After his husband dies, Simeon Link finds himself overcome by grief and seeking comfort in an unusual support group called The Wretches, who offer an addictive and dangerous source of relief. They introduce Simeon to a curious figure known as Porcelain Khaw—a man with the ability to let those who are grieving have one last intimate moment with their beloved…for a price.
Hallucinatory, fiendish, and destructively beautiful, Wretch transports us to a world where not everything is as it seems, and those we love may be the ones who haunt us most.
Dark bleatings, my lovelies. I’m later than I wanted to be getting this review out, but I finally made it, and as usual with LaRocca’s work, I’m excited to talk about it.
Every time Eric releases something new, I find myself thinking, “I think this might be their best so far,” and Wretch is no exception. I love Eric’s particular brand of weird, whether it’s the unique weirdness of the concept or the twisting of a trope into something deranged. It’s not just that the ideas are so unique and fresh, but that with each new book, the weird is weird in a different way than it was last time. I was surprised and delighted to uncover a Kafka-esque oddness in this one.
Simeon suffers the tragic loss of his husband, and this is on the backdrop of having a kid from his previous marriage that he feels too unworthy to have (and as a result he mostly avoids him), and an ex-wife who had her world upended by their divorce, and she is clearly still in love with him. Simeon’s life is riddled with shame, guilt, and unimaginable grief. His support system is his ex-wife, who he doesn’t want to take advantage of because he’s aware of what he’s put her through. Good grief, my heart strings were just being plucked from every angle here, for every character.
Simeon learns of a guy with a supernatural ability that offers one last connection with his dearly departed, and he jumps at the chance. He doesn’t know what could bring him closure but he hopes this might be it.
My tribe, I had no idea where Eric was going to take this story. There seemed to be many roads it could go down, but I couldn’t imagine a single one of them. I was so invested in the emotional peril of the protagonist that I wasn’t trying to predict it anyway. This is one of the other things I love about LaRocca’s work so much – I am always so deeply invested in the characters because they are always suffering, and they’re always so flawed. You know, like real people. I don’t always like Eric’s protagonists for the whole story, but I do always understand where they’re coming from and care about what’s going to happen to them. Eric has a remarkable ability to translate the deepest, most mind-wrecking emotions to the reader.
Often-times, because authors want us to care about their characters, there’s a tendency to try to amplify their pain but hold back on giving them thoughts and actions that might not be so savoury. I personally find Eric’s approach a bit more realistic and relatable, because we’re not shielded from their characters having ugly or selfish thoughts. I’ve known people who have suffered a loss, but also felt somewhat relieved that the person died. I’ve known women who desperately wanted to conceive and then once pregnant, panicked that they were actually ruining their lives. I know gay people who felt socially forced into straight relationships, who genuinely cared about their partners but constantly felt sick with guilt because they knew they were deceiving them. Even people that try their best to be good have these types of contradictions in their thoughts and character, and don’t always make the best decisions, especially in moments when emotions are high and turbulent. Eric’s writing is dark but so refreshingly honest in this regard.
Thematically, there are some obvious themes but, for me, there was one major thing beneath the surface that I read into it, and that’s the cyclical nature of trauma. Not just the damage done to ourselves if we don’t seek healing, but how we can inadvertently pass this on to those who care about us, sewing different anxieties in them that then form their own damaging patterns. I feel this is something that’s very difficult to balance when it’s discussed because it can feel unsympathetic to someone who is traumatised to point out that the way they behave because of their trauma can have a negative impact on others, but Eric does a great job of showing all of the angles of this here. Each character is shown, flaws and all, but without being demonised. It’s just so tragic, as stories about death often are, and it also serves as a warning to do your best to pull yourself back before you’re entirely dwelling in your pain.
I loved it, obviously. As usual with LaRocca’s work, check the trigger warnings if you need to, but I recommend this. I think it’s fantastic.
If you’d like to check out the book or the author, I’ve popped some links below for you:
Bleeeeeat!
Happy Goat Horror 
Leave a comment