An intermittently effective suspense tale that should satisfy die-hard horror buffs.
Seeking shelter from a massive rainstorm, two teenagers stumble into a psychopath’s hideout and must fight for their lives in McWhorter’s (Swallowing the Worm and Other Stories, 2015, etc.) gory debut novel.
Three teenage girls have gone missing in the sleepy town of New Paris, Ohio. Did they belong to a suicide cult? Or did they flee to new lives in New York City or Los Angeles? To escape these swirling rumors, high school seniors Luke and Garrett head out on a weekend fishing trip. Their chipper mood is soon interrupted by “menacing clouds, the color of gunmetal,” foreshadowing the violent downpour that follows. In the midst of the storm, Luke and Garrett’s boat breaks down, so they wander down eerily empty roads until they find a private driveway that leads to the run-down, abandoned New Congregational Church. At least it seems abandoned—upon closer inspection, Luke and Garrett discover an empty coffin in the middle of the sanctuary, simple drawings bearing the names of the missing girls, and a teenage girl they don’t recognize wearing a cheerleading uniform from their high school. Right after this discovery, Luke is knocked unconscious. He wakes up inside the coffin; outside, he hears the mysterious girl, who informs Luke that she and her father have been harvesting the bones of their victims. Luke manages to escape, and he unearths even more of the church’s grisly secrets as he struggles to survive a bloody cat-and-mouse game with the girl and her father. In this horror novel, McWhorter too often relies on his readers’ assumed knowledge of horror tropes to do his work for him—one character’s scream, for instance, “was like something out of a horror movie. Like nothing I’d ever heard.” Also, Luke’s narration tends to be somewhat vague and uninspired. However, McWhorter’s sections from the demented girl’s perspective are unforgettably creepy: “But, she knew her father’s work. She knew what his knives did to the human body and how much blood they brought out.”
An intermittently effective suspense tale that should satisfy die-hard horror buffs.Pub Date: July 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-937979-15-7
Page Count: 280
Publisher: PlotForge, Limited
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
