Black Mouth

By: Ronald Malfi

Narrated by: Joe Hempel

Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's summary

Perfect for fans of Stephen King's IT, a group of friends return to their hometown to confront a nightmare they first stumbled on as teenagers in this mesmerizing odyssey of terror.

An atmospheric, haunting thriller, full of memorable characters and sublime terror, from the author of Come with Me

For nearly two decades, Jamie Warren has been running from darkness. He's haunted by a traumatic childhood and the guilt at having disappeared from his disabled brother's life. But then a series of unusual events reunites him with his estranged brother and their childhood friends, and none of them can deny the sense of fate that has seemingly drawn them back together.

Nor can they deny the memories of that summer, so long ago—the strange magic taught to them by an even stranger man, and the terrible act that has followed them all into adulthood. In the light of new danger, they must confront their past by facing their futures, and hunting down a man who may very well be a monster.

©2022 Ronald Malfi (P)2022 Tantor

Likely my favorite Malfi of them all

Fantastic narration and a damn good storyline. Audible is making me lengthen my review so now I’m just rambling.

Excellent!

This book was phenomenal! Malfi is quickly becoming one of my top favorite authors. Dennis was one of my favorite characters. I just loved this story so much.

Good book.

Other than an aggressively large amount of swear words, this was a really good book. I enjoyed it.

Power of Evil

Childhood memories can haunt us forever and abusers and the supernatural can have a negative impact on our future... this is such a story.

Stephen King meets Neil Gaiman

My first listen of a Ronald Malfi book. An excellent performance by the reader along with a well paced story make for an excellent listen. My attention was held throughout and there were points where I was legitimately uncomfortable. The climax was a little difficult to follow and was definitely a very different feel from the rest of the book, but overall I plan on listening to more books by the author.

One more minute.

This was my mantra listening to this book, and like the narrator battling alcoholism, I often succumbed to listening to this like an audio Netflix show. I binged the hell out of this

Malfi’s story is very interesting and while it reminded me of It like so may others, it also reminded me of Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, but set in a contemporary setting. Malfi’s writing is engaging and created clear images in my mind.

I also found Hempel to be a fantastic narrator and very easy to listen to. The audio of this book is first class.

Fantastic story. Fantastic narration.

Engaging story, great narration

I agree with most of the reviews that this seems heavily inspired by It, but written Malfi’s style. That delayed my decision to purchase the book because it sounded like it might be a ripoff of one of my favorite King novels. I’m glad I decided to buy, the story was engaging from start to finish. The story can be similarly summarized as It but only in summary and not in detail, this book tells its own tale.

Just once, a good ending, please

I keep giving Malfi chances, but am going to have to stop. His endings are always bad. Little Girls should have been enough to make me avoid him, but his writing is pretty strong. Enough that I keep giving him another shot. This one has good characters, and the narrator is great, but after all the setup the ending is just another dud. I'm tempted to try December Park, but may have to fight it off.

Loved it!

I am glad I bought this one, pretty new to this author and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this book.

Great Childhood Story

This is a suspenseful story about friends and childhood. It really pulls you back to your childhood days when life wasn’t so easy. The end had me in tears.