3.5 Outrageously Far-Out Stars.......UNBURY CAROL is a bizarre story of good vs. evil with a strange mix of....magical realism....old time west...tricks and tricksters....and even a bit of paranormal when monster ROT enters the dreaded world Carol calls Howltown. Carol's frightening (secretive) health condition makes her appear dead as a doornail when she literally falls into a coma and almost no one knows about it, so....after confidant and best buddy John Bowie dies; Who should she tell?....Wh...

Thank you to the publisher for an Advanced Reader's Copy for all seven of the Night Worms review group in exchange for honest reviews. This book is out on April 10th.Of course, after reading Bird Box, I put Josh Malerman in the group of "authors that write books I want to read." Malerman's female protagonist in Bird Box exists in an apocalyptic state of events with a major physical handicap. In this book, Unbury Carol, our protagonist Carol is in a "wild, wild west" setting and also suffers from...

Copy furnished by Net Galley for the price of a review.How dead can you be, and still be alive? Carol Evers can tell you all about it the next time she wakes up.  She can listen with her mind's ear, no one else can hear.  The Trail, where legends are made, where you can expect tricky lighting, and space that is "off".  Now, throw in Smoke and a mirror.  A sour memory and a lost love.   I'd advise steering clear of Smoke.  He has a penchant for oil (only the good stuff will do!), and he talks in

I have literally just finished this book, and it completely exceeded my expectations. I will often take a peek at spoiler-free reviews before I pick up a book, and I was a bit disappointed when I noticed that quite a few of the reviews on Goodreads were negative. People that I respect were calling this one a DNF, and others just flat out didn't like it. I was worried going in, especially since this book was selected as the second book for a review group I'm in called NightWorms, and I don't want...

3.5 stars!Hell's Heaven! I haven't been this torn about a book in a long while. UNBURY CAROL was brave in exploring new territory, (weird western, I'd call it), while at the same time it wallowed in repetition. Carol has a rare condition which causes her to fall into a coma for days at the drop of a hat. To anyone unfamiliar with her disease, she appears to be dead. It's important for at least someone to know what's going on with her so that she doesn't get buried alive by mistake. However, Ca...

i have decided to give this five stars after all, because i can’t really think of anything i didn’t like about it, but so many readers had so much less fun than me, i worry i will be cast outta goodreads for my opinion! good thing i have a blog now.i don’t mind that this book isn't a horror novel. i wouldn’t classify either Black Mad Wheel or A House at the Bottom of a Lake as horror, so i didn't have any hardwired genre expectations going into my fourth malerman. as far as what it IS, well, it'...

DNF at 15%. This one is just not clicking with me at all, and Malerman's latched onto certain words he repeats ad naseum. Every single character, apparently, must utter the phrase "Hell's heaven" in every conversation they have (word search shows 45 instances of this throughout the book). And if I have to be told one more time that John Moxie is an outlaw, I'm going to break my Kindle. Word search shows 150 instances of the word "outlaw" cropping up, and I just don't think I can take it. One sec...

Carol Evers suffers from a bizarre condition: at times of stress, she lapses into a coma that closely resembles death, only she can hear what's going on around her. Now she's in one of her comas and her husband is planning on burying alive. The only man that can save her is a notorious outlaw that ran from her and her condition years ago, James Moxie...Josh Malerman is all the rage these days. What better way to give him a shot than a Netgalley ARC of his upcoming book!Unbury Carol takes place i...

"I'm a thing old enough to know that old was once young and that because young becomes old there is not love of life, only a fear of decay."Unbury Carol is sort of a mash up between a spaghetti western, the Brother's Grimm's Sleeping Beauty and do I dare say it, a Quentin Tarantino movie? I could seriously see Tarantino doing a movie with this book. Some of the characters are almost cartoonish such as Smoke - and I do mean that in a good way. He is a nasty piece of work.I am not a fan of western...

No one likes to be one of the pioneering negative reviews for a book, especially when you're already invested in the author, so let me start out by saying: some readers are going to love this. Unbury Carol is not a bad book by any means - it was just not the book for me.I recently read and adored Bird Box, and even though the summary for Unbury Carol seemed about as different from Bird Box as anything could be, I had enough faith in Malerman's storytelling to confidently dive in. What I found wa...

