Half-Made Girls (Pitchfork County, #1) by Sam Witt

Half-Made Girls (Pitchfork County, #1) Reviews

• 
  Dan Schwent

  Joe Hark is the Night Marshal of Pitchfork County, a rural area of Missouri plagued by meth and monsters. When someone crucifies a mutilated girl in a church, Joe finds himself balls deep in a mess involving drugs, demonic forces, and dark gods.
  
  Sam Witt wrote
  The Astromundi Cluster, a Spelljammer supplement I should get around to writing a review for one of these days. On a whim, I wanted to see what else he wrote and this popped up, for free no less. I've long thought rural fantasy had untapped potential as a genre and I was right in this case.
  
  The lazy way to describe Half-Made Girls is The Dresden Files meets Winter's Bone. There's a lot more grit and a lot more gore than the Dresden files and I don't get the feeling the Night Marshall is working with a safety net like I do with Harry Dresden. The Night Marshall isn't an overly glib white knight, either. He's the guy that gets his hands dirty and does what needs to be done when someone walks the Left Hand Path of dark sorcery.
  
  Set in Pitchfork County, Missouri, a dirt poor place where being a meth dealer is one of the only forms of employment, Half-Made Girls is a tale of dark forces that threaten to consume the earth and the one man that can stop them, the Night Marshall, Joe Hark. Now if he could just put aside his alcohol problem and the curse that has forced a wedge between his family and himself....
  
  Joe Hark is more Roland the Gunslinger than Harry Dresden, a hard man that's been to hell and back a dozen times. When meth head cultist stir up some serious shit, The Night Marshall is forced to do some things he doesn't want to do and question his beliefs and methods in order to set things right. Heavy shit.
  
  As befits the situation, the violence is stark and brutal and no one is making half-assed quips or tired Star Wars references. Even though I knew it was the first book in a series, I felt like all bets were off and I could be reading about a new Night Marshall in the second book.
  
  There's a real sense of place to the book. Sam Witt paints a vivid picture of life in the Ozarks. When he's not painting it in blood and gore, anyway.
  
  Sam Witt is also a much better writer than I thought he'd be. He knows how to write suspense and the dialogue is spot on. Also, he writes things like this: It looked like a bathroom at Hogwarts after a week long meth binge.
  
  Half-Made Girls is a gripping, sometimes gut-wrenching read, so much more than the urban fantasy fluff I was afraid it was going to be. It actually has more in common with Brian Keene's
  Ghost Walk. Four out of five stars.
• 
  Montzalee Wittmann

  Half-Made Girls (Pitchfork County #1) by Sam Witt is not what I expected. By the cover I thought this book would be about a kick ass gal, strong female lead, paranormal, etc..... NOT! This is a horror book about a Night Marshal, a marshal that fights the supernatural bad guys. He is married to a witch and they have two very unusual kids that have strange 'gifts'. They help him. They creep me the f#@k out! The half-made girls are the poor girls they are finding that have been butchered and by magic they are alive and evil. Yep, sleep with your lights on with this book folks. It is one of those kind of books. It is good at it too! If the good guys don't scare the shit out of you the bad guys will. Wonderful book! I had to get the next one!
• 
  Paul

  Good gore-fest
  
  If king had went all out inventing Roland he may have been Joe the night marshal.
  
  The night marshal has a very black and white view of good and evil in pitchfork county and takes his duties to protect the citizenry of the county very seriously indeed, even if a share of them are meth heads.
  
  Witt spares no expense in graphic details and really paints a dark and gruesome scene although his characterization could have been deeper Joe and his family had enough dimensions to retain my interest. This novel was entertaining enough as a mash:-p of splatterppunk and spaghetti western I wish some of the horror was left to the imagination as there could have been more ingrained dread and suspense IMO. All in all worth the read and I will continue the series but not Strongly recommend it.
• 
  Cobwebby Eldritch Reading Reindeer

  REVIEW: HALF-MADE GIRLS by Sam Witt
  (A Pitchfork County Novel)
  
  From the very first pages, HALF-MADE GIRLS grabbed it spot in the pantheon of my all-time favorite books. Like the Appalachian magic of Manly Wade Wellman, and the Alvin Maker Tales of Orson Scott Card, HALF-MADE GIRLS and its background locale of a horribly cursed county where darkness and evil magicks rule, is simultaneously fascinating, compelling, intriguing, and totally terrifying. Night Marshal Joe Hark cleans up the dirty deeds and sorcerous overflows of Pitchfork County, a position he inherited from his late father. His son harbors a demonic secret; his daughter is ridden by the dead the way vodou worshippers are ridden by the Loa.
  
