Reviews with content warning for Animal death - Nosferatu

It’s a horror book so the darkness is to be expected. It’s easy to dislike the characters, but that works in this book. It’s a compelling read, as you never know what is going to happen next. I loved this book way more than I thought I would, even though it sat in my TBR pile for years!

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fireweed15's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Christmas is my favorite time of the year, and I'm slowly learning to love horror reading, so the combination that is reading NOS4A2 was probably the natural result of that pairing. I loved this! The characters of this story are phenomenal. Hill does a wonderful job crawling around in the characters' heads and giving them depth. Vic is a fascinating, flawed protagonist, and Manx is a charming, terrifying villain. Even the secondary antagonist, Bing Partridge, was interesting, almost childlike, which made his role as "the Gasmask Man" and his horrific acts of service to Manx all the more unsettling. The plot itself builds on a low-medium pace, but when it picks up, it quickly becomes one hell of a page turner.

This book is not for the faint of heart with regards to the triggers (big ones for kidnapping, violence / murder and one animal death halfway through the book; references to rape / sexual assault and child abuse), but it's definitely worth a read, especially if you find a good creepy Christmas music playlist for ambience.

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lbracs's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

If you asked me what I thought of this book or what rating it would receive for the first 60%, I probs would have given it 2 stars - not because it’s bad, just because I wasn’t into it. But once the plot got real good about 2/3 in I definitely got more invested and more ravenously read the back half. It was a pretty disturbing and graphic book in parts, definitely didn’t pull punches and sometimes it felt gratuitous, but I don’t know. Won’t be a repeat read, but I’m ok that I read it.

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skyhuckelberry's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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joshkiba13's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

"[E]veryone ha[s] his own world inside, each as real as the communal world shared by all but impossible for others to access . . . It sounded like delusion until you remembered that people made the imaginary real all the time . . . Fantasy was always only a reality waiting to be switched on." -Joe Hill, NOS4A2

Who knew Christmas could be so creepy?? I'm honestly left quite stunned by this book. Its creep factor was dialed up to 11-- by far the creepiest story I've ever read. And at the same time it had such heart to it.

I felt that the story was utterly unique. The opening passages are frightening and foreboding, and I love how we jumped back in time from that point and resumed there later on.

Charlie Manx was a scary bad guy for sure, but his right-hand man, Bing Partridge (aka the Gas Mask Man) was even creepier in my opinion. The first chapters where we're introduced to Bing were among the most off-putting sections of the novel.

I loooved our protagonist Vic McQueen. We follow her from childhood and into adulthood. She is probably the most nuanced and heavily flawed character I've read of. In the Author's Note following the audiobook, Joe Hill explained his dislike for stories where the heroes are double-do-gooders, or something like that, and how he sought to write realistic and flawed "good guys." He absolutely succeeded in my opinion, with Vic and the cast of side characters like Maggie Leigh and Lou Carmody. We are able to cheer them on as they succeed in things, and mourn as they make awful (but real) decisions.

I loved how absolutely off the concept of Christmas became as the book developed--kind of like if The Nightmare Before Christmas was rated R. Beyond the horrifying effects of Charlie Manx's powers, even something as simple as hearing Christmas music beyond the bounds of winter (a common occurrence during the story) became scary. I loved this line: "There was something awful about Christmas music when it was nearly summer. It was like a clown in the rain, with his makeup running."

Hill's dialogue was snappy and clever; his prose and descriptions were unique and often (positively) unconventional. And I absolutely loved his takes on imagination and the mind, as seen in the snippet I opened with, as well as this one:
"Everyone lives in two worlds . . . There's the real world . . . But everyone also lives in the world inside their own head: An in-scape, a world of thought . . . Creative people . . . spend a lot of their time hanging out in their thought-world. Strong creatives though can use a knife to cut the stitches between the two worlds, can bring them together."

The book can definitely get a little out there in some places, but I honestly think the weird served to its benefit. The only part that made me wince in a truly uncomfortable way was Hill referencing a few real-life tragedies to serve a scene where a character was becoming demented. I love a good corruption arc (such as in "Apt Pupil" by Stephen King), but I found the allusions to real tragedies a tad distasteful. Didn't ruin it for me at all, just something I didn't care for.

Overall one of the best audiobooks I've listened to, I absolutely have to hand it to Kate Mulgrew for knocking it OUT of the park with her narration. Manx's voice was gritty and cold, Bing's was off-putting and creepily child-like, and she did Maggie Leigh's stutter so well. Her children voices were well done too, and successfully creepy when necessary. Above all I have to appreciate how when a character was yelling, she yelled and didn't just whisper-yell like some narrators do.

Solid book and sooolid audio 👌

Content Warnings

shay_talksbooks's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated

5.0

I've read Joe Hill's graphic novels (Locke & Key) and his debut novel (Heart-Shaped Box) and really enjoyed them, so it was definitely time to try another of his novels; I wasn't disappointed!! He's rapidly becoming one of my favourite horror writers!

This was a difficult story to read, but it was also so difficult to put down. I was totally gripped and, as always, loved the way Joe Hill crafted his story and brought his characters to life. I would happily read another 700 pages of the same...back to Christmasland!

Also, the little nods to his Dad's work, loved that.

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phoenix13's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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