**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, tou**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the book's subject matters & those detailed in my review overwhelming. I would suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters which contain reflections on the death of an animal, the death of a minor, violent crime, insinuations of sexual violence against children, body mutilation, body decomposition, grief, self-harm, domestic abuse, inter-generational trauma, & others.
The unsuspecting town of Little Hope is nestled quaintly in the California countryside. Not far enough away that its inhabitants are prevented from a jaunt to civilization yet, too far away for them to feel a part of the booming populace of the State. The slow-moving town boasts of one morbid point in its history, leaving the townsfolk confident that they made the right decision to remain aloof from the developing world. However, on one casual afternoon like every other, after the townsfolk had been told that three (3) teenage girls had wandered off for shopping malls & city thrills, did they realize that horror is not the concept found in the homes of the other—it is the terror found in one’s own backyard.
The publisher—Titan Books—has become something of a trusted source for me with regard to the publication of good Horror stories. Over the course of many years, I have fine-tuned my appreciation for the genre into a specific type of Horror. Though the tales of monsters & lore are terrifying in their own right, I find nothing to be more unsettling than reality. When I started reading this book, on a sunny Sunday morning, I found myself easily swayed into the story. I didn’t ask much of this fiction; I wanted to know the layout of the town, & understand why the inhabitants were so easily fooled into believing that three teenage girls would simply run away from home. These are not complicated demands & one may note that the latter is more so a request for intimacy with the world of the story rather than a need for a logical rationale.
In the non-fictional world, people go missing every single day. Judicial bodies are hard-pressed to turn to the worst-case scenario, even knowing that it is probably the most likely. What readers will find within this book mirrors the real world with a tinge of orange lighting. The characters in this story have known one another for their entire lives & in a bid to play pretend, they adopt more distinct roles within their community. One of the men becomes a police chief whereas another is a religious leader intent on protecting a child predator. Amongst the women, we have the drunken housewife who cannot stand her religious husband whilst simultaneously loving the wealth devotion allows her. Another is a young mother whose husband beat her senselessly. No adult in this book felt very real to me. Certainly, not every single character needs to have a fully formed backstory nor do we need to spend pages on end delving into their person. However, they were niche representatives of a category of people.
I certainly would have appreciated following the narrative of another parent rather than Kat’s. Between the two the reader notes a great deal of tension that never really meets its own potential. Kat is dead throughout this entire story, save for the sections the reader explores via her personal diary. Her mother, on the other hand, is about as ignorant as a person might get while raging against logic, every chance she gets. I found the sections of the journal somewhat tedious to read, though they certainly brought a much-needed level of normalcy to the story. Kat is a regular girl trying to make her way in a town filled with adults who have no way of clocking their own drama. Perhaps this is unfair. Kat’s mother fell pregnant with a man who was a domestic abuser. One might find it acceptable to give her some leeway. However, she turns around & treats Kat like a golden spoon for the entirety of her life, ignoring Kat’s own feelings towards the matter.
Each of the three girls shared a relationship with their parents that was tumultuous & veered on abusive. Rae is sent to a conversion camp which results in her self-harming. Donna is abandoned by her mother & lives in poverty. While Kat’s mother is a helicopter parent that drafts her into beauty pageants & bemoans her for her weight. There is rather little to highlight in terms of a positive aspect of any of the parents. Because of this, the girls are somewhat left to their own devices. On one such occasion, they decide that it would be a good idea to follow a man convicted of familicide into the woods on his property in the hopes of getting close enough to him for an interview.
Their journey into the woods leads them to a strange gorge—perhaps it is something else but I had a rather difficult time picturing the landscape of this particular bit of forestry & therefore imagined something of a darkened pit that led into a ravine where a monster lived. The monster in this story reminded me of The Kaonashi (No-Face) from “Spirited Away” (2001) while sprouting the dimensions of a magnified earthworm. The way that the beast consumed spirits truly made me flash through the bathhouse scenes in the 2001 film & I couldn’t move past the similarities. This is not to say that it is a bad thing rather, I couldn’t move past a giant No-Face slithering in the woods as he did throughout the film.
My eagerness to have the mystery resolved all but vanished when we learnt that a parasitic sentient mucus was flitting through the woods consuming everything in its path. Again, this is not so much a problem with the book as it is because I do not necessarily care for monsters & ghouls—rather less for ones that remind me of childhood movies that were spooky in their own right & therefore leave me with little room to be afraid of the familiar.
I have overall, very little to say about this book. It allowed me to pass the time & I enjoyed the first half. I cannot say that it was a bad book because that would be untrue; so many readers will find this to be an exemplary read. Therefore, suffice it to say that, this wasn’t a book for me. The terror that I was hoping for was rather surface-level scares whereas I wanted the beast to be all of the purely terrible things hidden in the town. Ultimately, this story will be for readers who enjoy the gore of a body being sucked up from its middle; the imagery of blood-soaked sheets, tarantula limbs reaching past thick darkness to touch the delicate young skin of the tormented young girls who stood at the entrance of its cave.
Thank you to NetGalley, Titan Books, Dale Halvorsen, & Sam Beckbessinger for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!...more
This book is painfully predictable. I listened to this story in audio format & for every single sentence written I was able to accurately predict the This book is painfully predictable. I listened to this story in audio format & for every single sentence written I was able to accurately predict the next. I acknowledge that as a frequent reader I sometimes encounter instances wherein I can gauge where a plot layout is going. However, in this case, everything fell into place far too predictably; everything was easily laid-out.
Thursday, the main character & narrator is something of a wet rag; without substance, depth or anything tethering her to human reality. At every turn, we read about her crafting excuses for her husband’s (Seth) behaviour. Does this second character add anything of mystic or intrigue to the story, no? Seth is an absolute dud. He is never fully fleshed out; we know nothing about him save for the assumptions Thursday believes. It would have been to the benefit of the impending ‘twist’ for Seth to have been crafted as an actual antagonist rather than a lowly loser.
The author goes to great lengths to fill the pages with Thursday’s talk of her active sex life as though the reader would be satiated by the mundane details of the fornication habits of rodents. Who is Seth? All we come to know about him are his physical attributes — we are given nothing to work with. There was so little effort put into creating the characters that it was no surprise that, in turn, said people underwent no development throughout the progression of the story.
Characters aside, the plot was very boring. It’s always semi-disappointing when you endeavour into reading a book & have its entirety mapped out before hitting the midway point. Another reviewer said it well, this book felt like bits of other stories pieced together. You’ve read this story before but, in different books....more
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