A captivating psychological thriller that delves deep into the minds of its characters. Prepare to be haunted long after you finish the last page.

Great easy October read. Just enough thrill and creepiness for the season. Thanks to netgalley for the copy!

Not what I expected! A coming of age horror story coupled with what felt like psychological research on ‘mental health’ and ‘tulpas’. For me there were elements of this story that were fantastic, especially the storyline between the kids and their friendships/bullying etc. I think where this book went slightly wrong was by trying to achieve too much and the various narrative voices/storylines convoluted the overall plot!

I loved this book up until the end and then I was disappointed. The ending was so abrupt and unfulfilling that it felt almost brutal. The build up was amazing, the story was intense, although I felt like there was too much time spent on explaining the creation of and concept behind the Tulpa. It is a fascinating concept and one that wholly fits well with a story about a mentally unstable and PTSD stricken child raised in a less than ideal home and bullied relentlessly by his peers. The whole story was intense and the characters were compelling and realistic, the back story of the serial killer was mysterious and intense but the whole book was thrown off by how quickly it spiraled out of control to the ending and then just stopped without any resolution for any of the characters. I guess this is one of those books where the reader is supposed to imagine what happened next but I’ve never enjoyed those. I like it much better when I know what the intended ending was.

Caleb is lonely, bullied, traumatized and anxious. The kids at school call him Clay Boy as he always has clay with him and has a talent for creating remarkably realistic clay figures. Guided by a YouTube video Caleb decides to create what he’s never had….a best friend. Thus. Gren is brought into the world by way of Caleb’s imagination, drawings and clay. Gren is at once imaginary and very real….like a Tulpa is meant to be.
I’ve across very few books that include a Tulpa in their story. Clay Boy is by far the most informative, educating the reader on the Tulpa, lore while entertaining us with creepy imagery and the constant threat of peril. Gren, the Tulpa, isn’t the 0nly scary, deadly threat in this small town. Beware the evil deeds of humans, beware the attack goat, be nice to Caleb.
Thank you #netgalley for,this fun, creepy read, #ClayBoy

It was an okay read. It wasn’t my favorite, and the writing style was not my favorite either. Unfortunately this story wasn’t for me. However i do think the idea behind it is unique and different.

Read from October 18th, 2023 to October 31st, 2023.

What a great story! It was so compelling to read and a great way to spend the time.

This was incredibly different than a lot of stuff I've read. The multiple points of view, the back and forth in the storyline and the connections among characters make it a very intriguing book. Also, the fact that it isn't a big book helps to enjoy it much easier since the story is not filled with information that we don't care about for the main storyline.

It is also insane that Tulpas are actual things in this world, making the story so much more frightening since it can be a reality. Great research on that behalf from the author.

Read it and enjoy it. Also amazing that I finished it on Halloween; makes it all the more creepy.

Signing off,
B.

This book is okay and it reads like a classic horror story, but I would have loved it to be shorter like a novella. It wasn't for me and I did not connect with ut.

Clay Boy is an interesting one, because I think it would probably work better in a visual format? I'm not sure what it is but I had a disconnect with this book. I felt like the story had potential and was creepy, reminded me a little bit of the old Goosebump puppet stories. But the writing was quite choppy and I felt like the crescendo / actual scary part was rushed in the end. It felt like a lot of build up just for the clay boy to rip off a few heads and then disappear.

This wasn’t my cup of tea. The book read like the script of a B horror movie. The characters lacked depth and the plot was shallow and predictable. The beginning/middle felt draggy then the last few chapters felt super rushed to try to wrap up the story.

I stayed up late finishing this book. I wanted to love it. But I didn't. I enjoyed the aspect of the story. But I wasn't hooked as hard as I thought I would.

