I love a good horror novel, and I often find myself cruising best of lists to find something that catches my interest and haven’t heard of. Apparently in October of last year, I missed a stellar horror release by Sam Rebelein.

Combining folk, cosmic and body horror, Edenville pulled me in and completely enraptured me with its story, even as I cried out WTF a number of times through the narrative.

The story introduces us to Cam and Quinn, a couple struggling to survive their relationship with one another as it begins to fall apart. Cam has dreams of being an author, and Quinn is just tired of trying to make ends meet.

When Cam has a truly horrific nightmare, he wakes and delivers a novel of cosmic horror about something known as the Shattered Man. This catches the attention of a college in Renfield County in a town known as Edenville.

In a remote part of upstate New York, the Edenville College, a select group of the creative writing department have been waiting for Cam. It seems what he has seen is real, and the staff want to assemble more of the broken tapestry that bore the Shattered Man’s image to recreate him, and open a gate to other realms, known as the manyworld, or The Spine.

As Cam works in the department, trying to write, trying to find more pieces of the wood tapestry that carries the Shattered Man’s image, Quinn revisits her past in Renfield County, a place filled with tales of strange things, disappearances and death, and lots of little old ladies working in shops that seem more than a little creepy.

The characters of Cam and Quinn know the horror genre, so there are a few nice meta moments, and yet find themselves being drawn deeper and deeper into the mystery of Renfield and the horrors that it holds.

There are horrifying things throughout this captivating tale that just kept me coming back for more. The body horror, if imagined in the mind’s eye, is truly terrifying, and Rebelein brings it to vivid life with his prose.

Running through it all is a playful, authentic sense of humor that comes from the way characters are reacting to the events they find themselves in. They comment and behave in a way that the reader feels they would as well. And it works as a nice release from all the horrific things Cam and Quinn find themselves going through, and they do not have an easy time of it.

Rebelein relies not only on a fantastic storytelling ability, but the imagination of the reader as he plunges his characters into a terrifying realm, and you may never look at sunflowers the same way again, and probably avoid those little towns in remote parts of New England and upstate New York.

Loved this book, and if you’re looking for something to creep you out, this may be exactly what you are looking for. Check out Edenville!