I have received a free advanced review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Ian Kirkpatrick, Steak House Books and Net Galley for this opportunity!

4/5

The sky in Baltimore, Maryland is never serene. Even on a seemingly sunny day, there's always a tinge of gloom in the air, and the smell of death and rot plagues the town. It's not like the denizens of Baltimore actually mind though, and if they do, they've probably buried that discontentment deep down and just accepted the twisted laws that rule the land as a way of life. In Baltimore, passing by streets littered with black plastic bags knowing there's a 50/50 chance of finding either some trash or a corpse inside is as normal as seeing a hot dog stand at the side of the road (not that Baltimore seems to have any of those). Cops have thriving careers in these hoods, since high crime equals high frequency calls for work, but don't be fooled into thinking they're the bastions of fairness and honour. Overall, Baltimore isn't the type of town you'd want to live in if you have thin skin, and our main character Josephine, who goes by Joey, is luckily anything but that. She needs all the skin she can get, since after finding a mutilated corpse in the trunk of her friend Wayland's car after being asked to pick it up from the town's body dumping grounds, Joey's life takes a drastic and chaotic turn.

Where is Wayland? Why the hell would he leave a dead body in his trunk and ask for it to be picked up? Was he the one who committed the crime, or is he a victim of someone else's twisted agenda? Joey finds herself drowning in all of these questions and her life spirals down out of control the more she tries finding answers, as she unwittingly comes across the dark secrets that lurk underneath Baltimore and are the breeding grounds of all the horrors, deaths and darkness that have haunted the city ever since Joey could remember.

This is my first time reading Ian Kirkpatrick's work, and I went into it expecting a dark and twisted tale. That I did indeed get, but what I was not expecting was the heavy dose of absurdist writing style that flavoured this entire work, reminding me of Christopher Moore's "A Dirty Job", with heavy doses of introspection as we read the story from the first-person perspective of Joey, whose mind is anything but dull. From the very first chapter, I was instantly drawn into Josephine's world, her perspective on life tinged with the intensity of her angst and her surprising wisdom, being painfully aware of life's harshness, with zero sugarcoating and refreshing honesty.

This is where Ian Kirkpatrick shines as a writer, her writing style being very beautifully descriptive, not shying away from portraying Joey's damaged life as authentically as possible, being vulgar in all the right ways to make all the right impacts. The world building was pretty good and the atmosphere was beautifully crafted. I could nicely visualize the locations in Baltimore and the lands beyond, with the dark skies and the blackened moon and stars and the way the lights shine purple on the leaves at nighttime, and the cold fog that mutes out all the surrounding sounds when it spreads around you. The presence of ravens that symbolize death added a nice gothic touch to this world that's teeming with spooky delights.



With all of its darkness and grit, Bleed More, Bodymore is also a pretty funny read. Joey's blunt humour is probably her coping mechanism for surviving life at Baltimore, and she uses it here in spades. Her wit and her bombastic comebacks alongside the reactions of other characters to her strong personality will at the very least provide you with amused chuckles.

Storytelling wise, the plot is fast moving and Ian Kirkpatrick spares us from the details of the little things like commuting and the spaces between intense moments. You won't have to wait 2 chapters for your characters to get from point A to B, it's fast and the pace favours action. If you like your books a little bit more drawn out with these aspects, this might irritate you, but I found it to be a relief, because this is the kind of story I'd wanna be in the middle of the action of.

The character work was alright, though I would have preferred for certain characters whom we spend a while wondering about to have been a bit more fleshed out and have had more of a personality. Since the main focus was on the first-person perspective of Joey, some other characters felt a bit underdeveloped compared to her. I hope the next installment in this series gives a little more depth to the rest of our cast.

This book is a perfect Halloween read, which is awesome since it's coming out on the 31st of October later this year. If you'd like to have a spooky read this Fall season, with a good amount of humour to accompany it, make sure to pick this book up and plunge into the broken and spooky world of Baltimore!

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"I don't know what it is about this place that makes people desperate. Desperate for a future. Desperate for money. Desperate for someone else. It's always everything we don't have that's going to solve that desperation."