Taking familiar places and turning them into visceral horror will always catch my attention, such as Mercy House and a retirement home. Bram Stoker award-winning and USA Today bestselling author Adam Cesare turns a place filled with elderly folks into a blood-splattered home for residents who have turned into monsters in this shockingly horrifying story.
Harriet Laurel notices the odor the moment she steps inside Mercy House, brought to the retirement home against her will by her son and his wife. In the early stages of dementia, Harriet has grown to resent her daughter-in-law for not providing grandchildren. Yet as she crosses the threshold, she notices her mind begins to sharpen. Then her hate begins to grow…
Arnold Piper, an eighty-five-year-old ex-Marine, has always prided himself on self-reliance. But betrayed by his own body, he’s learning that surviving war-torn Korea was easier than facing the daily indignities of old age. And his worst trials are still to come.
Sarah Campbell, an idealistic nurse, is already stretched thin at the chronically understaffed Mercy House. Now her duties are about to take a terrifying turn. Can she survive the night…and her patients?
Mercy House is not the first story where an author has turned a peaceful retirement home into a setting for a horror story. Well, technically it is, as the original digital release of this book was in 2015 and the other tales I read where more recently, but the newer version releases after the other stories I have read, so what is first…chicken or the egg. Wow, that was a tangent, moving on.
Needless to say, the story of a retirement home gone bad is not a far-fetched idea. These retirement homes are supposed to be a places for our elderly folks to live out the remaining years of their lives with the aid of the staff, but in a lot of cases we have heard stories that will turn your stomach. Cesare takes these horror stories and ratchets the terror up past 11 with a splatter-punk horror that was gruesome to its core.
Mercy House begins innocently enough, but doesn’t take long for things to turn into a relentlessly grotesque body horror that surprised me with each page turn. The pacing to start seemed to drag, but was definitely a purposeful choice by Cesare as the story puts the pedal to the floor and finishes with relentless breakneck speed.
I would’ve been satisfied with an extreme horror just for fun sake, but Cesare blends this visceral terror with some really thought out characters with backstories and motivations that really deepen the story. Wonderful staff characters and those dealing with aging and illness that immersed me into the novel a bit further. But let’s be honest, the gore takes center stage.
Mercy House is a blood-filled body horror that takes a familiar place and turns it into something unfamiliar. Adam Cesare brings the gore, blood, and guts along for the ride in this shocking horror story that makes me glad I’m still young. Cesare took a swing with Mercy House and seems to land his take on a blood-splattered horror.
Mercy House hits bookstores everywhere on October 20, 2026 from Del Rey. The audiobook, narrated by Matt Godfrey, is available via Libro.fm!