  Pitchfork County: no one wants to live there, but what a great place to read about. I'll be distraught if this doesn't expand into a very long series.
• 
  Steve Garriott

  I received a free readers copy through Story Cartel for my review.
  
  It's a neat concept: a sheriff who deals with the more mundane issues of life and then there is a night marshall who deals with the supernatural. Very Lukyanenko-esque with a western twist. But here's the rub: in Half-Made Girls, the first in a series dealing with the Night Marshall of Pitchfork County (cool name, I think), I don't see why anyone would want to save this place. Clearly, the current Night Marshall, Joe (who appears to have inherited the position) doesn't see a reason either. "Joe hated Pitchfork County." And I do get that it's part of his character arc. Joe is a mess and has to find redemption in the midst of hell breaking loose. So, the concept has potential.
  
  However, the novel just doesn't work for me, and I realize I might not be the target demographic, so keep that in mind for the review. Action is made up of a lot of blowing people away, a lot of visceral descriptions of heads being blown apart and bodies torn asunder, human and other creatures. Meth is the drug du jour, cultists seem to outnumber normal folk, but I think I'd rather spend my time in Night Vale where there's weird stuff galore, but there are still some breaks in the carnage.
  
  Joe spends a lot of time by himself, which is never a good idea if you want to avoid tons of exposition and memories; not much sub-text. It's okay for readers to not get everything right away and to make them work, especially if this is a series. My questions were being answered even before I had a chance to come up with them.
  
  Mr. Witt has definite talent. His sentences flow; his action scenes are concrete and graphic. But the story just isn't there yet. And I'm not sure I really like Joe enough to follow him to the next book. He's not a very nice person even though I understand there are reasons behind that; I've already been told what they are.
• 
  T. K. Elliott (Tiffany)

  Characters
  Joe Hark is definitely a flawed hero, maybe even an anti-hero. He's a violent alcoholic who shoots first and doesn't bother to ask questions because he thinks he already knows the answers. Or he doesn't care. But according to his lights, he's doing the best he can to keep the darkness out of Pitchfork County - the job his father died doing.
  
  Stevie Hark is as complex a character as Joe; her dark heritage is almost as big a barrier between herself and her husband as the curse her mother laid.
  
  Interestingly, Joe and Stevie's children - thirteen-year-old Alasdair and eight-year-old Elsa aren't just the ciphers or cute comic relief that children often are in books. They have their own darkness and their own power, and take an active part in the story as something other than hostages to fortune.
  
  Setting
  I loved Pitchfork County. I wouldn't want to live there, mind you. I wouldn't even want to visit. But as a setting for a dark urban fantasy/horror novel, it works really well. It's a place of grinding poverty, drug addiction, despair, and black magic, and it suits the storyline perfectly.
  
  Plot
  To be honest, this was the weakest aspect of the story - Joe does a lot of driving around shooting people, but not a great deal of thinking. This means that the plot isn't as complex as it might be. However, the setting and characters are more than solid enough to make this a minor quibble rather than a dealbreaker.
  
  Summary
  The Pitchfork County been compared with the Dresden Files and while it's closer to Dresden than some other series, if you're expecting humour and pop-culture references, go elsewhere. This is dark, gritty, and violent in a way that the Dresden Files books just aren't. It's closer to Stephen Blackmoore's Eric Carter books.
  
  This was a very solid four-star book for me - it didn't quite have the zing that would have made it five stars, but I'll definitely be reading more of Sam Witt's work.
• 
  Jenna

  3.5, really, but I rounded up for Amazon.
  
  This is the kind of book I've been wanting for most of my reading life. It's gritty, grimy, supernatural... The hero is not lovable, he's not cut from the charming but jerkish cloth of many anti-heroes. He is a man given a crap job and doing it the best he knows how. The romance is not predictable and it isn't a hinge-point for the plot of the book. There's no smut. It's a wild ride, and it feels BIG.
  
