A review by eggcatsreads
Deadstream by Maria Romasco Moore

3.5

 

With the rise of social media, streaming, and living one’s life online - the internet has been a place sorely lacking in good horror content focused solely on that. There’s been a few decent games and ARG’s I can think of that focus on the internet as the birthplace of the horror (the game Simulacra comes to mind), but as a whole I find it difficult to find many ventures into this genre to be both believable and entertaining. 

Deadstream, in my opinion, has a wonderful start to how the horror begins - slowly, and with increasing believability. With our main character recovering from the death of her friend after a car crash, she’s become agoraphobic and only gets her socialization online - typically through either streaming herself, or watching others stream. As someone who watches a lot of streamers, and has for a few years, I found these parts of the novel to be realistic and believable - the live chat, the reactions, the streamers content and speaking voice - all of which, made it remarkably easy for me to imagine I was also watching this stream and was involved in the chat. 

• With that note, I will say that I think someone who doesn’t regularly watch streamers online, and isn’t familiar with the kind of chat lingo that comes with it, as well as other typical fandom content on places like Reddit or Twitter, I do think you might be a bit lost during these parts. In being realistic, I do think if you’re unused to the speaking tone and the “chat-speak” that’s common during these things, you won’t get the full picture. However, if you do know these things, I personally found it to be one of the only times I’ve found the inclusion of this side of the internet to be realistic and charming - rather than cringy and painful to read. 

However, I will admit that a majority of my 4 star rating has come more from this beginning than how this book ended, as once the “reveal” of what exactly was happening was done I was less invested and found the entire thing to (somehow) become less believable. While the idea of something that haunted streamers and sent them catatonic was an interesting take, I think - once we (as the main character) knew the cause, it was suddenly less frightening or interesting. Not to spoil anything, but there was one scene with a character in a car that felt absolutely ridiculous and by that point I was just reading to finish the book, to be completely honest. 

While I understood our main character’s anxiety, I didn’t personally think that there was a serious need to have the background of her dead friend being the cause of her agoraphobia - at times it felt out of place, and since this aspect is never fully explored I didn’t think it was necessary. There are many reasons a person may become, or already is, agoraphobic, and I think any could have been explored with our main character and nothing would have changed. The parts in this book that focused on this section of our main character’s past felt less explored or thought out than the rest of the book, and it personally felt to me like a last-minute addition to give a “reason” for her behavior. 

I also kind of found the ending to have, while an interesting take on the entire thing, to have felt a bit too cheesy and not for me. However, considering the reasoning for the entire paranormal stream activity in the first place, it does - in a way - fit, but it personally took me out of the story by the time I reached it.

However - as a whole, I found this book to be a fun exploration of horror set in a modern digital age, with the focus being on streaming and the many doors that can - unintentionally - open, both to those streaming and those watching. While I think that this book had a strong start and may have missed the mark near the end, I do recommend it if you were looking for some fast-paced campy modern digital horror, as the premise was extremely well done and (at least for the parts focusing in the streaming) it never cut my immersion. 

A huge thank you to the author, NetGalley, and Penguin Young Readers Group for providing this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.