Review: The Book of Accidents

5 stars. RIGHT. I've never written a review this drunk before, for various reasons. But for other various reasons, I had to delay writing this one a bit and want to make sure I get some things down before the book fades away into the void (no not like that void, just like... the void). OMFG so, I loved this book. I kind of hated big time on Wanderers for being compared to Stephen King when I just didn't feel it, and I'm pretty sure Chuck Wendig read that and got annoyed and then promptly sat down and wrote The Book of Accidents just to personally prove me wrong. WELL, IT WORKED. This read and sounded and felt like a Stephen King book.

Okay so The Book of Accidents: when his abusive father dies, Nate Graves is determined to cut any lingering connection with the man and move on with his life. But when he finds out his father left him his house - essentially for free - Nate and his wife Maddie decide it might be a nice change for them to move there with their son Oliver, who is especially sensitive to other people's pain. And then, well, some weird shit happens. Maddie, a talented artist, starts to feel something off about her process. Nate starts seeing things and wonders if the land is haunted. And Oliver attempts to navigate a new school and new friends - including one who can apparently summon things out of mid-air.

Turns out the Graves family moved right across from a "thin" place called Ramble Rocks, and to go into too much additional detail might get spoiler-y so I'll abstain. BUT JUST KNOW that it's deliciously scary, fun and wacky. I love Chuck Wendig because he's able to write some really emotional, moving, disturbing stuff but he can also whip out the wacky to make everyone feel better. Oh, is this scene really gross and weird and sad? Here he is, Wacky Wendig, showing up between the pages to drop a line or two that's hilarious and grounding and takes the sting out of things!

Speaking of taking the sting out of things... well, there is some serious deep-ass WISDOM up in this book. Who knew (well, actually, I think a lot of people knew) that Wacky Wending is also sometimes Wise Wendig, dropping helpful smartbombs about humanity - and, what struck most true for me - about parenting in a world that looks like what it does right now. He doesn't shy away from scary monster shit, but also scary real world shit, which I really appreciated and found oddly comforting in 2021. Things like climate change, school shootings, the threat against democracy, the failures of America, etc. are all acknowledged. Refreshing that this stuff appears to have informed his work which therefore informed me that I am not insane and yes, the world is shit and we are all processing this together.

I really, really, really, really, really, really liked the short chapters.

What other ramblings can my inebriated brain come up with? Oh, well, there's this interlude in a haunted mine and there's a leg thing and it blew my mind, but for the most part, this book is more creepy than downright scary. I liked it that way. The tone felt well-suited to the story and made the whole thing really damn fun. I highly recommend this: a classic sort of horror/dark fantasy with King vibes (and maybe Spielburg vibes?). Read it. Lol, good night.

The Book of Accidents on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: Something Wicked This Way Comes

5 stars. Wow. This one moved me to tears. It's so strange... I didn't even really enjoy most of this reading experience. I stopped halfway through to read two other books, because I was bored and confused and needed a break from the purple prose. But somewhere in the second half, I got hooked - or maybe things clicked - and boom, suddenly I was crying. The ending hit me right in the fucking heart, or the gut, or the feels, or something. I just really wasn't expecting that.

Something Wicked This Way Comes should attract readers of all ages and preferences. I feel like my eyes have been opened... I see its influence everywhere from Stephen King to Erin Morgenstern to Clive Barker to Neil Gaiman to Cornelia Funke. It's about the arrival of a carnival at Green Town, Illinois, and how two young boys' discover something dark and sinister under the bright lights and the colorful canopies. It's also about being young and being old and corruption and friendship and fathers and sons and determination and heroism and laughter and free will and... temptation.

It's incredibly beautiful. I don't think I've encountered such gorgeous and unexpected prose since I read Lolita. The imagery is as haunting as it is whimsical and lush. It took some getting used to, but I'll miss those words floating around in my head painting vivid songs. I have associative synesthesia, and this writing might be the closest thing I could find that captures the way my brain concepts concepts and sounds and feelings with certain colors. The words have shapes and edges and corners. Reading this was like dancing inside of an orchestra made of many colors during a thunderstorm.

Originally published in 1962, this book does feature some out-of-date allegories, references and metaphors. And there's a thinly veiled thread of nostalgia running in between the lines, suggesting support for the imagined idea that America was a perfect dreamscape utopia in the 1950s (spoiler alert: it wasn't that). I've also read some fascinating reviews about how this book doesn't hold up at all, especially from an adult perspective. But that's partly why it made me so emotional, I think: like Stephen King's It, it strikes me as a story about the tragedy that is growing up, and I appreciate books that double down on that theme and then give it a solid kick in the teeth for fun.

