When the Silence Screams - An Indie Horror That Cuts Deep: Afraid to Feel by Alex Tucker
⚠️ Trigger Warnings
Emotional abuse and workplace bullying (Protagonist is repeatedly belittled and humiliated by his boss in front of colleagues. These scenes may be distressing for readers sensitive to power imbalances or toxic work environments.)
Alcohol Dependence (Protagonist drinks nightly to suppress dreams and avoid emotional processing. Whilst not depicted as violent or chaotic, the routine is clearly compulsive and tied to unresolved trauma.)
Mental Health and Emotional Repression (The novel explores dissociation. emotional numbness, and the psychological toll of avoidance. The protagonist’s inability to express or process feelings affects his marriage and parenting.)
Childhood Trauma - non explicit (The protagonist references a traumatic event from his past, that shaped his emotional detachment. The details were withheld, buyt the impact is central to the story’s emotional arc.)
Martial Breakdown and Emotional Neglect (The protagonist’s wife' emotional distress and the strain of their relationship are portrayed with raw intensity. The children also express feelings of being ignored or emotionally disconnected from their father.)
Therapy and Mental Health Conversations (couple’s therapy, and individual sessions are part of the narrative, with realistic portrayals of emotional confrontation and vulnerability.)
PLEASE NOTE THIS BOOK WAS GIFTED TO ME AS PART OF Macabre Mortis Book Club - Find our little community here.
Book Background - Potential Spoilers Ahead!
The novel follows Cory Gardner (our protagonist), a programmer, whose life is defined by emotional avoidance and a fortess-like detachment from everyone around him, including his wife and children. At work, he endures the bullying from his toxic boss without any protest from his part, he would absorb every insult and belittling scenario until he’s forever internally scarred.
At home, his wife, Kate, and their daughters have their own struggles as the wall he has built around him seems impenetrable. He isn’t as present as he should be for his wife and children and this has significant impact on the family dynamic which is depicted throughout the book.
The narrative explores Cory’s inability, or refusal, to express emotion, tracing this back to a childhood trauma. His coping mechanisms include isolation, nightly functional (up for interpretation) alcoholism, and obsessive routines (like cooking with surgical precision). The story builds tension, not through the norm of gore, haunting horror, or supernatural monsters, but through the creeping dread of emotional decay, martial collapse and the haunting consequences of unprocessed trauma.
Ongoing Themes and Motifs
There’s emotional horror which is the main theme. The true horror lies within Cory’s numbness, and his silence and detachment become monstrous in their own right because they erode his marriage and destroy his family bonds,
Isolation Vs Connection: It’s Cory’s preference for solitude clashes with Kate’s insistence on growth and intimacy, created a chilling portrait of how avoidance can destroy relationships.
Dependence and Fragility: Kate becomes the “load bearer” in Cory’s emotional architecture, which highlights the danger of relying on one person to contain another person’s darkness and contempt.
Domestic Dread: Home life is toxic, the dinner table conversations, therapy sessions, and every day family life are infused with unease, showing how horror can thrive in the ordinary, every day, behind closed doors.
Personal Reflections
Alex Tucker’s prose is precise, deliberate and emotionally charged, mirroring Cory’s obsession with exactness (like his refusal to cook with “a dash” or “a pinch”). The tone is claustrophobic with long passages of internal reflections that make you, as the reader, feel trapped inside Cory’s impenetrable fortress of avoidance.
The horror in this is the psychological and existential, not the reliant on gore, cruelty, or demonic entities. This is what appeals to readers like myself who relish horror’s emotional resonance, but prefer to avoid depictions of animal or child abuse. I also tend to try and steer away from domestic violence or emotional abuse in a marriage where possible, but I did feel able to read this, but please read with care and remember your mental health comes first.
Tucker wisely keeps the experience of the children centred on emotional neglect, rather than physical harm, which maintains the tension without crossing into territory that may be distressing.
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I absolutely loved the psychological depth, I appreciate a horror that digs into the human psyche rather than relying on scare factor or goriness. Cory’s emotional repression and it’s ripple effects are the kind of layered horror I tend to gravitate towards.
The novel transforms every day family life into a site of dread and toxicness. I love a horror that looks at the familiar, and real life events and scenarios. Tucker absolutely nails this.
This book has a slow-burn atmosphere, but not too much of a slow burn you find yourself wanting it to speed up or skip. You are drawn in and you don’t want to miss a page.
Afraid to Feel succeeds as an indie horror novel because it refines what horror can be, it’s not blood soaked gore and violence, but the suffocating terror of emotional paralysis. Tucker crafts an exceptional protagonist who is both sympathetic and terrifying, aa amana who’s refusal to feel becomes the monster haunting his own family.
For readers who love horror that is intimate, psychological and emotionally devastating, it’s standalone, in my opinion. It’s less about jump scares and more about the slow erosion of the love, trust, and connection. It’s a kind of horror that lingers long after it’s final page. It’s a chilling exploration of emotional avoidance and it’s destructive consequences. It’s a horror for readers who love depth, atmosphere and psychological unease that you know at any point could spill into the real life of you or someone you know. It makes you sit back and THINK.
Goodreads Review can be found here: Goodreads
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐☆☆ (3/5) Atmospheric and emotionally layered, but not quite nightmare fuel for the horror-hardened.
📚 Call to Action
If you’ve got horror book recommendations that could genuinely rattle a horrorcore veteran, I want them. Indie authors welcome, bonus points for originality and psychological depth. Just a heads-up: I tend to avoid books with repeated animal abuse. My TBR is hungry, and I’m ready to feed it something truly terrifying.
I’m asking you now to go seek out this book, support Alex and his artistry. You can find him on social media (linked below).
Instgram & Threads - @alextuckerwrites
Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/57951641.Alex_Tucker
Linktree - https://linktr.ee/alextuckerwrites
Special Thanks
Big thank you to Steph one of co-founders of Macabre Mortis and Alex Tucker himself for entrusting me with this gorgeous book. I can’t wait to see what he does next.