REVIEW: Coffinwood by Aaron Beardsell

Synopsis

Deep beneath the mountains, the hive grows. The hive hungers. The hive hunts.

Hazel Birnam and her team are investigating occult anomalies in the dark forests of Western Australia. People are missing, the dead bodies are piling up, and ancient monsters watch her from the woods.

As the town slips further into madness, Hazel realises she may already be too late to stop the evil growing beneath the hills. A cult is rising to power on twisted promises, and they’ll stop at nothing to achieve their goals.

If Hazel can’t defeat them, she knows that the Gate will open.

Welcome to COFFINWOOD.

Experience the downfall of Coffinwood through this web of interconnected horror short stories that build on each other. Some are heroes. Some are monsters. All are prey.

Review

I love a good horror story. I also love a unique take on the genre. But what I love the most is that feeling…you know, the one you get when you’re engrossed in a particularly wonderful horror story that raises goosebumps on your neck and arms, tightens your chest in anticipation of the jump scare, and keeps you guessing.

Coffinwood does all of these things for me almost flawlessly. Each chapter is a brick in the wall of the mythos swirling around this dark little town and explores briefly each important character in this dark little adventure. And these characters, however brief their introduction and development, will draw you deeper into the story and make you crave the next chapter to see what happens next. The way author Aaron Beardsell crafts their existence while intertwining these individually unremarkable people into a fantastic horrorcraft.

And let’s not forget about Coffinwood itself. The town is a character all its own, lurking in the shadows and fears of its denizens. Within its borders exists a pod-people-zombie-cult-supernatural genre presented in a wonderfully refreshing new way. After all, what do you do when the people you’re fighting look like the people you love?

I love that the history of the area was offered in a way that wasn’t an info dump but journal entries. The entire section brought light not only to the surroundings but the people in them. (I didn’t get the whole Klu Klux Klan in Australia thing, but racists are racists, so the jarring was only momentary.)

I also loved the art starting each section. They remind me of AI-generated images, but whatever keywords the author used were chef’s kiss perfection. They added to the story in a unique and amazing way that by chapter four, I was looking forward to the next one.

What I loved even more was the tapestry of government experimentation in small towns woven with a fantastic supernatural winding tale. The author did a great job of tying everything (and everyone) together for a wonderful tale that haunts my dreams (without a single complaint from me!).

If you’re looking for a singular horror story that’ll keep you on your toes and never knowing where its going next with a great wrap up, then you need to pick this one up today.

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