Black Hare Press, $0.99, ISBN 979-8201360528
Horror, 2021

This Hideous Joy is a lovely take on the horrors of toxic positivity, when a mysterious meteor shower hits the town of Bract Hollow and everyone that sees it thinks it’s beautiful.

Clearly, these people are not familiar with horror movies such as Color Out of Space, The Blob, and Killer Klowns From Outer Space or else they would be fleeing for the hills.

At any rate, our protagonist is depressed, which means he is going to make everything about him.

Oh, the people around him start behaving all happy and agreeable? Whatever, do you know that he wants to kill himself?

Oh, those people start dying? Who cares, do you know that he is depressed and he wants to kill himself?

The problem with such a detached protagonist is that there is no possible way for me to be engaged in the mysterious happening of this town when the narrator clearly doesn’t care at all and his attitude seeps from every word of his story. So why should I care? See the problem there?

It also doesn’t help that Whiny MeSuicidal here comes off as whiny and obnoxious instead of being a believable depressed person. His attitude is more of a whiny narcissist determined to make even a horrifying situation into a “Look at me! Damn it, pay attention to me!” attitude all the way to the final word of the story, oh my goodness.

That and the fact that he just stumbles around and eventually out of the story without knowing, understanding, or even caring about the events that have happened around him only make this story a clear miss.

It’s a shame, because this one could have been another interesting take on the whole pod people trope, only to be ruined by a protagonist that wants so badly for the story to be all about him instead.