Kind Nepenthe by Matthew Brockmeyer REVIEWED

Let us get it out of the way. There are so many bummers in Kind Nepenthe. It's a downward spiral through and through.

The biggest bummer for me, however, is that I didn't get to reading this last year, when it came out, because it easily would have made my best of 2017.

I'd actually heard of the novel around its time of release, and it's concept lured me in for sure, but as things go it fell off my radar.

Lo and behold, the author reached out to have me review it and what a lucky reader I am.

Kind Nepenthe is a harrowing book, unflinching in it's look at drug culture, human behavior and the unfortunate demise that often grasps those wrapped up in it all. Addiction, human relationships and abandonment are all heavily studied here, with a strong nuance of supernatural horror.

Think two parts Requiem for a Dream, one part The Shining and one part modern-day hipster culture exploration. If you think that's a lofty description for a book to live up to, check it out and you'll see what I mean.

Rebecca is a young single mother who is an out-and-out modern day hippie. She and her boyfriend, Calendula, have taken her young daughter, Megan, deep into the woods of California to begin a new off-the-grid lifestyle, hoping to live off the radar, with organic farming and natural foods.

Their means to do so are helping a nasty old pot farmer, Coyote, harvest his crops in a place charmingly known as Homicide Hill, due to it's murderous past.

Megan starts behaving strangely, talking to imaginary friends, wetting the bed, and spacing out. Calendula begins acting even more bizarrely and Coyote vanishes. Rebecca wants out, but Calendula has convinced her to stay through one more harvest.

Not far away, a big-time meth dealer, Diesel, and his teenage, soon-to-be father son have their eye on the land...

Shit hits the grisly, haunted, and ultimately saddening fan.

Kind Nepenthe is a book full of strengths, nary a weakness. The story follows a full-blown train wreck the reader thinks they can see coming, and just races towards it, with it all playing out in a totally unpredictable way.

The characters are well-developed, and if you're a reader in their twenties or early thirties you've totally met this type of crowd before. Reformed hipsters who are really just kids from a privileged background who don't want to grow up, a single mother lost in a loser of a man's shuffle, and a few old burnt out, relatively awful people... actually that's probably a bit presumptuous of me. Maybe we haven't all met these types, but I'm a social worker, who grew up in the punk scene of a college town. Ya feel me?

The end sure is devastating, but realistic in it's play out. The story is just creepy enough, with the human characters being far more threatening than the ghosts, who simply use the very-human vulnerability to their gain. A few gross out moments, a captivating story, it's an absolute winner.

I loved Kind Nepenthe and look forward to whatever it's first-time author, Matthew Brockmeyer blesses the horror world with next.

Grab yourself a copy, right away here.

5/5.