Review: YOU CAN'T SEE THE FORREST THROUGH THE TREES
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 7, 2011
AUTHOR ALISON BUCK is a modern-day Edgar Allen Poe!ABIDING EVIL by ALISON BUCK is an amazing novel so well plotted that I was kept in suspense. Each time I felt I knew what was going to happen and I had my suspect, she proved me wrong.  I just had to keep reading to discover that I'm not as smart an investigator as I thought myself to be.  This is actually my third novel in the "horror" genre that I have read.  I now find myself intrigued by ALISON BUCK's ability to craft a novel with such dark and scary characters.  In ABIDING EVIL, you first meet Jon, a young boy with a horrificly mal-formed face that the doctors could not improve.  Jon is abandoned by his mother at his widowed Grandmother's farm house in the late 1940's.  He has never been to a school, and his education comes strictly from his grandmother.  He learns survival skills from his grandmother and lives in the woods to avoid contact with other human beings.  One day he comes in from the woods to find his grandmother dead at the kitchen table.  He does not know what to do, so he leaves her body there.  In the small town of Losien, in 1957 children begin disappearing and the Sheriff's office is incapable of solving the mysteries. After a couple of years bodies are found.  The body count is four. I thought it must be Jon.Fast foward to modern day. a group of college friends, some with children decide to hold their annual Reunion at a small hotel located in the woods a short distance from Losien.  You get to know the group of mis-matched people, sort of like characters from St. Elmo's fire.  Each of the group brings with them a certain amount of baggage and you have contempt for the hot-shot lawyer, Neil, empathy for his "new" boyfriend Dave; sympathy for 13 year old Emma, whose Dad and step-mother (Jeff & Rita) she walked in on while they were making love.  Phil and his "bride" Lou. who is half his age and has a baby Ethan.  Then there's Bill and Annie, with daughter Lisa and toddler Mikey, who suffers motion sickness.  After settling into the hotel, seeminly the only guests, a snowstorm hits and you see the children and some of the adults having fun with snowball fights and building of snowmen.  There is also time of the adults gathering in the lounge where you get an insight into their personalities, which make you wonder if they ever were real friends.  Then, their children disappear.  The Hotel owners have not returned from town, and the group are left to man their own hunt for the children.  The lawyer, Neil wants no part of joining the search, but he finds news articles in the hotel office relating stories of the previous cases of disappearing children.  No one had ever been caught and the cases remained unsolved. He shares this with the group, which heightens their fears.The hunt for the children will keep you turning the pages as it builds up the suspense and you find yourself praying for the safe return of the children.ALISON BUCK wrote this in 2007, and I am really thankful that I found ALISON BUCK and ABIDING EVIL, and her other novel DEVOTED SISTERS here on Amazon Kindle.  I highly recommend this novel for anyone who enjoys a good scary novel.  FIVE STARS is not enough to affirm my award of appreciation for this novel.I will be anxious for more of Author ALISON BUCK's work.Michael PhelpsAuthor