I would've liked to have read this in college, for a class. I would've liked to have read this at age 13, when the battle between good and evil would've seemed brilliantly intense, and important. But here we are, age 30, disillusioned and cynical and skeptical and yet- and yet- or maybe because all of that- moved to tears by the written sound of laughter and Charles' parting thought that running with the boys, even if it killed him, would be worth it. Ohmygod I'm crying again. Thrilling, this one.

Something Wicked This Way Comes on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: American Pyscho

5 stars. I don't know what possessed me to read this book on the eve of a stressful trip, to New York of all places, but let me just say: you haven't lived until you've read these pages on the train up and then reflected on them as you rode through the streets of the city on the way to your hotel. This is a very, very diverting, compelling, New York book that gets a lot of things (vibes, critiques, elements of satire) about the city correct, in my opinion. I think maybe that's one thing that makes reading this so uncomfortable, and confuses squeamish readers: Bret Easton Ellis gets a lot right. Of course he juxtaposes this with absolute sickening violence - stuff that couldn't possibly happen IRL, right? - so we deny that we recognize something in it. Something about identity; something about America; something true.

I keep thinking about how Patrick Bateman's only goal, really (like any other psychopath), is self-preservation and avoidance of consequences. He clearly feels some things... hate, anxiety, fear, nerves, arrogance, desire, appreciation, disgust, etc., but a lot of these feelings revolve around the risk of getting caught or "discovered," maybe. Identified. And as he puts it in one case, he tries to fit in. So Patrick Bateman reflects society - society's values, wants, needs, priorities, habits, superficialities. Very, very interesting. (Can we talk about how he idolizes Donald Trump to the point of it becoming a motif throughout the entire book? Very, very interesting.)

Another surprising thing: this book is fucking hilarious. It's dark humor at its absolute darkest, but I laughed out loud frequently all the way through (the description of Bono, though). Sometimes it's a perfectly dry piece of narration:

"On the way to Wall Street this morning, due to the gridlock I had to get out of the company car and was walking down Fifth Avenue to find a subway station when I passed what I thought was a Halloween parade, which was disorienting since I was fairly sure this was May."

Other times it's a little more blatant:

“But you always bring them up,” McDermott complains. “And always in this casual, educational sort of way. I mean, I don’t want to know anything about Son of Sam or the fucking Hillside Strangler or Ted Bundy or Featherhead, for god sake.”

“Featherhead?” Van Patten asks. “Who’s Featherhead? He sounds exceptionally dangerous.”

“He means Leatherface,” I say, teeth tightly clenched. “Leatherface. He was part of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”

“Oh.” Van Patten smiles politely. “Of course.”

“And he was exceptionally dangerous,” I say.

And sometimes I found myself laughing despite the giant gutpunch:

"After the office I worked out at Xclusive and once home made obscene phone calls to young Dalton girls, the numbers I chose coming from the register I stole a copy of from the administration office when I broke in last Thursday night. “I’m a corporate raider,” I whispered lasciviously into the cordless phone. “I orchestrate hostile takeovers. What do you think of that?” and I would pause before making sucking noises, freakish piglike grunts, and then ask, “Huh, bitch?” Most of the time I could tell they were frightened and this pleased me greatly, enabled me to maintain a strong, pulsing erection for the duration of the phone calls, until one of the girls, Hilary Wallace, asked, unfazed, “Dad, is that you?” and whatever enthusiasm I’d built up plummeted."

I'd love someone to challenge me on this book. I've tried to do some research, since I missed the controversy when it was published, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around why it's so polarizing (in a world where so much violent content - in all shapes, sizes, formats and levels of extreme - openly exists and is rapidly consumed to the point of popularity... why this one?). For now, having read it with a close eye, it doesn't strike me as especially severe or shocking. Though the violence is absolutely insane and difficult to read at times, it feels intentional and deliberate and purposeful as it contributes to the central theme of the book - not cheap violence for violence's sake. But I'm open to a good argument; convince me! Tell me why I should hate it, or why I should hate myself for finding it a compelling, clever, worthy piece of literature. If BEE is a raging misogynist, as he has been accused (and as proven by his recent-ish cancelation), that's fine, but that's also just a ... different issue.

Anyway.

