Book Review: God's Leftovers by Grant Wamack

God’s Leftovers by Grant Wamack

64 pages, Paperback 

Published  August, 2022 by Bizarro Pulp Press

I was excited to finally catch up with a Grant Wamack work. Grant is a writer I have spent some time with at cons and things. He had been a guest on the podcast. I knew he was a unique voice, and his novella was one I had wanted to read since it was announced. God’s Leftovers packs an unnatural amount of story and ideas into a thin 60 pages. The biggest negative here is that as much as I love short work I would have loved another forty pages. It is rare that I close a book and think there needed to be more. It is not needed here, It is a great novella I wanted, not needed more.

We’ll come back to that as I want to focus on the awesome stuff you get with this book. God’s Leftovers is a southwestern modern horror tale that makes use of the setting of the Valley of Fire and characters to present a vibe and story that is a pure product of Grant. The young couple who shouldn’t be in the desert, the out-of-place rapper, and the weird cult that has a strange relationship with the flesh.

With a no-nonsense set-up God’s Leftovers played in my mind on grainy film, and I could almost feel my feet sticking to the grindhouse theater floor. It is the kinda story that got rented to kids too young having to be careful their parents didn’t know they watched it. Wamack doesn’t flinch so serious trigger warnings apply. The violence is not implied, the visceral  moments are as shockingly real as psychedelic and dark fantasy moments are unreal.

It is a combo that worked for me. This is a five-star 60-page novella. I enjoyed reading this novella and has me excited to read more of Grant’s work. Anyone who reads my reviews know I am a sucker for small moments that show a command of horror. “Shoes Crunched in the sand with each step. They felt far away, but still too close for comfort. Nicole wanted to scream, wail in frustration, but instead she bit her lip. She saw the man drop down on all fours scanning the ground for movement. She clamped a hand over her mouth willing him and his black ponytail to look the opposite direction. His head swiveled and locked in on her.”

Well-done moments like this are throughout the book I choose this one as my favorite.
Now could it have been longer? I loved this book at 60 pages but I think it could’ve been one hundred pages and not lost its short and hardcore tone. Will and Anca’s relationship being one arranged from Romanian over the internet gets attention and details, and it helps the character grow in our minds. All the characters get short backstories. It is well done but I wanted just a little more.

The Wiry Man, and The Collective – and their connection to nature are things I would have liked a little more exploration of. Not because the book is lacking those things but because it suggests them and I just wanted more.  

God’s Leftovers is a one-sitting read and packs an amazing amount of story into 60 pages. It is not for everyone as it is very, very brutal. The most important takeaway is that I wanted more, more, more. That is a great thing Grant Wamack has my attention and horror readers looking for the gritty underground shit have a new author to check out.