  Like some of the other lower-star reviews (and sometimes you can weigh the value of a book by the thoughtfulness that goes into the lower/average star reviews - this is one of those books), I had the sense that this book was more like the ending of a bigger arc. I got that feeling a lot. As though I ought already know and be comfortable/familiar with the cast of intriguing characters that danced across the pages - I WISHED that it were so. Seeing a series of stories that built up the relationships between the Night Marshal and his wards, which would make the weight of Half-Made Girls all the more convincing.
  
  As an example of what I mean: I'm a crier... Given all the violence, certainly there's death. I can cry at Folger's commercials because of the way they build up a figure in the thing. I didn't cry for some of the folks I probably OUGHT to have shed at least a single tear for in Half-Made Girls. (I did tear up a bit, not over a death, later in the book though - so, it's not like it didn't touch me at all!)
  
  Overall, engaging and well-written story. Sometimes the gore or the violence bordered on "too much" (not in the sense that I got grossed out or uncomfortable, but that I actually got a bit bored reading through it), but it never quite crossed the line into gratuity, given the flavor and texture of the overall text.
  
  I would love to see more about Pitchfork County, but wowzers - how do you go UP from battling a god? It's a tall order, but one I sincerely hope Mr. Witt is up to filling.
• 
  E.D. Martin

  I loved the premise of this book: there's a rural county filled with evil, and one man - the Night Marshall - has to keep it at bay. Everyone seems to play with darkness and the old gods in one way or another, for better or for worse, and then it gets much, much worse. The storyline and setting were pretty unique, which hooked me into the story right with chapter one.
  
  Without giving anything away, I enjoyed the ending of the book and the way the Night Marshall solves Pitchfork County's ancient evil problem. The author set up a sequel very nicely.
  
  That said, the middle slowed me down. There's a lot of gore and violence in this book. It's necessary for the ending to work, but it was hard to read through at times. It made the Night Marshall unlikable to someone like me who prefers problem-solving skills that don't involve blowing someone's head off.
  
  I also felt at times like I'd missed the first book in this series, because a lot of the dark magic and character history was referenced but never explained. Many major plot points relied on this knowledge. If there are other stories out there, the author should link to them so readers can read them first.
  
  The premise of the book was interesting enough to keep me reading, despite the excessive gore. I'm looking forward to reading the next book, as well as any other Pitchfork County stories.
• 
  Natasa

  I'm so happy I found something like this book to read, my new favorite author that I'll keep an eye on for sure.
  A great freebie and a freebie from the author, second book in the series, a novella actually, thanks Mr Witt!
• 
  Seth Tucker

  If Justified starred Harry Dresden. The main character in this book is the Night Marshal, a lawman charged with taking care of the things that choose the left-hand path. He has various supernatural means to protect himself and fight the monsters in Pitchfork County, but with this new case, things are starting to change. A fun read that keeps you turning the pages, Half-Made Girls was our first glimpse into the meth-filled county, and its memorable inhabitants. Sam Witt has created memorable and likable characters, while also building a county that feels real with its own history. Hints of the county's past and the various "religious" groups within it helped to add to the realism of this world rather than bog it down in exposition. Mr. Witt knows how to write one fine yarn.
• 
  Erin *Proud Book Hoarder*

  A dark and twisted book that's seriously dark and twisted. It's like...nothing else actually. Surreal and unique. Oddball characters. Bizarre little town called Pitchfork County. Meth is as big of a demon as the actual demons. The author doesn't hold back on the almost morbid noirish vibe, nor does he hold back from the gory tidbits, violent deaths and outright painful torments. Full review to come.
• 
  Sadie Forsythe

  3.5
  There is a lot to appreciate about this book. In a market that is so often flooded with Marty Stus, finding an alcoholic asshole as a main character/hero is pleasant change. The man is definitely fighting on the side of good, but he is what you might call a 'blunt tool.' His methods are violent and heavy-handed to say the least.
  
  In fact, it's the accumulated resentment of these same tactics that the book is based on. Poor Joe has to learn the difference between shepherding and policing a community and it's a hard lesson to learn.
  
