Book Review: The Handyman Method by Nick Cutter and Andrew F. Sullivan

I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.

The Handyman Method by Nick Cutter and Andrew F. Sullivan

Mogsy’s Rating: 3 of 5 stars 

Genre: Horror

Series: Stand Alone

Publisher: Gallery/Saga Press (August 8, 2023)

Length: 304 pages

Author Information: Nick Cutter | Andrew F. Sullivan

If there’s one thing I learned from reading Nick Cutter/Craig Davidson is that he is not at all subtle, and with the lack of nuance being especially true with The Handyman Method, co-written with Andrew F. Sullivan, I imagine that has something to do with why I struggled. The story relies too much on the shock factor when delivering its horror, going about it by trying too hard to make you angry or gross you out. More and more, I just think I’m becoming inured to this routine.

The story opens with a family moving into their dream home, which should have been pristine given that it is a new construction. But right away, husband and father Trent Saban finds a large crack in a wall of the master bedroom closet. A former lawyer by trade with no DIY experience, he nonetheless decides to take care of the problem himself, turning to the YouTube channel of someone he found called Handyman Hank for advice. Before you know it, Trent finds himself down the rabbit hole of home improvement, becoming eerily fixated with Hank and his “Handyman Method.”

Meanwhile, Trent’s disaffected wife Rita becomes increasingly aloof in the face of their big move and this subsequent flurry of activity, but does her distancing have anything to do with her husband’s new obsession or is it something more sinister? What’s clear is that neither of them are paying much attention to their son Milo, who begins having many of his own disturbing encounters. Unbeknownst to his parents, the young boy’s attention has been captured recently by a YouTube channel he himself has been frequenting, one owned by a seemingly innocuous kid-friendly influencer called Little Boy Blue.

Credit where credit’s due, The Handyman Method turned out to be a very different kind of “haunted” house story than what I was expecting. The concept was definitely interesting, taking and melding elements from such classic horror as It or The Shining, making something unique out of its results. That said, this isn’t quite Stephen King. In fact, it’s hard to pin down what exactly this is. At times, it reads like a satirical take on lives consumed by social media, or a scathing jab at toxic masculinity. Whatever it is though, by the second half, the book transforms into something else entirely, changing the overall tone of the plot. It does make me wonder if it has something to do with this being a collab.

Then there was the lack of subtlety I mentioned. Trent was so unlikeable to the extreme, he was practically a caricature checking off every item on the “Build-A-Character You Hate” kit. It’s one thing to make me dislike a protagonist, it’s another to make me not take him seriously at all. Then there was the gore factor and one particularly gruesome scene involving an animal death (I have a pet turtle that was a rescue, so the unpleasantness of that scene hit me especially hard). There’s a time and a place for this type of over-the-top and in-your-face horror, and I know an audience for it exists, but personally I think I am over it.

The ending was also a bit confusing, like somewhere along the chain a link went missing because I had a hard time connecting all the plot’s many scattered dots. Again it occurs to me that multiple authors might have played a role in this, but I don’t know. Just like I don’t know what to make of the ultimate revelation of the house and the special connection it had with the family. I think the book could have gone in a very good direction, but somehow things didn’t come together as well as they should have.

All in all, I would consider The Handyman Method to be a middle-of-the-road horror. I wanted a bit more, but it’s a good read if you enjoy a good bloody gorefest.