Book Review: "Itch!" by Gemma Amor

Cheap horror novels are definitely my thing and I've been off the scene for about a month or so, and so as you can imagine - lots of it has been released without my knowledge. I'm often glad for Kindle Unlimited because there are so many great horror novels to discover that I end up borrowing maybe ten to fifteen at any one time and just devouring them. This was definitely the case here. Itch! is a book about our protagonist Josie who, when she is young, has only memories of her dead mother, is seen as an inconvenience to her father and, can constantly feel the itch and pull of ants. She can see them, almost always. When Josie discovers a dead body in the Forest of Dean, things begin to shift and change.

Josie wakes up in a hospital on sedatives after fainting after finding a horrific sight. It's not just a dead body, but it's a dead body crawling with insects, looking as though it had been there for years. And the scariest part isn't even that, the scariest part is that it looks just like her. The dead woman is called Laurel and when Josie goes to the pub, the landlady - Angela - remembers Laurel as being quite a nice girl. The very thought of Laurel being around the area sends Josie into a panic. She wonders why, if her father knew Laurel, he had not said anything about her when she appeared on the news in front of both of them. As Josie tries to work things out - she realises that Laurel could not have been laying there for more than a few minutes - someone wanted her to be found. Someone, from long ago, is back and killing again.

Honestly, I was obsessed with the premise. Josie is a fantastic character who has a lot to relate to - including horrifying anxiety. The way this story is written means we get all the atmosphere, all the time. Split into sections which leave us with questions - we follow Josie on her quest to find out more about Laurel. It is a story that has clearly been put together very well. As we start to discover more about the life of Josie, such as the fact that after her mother died, her father cut himself off from the world (and cut his daughter off from the world too). Some might say that this looks like a trauma response but, others may be a little suspicious. And all they have as a suspect is a man, in a mask, who kills young women.

As the book moves on, there are of course more killings and bones and bodies, there's an investigation opened into how the girls of the past died and there is mention of one name: Emmet. Old Jacob, a creepy old man who collects things that witches would use in a ritual (i.e a human hand) etc. and fills his house with this sort of stuff, tries to elaborate on the fact when Angela stops him. But, as Josie becomes more and more involved, including the fact that finds one body, a bag of bones and yet, another body - there are questions she has about where this is going. I think that the great thing about this book is that we have a hook character, which is Josie, who is clearly someone going through a hard time and so, we naturally empathise with her. She explains her love life and back when her girlfriend through a brick at her head, and now having to encounter that woman (who does not care for a restraining order) again. But Josie has a special (and fairly repulsive) power in her grasp, though I don't want to tell you what that is.

Well, with so much talk of the Devil in this book, I was very pleased to find out it was a folk horror. It is a wonderful, deep and weaving book which definitely buries itself in the soul. The author has done a fantastic job of putting together the atmosphere in the Forest of Dean and honestly, the ending was incredible - I'm not going to lie, I am very happy about this book.