Atmospheric and wicked creepy! Cacek is a master of suspense! I would recommend this one to my thriller and horror friends.

This was a great horror read which kept me on the edge of my seat. I enjoyed the atmosphere and the writing but just wanted it to be a little bit longer so that the story could feel a bit more immersive. But for a horror read it was really enjoyable and creepy.

While I really enjoyed the author's writing style, I expected a bit more on the spook-factor of this novel. I thought the manikin would be more of a malignant force, but instead it was just... there. I feel like more could have been done with the concept. That being said, I did still enjoy the story and would be interested in checking out more from this author.

I was expecting this to be different than it was. It is more of a very slow family drama with some slightly weird elements, I wouldn't specifically call this horror. For me the pacing was off. We spent a majority of this book just learning about the family dynamics and nothing odd started to happen until the book should have been starting to wrap up. I wanted more to happen earlier on and was a little disappointed in the extremely small amounts of the manikin horror that we got. I did enjoy the writing and would probably read from this author again.

This author is a master at exploring loss and change while hitting you hard in the feels. It's difficult to categorise this book. It's about family and relationships, legacies, but with a little something else threaded through it. An unusual but exceptional read.

Morgan has always had a complicated relationship with his famous photographer mom. There is love there, but there is also the camera, always present and intruding on personal events and what should have been private moments.
Now suddenly, there is Sebastian, the manikin his mother claims is just for a series of photos but has become another intrusive presence in Morgan's life.

This was more of a psychological/family drama than the actual horror I was expecting. Not to say it wasn't a good story although it did move a little slowly in the middle. It kind of bothered me every time the word manikin was used since it was specifically mentioned that it had been purchased at a children's clothing store that was going out of business, and to me, that would be a mannequin which is what department stores use to display clothing and not a manikin which is what you get from a medical supply company to practice CPR and such. But that could just be my OCD kicking in.

Anyway, it was a decent story in which an obsession leads to an unexpected outcome, but there are no scares involved.

The creepy atmosphere in this book really worked with the plot. I couldn't put this book down, would definitely recommend it for horror lovers.

Quite a good read for October as it was creepy and psychological.

A clever portrayal as to how an obsession can take over everything and morph into something quite unexpected. I could picture Sebastian perfectly in the situations and would definitely be creeped out by him (just check out that cover).

I found I couldn't really connect to either Morgan or husband mother - they both could have easily spoken up (some reactions were odd). I also have no idea how Morgan was so blind.

I felt the ending was surprising, I guess it's open to the readers decision - but I prefer a bit more clarity. I guess that's the line between fantasy and psychological.

Overall, I'm unsure. I did enjoy elements if the story, though I found some reactions frustrating. I also would have preferred the ending to be solidly in one "camp", though maybe that's because I like my stories darker.

Great horror book! Kept me on edge up until the ending. There was an issue with pacing at some points of the book for me, but still kept me interested and entertained..

This book was a thriller ride up until the very last chapter. P.D Cacek will hold you to your seat and have you second-guess yourself in Sebastian. Sebastian starts out with an idyllic setting and cast of characters and then it slowly but surely starts to devolve into true terror.

Morgan, our main character, has a very famous photographer for a mother. However, the latest project that she has started working on involves using a manikin, who they decide to call Sebastian. Everything from this point forward starts to feel tense and as the reader, you are waiting for whatever will happen. Things start to not add up, mental health begins to deteriorate, and tragedy strikes.

I think the piece of this story that I enjoyed the most was the doubt that Cacek was able to inflict on me. I thought I had figured out what was actually going on, but the writing style and the twists at the end made me doubt myself enough that I didn't go all in on it.

Check out this latest book by Flame Tree Press. You won't be disappointed!

Sebastian by P.D. Cacek.
The son of a world-renowned photographer, Morgan Riley is familiar with his mother’s creative eccentricities. Having been the subject of one of her photographic series, he knows all too well how focused she can become with a new project. So he’s not overly concerned when his mother shows him her newest series that spotlights a small, featureless white plastic manikin the size of a two-year-old child that his mother has named Sebastian. However, as Morgan watches his mother’s obsession with the manikin grow, he begins to question her sanity and fear for her safety…
I really enjoyed this book. Creepy. I loved the cover. 5*.

