Book Spotlight | The Gulp by Alan Baxter

Today the spotlight is on The Gulp, a collection of five horror novellas by Alan Baxter! Thank you so much to the author for a review copy. This book is out now!

Here’s the synopsis and my review:

Publication Date: 12 January 2021
Page Count: 316 pages
Genre: Horror
Author: Alan Baxter

Synopsis:

Strange things happen in The Gulp. The residents have grown used to it. The isolated Australian harbour town of Gulpepper is not like other places. Some maps don’t even show it. And only outsiders use the full name. Everyone who lives there calls it The Gulp. The place has a habit of swallowing people.

A truck driver thinks the stories about The Gulp are made up to scare him. Until he gets there. Teenage siblings try to cover up the death of their mother, but their plans go drastically awry. A rock band invite four backpackers to a party at their house, where things get dangerously out of hand. A young man loses a drug shipment and his boss gives him 48 hours to make good on his mistake. Under the blinking eye of the old lighthouse, a rock fisher makes the strangest catch of his life.

Five novellas. Five descents into darkness. Welcome to The Gulp, where nothing is as it seems.

Review:

“This place is weird enough in daytime. I don’t wanna know what comes out at night.”

I was really excited to read The Gulp as I have enjoyed the author’s previous work. Anything to do with creepy small towns, I’m in! Like many horror books, the setting is essential to the story and it’s the same here. Taking place in a fictional Australian harbour town of Gulpepper, known as “the Gulp” by the locals, it’s not a place tourists seek out despite its enticing seaside location. People are disappearing. Houses are filled with strange things. The ocean is a source of nightmares. Strange creatures roam. I was captivated by how weird the Gulp is and I wanted to know everything about it.

The five stories are interconnected, so you get information about particular characters even in stories about the others. Out On A Rim is about a truck delivery driver who doesn’t believe the warnings about the Gulp and finds himself in a terrible predicament. Mother In Bloom features two siblings trying to hide their mother’s death when they encounter an unexpected obstacle. In The Band Plays On, a group of backpackers parties with a local rock band whose members seem a little too good to be true. In 48 To Go, a man is forced to do the unthinkable when he loses a drug shipment and has 48 hours to make a payment. The final story, Rock Fisher, sees a man catching something peculiar from the sea – something that doesn’t want to let him go.

This book absolutely delivers the scares and the uncanny. Discovering more about the Gulp with each story was very entertaining. The body horror and sharp violence made me shiver! I didn’t know where the next danger would come from. The relationships and slices of humour make the characters feel relatable. I liked that there are also some terrible people in the book. It gives the town a claustrophobic, sinister feeling. The characters have nightmares of things falling from the skies into the ocean, and I loved how disorienting and terrifying these visions are. The stories suggest something big is about to happen, but the book ends before it’s revealed. I’m dying to know more! I really hope there are more stories from the Gulp because I have a feeling this is only just the beginning.

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Cover photo by Luca Bravo