Book Review
Title: Dead Inside by Chandler Morrison
Genre: Horror
Rating: 5 Stars
I didn’t know what I was expecting when I picked up Dead Inside but it certainly wasn’t what I got, both in a good and bad sense. First let me start my review by saying to check the trigger warnings before reading this book and it is very dark and contains themes like necrophilia so please be aware of that when reading this book and my review as I will be discussing it. We are introduced to our protagonist, a hospital security guard who is a necrophiliac, as he can not get aroused by living women despite trying on several occasions and he is content with his life, until one day he catches a doctor in the hospital named Helen committing acts of cannibalism in the morgue.
They have a conversation while Helen is consuming a dead baby and he tells her that he isn’t going to tell anyone about her activities if she keeps his own a secret and this act forges a bond between the pair. Despite the protagonist being quite anti-social he tolerates Helen’s presence in his life even coming to enjoy her company. Soon after the pair go on a date, the protagonist is nervous as he has a horrible track record with living women and when Helen invites him back to her place he goes. However, the second he becomes aroused he freaks out and bolts from the house causing some tension between the pair but Helen dispels this by asking him to watch her eat and he agrees. During the process he finds himself immensely aroused by Helen and has sex with her despite the fact she is living and this upsets the balance of his life more than he intended it to and tries to break things off with Helen.
Helen is persistent and makes her presence known in his life which he doesn’t appreciate, things become even more complicated when Helen tells him that she is pregnant with his baby. At first he doesn’t believe but she convinces him, he wants her to have an abortion because neither of them is right in the head but she refuses. He has concerns that she is going to eat the baby but she protests saying it is different because its their baby although he doesn’t want to claim it at all. The relationship between them sours despite Helen asking him to stop shutting her out which he does to an extent but it isn’t the same as before. One night he gets a call from Helen and she tells him the baby has died inside her and as a maternity doctor she knows this to be true and asks him to come over which he does. Helen removes the baby from herself causing her to bleed out but before she does she consumes their child and the protagonist has sex with her corpse. Just at this moment, Helen’s husband returns home and he finally puts the clues together as he sits in their living room smoking. It isn’t clear what happened to the protagonist whether he was caught or whether like Helen he worked his way up to murder. Overall, Dead Inside was a dark and disturbing read that turned out to be one of the most gripping novels I have read in a while despite its subject matter. If you can stomach the content then I would recommended picking it up and I will be checking out more of Morrison’s work in the future.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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