Bumpy Oak Books

**I was provided with an electronic ARC from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for honest review.**

Actual rating: 3.5

Josh Malerman returns with his newest novel, Goblin. The novel is composed of six intertwining stories of characters that all live in the city of Goblin, a city with a rich and twisted history full of secrets. Each story layers on the previous to reveal more and more of the strange happenings of Goblin and the ghosts that haunt the residents.

This is my first experience with Josh Malerman, as I missed all the hype for his previous works. As for Goblin, I was able to see that Josh Malerman’s writing style is very clean and developed with mindfulness. I very much enjoyed the crafting of Goblin and the stories that built the city and its inhabitants.

Unfortunately, the book as a whole did suffer from its formatting for me. While cleverly intertwined, I simply don’t tend to build as much investment in short stories. I liked certain main characters over others and, as a result, was more interested in some story lines over others. This is definitely a personal preference issue rather than any fault of the author.

I am absolutely interested in exploring Josh Malerman’s backlist and am glad to have had the opportunity to read this work early.