What if the “Clueless” crew were less concerned about giving makeovers and more focused on surviving Coachella as cannibals? Or if the “Mean Girls” became zombies who just stepped off a Pride float? Then you’d have Kayla Cottingham’s book “This Delicious Death.” In my gay opinion, it’s a fun and unusual horror read, telling the story from the “monster’s” perspective instead of the victim’s.
I discovered Kayla thanks to the Framingham Massachusetts Public Library’s Dark Summer Book Fest (for fans of dark fiction) that ran six hours, with over fifty authors and multiple panels. The interesting and fun Loving the Monster: A Romance Panel consisted of six authors (Kayla being one) who discussed all things monster. I learned that Kayla is into Shrek because he’s a “family man” and “The Shape Of Water” movie which the whole panel had feelings about. Perhaps fish fetish is sub-genre I’m unaware of.
“This Delicious Death” is a mix of horror, mystery, humor and romance with a rainbow twist. Through flash backs, Kayla tells the back stories of how The Hollowing (a pandemic that turned random folks into blood-thirsty ghouls) changed character’s lives. Then cutting back to present time as four girlfriends road trip it (“Thelma and Louise” style but with more bloodshed) to The Desert Bloom Music Festival with their trusty cooler, full of synthetic human organs to quench their hunger for humans. These are the friends you call when you need to bury or eat a body, as boy crushing became bone crunching, and their bond strengthens as situations threaten their friendship and lives.
I got to meet Kayla afterward, so eat your heart out…not literally, of course!
