Mary's Reviews > The Nightmare Man

Hold onto your hats kids, The Nightmare Man by J.H. Markert is a bumpy ride and boy was it a doozy!! I have never read anything like this wild and crazy book, and while some parts are just downright weird, I found myself totally loving it. It is bookish in nature since Ben Bookman is a writer (how novel with a last name like that), and Markert brings the suspense and gore with murders straight out of Ben’s book. I don’t think I fully grasped what the full plot would be since at one point, I thought the book was over, but I was nowhere close to being done. There are lots of horror elements and this definitely isn’t going to be a story for the faint of heart. Markert blends past and present together and while you would think the switches would be confusing, they really weren’t, and I was able to easily follow along. It also helped that the before chapters are labeled as such and are italicized in the book. There are also consistent viewpoint changes which I liked a lot even though at times those did get a touch confusing just for a moment. I eventually got used to them and I was fine listening to the audiobook.

And speaking of the audiobook, I loved it! The narrator is David Bendena and I just now realized I’ve actually listened to him narrate once before (he was in the cast for House of a Thousand Lies by Cody Luke Davis). I enjoyed his narration quite a bit for this book and I thought he did an excellent job with the different voices he had for the various characters. He added an extra creep factor on top of what was already there, and I would definitely recommend listening to The Nightmare Man. This would be an excellent book to read around Halloween, but if you love horror and spooky books all year round like me, it would be great anytime! There is one part that was akin to a Batman movie and more than once my mouth dropped open at things that happen in the story. I just loved the twisty and otherworldly feel this book provided and I am holding out hope that there is a series in here somewhere.

Thank you to the publishers for my complimentary listening and reader copies of this book. All opinions and thoughts are my own.