Imagine one of Edgar Allan Poe’s creepy stories updated to the modern world, with all the intrinsic horror retained. Picture the story of Sleeping Beauty, with an eye to the darker possibilities of the situation. Take the classic woman in danger scenario and add a new dimension of horror to it. Sound interesting? Then you should definitely check out Josh Malerman’s new book, Unbury Carol.
Meet Carol Evers, a woman with a serious, albeit mostly secret, problem: she’s died frequently already. Those aren’t real deaths, just comas that imitate death perfectly and last for a few days (probably the sort of thing Juliet faked in Romeo and Juliet).
One of the people who knows about this condition is her current husband, an evil man who married her for her fortune and who figures he can get his hands on that fortune if Carol “dies”, is declared dead, and buried (alive). The other person who knows about this is her former lover, the outlaw James Moxie. When he finds out about her husband’s horrible plan, Moxie comes rushing to try to save Carol from a living death.
But, unlike the heroine of the classic Sleeping Beauty story, Carol is awake and aware of her situation, terrifying as it is, and she herself is fighting to free herself from the nightmare that’s caught her up. In the end, even as the two men battle to determine her fate, Carol herself is the one who has to save herself.
The terror of being buried alive is something deep in our psyches. If you’re brave enough to face that vicariously, then Unbury Carol is the book for you.
Bookskill 
[…] of this year’s nominees, Unbury Carol, by Josh Malerman, was also the subject of a blog post here. The story of a woman who periodically falls into deathlike comas, and whose evil husband intends […]
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