I like scary stories. One of the scariest stories I ever read was by Dean Koontz called Phantoms. That book kept me awake with the light on reading until the sun came up. And as I have said before in this blog my favorite author is Stephen King. So when I can find a new author whose book is alluded as one of the scariest books in recent years I get excited. I had read many great reviews about this book saying it was creepy and that I would never look at the woods the same way again so I ordered it. It was a small book and I finished it fairly quickly and although I enjoyed it, it was not as good as I was expecting.
Our protagonist is a man named Nicholas Close. He is a new widower who is driven to his childhood home by the loss of his wife and new found ability to see ghosts in the last few seconds of their lives played endlessly. This homecoming is marred by the abduction and brutal murder of a local child that is somehow connected to a mysterious wood that may contain an unspeakable evil. Over the years many children have gone missing and turned up dead around these woods and Nicholas sees the ghosts of these doomed children as they are dragged to their deaths. We follow Nicholas with the help of a woman who lost her husband, his sister and an unbelievably plucky child named Hannah as he attempts to slay the monster. Plus is has an interesting twist at the end.
This book is part The Sixth Sense, part IT and part any fairy tale with a witch residing in the forest. It had good atmosphere and likable characters but just didn't click with me. There were a few harrowing moments and if you have a pathological fear of spiders this book may not be for you. I judge the success of a story if I want to read it again and this book failed that test. I am not sorry I read it and I would recommend it but so far this author is not the second coming of Mr. King. So I will keep searching but would read another book by this author in future.
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