Craig E. Sawyer's 'Clay Boy' has a great premise: Caleb, a boy bullied and tormented since early in his life, uses clay for anxiety therapy, without knowing that he has the ability to create Tulpas; namely, entities that start in thought and imagination and end up incarnated in reality. The Tulpa he comes up with begins as an imaginary friend for emotional support, but turns very fast into a sinister being ready to defend Caleb at any cost. The paranormal aspects of the story are stressed repeatedly thoughout the book, thanks to the author's choice to involve a paranormal investigator-cum-psychologist-cum-writer in the tale. This way we get the necessary "info dumps" without feeling overly bombarded with detailed information on Tulpas.

The book has incredible dialogue, sharp, smart, and realistic-sounding. I personally had some issues with the pacing, but I still found the story wonderful: the atmosphere often hits a disturbingly spooky note and floods you with eerie creepiness, and the book is an easy read! Recommended!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC!

Posted on Goodreads.

Thank you to netgalley and Brigid Gates Press for the opportunity to read an arc of this book.

Caleb Jenkins is a young boy who witnessed the murder of his mother at the age of one. A way to cope with the anxiety and trauma is by molding clay. He’s an outcast and highly misunderstood by his classmates. While I’m detention he learns about creating an imaginary friend called a tulpa. It feeds off fears and anger and protects its creator at all costs.

This novel was very good. Characters are solid, the backstory and explanation of the tulpa was done well and even though there are several storylines, I felt they intertwined well.

Even though I love a slow burn of events happening, My biggest complaint is that the ending was rushed. I was left wanting. The terror was subdued and needed more focus. The tulpa in the end was terrifying and vindictive, and I felt like it encompassed the pent up negativity within Caleb. But The ending was too abrupt. It just stopped. And though I understand what was done, I still feel like Something is missing and I cannot put my finger on it.

That being said, I did enjoy this read and I’m interested in reading this authors other works

Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion

Overview
Clay Boy is a story about Caleb, a boy who has a disturbing start to life and is tormented by bullies daily. He uses clay therapy as a way to help him through his troubles but over time this progresses to something more sinister. What starts as an imaginary friend quickly becomes something evil and is out to get revenge on those that have hurt Caleb.

My Review
I was drawn by the synopsis of this book. It sounded very different to anything I’ve read previously and sounded great for the run up to spooky Halloween.

In general it was an ok read but there were some things that really let it down. It definitely needs more editing, there were so many glaring mistakes in the grammar and writing such as extra words in sentences that didn’t belong there or duplicated words.

I also found the characters really difficult to like, relate to or even picture to be honest. The story line itself although had a really good idea behind it, it just took way too long for anything really good and spooky to happen! Half of the book seems to be explaining what a Tulpa is when it could have covered that quite quickly and then got into the good stuff of seeing a Tulpa in action!

The good parts were the ideas behind the story and once we did get into the action it had a spooky and eerie feel to it. It was also a quick and easy read.

I sadly didn't care for the writing style of this book. I also felt there was a lot of info dump that I could've lived without.

Clay Boy follows a teenage boy called Caleb who is bullied for being different. Caleb suffers from anxiety and uses clay to help him cope. During detention one day Caleb learns how to conjure a Tulpa. A supernatural phenomenon were an imaginary friend is brought to life.

I found the story to be very original and although I didn’t find it particularly super scary but still gave me goose bumps in places. There were a couple of side stories that I felt weren’t needed as they didn’t really add much to this particular story but if they were written as a separate book I would definitely want to pick it up.

One thing I am a little confused about is what age group this books aimed at. I mean it reads as though it’s aimed for younger readers but I feel some of the topics and details are more suited for adults, never the less one I enjoyed very much.

Clay Boy is a great quick read making it ideal to pick up over the Halloween.

I would like to thank NetGalley and the publishers Brigids Gate Press for my digital review copy (eARC). These are my honest and unbiased thoughts and I am sharing them voluntarily.

There is a content warning at the back of the book.

