Horror Mini-Review Pt. IV: We Are All Completely Fine by Daryl Gregory

Welcome to part four of my mini horror review series, featuring We Are All Completely Fine by Daryl Gregory! Previous mini horror reviews can be found below: 

Part I: Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice
Part II: We Can Never Leave this Place by Eric LaRocca
Pt. III: Winterset Hollow by Jonathan Edward Durham

We Are All Completely Fine by Daryl Gregory

Tachyon Publications
Publication: July 21st, 2014

Paperback. 182 pages.

About We Are All Completely Fine:

"Harrison is the Monster Detective, a storybook hero. Now he’s in his mid-thirties and spends most of his time not sleeping. 

Stan became a minor celebrity after being partially eaten by cannibals. Barbara is haunted by the messages carved upon her bones. Greta may or may not be a mass-murdering arsonist. And for some reason, Martin never takes off his sunglasses. 

Unsurprisingly, no one believes their horrific tales until they are sought out by psychotherapist Dr. Jan Sayer. What happens when these likely-insane outcasts join a support group? Together they must discover which monsters they face are within and which are lurking in plain sight."

We Are All Completely Fine follows a group of people through their time in a therapy support group together. However, this is no ordinary group of people, but rather is composed of people who have survived their own horror story and have been living their life dealing with the aftereffects ever since. I’ve read a few books with this similar set up and have really enjoyed them, so I was pretty excited about this one.

What I liked: I really liked getting to know each character and their backstory since they all come from very different circumstances with some very unique, tragic history, and it was fascinating to see them come together and share these experiences with one another. It was particularly interesting to see how they all chose to deal with their experiences; for instance, some embrace it and are public with their experiences, whereas other try to hide from it and embrace as much invisibility as possible. Throughout the story, we visit each group member’s POV and get to see everything from their perspective, which I appreciated and I think allowed for a more well-rounded and compelling narrative to see how each perceived the rest of the group. I also liked Daryl Gregory’s writing style overall, and it definitely makes me want to read more books from him.

What I didn't like: There is a bigger overall plot that comes to light more near the end of the book, and although this plot was really interesting to explore, I did feel that things were just a little rushed and out of place at times for me. I liked seeing how individual characters ended up at the end, but I just didn’t necessarily love the pacing and I did find my focus wavering a bit in the latter portions of the book.

Overall, this is a very solid horror story following some intriguing characters straight from their own horror stories. It wasn’t as spooky as some horror novels are, but it will definitely still hit the spot for anything in the horror realm.