Book Review: House of Bad Memories by Michael David Wilson

“Most of my miserable childhood, I’d been the one to pay. Had the scars and cigarette burns to prove it, faded reminders. Stronger were the memories, the occasional flashbacks. I could still feel each punch and hear his venomous sermon of hate so loud I thought my eardrums would explode.”

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House of Bad Memories opens on a seemingly idyllic Saturday morning with married couple Denny and Kat Carlton caring for their baby over breakfast. Things aren’t as blissful as they appear, however, as Denny begins hallucinating his abusive step-father Frank, after which he learns that Frank has died. And when he begrudgingly returns home for the funeral, mundanity quickly devolves into crass, cruel, extreme, and intense chaos that redefines “dysfunctional family.”

This book is an outright bonkers ride that rockets into its own dimension of horrific brutality, utter devastation, gag-inducing nastiness, and bizarre twists balanced by laugh-out-loud banter and hilarious moments. To say that the reader feels whiplashed is a huge understatement, yet it all works. And works incredibly well. Think Tarantino film in British horror/thriller novel format infused with a dark hilarity that goes to nasty, horrifying, crazy, brutal places. If there is a proverbial line, this book obliterates it, or, shall we say, draws an entirely new one.

House of Bad Memories is a dual haunting, and by that, I mean that it begins as a “quiet haunting” — a man working toward an ideal but held back and literally haunted by childhood demons — and ends with an indelible bang, a “loud haunting,” if you will, this time of the reader (trust me; you’ll see!). The characters and plot line are compelling, layered, disorienting, and, at times, oddly touching, ricocheting to unpredictable and unimaginable places. All of these elements combine to form a strange, funny, horrific, jaw-dropping, and utterly brilliant work that leaves the reader exhausted, as though they’ve run a literary marathon and need a rest! Or perhaps a good cup of tea to calm things down.

A huge thank you to Cemetery Gates Media for providing a physical ARC of this tremendous forthcoming release. It was an incredible ride, and I can only imagine what Michael David Wilson will create next!

🖤Amanda