Being an active Goodreads user, I put great importance on writing and, especially, reading reviews. I will admit reviews definitely impact what I choose to read: my TBR is long and I want to read the best books possible. Unbury Carol, the upcoming release from Josh Malerman, has not been getting good reviews — especially from my friends, people I trust in the GR community. Since his book was chosen as the second Nightworms read, however, I had no choice but to jump in and hope for the best.And w...

"Fear was no stranger to Howltown, no traveler from the Trail, but the fear she felt now was shattering." I read Unbury Carol as the second book for the Night Worms review team. This was a rollercoaster for me - I really enjoyed some parts, and struggled with others. I want to say up front that I am not particularly fond of books with a lot of traveling, so keep that in mind when reading my review. I think I would classify this as a paranormal western. Don't go into this expecting a horror novel...

2.5 stars.UNBURY CAROL, by Josh Malerman is a difficult book for me to review. On one hand, his writing is very nice and fluid (in parts), but overall, the repetition of certain phrases had me practically rolling my eyes by the end.The premise of this story is very original. Carol has a rare condition that causes her to go into a coma for days at a time, appearing dead. Now married to someone who only wants her money, he plans on making her next "death" the "real deal". Enter an "outlaw/boyfrien...

‘’To someone outside the coma [....] I appear...dead. Hardly a heartbeat. Far from fogging a mirror. And a pulse as slow as a slug. There’s no light in there, John. I can hear the world around me, but I can’t move. And the wind in there...it howls. So...Howltown.’’ I’m certain that the people sitting opposite me in the Tube during my commute were absolutely amused, watching my face while I was reading. Shock, anxiety. Heart racing, eyes staring in surprise and disbelief...Because this book by

To be fair I only made it 10? 15? 20%? into this one. I don't even know and don't care enough to look it up. Whatever percent it was, it was too much and I couldn't go on.I hated everything about this one except for the "idea". Too bad, I was looking forward to it and it sounds good on paper...but not on the page.Edited 3-23-18After recently watching a video on beta readers by my friend Edward, I felt bad that I just gave this one a single star without any explanation other than I really didn't

Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/WARNING: THIS IS GOING TO BE A HOT MESS.You ready???? Okay . . . . . Carol is “dead” – her evil husband (who was TOTALLY Justin LaMonte in my brain). Sidenote (yes already a sidenote): Do y’all know who Justin Lamonte is? Probably not because you’re not ancient, but if you too are old you might remember him as a super douchebag from North and South . . . . Anyway, Justin Lamonte Dwight wants to get Carol in the dirt stat so he

First off, I will say that this is definitely not Bird Box. If you want to read this because you loved Bird Box, that is okay, but if you think you will be disappointed if it is not like Bird Box, then you probably won’t like it.I thought it was pretty good! I was leaning towards 5 starts until the end when things started to get awfully convenient. In fact,(view spoiler)[the book is called Unbury Carol, and the whole actual unburying is just kinda “BOOM! Done” after a lot of buildup (hide spoile...

Josh Malerman writes what he wants and that is just fine with me. Whether it's a mother trying to keep her kids alive, a group of musicians trying to save the world, or an outlaw trying to rescue his ex-lover, they all have one thing in common: Malerman communicates desperation and incredibly deep themes in a storyline that is as unique as a fingerprint. In Unbury Carol, Malerman uses a combination of western, horror, thriller/suspense, paranormal, a little bit of steampunk, and wild west humor

Gotta think about this... Storyline is unique, definitely has potential.... the telling is brooding, a creepy tale... Oh, this author's previous book, Bird Box, wew, was so very good! But this one just seemed to drag on a bit too much for me. Fastread/skipped a couple parts I admit. Mmm.... gotta think. No doubt this author is good, with a great imagination. Three and a bit, but no four star I'm afraid. Sleep on it I will, without fear of being buried alive ;-) More to follow.

TWO STARSFor transparency --I did not listen to the whole book. It is a western, which is okay, but I just couldn't get into it. I gave it the old college try because I absolutely loved Bird Box and I think the author, Josh Malerman, has an INCREDIBLE imagination. This is the story of Carol, she falls into deep comas repeatedly throughout her life. When this happens, people think she is dead since her very light pulse is almost impossible to detect. She calls it going to "Helltown" because of th...