This was a strange book, a strange mix which references to Prometheus, the Beowulf (Gren(del), the Scripture and some 80s and 90s classic horror films, such as Psycho.
Caleb is a troubled young man, his emotions of anger, helplessness, and sheer malevolence manifest in his alter ego Gren (Grendel)-
I was also reminded of His Dark Materials, in particular in this story the 'evil' manifests in his companying 'daemon.’'

I thought the idea was original -but I think the author tried to implement too many ideas in this story. For me, at least, it didn't work.
The Beowulf was covered extensively during my English studies, I am also reasonably well acquainted with Greek mythology.
I found the dialogues between Helen and 'Scares' a bit unnatural, that's really not the way young people talk!
The transitions into the next chapters were all too abrupt, it sometimes seemed like I had entered a radically new story. Some parts were very well written, half-way though the quality went down drastically.
I did find the explanation about the tulpa, as a manifestation of evil to be very original, but the execution really leaves something to be desired. As a result, the story comes across as disjointed, the storyline is not balanced.
I recommend editing parts and taking a critical look at this work. A potentially original story, but for me it's really not sufficient in terms of writing style and dialogue.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Brigids Gate Press for the ARC copy they provided.

One thing I will say for Clay Boy, this book… it made me sit down and lay out a format for my personal reasoning behind star reviews. Until this point, I had been going off a more arbitrary gut feeling about a book, but after reading a little over half of Clay Boy I wrote down a set format to determine why I rate a book the way I do.

Unfortunately, Clay Boy will be my first ever two star review, based on the criteria that I had trouble reading this book, due to the blatant developmental and copy editing issues that got in the way of my enjoyment of the story, and made the book hard for me to read.

I managed to read roughly 62% of Clay Boy before realizing the basic level of storyline and plot development, not to mention the constant and consistent tendency of the author to just say what a character was feeling, instead of showing their emotion through actions and dialogue, were killing my enjoyment of what would otherwise be a fine, and rather classic, horror story.

Clay Boy is, at its heart, everything lovers of 80’s horror movies crave, all unabashedly tossed together in a wonderfully greedy miss-mash. That element of the book I loved, and it is what kept me reading for as long as I did. Nostalgia and a classic feel go a long way and set a marvelous tone. However, that tone was the only thing I felt this book had going for it.

The story, the base plot of the book was there, but not well executed. The characters felt wooden and unreal, emotionless. They all acted, in general, the same, making age distinctions hard to identify. Adults were, well, “adultish,” but the pre-teen characters acted the same as the teenagers closer to graduation, and they all felt childish. Motivations were also unclear, and oftentimes stated rather than demonstrated through story development.

Story development… was… basic. Near the 62% mark, where I stopped reading and started skimming, just so I could figure out how the plot was resolved, a teen was discovered to have a gun in his glove box. His reasoning for acquiring said illegal item, as well as how he got it without adult assistance, weren’t well defined. There was the implication that the character wanted/needed the gun to defend himself from kids supposedly younger than himself, which made no sense to me, and tied into my frustration at not receiving cues to characters’ ages and maturity levels.

In short, Clay Boy just did not jive with me. I come from a reading/writing background where story development and clear language are king, and I just didn’t find those elements in this book. Given, the copy of Clay Boy I read is an ARC, and many, or all, of these noted issues could be corrected before Clay Boy hits shelves. I do not know, and I won’t be finding out as I have no inclination to read this book again.

If you’re looking for a spooky story you don’t have to think hard about, with some 80’s aesthetic thrown in, Clay Boy might just be the book for you. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the book for me.

This was a very good read taking imaginary friends to a whole new level. Very well written and easy to read. Holds your interest to keep reading. As I was reading, I kept thinking this would be a good movie. Thanks to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for the ARC of this book n return for my honest review. Receiving the book in this manner had no bearing on my review.

I loved this book's originality. I've never read about Tulpas before and loved the dark side of them. Unfortunately, this book needs more work. There were a lot of tangents and oddities that did not forward the plot. Info dumps from characters and back stories, over explaining plot points, side stories that had nothing at all to do with what was going on in the story and never tied in with the plot.