A short and eerily effective update on the suburban Gothic genre. Mr. Munson seeds the otherwise ordinary setting with ominously recurring symbols and side characters ... But the story sustains its atmosphere of disquiet by refusing to give away its secrets until the final sentences.
A slow burn ... The plot is simple, yet deceptive ... What Munson lacks in girth, he makes up for in atmosphere ... A 'vibes novel,' one that benefits from the reader giving themself over to its rhythm, mood, and current of unreliability.
The reader is sucked into Montessori’s mind ... Munson keeps the reader hooked on the mystery ... While the mystery is enough to make the short book engrossing, Munson’s narrator invites the reader into the story...with the direct address to the reader ... Surreal, with twists and turns and even diction that is sometimes off-putting enough to feel like an error, so these asides to the reader only add to the edge-of-your-seat appeal to the psychological horror ... [The] language allows the story to evolve quickly enough to suck the reader in, but beautiful enough to quietly blow the reader’s mind ... When the ending hits like a couch dropped from a tenth story building, it feels so abrupt, so immediate that it’s almost a let-down. This is, in part, due to Munson’s delicious and brain-melting prose ... Consuming ... Can be devoured in a sitting or two.
There’s something undeniably compelling when a story manages to shake your hold on what is and isn’t possible...[and]The Sofa by Sam Munson, managed to walk this line ... A masterful example of conjuring this effect. I did not particularly enjoy reading this book because it kept creeping me out, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it ... Through his use of language, repetition, and pacing, Munson weaves a spell.
Surreal, grimly humorous, and intense ... For fans of horror that uses a mundane object to frame a story to hold readers’ nervous systems hostage, keep their eyes glued to the page, and thwart the instinct to look away.
There’s just not enough here to hang a story on. The younger son is so superfluous he’s not even named, while the wife is a judgmental placeholder at best. There’s something to be said for a good descent into madness, but this house isn’t haunted enough to leave an impression, let alone a scar. An unkempt, scare-free portrait of a guy losing his mind in his couch cushions.
A haunting if uneven work of psychological horror ... The premise is arresting, but the plot loses steam as it hits the expected genre beats, with creepy children, dead pets, and other gothic tropes showing up. Still, Munson sticks the landing with a creepy finale that mixes macabre humor and an unsettling reckoning with mortality. There’s plenty to admire in this offbeat ghost story.
