Progeny

Thanks to Truborn Press for the e-ARC, I’m glad for this spooky read!

With the son’s name being Craven, and the way the story opened, I really thought this was going to be some kind of modernized werewolf story. I’m not entirely sure why, but that was the first thought that hit me. It’s not, and I happened to like the direction the story took.

Leo is the daughter of one of Paul’s closest patients. So when something goes wrong, his wife thinks it’s only right that they take him in. The eight year old has some real quirks to him, and it’s a learning curve for the entirety family. He’s obsessed with death, recruiting a small army of roadkill and dead animals. He keeps them in a backpack, and plays with them like toys. However, when he does, strange things happen, and they even seem to move…

It’s not just Craven having a hard time adjusting to this new life change…frankly there’s something off about Leo and his parents just can’t see it. He tries to reach out and make the brotherly connection, but it doesn’t work, doesn’t last, and things go wrong from there. I even liked how Leo speaks in a way that’s not usual for a child to his adoptive father, really adding to that layer of other.

While this is short, it does do a solid job of building an atmosphere of paranoia, and Craven seems to be the only one noticing that there’s something wrong with Leo. It could be Paul’s blissful ignorance, his wife’s plotting, or something else entirely that’s keeping them blinded to it. But will they catch on only when it’s too late? The later, more demonic, parts of this book brought to mind scenes from Paramount’s Evil, which I loved.

The examination of familial ties is really well done, and although I wish this had a wider, more in depth ending, the story really is about that examination overall. The ties that bind them are also part of the problem, dragging them down. This family’s legacy is anything but normal.