  Unfortunately, while I really liked the premise of the book and thought the characters were really interesting, I thought the book tended to drag. There is a lot of rambling exposition and just too much gratuitous gore and violence.
  
  Now, I don't really mind violence or gore; that's not the reason for my complaint. I'm not even bothered by the fact that the victim (intended or collateral) of Joe's wrath was as often a small innocent child as a meth addict or evil god. What bothered me was that it just got so darned repetitive. I got tired of reading variations of the same scene. But also, that single pony-trick didn't allow for very much character development.
  
  This was exasperated by the fact that the community situation that leads to the events of the book has been brewing for 20 or so years and the reader is just told it is what it is. It leaves you feeling like you've missed something important, like maybe a first book.
  
  All in all, though I enjoyed the read. I'd be more than happy to pick up a sequel or another book by Witt
• 
  Paulette

  This book is similar to
  Something from the Nightside,
  Monster Hunter International,
  Sandman Slim, or
  Street Magic. If you like the above books, please feel free to ignore this review and go right out and get this book, because you will like Half-Made Girls as well.
  Otherwise...
  Why did I give this book only one star? I reserve one star for books that I simply can't bring myself to finish. I rarely, and I mean really rarely, DNF (did not finish) a book. I think I've done it 4 times in all the time I've been on Goodreads, and it was because I found myself thinking"ooh, I'm going to go read" but then remembering what book I was reading and mentally wandering off, wondering if I had any moves left in my online games or if there was any cleaning to be done.
  I don't mind violence, as long as it makes sense in the plot. I'm pretty sure that in this book, the plot exists only to further the violence.
  This book has the privilege of being only the fifth book I've DNFed on Goodreads. And that is why I only gave it one star.
  
  
• 
  Kristi Hudecek-Ashwill

  I guess when I step outside the box, I do it big. This book is not something I would normally read but overall, I liked it. There were a lot of "bang-bang-shoot-em-up" scenes in it and lots of blood, guts and gore where I had to set the book aside for awhile but I wanted to finish it.
  
  The story is pretty easy to follow yet tough to read due to all the violence but there is a good, strong plot, great characters and some excellent writing. Everything just fit and worked well together.
  
  Joe is the Night Marshal who has supernatural powers bestowed upon him by the Long Man. The Long Man is supposed to be the good guy but I never really did like him. He had an underlying sinister quality that made him untrustworthy yet Joe answered to this guy. He answered to him and did his bidding which usually meant that he had to kill people who'd chosen the Left-Hand Path or the side of evil. Joe did it without question because he figured it was his destiny since his own father had been the previous Night Marshal.
  
  Joe is married to Stevie and they have two kids. Alasdair (Al), his son is a shifter and his daughter, Elsa is some sort of spirit monger. Stevie is a witch but has been forbidden to practice witchcraft by Joe. She knows if she does practice it, Joe will kill her because for him, everything is black and white. You're either righteous or you're not and if you're not, he will kill you. That's what the Night Marshal does.
  
  The half-made girls are a mix of human and demon, the latter being the most prevalent. They were once normal girls that got switched over by the darkness and now are evil themselves. They are servants of whatever the dark force is that's trying to make its way to the earth via Pitchfork County. The county is inundated with meth addicts and this force uses them, these half-made girls, bats and whoever and whatever else is handy to feed itself until it has enough power to make it over.
  
  I don't want to go into a lot of detail because I don't want to put any spoilers in this review. That being said, a lot happens in this book. It has some surprises and considering how things were going, I wasn't sure just how it was going to end. I found myself disappointed in Joe and then a few pages later, I was cheering for him. The story is a roller coaster and when you start reading it, you're in for a heck of a ride. Just hang on.
  
  I'm of the mindset that this is probably a book geared toward guys but I do have a tendency to step out of my comfort zone and read something totally different and this was it. This scared me more than once. Okay, I'll go back to reading romances for a little while now.
• 
  Dee Arr

  Looking for a story so full of grit that your insides will feel raw long before you’re done? Can’t get enough horror from what you’ve been reading? Sam Witt’s “Half-Made Girls” more than fits the bill.
  
