Wet Bones, at its core, is the tale of a mass murder investigation by two dumbfounded cops with no leads or ideas what in the hell has been happening. The murders surely cannot have been committed by anything of this world, though. There’s definitely some dark magic afoot.

Full skeletons have been discovered in the woods, completely stripped of all flesh, but appearing as fresh as the day they were killed. The reason for this exquisite preserving is the strange slime that coats the bones (makes them wet, see?)

Yes, there’s human sacrifice going on here. A coven of Satanic witches are offering people as food to a monster. Well when I say monster, I really mean an evil, malevolent giant worm from the pits of Hell. This worm digests humans whole with its slimy gastro-juices before vomiting them back out again as a complete skeleton. This feeding mechanism would make eating chicken wings a lot easier.

So a horror-thriller tale of two cops investigating these strange murders would be interesting enough on its own. But no, there’s so much more going on in this story.

And this is what made the book so enjoyable for me. One of the cops is a lady with a penis. The other is a member of a ‘smoothie club’ where a group of people from differing social circles meet every month to share recipes and taste each others creations. This club is led by the insane bitch, Grace.

Grace’s nephew (or is he her son?), Greg is a good kid who just wants a good life. And he’s doing pretty well; he’s got a decent job and a great girlfriend; things are really looking up for him. But Greg is forced to live with his Aunt Grace and although reluctant (she’s an insane bitch, remember), he does stand to inherit her fortune one day. So making the odd smoothie for his mom’s demented sister doesn’t seem too much of a bad gig, all told.

That is until one seemingly small act pulls Greg’s world apart. After Grace screams at him then kicks him up the arse for nothing in particular, he decides to make her one smoothie she’ll never forget. This smoothie contains a secret ingredient; Greg’s very own jerk-off juice.

Things backfire. Massively. But I’m not going to say too much about this.

At the start of the book we are introduced to a lot of seemingly unrelated characters. A harsh critic may say that the first few chapters are info-dumps about various characters’ back stories. And that’s kind of true, but these backstories are fun, and do what they’re supposed to do – get you to understand the characters.

As the plot moves on we see that these characters’ lives have more in common than it initially seemed. And it all revolves pretty much around the infamous smoothie club.

With this many subplots going on it may have been easy for the author to lose sight of the eventual goal, or confuse the reader with so much plot-hopping. But that really doesn’t happen. Each storyline comes to a satisfying conclusion. And yes, the case is eventually solved.

Now you may have got this far and are thinking ‘yeah, this sounds pretty good, I might check it out.’ And you should do. But first, here comes the warning.

There’s a lot of sex in this book. Some of it is pretty hardcore, some of it’s funny, while the rest of it is some sick, sick shit (and those are the perfect words to describe it). Plenty of semen is spilled, much of it into the aforementioned smoothies. There’s also the most comical rape scene I’ve ever read. I know that’s quite a strange sentence to include in a review but don’t get me wrong, it’s bordering on the absurd and works well within the story.

Then there’s some pretty gruesome violence and horrible, evil characters. The two mob henchmen (henchpeople) Black and White are two depraved and sadistic bastards. These two you certainly don’t want to get on the wrong side of. I’m curling my toes thinking about them as I write this now.

This is certainly not a book to read to your kids before bed. In fact, even explaining some scenes to friends had them almost gagging. But although it’s chock full of ‘ewww’ moments, there’s a great sense of humour throughout that prevents everything getting too dark and depressingly awful.

So if you’ve already eaten and are the lookout for something gross and unbelievable, while at the same time being kinda strangely believable, this one is definitely worth checking out. Wol-vriey has the mind of sick, deranged man and that is a truly great thing. And to think, he looks like such a sweet dude on his author pic. Don’t be fooled!

So check this one out, but don’t blame me if your digesting dinner ends up on your lap. You’ll never look at a smoothie the same way.

Categories: book review

Tags: book review, disgusting, gore, horror, monster, sacrifice, sex, smoothies, violence, wet bones, wol-vriey