The Slob Review

The Slob Review

Wow, Aron Beauregard, Once again wrote another splatterpunk horror I do enjoy. This one in particular I had to pause for a moment after one specific chapter but, after picking it back up it leaves room for a Slob two and allows for us to root for the main character.

As Always with Splatterpunk horror I will be adding many content warnings. This kind of writing and especially Aron Beauregard's books is not for the faint of heart. I read this book a while ago after I read Playground, but never got the chance to write this review. That being said, now is the time. In this review, I will be leaving the summary as bleak as possible to give new readers the chance to experience the book as best as possible.

CONTENT WARNING

We start the book with a background of our main character and then we follow her and her loving husband trying to grow their family. In this family, we see a wheelchair-bound husband and a Loving wife who are determined to make money to help their family expand with an extension of their love, and honestly, I do love this couple dynamic. I think providing the readers with such a loving and supportive relationship, creates a sense of loss and tragedy for the remainder of the book, it allows the readers to become angry with the slob and the following events. Not to say that the following events are not gut-wrenching on their own, but providing such happiness adds a layer of demise.

During this time they are faced with the choice to sell the husband's beloved car or start a new career, she is successfully pregnant with their first child. While these hard times haunt the family a stroke of inspiration knocks on their door with a vacuum.

Making her way into the marketing world, the wife becomes a door-to-door saleswoman and kicks ass doing it. She begins to rake in sales and is climbing her way to the top. With only one sale to go, she fuels her burning desire to reach the bonus on the line and travels down the long dirt path to the house in the middle of nowhere. This is where I would stop reading if you cannot handle extreme gore, SA, or body mutilation.

Reaching the doorstep she's met face to face with the most repulsive man she had ever seen, the description of this man is absolutely VIAL and I appreciated the imagery because it adds an extra amount of horror reading. He invites her in to show the product and tricks her into going into the basement. As she demos the product he locks her in and begins the start of his torture. This is where my partner had to stop reading and so did I for at least a month or two.

The slob beats the woman's stomach, pulverizing her pregnant belly, and killing the developed baby inside. The description is so graphic it made me sick. After the pulverization, he then uses the vacuum she was selling to… suck out the now-created baby slushy; while also forcing her to eat it. This only sets the tone for how much worse the book gets. For the following events I will not be going into detail, but I will give a summary.

With the thoughts of her husband in mind she fights to be free, meeting another victim of the slob they fight their way out, unfortunately her newly found companion is shot and killed. After her friend is killed she is dragged to the barn, where women get assaulted and beaten until eventually they get put into the giant grinder, blending them into a human paste, put into jars being sold to a secret society of cannibals. This group believes that eating young beautiful women will keep them young and youthful and has begun selling it around the world. Our main character will not let herself die so easily and fights her way to the top of the giant human blender, knocking the slob into the blender, and turning him into human spam. She manages to make her way home to her husband who has been waiting desperately for her return. Her husband had fallen back into drinking, though it took a while for her husband to come around to his wife's new scarring and appearance and he handled and remained patient with her. She knew he didn’t feel loved as she didn’t want intimacy and began to be sick and after going to the doctor there was the darkest possible ending. She was pregnant, setting up for the second book.

I feel terrible for the main character, I could only imagine what this could do to a relationship, to someone's mental health, to someone's life. This book came from the dark pits of Hell in someone's mind, the worst possible events, the most disgusting and horrific events. This book is hard to read and provokes physical and emotional reactions. I loved Playground, but The Slob hit a completely different set of emotions I didn’t know I was capable of. It is hard to give this book a rating, this book fills you with rage and disgust which sets it up for a terrible review, but that's not the point. You are supposed to hate it, you are supposed to be mad, sad, and horrified. The book is meant for reaction and it did just that. This is where my review is conflicted. I have tried for months to figure out how I feel about this book and for now, I will keep my opinion indifferent.

If you are looking for a reaction, I would suggest reading it, but I will give a big content warning that it is hard to read.