The Stray Reader

Author:	Jon Athan
Genre(s):	➡️ Extreme Horror ➡️ Splatterpunk
Series?	❎ No
Goodreads Rating:	⭐ 4.13 (292 ratings; 86 reviews)
Personal Rating: Violence Rating:	⭐ 4 / 5 Overall 💀 4.5 / 5
Trigger Warning(s):	violence, graphic deaths of both adults and children, addiction

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🛑 Spoiler Warning 🛑

I might be recounting events, characters, and themes so THIS MIGHT BE FULL OF SPOILERS.

If you’d like to read a review with the spoilers hidden, kindly scroll to the bottom to read my spoiler-free summary in the ‘Recommendations’ section or head to my Goodreads post. You don’t need an account to read it. 🙂

SYNOPSIS

Brian Turner was driving with his pregnant wife and child when they witnessed the fall of society. All of a sudden, people around them became increasingly violent; all to get any infant they can lay their hands on so they can blend them and get high.

It all seem to have started with unfortunate news of babies being kidnapped and boomed through social media. It’s been rumored that they have a special chemical that are so addictive that people started kidnapping infants, even ripping babies off of their mothers’ wombs.

What follows is months of chaos with no end in sight. Brian and his family manages to group with a team of survivors but the safety won’t last long.

🌟Review (4/5) 🌟

Excellently gives the same tension as a zombie apocalypse movie in the most personal gruesome circumstances.

This book was very well-paced. It begins with an intense action scene where Brian Turner, his pregnant wife Leslie, and his young son Cameron are driving in the city. Traffic starts to jam as the people affected by the ‘craze’ turn up the violence in the streets to get their hands on any baby they can, completely disregarding the laws. Immediately my heartbeat picks up as I worry for Brian’s pregnant wife in the passenger seat and for their young son in the back. The story successfully hooked me and got me emotionally invested for this family. The family then decides to lay low by going to Brian’s brother’s abode nearby. Tommy was a recovering drug addict, but Brian would discover that he’s not addicted to something more dangerous and more addictive than any substance – blended babies. When he witnesses his own brother blend a real, live baby in front of him, the reality of the new world sinks in.

Fast forward to a few months later, Leslie has given birth to their daughter Harper. The Turner family has been kept safe inside a police precinct with other families. But supplies are running out and the few, able-bodied adults decided to brave the streets filled with addicts sniffing for more hits of blended babies. This leaves their barricaded fort with less safety and thus no match to the now-organized addicts that threaten to raid their safe haven.

Tensions running high, distrust lingering everywhere, conspiracy theories about baby factories afloat, and whispers of safety in the underground tunnels keep the thrilling momentum going. Once the walls of the police precinct go down, however, the action picks up to a crazy pace with very little breathing room in between. The writing was so descriptive that I felt like I was watching a movie. Every shot from a gun, slip through the floor, and other ensuing chaos made my jumpy. My heart broke for the mother who got cornered in the bathroom with her children. Knowing what awaited them she took her own children’s lives and failed to take hers. It was a massacre.

The Turner family crawl their way out of the ambush and took me for a dangerous ride through the wasteland. Just as I thought that the violence could not get any worse, Brian witnesses the torturous mangling of two police officers from the previous precinct. I almost gagged when one of the addicts castrated one officer, put the meat through the grinder, and fed it to officer Daryl. Once again, my heart broke when Brian failed to rescue officer Daryl.

As they venture further, the Turner family experiences deceit from a survivor they met along the way. This resulted to baby Harper being kidnapped and Brian going to a rescue mission alone. Again, just as I thought that the violence could not get worse, Brian gets trapped to a psycho clan leader’s initiation process that involved literally clipping a woman’s private part using a nail clipper. At this point I could barely keep going. But I needed to find out if Harper was still alive. Oh I’m pretty freaking invested all right.

In this part of the journey we also get a glimpse of the level of organization the addicts achieved in this post-apocalyptic society. Great world-building. They managed to work in groups, identify hierarchies, and trade with each other as only some groups had the industrial blenders needed to produce the substance they all crave for. Through Brian’s eyes we discovered sicker practices such as openly raping women to impregnate them and literally building makeshift baby factories complete with frozen babies to manage their supplies. More heartaches came to me when the women begged to be killed than to endure torture.

Finally, an excellent twist and a full circle moment came to Brian when he arrived in the building where Harper was brought. A last battle ensues between him and this building of baby fiends who turned out to be led by none other than his brother, Tommy. Tommy having his own niece inside a blender ready to consume her gave me so much anxiety and anger in the moment.

Recommendation

In conclusion, there’s so much graphic violence excellently described that they ran like movie scenes in my head. The plot was strong enough that there’s very little suspension of disbelief required to immerse myself in this hellhole of a post-apocalyptic world. The motivations and characteristics of each character were so well-defined that I was heartbroken for the side characters that died… especially with the way they died. The story displays the worst side of human beings that triumph in a drug-crazed world where people function just enough to continuously act on their sickest impulses, and it scared the hell out of me.

Pick ‘Blender Babies’ by Jon Athan up from Kindle Unlimited if you’re into extreme horror. Fair warning though: This isn’t the type of post-apocalyptic survival story where the protagonist gets to find out where this all started and hopes to end it. There’s not enough information for that and there’s certainly no conclusion. This is the difficult journey of survival by one of the families trapped in this crazy setting, but I assure you it’s a worthwhile read.