On his Wikipedia page BEE is quoted as saying "American Psycho doesn't really work as a movie." I think he might be right, at least when it comes to a direct adaptation. I was pretty delighted to find that while the movie version pulls from the source material and is completely aligned in concept/premise, it's also sort of its own thing. Very, very good, but very different in that format. Some of the key features of the book - the transcriptions of designer outfits, the ridiculous food, the references to Les Mis, the written peek into Bateman's internal self/consciousness, the fact that characters keep misremembering and misidentifying people they think they recognize, even some key events - are missing from the movie, which benefits it but also makes the book stand out even more. *Giant Shrug* I really like them both. Sorry Twitter, but that is allowed.

Final thought: American Pyscho is an incredible, classic, bleak piece of work that left me horrified and inspired at the same time. Read it or don't, I don't care. I need to go return some videotapes.

American Pyscho on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: The Last Final Girl

5 stars.

Hahahahahahahahaha.

I loved this.

I'm on a final girl kick, and I've mentioned before that I'm someone who loves horror in a way that goes way beyond the superficial enjoyment of scary stories. I love it all - the psychology behind it, the creativity, the tropes, the dark humor, the history of it... I'm a huge horror nerd, and I don't know anyone else IRL like me, so I've found a friend for life in The Last Final Girl.

(That's truly how I feel. Like I found a connection. I got the witty references and the clever jokes. I was in on it for once. I feel like SGJ wrote this just assuming the reader would recognize the names Tobe and Robert and Wes and things like the voice box and the janitor and Tatum and I passed the test or something. Every little reference made me giddy.)

Written in a pseudo-screenplay style, The Last Final Girl introduces us to Izzy, a smart and rebellious horror fan who lands herself smack dab in the middle of a real-life slasher situation when teens start dying in her small town. To give away any more of the narrative would spoil it, IMO, but just know that you can expect: a funny, kickass heroine who knows not to go upstairs, a masked killer with an adorable habit of coming back, a killer homecoming dress, a couple of unexpected (and expected) decapitations, small town vibes, high school drama, and a little nudity.

The deaths were bloody beautiful. The ending made me cry and laugh and cheer - this really has got to be the most brutally charming love letter to slashers ever. I feel so seen. The format isn't for everyone, and takes some getting used to, but by the end I really felt like I had watched a movie. In the wrong hands, this book would have been a vehicle for something really pretentious... but in the right hands, this exploration of meta-horror is wrapped in a really fun package.

Stay stabby, kids. I'm going to go practice my Hodder head tilt in the mirror.

The Last Final Girl on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: The Final Girl Support Group

4 stars. Wow, what a wild ride! This was super all over the place, unexpected, breathtaking, action-packed, gritty, and full of all the twists and turns one can expect from a book directly inspired by slasher horror movies. This is horror for fans of horror - fans like me, who aren't just interested in the surface-level stories but also the driving forces within and around the industry and the history and the audience. Fans who like to be "in the know" when it comes to the details, fans who will enjoy the Easter Eggs and clever references and recognize the tropes.

Every horror fan knows about the final girl: the ultimate victim... the survivor. But what happens after the fact, when the blood dries, the news dies down and the monster faces justice? What is she left with? Serious trauma, and the fragile support of her fellow final girls. This book explores, through the lens of an action-packed thriller, what that trauma, recovery and justice would look like in a world that isn't a movie with a happy (?) ending. Spoiler alert: it's messy. Lynnette, our narrator and protagonist, is absolutely shattered when she learns that her carefully-curated existence is under threat. Moving on instinct, fear and determination, she ends up on a crazy mission to save herself and keep her fellow final girls alive, once more, at a horrific cost.

It sounds so grim, and it kind of is. These are big, big themes wrapped up in a clever premise with unlikeable characters. I found it to be really unpredictable and unreliable even though you know to expect, like, a red herring here, a fake fatality there, a twist around the corner. It's incredibly violent and twisted and ugly... stylishly brutal. Hendrix is a master at the "nobody except the audience believes her" thing and some moments really made me squirm in angst. But it's also, honestly, super fun. Almost meta in execution. It's self-aware and darkly funny at times and I loved the dynamic among the final girls group, all of them weird and unhealthy in their own ways, so far from the classic, beautiful, resourceful slasher heroines depicted in Hollywood.

I especially loved Chrissy. Her small yet memorable appearance was beautiful and uncomfortable. As a super fan of slashers and true crime, two "industries" that often focus on (and exploit) crimes against women, I do sometimes ask myself why I'm so fascinated, and what equals too far. I don't think Hendrix is offering any answers here, but he leans into what makes horror movie endings so satisfying and thrilling and why we return to them again and again. Maybe it's not the death depicted, but the life saved.