  Truth be told, this is not my kind of novel. It wavers between reality and a place so fantastic it is hard to believe. It runs from straight horror that can lift the little hairs on the back of your neck to demonic images of fiendish animals that leave their victims draped in blood. It makes you want to put the book down while at the same time propels you to read just one more chapter.
  
  Sam Witt is the main reason I kept reading. His writing is descriptive, different in a way that hooks you and entices you to continue. The passages read like pictures, powerful images that explode off the pages and promise nightmares for days to come. It is easy to become involved with the characters. Witt fleshes them out nicely, exposing their strengths as well as their underbellies.
  
  Joe is the Night Marshal of Pitchfork County. It is his job to prevent the horrors he encounters from spilling out and inhabiting the sane world. The entire book is nonstop action, as Joe moves from one battle to the next. He is aided by his wife and children, who have powers that border on the demonic and sometimes cause even Joe to ponder as he walks the line between darkness and goodness.
  
  If there was anything that didn’t make sense to me, it was the banter between Joe and his wife, Stevie. Our initial view of their marriage indicates a pairing that has splintered, although this is more from Joe trying to protect his family from the evils that want to destroy anything he loves. Once they begin working together, their conversations during and after battles seemed a bit too lighthearted to me. Perhaps this is the way folks talk after squeaking out a victory against evil, but for me, it didn’t ring true. Perhaps it is just as well that this only happened a few times over the course of the book.
  
  If you haven’t already guessed, this book is heavily seasoned with vulgar language and disturbing images, and is not for the fainthearted. The religious overtones may also cause other readers to close the book. Horror lovers who crave stories that will drag you through the muck and back will probably not be able to get enough of the Night Marshal. As for me, I have Sam Witt’s books on my “To Read” list. Now all I have to do is gather enough stamina to carry me through another of his stories.
  
• 
  Eden Hudson

  Half-Made Girls is darker than black, grittier than creek sand, and as backwoods as your granny witching warts off your finger with little white rocks.
  
  I don't know if I can say how much I love this book. Witt does an incredible job of translating Southern Missouri's beauty and ugliness onto the page, juxtaposing the gorgeous and ghostly mountains, forests, and bogs with its barbwire populace's fall into ruin at the hands of poverty, meth, and eldritch horrors they should never have reached out to.
  
  Somehow Witt managed to balance almost nonstop, dead-sprint action with the personal stakes of the Night Marshal and his family. It was awesome from a technical standpoint and for the pure enjoyment of reading. I was so invested in Joe, Al, Stevie, and Elsa. They felt like real, complex people, twisted by their pasts, but loyal to each other. Stevie is such a badass. Watching her backed into a corner, then fight her way out for her children and her husband even though she knew what would happen was the most exciting part of the story for me. Her and Joe's relationship was so tragic, even gut-wrenching at times. I loved it.
  
  I've already bought the next book, Night-Blooded Boys. I can't wait to spend more time with the Night Marshal's family, and see what sorts of new horrors Pitchfork County will face.
• 
  Kenya Starflight

  Something more horror media creators need to realize -- whether they create books, movies, video games, or anything else -- is that pumping their work full of blood and gore does not necessarily make it horror. "Half-Made Girls" is a prime example of this. The concept, of a Night Marshal who defends his county from demons, witches, dark spirits, eldritch gods, and other horrors, is rich with potential for a horror fantasy, but a combination of unlikable characters, an utterly hopeless setting, and a gore-soaked story stuffed full of blood and guts and body horror makes it nearly unreadable, and squanders otherwise-competent writing and an interesting premise.
  
  Joe is the Night Marshal of Pitchfork County, a Minnesota county full of meth-heads, twisted cults, and far more than its share of demons and dark creatures and forces. Joe's method of dealing with the evils that plague his county is simple -- shoot first, kill anyone who steps out of line, and ask questions later. But when the citizens he has tried to keep in line for so long rebel and seek to summon a horrific force to stop him, with the help of a group of mutilated girls possessed by evil spirits, he'll need to rely on his family -- his bog-witch wife Stevie, his werewolf son Al, and his medium-daughter Elsa, to stop this force from utterly taking over Pitchfork County.
  
