you, Ben’s heart sobbed. Tell him. Tell him that I’ll stay with him forever. Even if that means neither of us can never ever leave, I’ll stay.

Was Bad Man a perfect read? No. It’s lengthy, it misses opportunities left and right, and to be totally fair, the ending left me with a sense of dissatisfaction that I haven’t been able to shake in the days since I finished reading it. Regardless, Dathan has a knack for plot lines and creepy settings, and my slightly lackluster response to this story will absolutely not slow me down when it comes time to reach for his next release, whenever that may be.

Content warnings for child abduction, abuse, fat shaming, ableism, substance addiction, racism, brief slur usage

All quotes come from an advance copy and may not match the final release. Thank you so much to Doubleday Books for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

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More about Destiny @ Howling Libraries

Just a horror aficionado/geek girl trying to juggle motherhood, reading, blogging, gaming, and everyday life.

11 Comments
    1. I’m debating whether to try to fit this in. I met the author at Comic Con and he was super nice! Books with mixed reviews are sometimes more intriguing to me so hopefully I can find time to read it?

      1. I would definitely say it’s one worth picking up and giving a try for yourself! It had a lot of good to it, and honestly this is on the higher end of my 3-star rating “scale”, for lack of a better explanation ?

    1. Lovely review!
      I can see why you were on the fence with this. Recently i’m super into emotional stories and books that dig deep into people’s sadness and whatnot, but at the same time i do want to feel satisfied at the end and not just go on with the endless wallowing.

      1. Thank you! Yep, I feel you. Like, in horror, I know not to expect happy endings, but I want to AT LEAST feel like the loose ends have been tied up or that the ending made sense. With this one, I felt like it just didn’t click for some reason. Still not a bad read, though!

    1. I can’t agree more with your thoughts! My own review is scheduled to go up in a couple of days, and we hit upon some of the same snags. I also thought it had a great premise, had its amazing moments, but on the whole I thought it was too long and there was some seriously wonky pacing in some sections. The ending dragged and ruined some of the suspense there. I also wasn’t 100% satisfied with how the story ended. I guess it could be worse, but I still have questions.

      1. Thank you! I feel like a lot of the reviews I’m seeing are saying things similar to how we felt about it, so maybe his next release will be a little shorter and paced better (I hope). Like you, I wasn’t in love with the ending. It just felt like too much was left unfinished, you know?

    1. Amazing review, Destiny! I don’t know that this is something I would enjoy even with it’s pacing hangups so I will probably give it a pass but I am sure many will enjoy this one!

      1. Thank you! Yeah, I know we have talked about not being super keen on really slow horror like this, so I honestly would think it would probably be “meh” for you, too – I don’t think you’d hate it, but I can’t really justify nudging you towards it, either. ??

        1. Thank you for your honesty! While I would love to give it a try, I can’t justify something I know I won’t love when my TBR just got knocked over by my cat (literally)

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