Decomposition Book by Sara van Os
Ooooh, yes. The premise grabbed me immediately, the cover is perfection, and the story is engrossing, if a wee bit unfulfilling at the end. College student Savannah is reeling (well, spiraling) after a friendship breakup and has retreated to an isolated cabin to drink away her woes. It’s not going particularly well, given her OCD and other mental health challenges. One morning, she wakes up next to a corpse in the woods. Awkward. There’s a journal next to the corpse, which recounts the harrowing set of circumstances that led to the young woman’s death. Instead of reporting the body, Savannah…bonds with it? For lack of a better phrasing. She starts reading the journal and visiting the corpse, and before long, she has formed an emotional attachment with the ghost of the dead hiker. If it sounds trippy, it is. It’s wild and unhinged and occasionally messy and gory. And I’m here for the mess. We also get to read along in the hiker’s journal. Her name is Ava, and watching her story unfold keeps you on the edge of your seat, even as you know where the story ends. The ending was a bit unsatisfying, but not so much that it detracts from the thrill of the story to that point. Great themes of mental health, toxic friendship, and how we heal.
Decomposition Book by Sara van Os, (List Price: $30, Hanover Square Press, 9781335001894, May 2026)
Reviewed by Kate, Plaid Elephant Books in Danville, KY
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“I thought about setting the historical timeline before the Meiji Restoration, when the samurai still would have had social standing and power. But ultimately, I liked the idea of Sen’s family desperately clinging to the past glory of the samurai, because desperate characters do irrational things. I also liked that because Sen’s father essentially wants to start a whole new samurai rebellion from scratch. The stakes feel much more like a personal vendetta than a political movement. I think this decision fit better with the story I was trying to tell — I’m more interested in talking about the mistakes of one family who happened to be samurai rather than commenting on the samurai at large.” 