  Witt's writing is competent, albeit not masterful, and he knows how to keep a decent pace going. And he has an entertaining concept to his work. That's about where my praise ends, to be honest. Instead of giving us a sense of suspense or true horror, his solution to scaring his audience is to drench his work in as much blood, gore, guts, and mutilation as possible. The best horror writers know how to maintain a sense of horror without resorting to cheap tactics such as dumping in endless blood and guts, but sadly "Half-Made Girls" falls into the same trap as the "Saw" movies and countless Stephen-King imitators. They forget that, while King's work could be gory, he was able to horrify readers without absolutely drenching his work in blood.
  
  The characters are also lacking. Joe is an absolute sociopath of a main character, unlikable and often doing dumb things for the sake of the plot. Part of this is intentional, as it shows how far he's fallen and what he must change to find some kind of redemption, but reading about an unlikable character is an unpleasant experience, especially when we're expected to root for them. I actually liked his wife, Stevie, as a character far more -- her moral struggles and her fierce devotion to their children was a far more interesting plotline, and I feel she should have been the main character. Other characters are either grungy stereotypes or just props.
  
  The setting is pretty awful too. I get it, these former mining towns of the Midwest are not pleasant places, what with their economical struggles and the meth trade that plagues them... but it's hard to get invested in a setting when it's completely grim and without redeeming qualities. Also, there seems to be quite a bit of setup missing, and events alluded to that I wanted to see established in greater detail. I feel like I picked up the second book in a series and missed the prequel, though every site I've checked insists this is the first book in the series.
  
  "Half-Made Girls" has some promise, but is ultimately a thoroughly unpleasant experience, so full of nasty characters and almost-constant blood and gore that it's nearly unreadable. It's less a horror novel and more a gorefest with some supernatural elements thrown in. If your idea of a horror movie is something bloody like "Saw" or "Final Destination," you might enjoy this book, but otherwise avoid.
• 
  Jeremy Maddux

  God, the final battle in this book just goes on and on and on and on and on and on. They don't have enough body left between them all to keep getting wounded. Enough already!
• 
  Mary Helen

  I downloaded Half-Made Girls from BookBub and was immediately hooked on the series. After purchasing and reading the remaining books, I was not disappointed. The books are scary and have strange backwoodsy monsters, but deal with some very real life situations along the way such as greed, loyalty, fear and the need to protect family.
  
  Half-Made Girls is the first book in the series. I keep looking for more from Sam Witt as I truly enjoyed all of the Pitchfork County books. 5/5🌟
• 
  Xenophon Hendrix

  According to the ebook software, I got 57% of the way through this book before giving up. It is full of continuity errors, clunky writing, and characters the reader has no reason to care about. The author imagines some vivid scenes, but it's not enough to save the novel.
• 
  Kat Jones

  Like most "scary" movies, this was mostly just gory and gruesome. The Night Marshal, policeman of supernatural criminals, of Pitchfork (laying it on a little thick, but whatever) is more feared than the demons he hunts, mostly because he's just looking for an excuse to turn his shotgun on anyone but his family, though he's quick to remind them that if anyone but himself uses supernatural powers to defend themselves against evil, he'll murder them too. The poor middle of nowhere town is basically full of nothing but meth addicts, demons, or both. Sick of his putting holes in everyone that looks at him wrong, the town decides to call up an evil bat god to rid them of his hated shotgun for a chance at a better life. With the help of his family and a few religious leaders that hate him as much as he hates them, he tries to take on the evil god, even though he's pretty sure all the drugged up trash deserve what they called down on themselves. There's an attempt at history and a love story that reads like there should have been a prequel, but it's basically unimportant poorly done flashback/backstory to give depth to shallow characters and a lose plot that exists only for the series of detailed blood and guts.
• 
  Christopher

  I stumbled across Sam Witts Pitchfork County by accident...and boy what a lucky accident that was!. Half-Made Girls is a truly phenomenal piece of urban fiction, The Night Marshal is spectacular as a character, giving everything you want and need as a reader. You want to cheer him on and take out the bad guys....(Sorry did I say bad guys?...I meant to say Bat faced, pig faced, meth addicted products of demons and incest at its worst!), feel sorry for him when he takes beatings and wounds that would kill a normal guy, then you want to punch him out when he decides who lives and dies by his rules, because anyones rules and perspective are clouded when viewed through the bottom of a bottle of Jack.
  