I docked a star because sometimes things got really random, or I felt like I was missing context. There were a lot of "who wait what now?" moments that will probably be smoothed over in an inevitable adaptation. I can't wait, by the way. This story might be even better as the very thing it examines, satirizes, and references. For now, Grady Hendrix continues his winning streak as a must-read author for me.

The Final Girl Support Group on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: The North Water

5 stars. Fucking siiiiiiiccccckkkkkkkkkk. I was SO READY FOR THIS and it was SO READY FOR ME. The North Water is The Terror's shorter, dirtier, less detailed little brother (with fewer exhaustive lists of remaining supplies, I mean, but more whales), about a bunch of foolish men heading into the brutal north only to be devastated by nature in all its forms, including the natural proclivities of the men themselves. It's a survival story with threats of all shapes and sizes, external and internal, all of which feel interesting and inevitable. Nature always wins against the illusion of the advanced.

Our main character is Patrick Sumner, an Irish surgeon who was recently forced to leave the military after witnessing and experiencing some truly horrifying and violent events in India. Haunted by his past, addicted to opium and ultimately directionless, he decides to join a crew of whalers and serve as ship surgeon for the Volunteer. But not all is as it seems on this voyage, from the route to the cargo to the men who crew it. As the weather and conditions deteriorate, so does his hold on civilization itself.

I'M SO EXCITED TO TALK ABOUT THIS BOOK. Okay, first of all - this is about as gritty, dark and depressing as they come. From the premise to the details to the word choice ("khaki phlegm" comes to mind, as does "squirts of shit" and "unspeakable rectal oozings of a human corpse..." yummy), The North Water is absolutely relentless with the violence, gore and bodily fluids. I could put a trigger warning on every page, and animal lovers should especially be warned.

But it's not ONLY blood, guts and shit... there are also a lot of subtle and not-so-subtle philosophical musings and conversations about instinct, morals, ambition, action, obligation, and man's place in the world. Sumner spends most of the book reacting to the extreme evil he experiences and witnesses firsthand, trying and failing to reconcile it with the world and the life he expected for himself. It's frightening and heartbreaking and ultimately really beautiful, in the way his story turns out.

“It is a grave mistake to think too much, he reminds himself, a grave mistake. Life will not be puzzled out, or blathered into submission; it must be lived through, survived, in whatever fashion a man can manage."

And then there's Henry Drax, who has only a little bit of page time but enough stage presence to chew up everyone else entirely. He is not scary because he is a murderer, exactly, it's more because he is truly feral - he exists in a space without morals or laws or consideration. He just floats on his dark instincts and tendencies, with no thought for consequence other than the hunt, delivering pain, and self-preservation. He doesn't even go to any lengths to hide his crimes, like Ted Bundy on his final spree. Away with the charm and the sidesteps and the denials, onward with causing as much destruction as humanly possible.

I was especially blown away by the ending. I was really holding my breath, there, as everything came to a head, and I'm happy to say I could let it out with absolute satisfaction after reading the final line. Men and animals, indeed. All in all, an incredible read for fans of gritlit and horror and books in which Women Are Not a Thing lol. Very excited to check out the adaptation soon.

The North Water on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: Pet Sematary

4 stars. Absolutely horrific. This took me eight months to read, for multiple reasons: pandemic burnout, lack of interest, but also maybe lack of enthusiasm for a book filled with such potent dread you can taste it. I'm so glad I stuck with it, though, because I blasted through to the end in a kind of obsessed panic. Phew, it's dark. Despite the fact that Pet Sematary narrates the story of a doctor who moves his family from Chicago to Maine for a new job - and their subsequent adjustment to the new way of life - this is really, quite definitely, undoubtedly, unsubtly about death.

Death in all its forms, shapes, and sizes. Death as an act and an experience and a thing to be feared, or revered. Death as tragedy; death as escape. Death through the eyes of children; adults; victims; survivors. Death as it is dealt with by different cultures and faiths and religions. King dives deep - really deep - into the idea that death is somehow both the most natural, universal truth of being human, and also one of the most unnatural, surreal events to encounter. Worse still, should it be somehow reversed.