I read Second Lives and thought it was the best horror i had read / listened to in a very long time. Horror with heart! This is also horror with heart, although a little less horrifying than the zombies series. The character development was wonderful and you grow to appreciate both the mom/artist, and her son (the real one, not the mannequin!). Thank you for the opportunity to review this great book! I will definitely recommend it to my patrons -- it's coming out today, just in time for Halloween.

4 Stars!

With the faceless head half shrouded in darkness on the cover, Sebastian by P.D. Cacek promised to be a supremely creepy book. The creepy/haunted doll has long been a topic in horror fiction, and this looked like it would be a new take on the subject. I had expectations of what direction the story would take when I started the novel. I am glad to say that I was wrong.



Morgan and his mother had always had a complicated relationship, but it was a good one. His mother was an eccentric photographer that put her work before everything else. Still, she never neglected Morgan. He was always there. All one had to do was to look at the photographs his mother sold around the world. Morgan was in most of them. Whether he was the subject or a body part at the edge, he was always there. He may not have been the focus of her attention, but he was always there. Then came Sebastian.



When Morgan first saw Sebastian, the manikin was just another prop that his mother had found at a store’s closeout clearance. Morgan helped his mother take her first series of photographs using Sebastian and, while they were a bit macabre, he thought little of it. Then Sebastian seemed to pop up everywhere as his mother began to develop what seemed like an unhealthy obsession with the manikin. Morgan found himself subtly moved out of his mother’s everyday life as the manikin took up more of her focus. What seemed to be a harmless diversion at first began to grow into something more as his mother’s world began to revolve around Sebastian. Just how strong of a hold did Sebastian have on his mother’s mind? Morgan began to question her sanity and his relationship with his mother as Sebastian began to seem more real to her than the rest of the world.



Sebastian was not what I was expecting in the least, and that is ok. I was expecting a horror novel and kept searching for that when I started the novel. Cacek kept taking the story to places I did not expect and the expected turn just never seemed to happen. Yes, Sebastian is a little bit creepy, but this is not a creepy doll story at all. In fact, what drama there is in the story does not come from Sebastian but from the relationship between Morgan and his mother. Sebastian is always there, but he is an external manifestation of the family dynamic rather than the driving force of the story. Morgan, like Sebastian, was always there. He was more window dressing than a participant in his life. The problem is that Sebastian seems to be better at being there than Morgan ever was.



Sebastian is not a horror novel at all. In fact, it would be difficult to even classify it as dark fiction. It was not at all what I was expecting. It was because of these things that it was a better story. Cacek handles the story with a deft touch and a shadow lurking in the background that reminded me of Ramsey Campbell at his best. There is no horror here, but Cacek looks into the dark corners of a relationship between a mother and her son and crafts a story that is both haunting to the core. The shocking scene that seemed to lurk around the corner remained there, but so much more happened in this book. Then came the end of the novel which was a perfect way to end the story. It was expected but done in a such a powerful manner that it closed out the story like the slamming of a heavy door. Sebastian will not scare the reader with the events of the story. Rather, it chills with the feelings that it dredges up from the darkest depths of the mind and left me with chills that I still feel a day after reading the last word. This novel may not appeal to all horror fans, but it is just quite simply a very good novel that should not be missed.



I would like to thank Flame Tree Press and NetGalley for this review copy. Sebastian is scheduled to be released tomorrow, October 18, 2022.

This was shaping up to be a really creepy read, I had so many theories…all of which turned out to be way more sinister than the actual story sadly! The last half let the book down a little for me and the plot almost forgot about Sebastian and left me wanting a bit more. Overall though a good read!

Not what I was expecting when you read about a horror book about a mannequin, but a pleasant surprise. I really enjoyed the family dynamics, and I enjoyed reading about a photographer, and so deeply involved in her work. It was an interesting and captivating read!

Thank you to Flame Tree Press and NetGalley for the copy!

I received a free copy from Netgalley to review, here is the blurb.

The son of a world-renowned photographer, Morgan Riley is familiar with his mother’s creative eccentricities. Having been the subject of one of her photographic series, he knows all too well how focused she can become with a new project. So he’s not overly concerned when his mother shows him her newest series that spotlights a small, featureless white plastic manikin the size of a two-year-old child that his mother has named Sebastian. However, as Morgan watches his mother’s obsession with the manikin grow, he begins to question her sanity and fear for her safety… "

This book did not go in the direction I was expecting. I was expecting an edge of your seat horror story with the manikin moving and doing creepy stuff, but this is not what I got. Not sure how to describe it really, I kept waiting for the creepy stuff to start and it just didn't until virtually at the end where it got a little more unexplainable. The book was well written and I enjoyed it and liked the characters but it just wasn't what I was expecting.