  Sam Witt is a truly gifted author and I can't wait to read the rest of the Night Marshal and Pitchfork County Books!
• 
  Kay

  The is my first entry to Pitchfork County and its corpulent stomach-turning evil threats kept in check by the Night Marshal. There's magic, dark gods and good old fashioned violence with so much gore that I felt like I may have needed to literally wring out the pages (and I'm reading the Kindle edition). I found this book to be the perfect mixture of dark fantasy and horror tied in to the real life and desperation of rural poverty. Maybe it's my rural Missouri background for I really enjoyed this book, the angsty Night Marshal and his unusual family. I rated this 4 stars as the muck and slime often overwhelmed the story. However, I have nothing but admiration by how well expressed all of the descriptions were especially as relating to a highly rural setting.
• 
  Bruce McLennan

  Half Made Girls is as gory and disgusting as any story gets to be but it is compulsive reading and it works. If you want a synopsis of the book read the blurb, I'm not summarising here. I was about a third of the way through this story when I started to wonder what Sam Witt was drinking or smoking to come up with this level of grit and grime.
  
  Plotwise, the story is pretty straightforward. We've essentially got a cop of sorts as the hero, the Night Marshal. And his job and personal life have driven him to the bottle, like so many literary stereotyped cops/detectives before him. But it's in the detail where lies the creative madness that puts flesh to this woeful tale of good and evil. With more blood flow than an abattoir at full production, this one is for the lovers of gore.
• 
  Robert Joslin

  I came upon this book when it showed up in an email ad for kindle books on sale. The cover was the first thing that caught my eye, made me think of Harry Dresden. Reading the synopsis, I decided to take the leap and I'm glad I did. Sam Witt does a magnificent job of grabbing the reader by the "unmentionables" and pulling you in. The first few chapters was like being hit by a bus, shaking it off, and saying, "That was fun. Let's do it again." I can't think of another way to describe what I read. It is an odd story but one that is intriguing. Supernatural and spiritual come to mind in a tale of a man and his family set out to save the town with the oddest of friend from an even odder enemy. If it sounds like it is up your alley, take the leap. I think you'll like it
• 
  Carol S. Roeder

  Oh my goodness
  
  This book is a strange one. You can almost feel the teeth of the bats on your body as well as their hot rabid breath. Chuck full of witches and warlocks, werewolves and a lots of other things that go bump in the night. It gave me the creeps and made me laugh as well. Yepper, I would recommend this book to anyone that doesn't shy away from very strong language and lots of blood. Deep down you can really understand how evil can creep under the skin of anyone that has some bad vices and enter your soul and tear you up. Almost makes you want to give up every one of those bad vices and start fresh!
• 
  Sara

  Good god the gore descriptions in this were thoroughly disgusting - I loved it. Absolutely not for the squeamish. This is definitely a dark book with some dark topics, like torture, alcoholism, drug addiction (specifically meth), and toxic masculinity made an appearance. I can’t decide if I’m glad they didn’t use or make up an old language that they reference when doing spells, or if I think it was a cop out.
  
  There were several grammatical and spelling errors that were irksome, but it didn’t completely take away from the experience.
• 
  Maria

  Half-Made Girls
  
  I don't know where Sam Witt has been, but I'm happy I've finally stumbled upon him. At first I didnt know where this one would end up. It seemed like the author had far too many balls in the air, as far as the plot went. But at the end, he threw a net around them and pulled it all together. He even left enough dangling to make you look forward to the next book. I haven't been this pleased with a new character in a while.
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  Shell

  I wasn't expecting much from this kindle freebie but now I need to read more in this series. Original and disturbing and although it seemed like it took forever for me to finish (not sure why because it certainly did NOT drag) I really enjoyed it. There were a few typos in the latter half of the book but not enough to become annoying - or maybe I was simply enjoying the story so much that I didn't care.
• 
  Lucinda

  Very interesting
  
  It's a bit different from my usual genre. I really liked the characters. Poor Joe is a raging alcoholic, hunts people who practice black magic, and can't touch his wife because her mother cursed them. Only problem is Joe sees black and white. Oh, and his wife is a witch. That's made him a lot of enemies. So when a big bad comes along, he doesn't get much cooperation. I'm looking forward to the next book.