Midwestern Gothic by Scott Thomas is a four novella collection featuring Gothic tales set in Kansas. The collection defines Gothic as a horror of the land. It is better yet a horror that is just under the surface. The horror in most of these stories is deeply rooted in the lore of the land. The land demands sacrifices. The horror is also deeply rooted in stories passed down from generation to generation. In all the stories, there’s a book that either mirrors the current events. It also provides the characters with insight into a horror they are dealing with. The stories are brutal and enter extreme horror. I describe extreme horror as showing no mercy. It kills anyone or anything and details the violence and gore with the most graphic description possible. I liked some stories more than others but I felt all the stories were good. The pace is pretty good. I felt One Half of a Child’s Face was the slowest. There was a lot of character setup and exposition. There’s only one traditional horror story The Boy in the Woods which is a different take on vampires. The stories start a little odd. They reminded me of The Simpsons episodes. These episodes begin and find their direction later. Wear Your Secret Like a Stone begins with an idea to sell books. It ends up with a complaint about a book a crew member shared. I think Thomas is a unique writer. He describes things in a great way. My favorite bit of writing was a description comparing a patchy field to a child trying to cut its own hair. Thomas’s writing adds a rhythm to the story with words sometimes it’s a heartbeat or a ticking clock. This device works well to add tension to the stories. I read Midwestern Gothic thanks to Inkshares and Netgalley. Midwestern Gothic was published on September 17, 2024.

Plot Summary and Rating:

5 stars

Wear Your Secret Like a Stone is about Tara who works a dead-end job in retail at a big box store. She is saving up to 10,000 to get out of town. She gets a complaint about a book blurb displaying her favorite horror novel. She defends it and learns part of her novel is true. That the town has a hunger stone. Tara still mad at the complaint decides to track the complainer down. Tara finds the woman in the woods close to the hunger stone where she lost her best friend years ago. The woman lied about having a son. She wanted Tara to come because of the book, and how connected it is to Tara and her fate. The book has a great ending that isn’t sad but links to the sacrifices of family. The ghost of the schoolboy wasn’t the main focus of the story, but one of my favorite parts of the story. The mirror at the sink scene was very terrifying. The story within the story was interesting about the original river stone was interesting. I was intrigued by this story from the beginning. Wear Your Secret Like a Stone was easily my favorite story. 4.5 out of 5

4 stars

The Door In the Field is a gothic/folklore horror. An adult woman is looking for her father who abandoned her. She finds him and he tells a tale of why he wasn’t around. Ray, the father, was an angry young man. He would often go off the handle and explode in a fury of fists. Some see Ray as a monster and others see him as a vessel. There’s some good theme in this piece about inheriting the ghost of family. This story is the most intense and very gory. There’s a very intense scene. It involves a wild pig, a guy with a gun, and a man strapped to a chair. The ending was good it wraps up Ray telling his story and what the abandoned daughter thinks about it. 4.1 out of 5

One Half of a Child’s Face is an interesting take. It resembles Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. A woman watches an apartment from her house on the hill. In one of the apartments, her former husband lives with his new girlfriend and their child. The woman watches the 8 floors of apartments like a TV soap opera. She starts to notice people acting strangely when a new painting arrives in one of the rooms. The story was very dark. The ending was satisfying. I liked that the current girlfriend didn’t fall into the wicked stepmother trope of being nasty and actually loved the child. 3.8 out of 5

The Boy in the Woods is about a camper that gets left behind and his camp counselors are acting strange. I like that the catalyst is mosquitoes drinking dead animal blood and then affecting the counselors. The Boy in The Woods is the shortest story and the most straightforward horror story. The action starts pretty quickly and will not disappoint. This story is the most brutal and goriest. This story does have the least character development, which is something I’ve liked from this collection. This story had a connection to books like all the other novellas in the collection. Where the story within the story mirrors the events in the story. The ending for this story was killer, it was bloody yet cathartic. 3.5 out of 5

Recommendation: Midwestern Gothic is a good collection of horror. I was not prepared for how extreme the horror and the graphic descriptions were. I read and loved Violet by Scott Thomas which was not extreme horror and more horror of the mind. The tonal switch was a little bit jarring. But, Thomas is a good writer. He made me care about the characters and the situations they experienced. In each of the stories, I had a moment of not knowing where the story was heading which was exciting. I have not read Kill Creek by Scott Thomas. That book is referenced a lot. It made me want to check it out. Some of the story’s events are mentioned. You could get more out of this book if you read Kill Creek first.

Rating: Midwestern Gothic by Scott Thomas 3.9 out of 5