Review: Hexis by Charlene Elsby

Looking for something a little different in your horrific books? 

Hexis by Charlene Elsby

Published February 2020

Dark Fiction  |  Goodreads  |  Amazon 

Source: Received for Review Consideration 

I'm not relentless. "Relentless" makes it sound like there's something called "relent" and that I'm lacking it. In that sense, I'm not relentless, but perhaps I'm unrelenting. I could relent if I wanted to. But he always has to die. I mean "always" in two senses: at all times and all of the time. I can't kill him all of the time. That would take too long. But all of the times I did, I did. I'd do it again. I could relent if I wanted to, but instead I'd do it again. If he's different, then he's the same and if he's the same, he's got to go. If he were different and not the same, then there would be two things and I'd only have to kill one of them. If only I only had to kill one of him. What a life I would live, if only I only had to kill him the one time. But death doesn't always do him in.

My 2 Cents For Free!

Hexis is a slim book but it wasn’t a quick read. It’s told in what I can best describe as a stream of consciousness but it’s a lot more than that and a lot more than my brain can comprehend but I enjoyed it quite a bit! It’s dark and painful and is sometimes even darkly humorous and it tells SO many truths about being a woman in this world we live in.

“He just sat there, the most natural thing in the world, drinking his fucking coffee like he hadn’t fucking ruined me.”

I don’t think we ever learn names here but we’re told this story by a woman who repeatedly encounters a man who did her all kinds of wrong. He has hurt her, betrayed her, damaged her and she wants him dead, as you do. She is justifiably and fiercely angry and she takes care of business over and over again because this fucker simply will not stay dead.

There’s sex and there is murder and there’s also loads of internal dialogue. It was rather like being in my own scattered head at times (minus the murdering and some other things, ha). It goes sideways and backwards and then sideways again and it did indeed confuse me but it also fascinated me and kept me reading. Was this real or did she have a wildly imaginative imagination? I’m still unsure but her fury boils over in each chapter and it’s a pretty damn glorious event every single time it happens. But know that this is not a “fun” read as it deals with the aftermath of trauma or at least that’s how my brain processed it.

This book was a bit much for my brain. I’m not going to lie. Give it a read if you want to expand your horror horizons and also your brain.

⭐⭐⭐⭐