Reviews

The Pallbearers Club by Paul Tremblay

Only show reviews with written explanations

jencunn2024's review against another edition

2.0

I’m on the precipice of a mixed review. This book was fantastic at the beginning with all the pop and punk culture references for Gen-Xers. The characters are fun and interesting and full of quick-witted banter. I especially loved the dual/duel narrator format with the Art Barbara protagonist and his co-editing friend Mercy Brown. It was fun having both voices in this format. The ending was pretty good too. But somewhere in the middle Paul Tremblay lost my complete interest, especially with Art’s character. It turns into repetitive drone and boring gloom that goes not much of anywhere for about 100 pages or more. This is an alternate historical fiction, a vampire story. It was a great idea for a novel/memoir but the execution was stifling. The mystery was dull and there was almost zero character development. I just wanted this to be so much more and felt robbed by about halfway through and kept giving the author the benefit of doubt to get through to the end, which was almost worth it but didn’t quite get it for me. Tremblay also had a tendency to overuse words like precipice and common phrases such as “To wit…” which eventually made my skin crawl. All puns and sarcasm in my review are intended as it was for his characters. One other problem he should look out for in future endeavors is giving two different narrators almost the same voice; even though there were different personalities here, that did not play through between the narrators’ voices.

marcus_bines's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I was so disappointed. I loved A Head Full of Ghosts, but this couldn't hold a candle to it. Slow and frustrating, with a main character who I didn't really want to spend time with and a mystery that is entirely uninteresting and presented in a muddled way. I liked Mercy's beta reader voice, but the novel could have had a lot more of her and a lot less of Art. And just a lot more things happening please!

kaebirdie's review against another edition

Go to review page

2.0

I had to throw in the towel on this audiobook. The prose started off interesting and by half way (where I'm calling it), the "verbed nouns" were way out of hand and "Art" was recounting his love life for "Mercy" for some reason - even in fiction, I have no idea why she'd care. I loved the original premise about the Pallbearers' Club, but the rest of this...just isn't for me.

readingwmiles's review against another edition

Go to review page

4.0

abt to write a paper on this! excited

somesortofwitch's review against another edition

Go to review page

5.0

This book is most likely my favorite horror read of the year, and I’ve read quite a few. The Pallbearers Club so perfectly balanced the real and the unreal, the variations of perspectives based on both time and persona, and the differences between fiction and fiction which claims to be memoir.

dotjaepeg's review against another edition

Go to review page

3.25

the slowest of burns to the point where the horror is only allowed to be confirmed in the very last paragraph which is cool and all it just took allll book to get there to basically just say

what he thought was happening the whole time was true

. like okay i guess, still had a good time with the funky mcs