This Thing Between Us

When I began reading Gus Moreno's This Thing Between Us, I had moved toward it intentionally as the fall days darkened earlier, wanting to gravitate to books and stories that unsettle and then settle cozy in their unsettled-ness around you and won't let go.
I had moderate expectations, with no foreknowledge of the author, but a few glowing recommendations from some trusted book podcasters. I'm glad I got their message.
I had to slow my reading down to make the book last a few days and not spend a night devouring it whole.
This slim existential crisis in written form is woven with heart and life and even humor while brimming with fear, sadness, death and horror. What a feat and what an incredible testament to the power of grief. Moreno uses it to elevate horror to reveal the terrible questioning and cavernous emptiness that we all must endure for seasons of our lives, but wraps it in incredible storytelling, sitting on any ham fists, and letting his prose do the talking. I loved this book.
*I must include a spoiler alert because as I read it, and even as the deaths of humans were shared in bloody visceral details, I thought of my wife and her aversion to a certain kind of cruelty, albeit, a ghostly one that is short-lived in this case. So, trigger warnings for animal harm and death.