The Fifth Anomaly follows a small urban exploration group that prides itself on debunking hauntings with cameras, notes, and skepticism, until they meet Hillrose Penitentiary, a prison with too many basements, missing records, and a pattern of investigations that always start in October and never quite finish. As Marcus, Riley, Sam, and Kevin descend through Hillrose, their footage, their chat logs, and even their sense of time start to bend around the anomaly. The story keeps zooming out, until we meet David, a writer who realizes he is somehow channeling their ordeal into the very book I am holding, and the act of publishing the story becomes part of the horror itself. It is a cosmic horror tale about patterns that want to be seen and a book that may not want to stay fictional.

I really liked how the book feels. The Discord transcripts, reports, chat logs, and more traditional scenes flow together in a way that reads fast and keeps the world grounded. The author even opens with a frank foreword about “just trying to finish a book,” which sets a scrappy, human tone that I found charming and disarming before the story gets weird. The writing leans into clear, conversational language, so even when the concepts get big, the sentences stay readable. Sometimes the momentum gets ahead of the polish. I could feel a bit of repetition and a few cumbersome transitions, especially when Kevin is info-dumping research or when the group re-states the pattern one more time. But I never felt lost. The scenes in Hillrose’s lower levels, the tallies on the walls, the long grind of “observation duty” all landed for me with a heavy, tired dread that fit the characters and the premise.

What I liked most was the book’s attitude toward observation and authorship. The core idea that “some patterns demand to be observed, and observation changes the observer” runs through everything: the Discord channel, the cameras, the tallies on concrete, the way David’s hands become a kind of meat keyboard for something else that wants the story finished and uploaded. I felt genuinely unsettled by the suggestion that my act of reading joins that pattern. The meta twist, where The Fifth Anomaly exists inside its own last chapter as a runaway book that writes and distributes itself, is clever and creepy. It also brushes up against real-world questions about AI, co-writing, and who is really in charge of the words. Riley’s arc in particular hit me harder than I expected. Her mix of competence, fear, and longing for a “normal” life gave the cosmic stuff a human anchor, so when the story asks her to pay the price for seeing too much, I felt that loss.

I would recommend The Fifth Anomaly to readers who enjoy cosmic horror with a tech-age vibe, people who liked House of Leaves, creepypasta, or “found footage” stories, and anyone curious about metafiction that plays with Discord chats, documents, and author notes as part of the scare. It is not for someone who wants neat answers, clean timelines, or a cozy ending. The book leaves some edges rough, both in prose and in lore, and it leans into existential dread more than jump scares. I closed the last page feeling spooked and impressed that a debut horror novel managed to make the simple act of opening an ebook feel like joining a very old, persistent experiment.

Pages: 469 | ASIN : B0G8LTJQR5