BOOK REVIEW: YOU ONLY GET ONE SHOTA CLEVER NOVELLA BY KEVIN J KENNEDY AND J.C. MICHAEL

This is something of a ‘Bonus’ review, not requested, not scheduled but nonetheless happening. The reason is quite simple: I was on day 2 of a 10-day holiday. I haven’t had a proper holiday in years, largely for health reasons but even though I have a waning dose of ‘man flu’ I had headed off for a 5 day break in Dresden. But hey, I said ‘10 days’ earlier, well we had stopped off for a few days at my better-half’s Mom’s on the way and we caught the train on the Monday morning and then it’s five days in Dresden, a couple of days back at Mutti’s and then home to Frankfurt in time for supper.

Due to the aforementioned ‘man flu’ I’m under a self-imposed quarantine and have spent much of the past two weeks resting, organising files, writing and reading, basically absolute bliss or business as usual depending on how you look at it. The big difference is no internet connection at Mutti’s and so I was not arsing about on facebook as much as usual. Luckily I had plenty of time to relax, and I usually spend it watching movies to review, but not this time, this time I decided to read for the pure joy of not having to do it for a particular purpose.

Not so long ago I reviewed the ‘100 Word Horrors’ book of ‘drabbles’ from KJK Publishing and was highly entertained by it, there were dozens of authors involved and the wealth of short stories were a joy to read.  In the wake of my largely positive review the anthology’s publisher, Kevin J Kennedy, thanked me for the review and offered up his latest book as a willing sacrifice, not for review but just because he’s a decent sort and wanted to see what I thought of it. ‘You Only Get One Shot’ is a collaboration between him and J.C. Michael, and it’s well worth reading. I started it early in the day as a little light reading while relaxing and suddenly found myself engrossed in the tale(s). Partly because it’s hitting a little close to home, with the core concept being that of revenge against four more-established writers who were very negative about a newcomer’s story to the point where said newbie commits suicide. The four writers become involved in the ultimate story competition in which the writer of the best short story gets the ultimate prize… they survive.

I think that’s one hell of a concept, but it isn’t actually that straight forward as the four combatants have to write a story that day and post it publicly, somewhere easy to find. It will then be judged, but the writer will not know the outcome straight away, win or lose they will have to sweat it out until the mystery accuser decides it is time for the losers to die.  That in itself is a great story, but then we are actually treated to snippets of the lives of the four authors, and the actual stories that they write, and so it’s four stories within an overall plot, which is something I have always liked the idea of and which is done to great effect here.

I will not tell you what the four stories are about except to say that they are all very different and absolutely suit the characters who allegedly wrote them, even though in truth there are really two writers penning this book it does come across as somewhat schizophrenic with multiple voices and a very slight difference in quality deliberately injected into the stories. With impressive finesse the writers pull off a seamless thriller interspersed with enough horror to make this a gripping read. So much so that I read it in one sitting and although originally read it to pass some ‘me time’ I found I couldn’t let it go without a review, so this is it.

It’s the second book I have read from KJK Publishing, and the second book I found ‘unputdownable’. I’m eventually going to read more of their back-catalogue to see if the quality is consistent across their range, if that’s the case I’ll let you know, if it’s not I might just keep it to myself in case I suffer the same fate as the characters in ‘You Only Get One Shot’.
Available now on Amazon. Dirt cheap and well worth it.