Book Review: Stay on the Line: A Novelette by Clay McLeod Chapman, Trevor Henderson (Illustrator)

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“The booth’s become a shrine.

“A sanctuary.”

📚

After a hurricane devastates a small seaside town, broken-hearted survivors struggle to pick up the pieces. Among them is Jenny, left behind with her young daughter, Shelby, when her husband, Callum, is lost in the storm. She, along with other grieving residents, soon finds comfort and purpose in the most unexpected of places: an old phone booth, a long-disconnected relic that becomes a beacon of hope. But does this artifact actually enable people to speak with the departed, or is something sinister afoot?

Fueled by tender nostalgia and haunting sorrow, Stay on the Line is a phenomenal supernatural horror tale rooted in the universal experience of grief. The second-person (“you”) point of view is effective and moving, as are the eerie black-and-white illustrations scattered throughout, which evoke visceral feelings that heighten as the reader contemplates the story’s premise. The idea of being able to talk to a deceased loved one again — the very thought of hearing their voice, of having another chance — is absolutely gutting and almost too difficult to bear.

The gradual turn the narrative takes is masterful, descending into disturbing, obsessive, and outright terrifying territory studded with nightmarish, shudder-inducing horrors. It’s a chronicle of love and loss, fantasy and reality, devastation and desperation, holding on and letting go, and, ultimately, life and mortality: the bane of the human condition, the ever-present, unavoidable guarantee that both connects and divides — that which one can never really be ready for, and which no amount of “one-more-times” will ever quench or satisfy.

Thank you to Shortwave Publishing for providing a free digital ARC of this outstanding forthcoming novelette, which releases on July 30th. The feeling packed into 47 pages is staggering, and makes this reader eager for more Clay McLeod Chapman!

🖤Amanda

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