"The Fall of the House of Usher meets Evil Dead 2. Experience an offbeat occult ghost story from the twisted mind of Sawney Hatton." With that...welcome to the book tour for Dirty Spirits by Sawney Halton in association with Black Tide Book Tours.
Looking for a twisted paranormal packed horror story? Well, here’s some good news...Sawney Hatton has a book that will draw you in and have you page-turning to find out how it all ends. Dirty Spirits is a book that is not to be missed for fans of novels that are twisted and more than a little bit of horrific.
Dirty Spirits is a standalone horror novel with paranormal elements written by Sawney Hatton. This author moves to draw readers in with a cover that really makes you stop and take a second look. What do you see? What makes you pause and do a double take? The sight of a head coming out of a woman’s torso? The fact that she’s holding a bottle of whiskey and pouring it into his mouth? Or is it the cut that mars her flesh and where the head appears to be erupting from? Regardless of what makes you pause, it’ll be enough to tempt you to pick this book up and see where the storyline leads you.
Dirty Spirits is a story that is heavily focused on drug addiction and alcoholism. Two of the characters – Liam and Michelle, have struggled for years with these two particular substance abuse demons. It destroyed their careers and relationships with other people. But one day, push came to shove and Michelle made a decision for herself. But at what cost?
Dirty Spirits starts off by depicting a news story about an ancestor of Liam’s who passed away by fire on his ship. He was called a “professed necromancer.” Typically that means that people feared him and would have eventually taken steps to see his demise. This is just the beginning of this story, and promises much more to come.
Author Hatton paints a story where Michelle breaks away from her toxic relationship with Liam. Things weren’t always bad, but one day...things escalated from bad to worse and things just kept going downhill. Ultimately, if she hadn’t made a choice, she would have inevitably followed him down a very dark path. But because she chose differently, her path took a different course than Liam’s.
Dirty Spirits runs the race of happening in “present” time for the main line of the story. But author Hatton also takes time to send readers back in time to when Liam and Michelle met and how their lives intermingled. Author Hatton shows readers that Michelle and Liam met at rehab. They both got clean together, they established a romance, and things looked good. But then it begs the question...what happened? Where did things go wrong? Well, hold on to your butts because that particular element? It’s coming. Boy is it coming! Prepare for some seriously interesting elements that even YOU, the reader, won’t see coming. Who would?! Honestly...only author Hatton, and that makes this a delicious twisted element to behold.
Michelle is a troubled soul. That much is apparent, but you get to see that she has people who care about her – Doug, and her father are two such characters. Yes, Liam loved her, but in his own way. You’ll see that Liam, after a particular scene in this book, became Michelle’s enabler. He encouraged and pushed her to surrender to the vices that originally plagued them both and ultimately led to his untimely death.
But while Liam may be dead...that doesn’t mean that he’s gone. Nooo...Liam still lingers, and he has no intent to let Michelle go. In his mind, she belongs to him, and he means to have her. Do her feelings matter? Not a bit. Liam and his family have plans put in place and they are determined to make sure that Michelle helps them fulfill each and every one of them regardless of her feelings. These people will manipulate her any way they can to make sure that Liam has her...even in the afterlife.
Dirty Spirits has a slightly rocky beginning of where it seems like the story is trying to find it’s footing. The story shifts back and forth in the narrative from being present day to the past at random moments. Once you gain your footing with this story, it’s going to engage you and pull you to delve deeper. You’ll be compelled to learn more about Michelle’s and Liam’s toxic relationship. You’ll see how it evolves and ultimately devolves. Hate to say it, but you can thank Liam’s parents. Yeah, we said what we said – sorry not sorry. LOL!
One thing that can be safely said about Dirty Spirits is that there are going to be a lot of elements and scenes that you’re simply not going to see coming. Author Hatton is going to make sure you keep coming back for more when it comes to this book. You’re going to want to know what happens next. What is going to happen to Doug? What is going to happen to Michelle? Are either one of them going to survive the drama, the danger and ultimately the fall out of what takes place in this book? You’re going to want to know – does the image on the cover become depicted in the story itself? Want a spoiler? Well, whether you do or not...we’re not giving you one. LOL! Not this time anyways.
As stated in the trigger warnings there is a lot of focus on alcoholism in this book. It is a primary point of the storyline and isn’t overdone. Author Hatton creates characters who are struggling with real issues and their struggles make them seem all the more realistic. Is there sex in this book? Yes, there is. Technically it can be classified as R-rated, but it’s far from being graphic in anyway. There aren’t heavy details, it’s just enough for you to know that either characters are having sex or there is something sexual in nature taking place.
As a standalone novel, Dirty Spirits has an interesting ending. The final chapters work to ramp up the drama and take the story in an unexpected direction. Author Hatton takes two particular characters and lets them have some unexpected breakout moments that lend them toward the light of...dare we say...hero? Shocking, right? But it’s definitely unexpected and does the job of keeping you on your toes.
Dirty Spirits is an interesting novel that will grip you and intrigue you to the very end.
Pros:
- Gripping storyline
- Realistic characters
- Twists
- Page-turner
- Nice amount of horror
Cons:
- Rocky beginning
5 out of 5 stars
Thank you to the author, Sawney Hatton, and Black Tide Book Tours for the opportunity to read and review this book. We look forward to what comes next!
Dirty Spirits
by Sawney Hatton
The Fall of the House of Usher meets Evil Dead 2. Experience an
offbeat occult ghost story from the twisted mind of Sawney Hatton.
They say you can’t choose who you fall in love with,
and Doug believed it.
He didn’t expect to fall in love
with an addict. Once he did, he knew the relationship would be
challenging. He knew sometimes it would blow chunks and rain shit. He
expected it. He prepared for it. But there are some things you can
never imagine happening, crazy stuff you can never prepare for no
matter how hard you try. All Doug can do now is hang on and hope the
love of his life isn’t dragged back into hell by her ex-fiancé who
can’t move on.
Because while Liam Fowlington may be
dead… he’s far from departed.
Trigger warnings:
Drug
& alcohol addiction plays a large part in the story. R-rated sex
and violence.
About the Author
Sawney Hatton is an author, editor, and screenwriter who has long
loved taking trips to the dark side.
Weaned on a steady
diet of paranormal horror and creature features, he quickly developed
an appetite for all things macabre and monstrous. With early literary
influences as tonally disparate as Stephen King’s Pet Sematary,
Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One, and Marquis de Sade’s The 120 Days
of Sodom, he enjoys fusing the sinister with the satirical, the
abominable with the absurd.
Other incarnations
(reincarnations?) of Sawney have produced marketing videos, attended
all-night film fests, and played the banjo and sousaphone (not at the
same time).
As of this writing he is still very much
alive.
https://www.sawneyhatton.com/
https://www.facebook.com/sawney.hatton
https://www.instagram.com/sawneyhatton
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