Cruel Summer By Wesley Southard
Melissa Braun is a broken woman. Only wanting what’s best for her family, she’s willing to do whatever it takes to mend her fractured relationship with her abusive boyfriend. In a last ditch effort, she hopes the sun and sand of a much-needed Florida vacation will bring them closer together.
Patrick Braun is a demoralized kid. Quiet and sullen, he only wants his mother to see her boyfriend’s crippling torment. After years of silence, he refuses to stand by and let the abuse continue to tear them apart.
Hoyt Rainey is a vile man. Unable to keep his hands to himself, he finally takes his anger one step too far. Only this time, he finds himself on the receiving end of his own punishment. Down and down he goes, plunging deeper into the dark blue abyss of the sea.
Melissa and Patrick finally believe they are safe, the trouble now behind them for good. They are wrong.
Gods never really stay dead-they only lie in wait. And when a beast as old as time discovers Hoyt…he, too, won’t stay gone for long.
The nights grow darker, the water flows colder, and the cruelty of summer lives on. Cruel Summer
This is a mixture of domestic abuse, a mothers deep love for her son, and a creative story intertwining modern day and mythology.
It takes us into the depths of the monstrous part that often lives in a vile humans heart and the hate that dwells there. As the story unfolds, it reveals the mythological creature that dwells in the deep depths of the ocean, lying in wait to return, waiting for the hate to feed it and give it control.
A story of a mother and son living through domestic abuse and coming to grips with it through strength and love, finding a way to lean on another human and move forward. Doing everything in their power to push the past behind them takes them on an even darker path, one which they may not survive.
At times during reading this, it gave me the chills. Just thinking about how vast and powerful the ocean is. Imagine it being completely controlled along with all the deep sea creatures by an evil mythological God!
I enjoyed reading this, entertaining and creative with a satisfying ending!
English You’ll never go in the water again!
Like haunted houses, deep-sea horror is a sub-genre that a lot of horror writers seem to flirt with at some point in their career. A lot of great authors have made it their entire career and, at this point, it feels like one of those subjects where there is little fresh ground to tread.
Enter Wesley Southard…
Melissa has decided that a vacation with sun, sea and sand is just what is needed to mend her broken relationship with her abusive boyfriend, Hoyt. With her twelve-year-old son, Patrick, in tow, the trio set off on a week-long stay in Florida where she hopes to forget her troubles and fix her family. It is not long until Hoyt devolves into his pattern of abuse and, after taking his anger out on Patrick and Melissa, a terrible accident unwittingly unleashes a much greater evil.
Haunted by terrible visions and stalked by a nightmarish creature that declares itself a god, Melissa finds herself a target of an unspeakable evil, aeons-old and with a desire to destroy mankind, starting with her and her family. Will Melissa submit to these unfathomably ancient forces, or is she done being a victim?
Fans of Steve Alten or Hunter Shea will find a lot to love here. Mixing aquatic monster mayhem with Greek mythology to create something simultaneously familiar but with a fun twist, if you’re in this for the man versus nature showdown, then you’ll get that in spades. The action, once it gets going, is inventive, gory, and massive in scale.
As you may expect from Wesley Southard, ‘Cruel Summer’ isn’t satisfied with just being a big fun creature feature and his penchant for the weird, bordering on bizarro is present, albeit far more restrained than his previous books. Some set pieces have a surreal, nightmarish quality to them, and it gives the whole book a sense of unpredictability. The grand finale is especially chaotic and it works incredibly well, delivering unique twists on well-worn tropes within the popular deep-sea horror genre.
A big reason this works as well as it does is that the big action set pieces and bigger body count are all grounded in a very personal tale of a mother navigating an abusive relationship whilst trying to care for her son. Melissa is a complex and sympathetic lead, full of strength and resilience, yet seemingly powerless to end a cycle of poor decisions. The bond between her and Patrick is the heart of the book, and you find yourself desperately wanting both to make it out of the book unscathed so that they can begin to take steps to mend their fractured relationship.
Deftly mixing a classic gut-munching creature feature with a serious, often painfully real family drama, all told with the trademark Wesley Southard skew, Cruel Summer is a big, bold horror extravaganza with heart. Do not read before you go swimming!
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Island vacation gone very wrong. Good unique story with some pretty terrifying scenes. If you have a fear of drowning then this one with get under your skin.
I did not connect with the characters so it was hard to be empathetic with them but the story was strong enough to keep it interesting Wesley Southard uhhhh
the cover creature reminds me of azog
and that bananarama's famous song
it's a cruel, cruel summer, leaving me here on my own~now you've gone~you're not the only one~ Cruel Summer by Wesley Southard is a story of tension and terror and cosmic horror. This is one of the most horrifying stories I have ever read. The raw real-life horrors, which are an integral part of the story, are so realistic in content, psychology, and premise they filled me with a persistent feeling of dread and straightup gave me nightmares. There were times I could not decide whether the cosmic horror or real-world horror was more horrifying. I found myself both eager to turn the page and terrified of what awaited me when I did.
Wesley Southard has elevated himself to a Master of Tension with Cruel Summer. His writing is flowing and evocative. His characters are vivid and relatable. His gifts for creating and storytelling are beyond impressive.
Cruel Summer is a must-have, must-read for horror fans, a truly shelf-worthy book. Horror, Thriller
A mother and her 12 year old son arrange a deep sea fishing excursion as a bonding experience and a new beginning on life. However when the mother’s abusive boyfriend tags along, the warm sounds of a gentle ocean breeze quickly turn into warnings of a living breathing aquatic nightmare.
Cruel Summer by Wesley Southard acquaints the reader with both a loathsome villain with a inexcusable derogatory personality and a protective strong willed Mother who’s secret will soon change lives forever. The first portion of Cruel Summer flows like a chilling Hitchcockian crime novel. Receiving the best of both worlds, it then morphs into a inexplicable seawater Lovecraftian nightmare. The darkness he weaves around the central characters is an oceanic vessel fueled by an ageless evil. Having the reader understand and care for the characters is a special achievement in the art of writing fiction. So much that the reader’s heart will hammer along with the suspenseful storyline. Not for the gore and not for the shock value, there’s a rhyme and reason for the terror that takes place within these foamy seawater soaked pages.
These things are certain: The murky ocean depths possess powers to give life as well as take it away. Heroes, minions and gods of the ocean floor hold a vast history of theological enigmas. Wesley Southard’s intriguing approach to writing becomes a proficient work of fiction for each and every book. Cruel Summer is no exception. Another strong Horror Bookworm recommendation for Wesley Southard. Horror, Thriller A cryptid horror story on steroids.
That’s the best way I can describe Cruel Summer by Wesley Southard.
First off, damn. That cover. Damn. I mean what kind of inspired hellscape, nightmarish kind of artistic mind comes up with this stuff...
More please... pretty please...
Anyhoo...
As other reviews have mentioned, this tells the story of Melissa Braun and her son Patrick, taking a good intentioned, but ill-fated trip with Mel’s abusive boyfriend. That vacation proceeds kind of how you would expect. Until it doesn’t. That's when the book takes a turn into supernatural horrorland. Which was cool. As it works out,
Well, that doesn’t exactly happen, The whole book, which takes place in Florida, has an oceanic feel to it. Which handled right, the ocean can be terrifying. Oceans are so vast and unknowable and filled with life and lethality and wonder, how could they not be?
For a short tale, this had elements of a slow burn, particularly in the middle, which were not inherently bad. Just an interesting story developmental technique you don’t often find in a work this short. It had good themes like strength deriving from goodness and purity of heart. Southard, I thought, did a very good job of making a loathsome villain you could hate right from the outset and made the Hoyt character palpable, believable, and integral to the story. His evil and brutality drive Mel and Patrick and to rise up and find their inner power in this story. Just reinforces what I’ve heart before is that a story is only as good as its villain.
The writing is easy to read and flows quite well. I’m a sucker for great imagery and this had a good amount of that. The ending was exciting and action packed, even though I found a few sequences, even for supernatural horror, to seem a tiny bit implausible in terms of minor characters’ reactions.
There aren’t really criticisms I can make of this that aren’t complete nits, so I’m just going to leave that out. Except the last chapter, which read sort of like an epilogue, felt a bit too abbreviated to me. But nothing significant enough for me detract from this otherwise edge of my seat read that kept me propelled further and further into the story. So that's why I am giving it 5 stars.
I look forward to deep dives into more of Wesley Southard’s work.
Yeah. I had to go there. Hardcover I'm sorry to say that I left this book on my to-read list for so long. It was very well done! It did strike quite a few personal notes, as Patrick and Melissa withstood the onslaught of abuse from Hoyt early on. And while I could see certain things appearing to be done without a certain level of logic, I can attest that this is was a fairly accurate depiction. Abuse for a mother, at that level, is not just an easy pick up and go situation. I saw my mother go through very similar things during my upbringing, and I obviously experienced a high level of various abuses myself. So I would just recommend that anyone who is reads this book, without such a background, understand that you must be open-minded of abusive situations and how they may play out. But beyond all that, I loved the style of writing, story premise and progression, the characters and the scale that it went to. I really was left wondering how the book was going to end and just wow! I am a big fan of this story, and thought the cover had a cool look, too. I can't compare it to anything else that I've read to date, but that's a huge plus, as it demonstrates the individuality of the story. Monsters, gods, killer dolphins, and some strong writing here make it all worthy of your time and consideration. Wesley Southard I beta-read this book in March of 2020 and will refresh my thoughts after reading over the final copy from Death's Head Press. Started out strong and kinda creepy but then devolved into a lame family drama/clash of the Titans story. Cruel Summer
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