Book Review: Sour Candy by Kealan Patrick Burke

‘Sour Candy’ by Kealan Patrick Burke was released in 2015. It is a short supernatural horror novella. It follows Phil Pendleton, who, after being faced by a bedraggled woman and her screaming child in the candy aisle of ‘Walmart’, was rear-ended by the very same woman, with her child no longer in tow, and finds himself miraculously a single father of an approximately seven-year-old child that can and will only eat sour candy.

I loved the concept of this story, it was very easy to slip into, and understand, Phil was happily childless and in a stable relationship with a woman called Lori. She had been the one who tasked him to go and buy chocolates so they could cuddle and watch TV all day, gorging themselves in sweets. But he got more than he bargained for when this child latched onto him and altered reality to make him the boy’s Daddy.

I was very on-edge reading the first part of the story, where Burke uses a lot of the uncanny to get his point across; a child like Adam, named after the first man, who was dressed in an out-of-era fashion, would draw people’s eye regardless of whether he was screaming or not. The way Burke establishes a common enough sight of a distressed and frustrated child as potentially being something strange and other, was incredibly clever, as people encounter them frequently.

I found that this book was a quick and easy novella to read, and while I found the ending predictable in its inevitability, watching a character have the world be completely flipped upside down at will was very interesting.

It was a great read to get me into the spooky season mood and I ensured that I was looking forward to sinking my teeth into more scary stories. It was a simple, compelling, disturbing way to dip your toe back into horror in anticipation of Halloween. I’d definitely recommend it with that in mind.