"Black Mouth" Ronald Malfi 3/5

The story of an unsettled man, alcoholic with troublesome demeanor who happens to come back to his homeland to deal with his inside demons. Along with his friends and brother they travel back in memories, sending us a thrill that remains in their heads and derives from their actions.

When it comes to all the adventures taking place in childhood, the plot is really amazing. It is quite dark, suspenseful and creepy. I have always been fond of books written from the child's perspective, since it adds much spookiness to the innocent narration. Disturbed family lives of those small ones are really moving, so these parts are in my opinion the best in this book. I admire the writing style of Ronald Malfi, but I would be more content if he spent more time unraveling particular scenes. Each time he built an intriguing, dark and atmospheric background to the scene, he cut the point of view too quickly. The action taking place "now" was for me not so interesting, and I would dream of cutting it shorter for the sake of enlarging "past" passages.

All the characters were unfortunately quite flat, hence difficult to differentiate, apart from the Magician, who was the dark horse of this story. An amazing portrait of the villain, a spooky man from the past who causes goosebumps whenever mentioned.

The writing style is flowery, all epithets, and contains many sophisticated adjectives and phrases. I would compare Malfi's writing style to King's manner of tale telling.

I should also comment on the person reading, as I was listening to the audio version. In my opinion this man lacked any emotions and intonation, so I would recommend reading instead of listening to "Black Mouth".

A sincere thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

"Black Mouth" Ronald Malfi 3/5

The story of an unsettled man, alcoholic with troublesome demeanor who happens to come back to his homeland to deal with his inside demons. Along with his friends and brother they travel back in memories, sending us a thrill that remains in their heads and derives from their actions.

When it comes to all the adventures taking place in...