I went in knowing already many of the iconic moments in this book, but the one that truly twisted me up inside was the revelation about Rachel's sister, Zelda. The sequence describing her illness and death had me terrified. It's often King's scenes like this - unexpected detours or side scenes - that really dig deep. Another one that comes to mind is the parlor scene from The Stand ... the interaction between Franny and her mother had me struggling to breathe. It's so good.

From a technical perspective, I would argue that this isn't one of King's best-written books (he knows this). That ending, lol. But also the pacing seems off, and the level of detail during certain scenes (and normally I love his level of detail!) had me skimming. It's a little outdated, a little misogynistic like a lot of King's older writing. Still, it's a must-read for fans of horror and of King. I sort of feel like I have an experience under my belt now, like a notch in my bed post, or an achievement unlocked. There's something really vivid about this one.

Pet Semetary on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: Plain Bad Heroines

3 stars. Inn-turr-ess-tinggg. I'm thrown. I didn't hate this, don't worry, but something about it was, well, excruciatingly annoying to me. Between the quirky footnotes, the flashbacks, the lack of horror, the sheer wordiness of it all... plus, character access felt shallow; toe-deep, and the viewfinder felt off-kilter, like we could only see one corner of the full picture, or we could only look at it sideways.

The whole thing just didn't come together in the right way, for me. And it's very possible that it all just went over my head, too.

Story 1: Present. Three young women, two actresses and an author, are brought together to make a movie about Story 2.

Story 2: Early 1900s. Three young women die under mysterious circumstances (two stung by a swarm of yellow jackets; one ate poisonous flowers) at a school for girls in Rhode Island, and the principal must deal with the aftermath.

Our questions: did something sinister lead to their deaths? Why do strange and unusual things still happen on the school's land? How will they make a movie about its hauntings, despite its hauntings? And WTF does Mary MacLane have to do with it, other than connecting all the main characters and being kind of an original badass herself?

And also, in addition to being about all that, it's about women in love with each other and the many different colors of being queer. Which is wonderful.

But back to that sideways viewfinder. Maybe it was sideways, maybe it was foggy. I just couldn’t bring it into focus. I just couldn’t figure out what I was looking at. Carefully built momentum took me nowhere. Deep dives seemed pointless. The author led us down rabbit holes that didn't seem relevant or resolved. It's full of excellent moments, for sure, but the connective tissue just wasn't strong enough, for me. I hate to say it, because this mood board has almost everything I love on it - it's just, when I step back and look at it as a whole, it's a mess.

And back to that shallow character access. Especially in Story 1, I never really got to know the three girls. For real, deep down. The narrator (anonymous? Did I miss something?) tells - it's very tell-y - a lot about their actions and thoughts but they somehow still seemed so ... flat.

Finally, though this is marketed as horror, it doesn't really hit in a scary way. There are creepy moments, and a lot of meta-exposition on the academia of horror (which I admittedly loved), but no true frightening moments. I couldn't even really tell if the stakes were that high, honestly. And the climax proved, unfortunately, that they weren't, canceling any delicious dread I felt as the mystery unfolded.

So there it is. No regrets, truthfully, because I was absolutely picking up what it was putting down about queerness and queer history and I loved the gothic tropes and the themes. And I can't rate this any lower because it is truly impressive and ambitious and like I said above, it's possible it just went right over my head. I would LOVE for someone to convince me what I missed and what it’s all about and why I should LOVE it. But here we are. Thanks for listening, anyway.

Plain Bad Heroines on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: Survivor Song

5 stars. Well, in a world that has turned out to be pretty wishy washy, I can always depend on one thing: Paul Tremblay will stress me out. I have no idea how or why he managed to get things so right, nor why I decided to pick this up now of all times, but here we are. Survivor Song is, as expected, a brutal and tense book full of awful things happening to good people. It is full of pain and fear and inconvenient, unfortunate truths. It didn't fuck me up as much as some of his others, but yeah, it's an immersive nightmare, if you're into that sort of thing, which I am. Lol.

Dr. Ramola Sherman, already nervous about a new rabies-like virus infecting the human population in Boston, is thrown into an intense emergency situation when her pregnant friend from college, Natalie, is bitten by an infected man. The two of them realize they must navigate from an overrun hospital through an infested area to reach a safe clinic before it's too late, challenged at every turn by miscommunication, government failure, untrustworthy citizens, and Natalie's worsening condition.

Sound familiar? Yyyyyikes. But it's really good. This is probably going to come across as super presumptuous, but I think it's Tremblay's best-written book to date. It's very simple in premise and execution (sort of like an episode of The Twilight Zone or a less-darkly-comedic Creepshow), and he's lost a lot of the analogy-laden writing that weighed down previous books. It's just snappy and well-paced and very frightening. I would also say that he absolutely nails the balance between horror and heart, which is tricky and rare.

