Review: Overlong, doesn't live up to promise
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 03 16, 2014
There seems to be a school in recent horror thriller writing that involves promising extreme grotesqueries (whether or not they are ever delivered), hiding key aspects of character-POV from the reader (even when the story or part of the story is told from the character's POV), creating tension out of dozens of small events (most of which don't tie to the plot), and assuming that evil-doers get more of a thrill out of planning elaborate acts of evil than actually doing the evil itself (I call this the "Saw" effect).If these things don't bother you, you will probably enjoy this book.  If you don't enjoy these trends, I suggest you skip this book.This story involves three young boys who are spending the summer together.  The three are camping in Jack's backyard.  They're in that twilight age before high school and the parts of the book that work involve Hamill's ability to convey what friendship looks like at this stage of life.  In the extensive woods behind Jack's house, they discover a building that appears to be abandoned and an envelope full of money and a cryptic note.  The three are drawn, in varying degrees, into discovering the secrets of the house.The idea of the story is an interesting one.  The puzzles are intriguing at first and it's interesting to see the boys tackle them.  But it simply goes on too long and there is too much pseudo-danger, from other sources, that never amounts to anything.  The boys have to go back to the building multiple times and having them revisit the house over and over again and go through the same rooms becomes almost unbearably tedious.The ending is deeply unsatisfying, to the point where I almost felt the frustration physically.  Before this point, I had realized I was in the hands of an author who was more committed to a certain style of modern horror fiction than the dynamics of a good story, but the ending really drove it home.  There were elements of this book that are very entertaining.  I mostly read it on the bus and it did make the commute go fast.  But I can't really recommend it -- it feels more constructed than a good book should.