This Skin Was Once Mine and Other Disturbances

January 1, 2024

LaRocca wrote the viral-sensation novella Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, which was nominated for a Stoker Award and won the Splatterpunk Award. Known for reads that disturb and terrify, he returns with a new novella and short story collection. Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 5, 2024
These four dreamy and gut-churning stories from LaRocca (Everything the Darkness Eats) offer glimpses of the horrors people visit upon those they love. In the title story, a woman returns home following the death of her beloved father to take care of her estranged mother—and she discovers something terrifying in the attic that’s spent years waiting to make itself known. “Seedling,” a meditation on grief, follows two men in mourning who both sprout little black voids all over their bodies. In “All the Parts of You That Won’t Easily Burn,” a man searching for the perfect knife to give his husband strikes a deal with an unorthodox shop owner: rather than pay for the knife, the man must endure a small cut—with bizarre and horrific outcomes. “Prickle” features two old friends who meet at the park to play the eponymous game, which centers around an escalating series of shocking offenses to strangers and culminates in a truly unforgivable act. Though these stories sometimes struggle to pay off on their harrowing buildups, LaRocca’s refusal to go for the expected resolution lends the collection a wonderful feeling of unpredictability. Readers searching for visceral horrors need look no further.