Book Review
Title: Savage Indulgence by Shayla Raquel
Genre: Short Story, Horror
Rating: 5 Stars
I am a lover of short story for horror especially when they are darker and gorier so I was excited to pick up Savage Indulgence which seems like a Hannibal type short story around a cannibalistic dinner host named Joyce. Obviously, this review isn’t going to be long considering the story itself is only 53 pages long but I will do my best. This story is about Joyce, a 60-something woman who is a cannibal preparing for a dinner party much like Hannibal Lecter. Joyce is throwing the dinner party for Patrick, Beth, Ken and Michelle but Michelle has to cancel at the last minute leaving Joyce with only three guests all of which she is planning to kill and eat.
The dinner party itself seems to be going smoothly as Joyce drugs them before feeding them human meat and confessing what she is doing as they begin to pass out. The only one who doesn’t hear the confession is Patrick since he was the first to pass out. Joyce immediately begins preparing them for her workspace where she is going to dissect them for their meat but things quickly go south. The first problem comes when she realises that Patrick has tattoos which makes him useless to her so she leaves him to sleep of the drugs on her sofa while she deals with the others. The second problem comes when Michelle arrives and Joyce has to strangle her until she passes out but she comes out of this encounter injured. By the time she gets the remaining three down to her basement workspace, Patrick is waking up so she explains he drank to much and gets him to leave. Back in the basement Ken wakes up because she didn’t give him enough of the drugs and she has to beat him to death meaning he is now useless to her as well leaving her with the women. Upon dissecting Michelle, Joyce realises that she has blood disorder making her blood toxic and the meat unusable.
At this point Joyce is extremely frustrated and this is made worse when her neighbour, Betty asks for help in finding her dog. Joyce obviously helps and ends up running into Patrick again who left his wallet at Joyce’s. They return and find the wallet but Patrick confronts Joyce about drugging him and she uses her age as a weapon to deflect his attention away from her. She does manage to convince Patrick and gets him to leave once more before turning to her final victim, Beth. Beth is the only one that is usable for meat and Joyce makes quick work of this before marinating the meat and heading to bed. We also get a short scene of three months before where Joyce kills her husband Theo at his request after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s which led to her becoming a cannibal in the first place. I really enjoyed this story and it was perfect for Halloween, I also felt the concept would be great as a novella or full length novel much like the Hannibal series which is one of my favourites. This was a solid 5 stars from me, I don’t usually like short stories but this one was creepy, atmospheric and did exactly what it said on the tin.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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