Review: really good, not great, but kept me turning the pages
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 18, 2013
Bettes is one of the better horror writers to me - she's not just delivering a gore-filled tale here, she's pushing the edge of reality. Her other books were more "this could happen" but this one asked the reader to suspend disbelief. The only place I think she failed with her tale was the response of the townspeople. There wasn't enough motivation behind their actions for me. I did like the presentation of alternating the point of view in the beginning between Tim and Molly as the tale unfolds.She starts off with a bang. I did get a bit frustrated with this one. The female lead, Molly, is berating herself for falling into the same traps as most females in horror flicks yet does the exact things she knows she shouldn't. The characters do a lot of running around in the dark - that is true - but it never bothered me. It's a typical horror tale in that regards. We readers are always so much smarter than the characters in the book and of course, would never do anything stupid. <g>The book creeped me out at times which I think is the hallmark of a good horror tale. Tim and Molly were likeable. The villain was very villainous. The setting lent itself to the story and was vividly described. There wasn't an abundance of character development overall - people seem to just do things without reason behind it. What character development we are given is done quickly and very high level. Still, I liked the story for the creep-factor. I wanted the protagonists to win over the villain - you don't know you'll always get that with Bettes - so in the end, that's what kept me reading - to find out if they would.