Wow… I don’t even know where to begin. I finished this because I’m a completionist but I wanted to give up so many times. I absolutely hated this book and need to rant about it, so just let me blow off some steam… I’m surprised to see it getting some positive attention in here, though. Spoilers below.
The dialogue is so cringey and not in a way anyone would actually speak at some points that I had a physical reaction. I also thought that giving two characters the name Ava for absolutely no reason made the book unnecessarily difficult to follow in certain interactions and dialogues, just why? So many things about this book… just why?
This book also had two of the most overdone and eye-rolling clichés in literature that tank a book or movie for me. The first being “Ava is dead, oh WAIT, no she’s not! She’s still alive! What a badass!” The second being “bad person (Linda) has a gun and is about to shoot good person (Ava) and then there’s a gunshot but WAIT! Other good guy (LeGrand) shoots bad guy right in the nick of time!! Who could have predicted!” Eye roll.
Aside from the fact that this book was painfully boring and I didn’t care about any of the characters, it felt completely disjointed and all the storylines felt random. Let’s just randomly mention LeGrand’s sister and her life story 2/3 of the way through the book and drop a whole new storyline about his family being involved in a cult-like group in passing dialogue. Maybe this could have been better explored in the beginning when the author opted to have him be mute until the book was nearly over?
I liked the concept of this book which is why I picked this up in the first place, but wow the execution was absolutely horrible. I was intrigued at the idea of people competing against each other for the prize and the locals betting on it, which is set up at the beginning of the book (the only moderately enjoyable part), only for all of that to go completely down the tubes and for it to randomly be about… a freaking invisible monster? Like… are we being serious? Add in some strange and out of place political talking points to tank this even more.
I’m drawn to books like this because I like my horror/thriller grounded in reality, but I immediately lost interest when a damn invisible monster became central to the story. I’d also like to acknowledge how the invisible unnamed monster who wakes every 7 years is a complete ripoff of Pennywise the Clown… but I digress.
Am I alone in thinking this? I found this practically unreadable. This was the longest 250 pages I’ve subjected myself to in my life.
by xTheKingOfClubs
1 Comment
The time you spent on this book will never come back. But hey, at least you can call yourself a completionist!!