Big thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Overall, I think that was fun. I had a few issues but not enough to detract from the book as a whole. Mainly, the writing style didn't mesh with me the best. That being said, I still really liked the story. I think this would a good addition to a collection that had similar titles.

The problem with giving an author a try that is new to you is that there is a chance that you are not going to like the book that you choose to read. Now this may not be anything to do with the writing or anything like that, it is simply that you didn't connect with the story, and this was the case with Sebastian.

Now I want to make it perfectly clear that there was nothing wrong with the book per se, however, I just could not connect with the story and I found that it did not grip me. Yes P.D. Cacek writes good descriptive prose and the character work between the main protagonists is good. However, I failed to find that connection that made me care about the characters as a whole.

Not only that she manages to instil a sense of unease as the main character of the piece becomes more and more entrenched in the story and the lives of the main characters.. However, my ability to maintain my focus on the story seriously waned, particularly in the second act of the story and it never really resurfaced..

Sorry, this one was not for me!

The author’s writing was descriptive without being boring, painted a vivid picture of both character and setting, and managed to create a moody atmosphere that would have been the perfect setting for some seriously creepy doll drama that could have given Annabelle a run for her money. Alas, that wasn’t the case. I was expecting perhaps a spooky tale of a haunted manikin, or a thrilling mystery about an unknown character terrorising the characters by making the manikin appear to be alive. Instead it was just the story of an elderly woman who became attached to a doll before she died. I honestly just kept waiting and waiting for the point of the story to be revealed, but sadly I seem to have missed it.

Would I class this as a genuine horror novel? No, although I suppose there was a subtle horror to the faceless doll and Morgan’s mother’s burgeoning mother/son relationship with it.

Would I recommend it? That’s a toughie. I didn’t enjoy it; if it weren’t for being part of the review tour I almost definitely wouldn’t have finished reading it. BUT I can see how others would enjoy the more subtle flavours of horror and unease, and how they complimented the main theme of family dramas.

I was gifted a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review as part of the author’s book tour.

Hi and welcome to my review of Sebastian!

With the spooky season just around the corner, I was having a look at the upcoming Flame Tree Press books. I fell in horror love with Sebastian the very instant I spotted it. There are few horror tropes that truly freak me out, but creepy dolls is definitely in the top three so I figured Sebastian would be right up my #spooktober reading street.

I think it was fortunate that I went in with very few expectations. I did expect Sebastian to give me the heebie-jeebies, but how it was going to go about that, I had no idea and I was basically up for anything. It crossed my mind that a sort of Child’s Play / Annabelle-like experience might be on the cards but that’s not at all what this story was like, so I’m happy I didn’t go in with that fixed idea.

The story is told from the perspective of Morgan, the son of a famous photographer who has got hold of a manikin that is about the size of a young boy, which she’ll be using as a Halloween and photograph prop. Morgan is creeped out by Sebastian from the get-go, as was I, but things get creepier and creepier when his mum starts to treat Sebastian as a real boy. Is she delusional or is Sebastian more than the plastic dummy he seems to be?

As I said above, Sebastian is no Chuckie. He doesn’t run about wielding a knife. This story is a lot more insidious than that and if I were to describe it in one word, I’d say it’s eerie. It also focuses on the somewhat complicated relationship between Morgan and his mum, with Sebastian as some kind of focal point. Or at least that’s what it felt like to me. Oftentimes, the eeriness is not so much in what is actually said and shown but in the things left unspoken and hidden, not so much in what is, but in what might be.

After feeling rather underwhelmed by a number of books and heading for a slump, picking up Sebastian was the best decision I could have made. It was a breath of fresh air and I was completely absorbed. It might not be your typical horror story or creepy doll tale, but it is so so good and I had a fantastic time with it. It’s also much more tragic than I thought it would be, for reasons I can’t disclose, and it unexpectedly hit me right in the feels.

Don’t expect any of your questions answered at the end, I feel like I have more now than when I started out. While that can in fact annoy the crap out of me, in this very instance, I couldn’t care less, to me Sebastian was practically perfect in every way and I wouldn’t change a single thing.

Sebastian is out on 18 October.

Massive thanks to Flame Tree Press and NetGalley for the eARC. All opinions are my own.