I also really admire his female characters in this one. Actually, all the characters. For such a short book, I feel like he committed a ton of time to research, not just the scientific/medical stuff, but the personalities and motivations behind the choices his characters make. You can absolutely expect the sort of grisly ending that would be inevitable in this situation, and Tremblay knows this, so he focuses a ton of effort on the journey we take to get there. And it works really, really well. By the time it hits, we care. A lot. It's really emotional.

The use of location and space in this reminded me a lot of The Stand, which puts you smack dab in the middle of Boulder, CO - street names, landmarks and all. I'm guessing the highways, hospitals and other areas featured are accurate, which makes this even more badass and wonderful. It lends yet another real life flavor to what is already a devastatingly real story.

I think we can expect that Paul Tremblay's work will continue to evolve and grow in new ways. I think we can also expect that no matter where he goes, he will always be reliable for a good, fucking good, scary story. Consider me a superfan.

Survivor Song on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: The Only Good Indians

5 stars. Absolutely incredible. A surprising, thought-provoking, heavy metal level of scary book that really sticks. I slowed down on this so I could savor it and relish the unfolding of each dynamic, captivating chapter. I wanted to chew on it respectfully; wanted to really taste the creeping dread and brutal punches. Reading it this way - carefully, instead of barreling through - was an incredible experience and I feel kind of cleansed despite the buckets and buckets of blood (good horror does this to me?).

The Only Good Indians, borrowing its title from the infamous phrase, is about four Native American men living ten years after they experienced a strange and disturbing hunting trip on forbidden land. Two of them are eventually killed under brutally violent circumstances, and the others are haunted and hunted unaware as they continue to embrace and defy their cultural identities through fresh grief and old regrets. There's so much more, but I don't want to spoil anything.

This is a story that blurs lines all over the place. It's a slasher, but it's a twisty one - the monster may not be the monster after all. It's a mystery, but not to us as readers - to the characters who are largely oblivious of what stalks them. It's a cautionary fairy tale that teaches many lessons - with an unexpected take on good and evil. It's an exploration of Native American culture - but through a unique and fascinating and terrifying lens. It captures characters that suffer that internal battle within and around and about themselves so well: "He hates being from here. He loves it, but he also hates it so much."

It's a story about tradition and choices and the urge to chafe against your core identity; the urge to defy custom and ignore the rules; the urge to be wasteful for selfish reasons; the urge to resist the reality of your own making; the urge to escape what you can't; the urge to blame everyone and anyone for your decisions knowing that deep down it's you - it's your doing - and you'll pay for it in the end. It's a story about how outrunning the past is impossible. And it's about revenge. Deep, natural, solid, earthly, instinctual, all-encompassing, bigger-than-you-and-me vengeance that is ugly and beautiful at the same time.

It's also, wonderfully, about basketball and marriage and friendship and paperbacks and masculinity and motherhood at its most ancient and primal. It's full of delicious details that lighten up some super dark themes in entertaining ways. Second person is used brilliantly in the second half to a jarring and energetic effect. Pacing, plotting, dialogue - it's all there and it's all excellent. Also, there's a really clever play on the final girl trope.

And the ending brought it home in a way that made me cry, although I don't know if I can articulate why.

Random lines that jumped out to me: "The best jokes are the jokes that have a kind of message to them. A warning." and "They stand together, their doors closing at the same time, an accident of sound that makes the boy straighten his back, like it's bad luck."

By the way, there are two things in this world that I absolutely hate: reading/seeing/hearing about animals getting hurt or killed, and feeling hot, temperature-wise. This book has a lot of both. I don't usually issue trigger warnings but I AM WARNING YOU: if you, like me, were traumatized by Where the Red Fern Grows in fourth grade and can't even think the words Bambi or The Lion King without crying, this book is not for you.

In fact, I typically dock a star automatically for UDDs (Unnecessary Dog Deaths) because I often see it as a cheap shot to play on readers' emotions. I stuck with this book, though, because horror tends to wash differently into my brain than other genres, and it was worth it in the end. Plus it was written so perfectly, and (this is not a spoiler) the animal deaths were absolutely necessary IMO.

A must-read for horror fans - and I think for everyone. I'm obsessed with this and gutted in a good way.

The Only Good Indians on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads