It Begins by Eule Grey
I would like to thank the author for an advance copy of this novella in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher - Ninestar Press
Published - Out Now
Price - £2.95 ebook
Byron, PhD student and waistcoat admirer, knows about yearning and betrayal. It’s been four years since the love of his life, Ruben, walked off without explanation. Byron dreams of midnight sex he can’t fully remember and a beloved man with dancing eyes. If only Ruben would return… But life moves on. At least it did until you-know-who unexpectedly pitches a tent in the garden, provoking ghosts from the past as well as Byron’s aching heart.
Ruben understands how to push Byron’s buttons. But he doesn’t know why someone is stalking them or why his memories are haunted by students playing a naked truth-dare game in an ancient room. What happened on the claw-marked table covered with crispy skin flakes?
Halloween draws close, and with it comes a rollercoaster ride of sex, fear, and love. At the back of their minds, a chilling, familiar voice reminds Byron and Ruben of a game from long ago and a pact that can’t be abandoned or left unfinished.
True love never dies.
Can love create horror? Certainly some relationships will make us remember times when there was pain and heartache. Getting an ex out of our lives can itself be a form of exorcism too. The reminder of a bad relationship can also induce a sense of trepidation. In Eule Grey’s engaging erotic horror novella It Begins. We follow a young man’s reconnection with a former boyfriend but sense something much more menacing from their past is now also reawakened as much as their obvious interest in one another.
For Sid in 1980 finally finding a university group that invites him is finally some form of validation that he can fit in somewhere. Although this group of eight students are looking for some different kind of extracurricular activities keen to experience their greatest fears and push boundaries socially and sexually. Sid is also intrigued by the extremely handsome Elvin. But he senses something else is in the room when the eight join forces. They are honouring a long standing tradition of this Group which has a murky beginning lost to history.
Meanwhile in the present day Byron looks out of his houseshare and finds a man in a tent camping in the garden. A man that suspiciously looks like his former boyfriend Ruben his first love who vanished on him who he met at university and vanished mysteriously five years ago. His arrival though starts a chain of events linking both men’s pasts and extreme evil is at work.
As often with Grey’s work the main characters really help these stories come alive. Byron really feels like a young man trying to put a brave face with humour on things but as we discover his relationship both brought him joy but also a lot of heartache. There is a lovely early sense of friendly repartee with his housemate Marva where we get the jokes and the insecurities together to help us realise Reuben is going to be a tricky situation to manage. While in the 1980s we see Sid a working class student handing out with quite privileged upper class ones feeling scorned and resented but his own potential first love with Elvin gives him a hope he may finally have found someone. Grey writes these early and post romantic relationships with depth and a very strong erotic bond as they discover their sexual interest in one another and their boundaries being pushed in many ways while across both we sense something stranger and darker is going on.
In both sense something in their pasts is at work and we see the meaner side of humanity has an interest - these quite isolated 1980s students seem to want to humiliate both themselves and each other. While in the present strange events surround the troubled Reuben with strange messages, being followed and increasingly weird electrical activity. It’s an unusual mystery as well as sensing people are starting to act beyond their control but Grey has a neat explanation for it which surprised me. The only drawback was so much time was spent on the core four men in the storyline often the other key characters felt their summaries were a little rushed and perhaps a bit more time with them to explain their motivations and what had happened to them too would have been helpful. I also liked that for all the macabre things going on there is still a good prospect of a happy ending but who knows for sure? I really liked that the horror is not just the strange escalating events from their pasts but how a former love can really unsettle you in so many ways even years later.
It Begins manages to be scary, romantic and also erotic which is a tricky balance to navigate and yet largely I felt succeeded as I cared about what happened to the main cast and it has an interesting angle on the darker side of university too with moments of strangeness that do unsettle. Definitely a treat for Halloween if this sounds like it could appeal.
