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gwennypenny15's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
vickideleon's review against another edition
dark
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
lethaldose's review against another edition
3.0
A good, but not quite great, debut novel. I kind of understand why Joe Hill chose to not advertise at first that he was Stephen King's son, because I knew it going in and I could not help but compare the two. I will resist the temptation to do that here, but I would be lying if I said there weren't some very distinctly similarities to their story telling style.
It is a very easy book to read that is a big plus, the chapters are laid out in the style of mostly short covering the immediate event, so all most all of them respresent a good and natural stopping point while reading.
The story is good, the ghost of a dead man purchased through a suit to exact revenge on an aging metalhead. I loved it as a concept and as an actual plot it was great too. There are some twists and turns along the bunny trail that make it a satisfying story all the way until the end. Some you will have guess, most of the rest won't exactly be surprising, but will be interesting. The actual events within the story happen over just a couple of days and the book starts relaxed enough but quickly builds to a frenzied pace that it maintains almost throughout the rest of the book. Does the ending make sense? Well, not really and the story gets a bit jumbled at the climax and it is a little hard to stay grounded in what is going on, but you get the gist of it. And I actually enjoyed the wrap up afterwards, it was very satisfying.
The characters are the weak point of the story, they are believable, they are interesting, somewhat. The two women of Judas Coyne present and past are a bit cliched and boring, but Judas himself and Craddock are very interesting. But not exactly likeable, and that was a hard part for me. This is suppose to be a story of redemption, but it never really felt like that, I didn't feel like Judas was very horrible at the beginning and I didn't feel like he changed much by the end. He was upset to learn about his ex-girlfriends death early on and he was still upset at the end. And he came to the conclusion to sacrifice himself to save his girlfriend early on in the novel, not towards the end. He was a character whose moral compass was just a little off to start with and events quickly nudged it into true, and it stayed there, not really the redemption story I thought I was getting. Craddock was suppose to represent the opposite and his character is a bit better done, and very cleverly. Since he is dead and a ghost it isn't about his character changing, but Joe Hill does a magnificent job of shifting your perspective as reader so your opinion of him and interpretation of what he is doing changes. For the book to work right your opinion is suppose to view Judas and the bad guy and Craddock as the good guy with rightful vengenance, as the book moves forward you are suppose to change views of them and they are suppose to change places, it never really works like that, it was ambitious, but it falls very short of that.
Still the book was entertaining, I am not sold on Joe Hill being the new voice of horror, but I will certainly give a few more of his books a read, he is a very talented writer and will only get better.
It is a very easy book to read that is a big plus, the chapters are laid out in the style of mostly short covering the immediate event, so all most all of them respresent a good and natural stopping point while reading.
The story is good, the ghost of a dead man purchased through a suit to exact revenge on an aging metalhead. I loved it as a concept and as an actual plot it was great too. There are some twists and turns along the bunny trail that make it a satisfying story all the way until the end. Some you will have guess, most of the rest won't exactly be surprising, but will be interesting. The actual events within the story happen over just a couple of days and the book starts relaxed enough but quickly builds to a frenzied pace that it maintains almost throughout the rest of the book. Does the ending make sense? Well, not really and the story gets a bit jumbled at the climax and it is a little hard to stay grounded in what is going on, but you get the gist of it. And I actually enjoyed the wrap up afterwards, it was very satisfying.
The characters are the weak point of the story, they are believable, they are interesting, somewhat. The two women of Judas Coyne present and past are a bit cliched and boring, but Judas himself and Craddock are very interesting. But not exactly likeable, and that was a hard part for me. This is suppose to be a story of redemption, but it never really felt like that, I didn't feel like Judas was very horrible at the beginning and I didn't feel like he changed much by the end. He was upset to learn about his ex-girlfriends death early on and he was still upset at the end. And he came to the conclusion to sacrifice himself to save his girlfriend early on in the novel, not towards the end. He was a character whose moral compass was just a little off to start with and events quickly nudged it into true, and it stayed there, not really the redemption story I thought I was getting. Craddock was suppose to represent the opposite and his character is a bit better done, and very cleverly. Since he is dead and a ghost it isn't about his character changing, but Joe Hill does a magnificent job of shifting your perspective as reader so your opinion of him and interpretation of what he is doing changes. For the book to work right your opinion is suppose to view Judas and the bad guy and Craddock as the good guy with rightful vengenance, as the book moves forward you are suppose to change views of them and they are suppose to change places, it never really works like that, it was ambitious, but it falls very short of that.
Still the book was entertaining, I am not sold on Joe Hill being the new voice of horror, but I will certainly give a few more of his books a read, he is a very talented writer and will only get better.
kayshorrorcorner's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.25
Could have used more character development and faster pacing, but otherwise an interesting story; more of a thriller than horror
baileycb's review against another edition
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
dianna_reads's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal death, Sexual assault, and Child abuse
trin's review against another edition
3.0
Aging rock star Judas Coyne (surprise twist! not his real name), a collector of strange and macabre items, learns about a ghost up for sale on an "eBay knockoff" and decides he has to have it. The ghost is transported to him via the dead man's suit, wrapped in a heart-shaped box, and almost immediately Jude begins to experience buyer's remorse.
The beginning of this book—the first hundred pages or so—was truly frightening to me. A secret: vampires, werewolves, mummies, sea monsters, demons, zombies, killer clowns—these things don't scare me. Ghosts scare me. They don't even have to do anything: there's just something about them, intangible but there, watching, that scares the crap out of me. So this book freaked me out the most—in that wonderful, shivery, brrr kind of way—when the ghost wasn't doing anything, when it was just sitting in Jude's hallway, its hat in its hand, two mad, black scribbles where its eyes should be.
Then the plot happened. See, there's a reason Jude came to find out about this particular auction; Jude's ex-girlfriend's family is blah blah blah...okay: all of this is actually pretty interesting. The action did lag in the middle, when there were just a lot of instances in a row of the ghost trying to convince Jude and Jude's new girlfriend, Georgia, to kill themselves, but it does pick up again, and the whole book is generally captivating. However, as soon as the plot engages, the book stops being scary. At least to me: once its motivations are explained, the ghost became a creepy dude out for revenge, and a lot of the otherworldliness, the inexplicableness, went away, and with it the scary. There were still things I enjoyed: Jude and Georgia are both interesting, flawed characters, and I liked how their relationship developed; I even liked the slightly unrealistic ending. (It made me happy, okay? I'm a sap; shut up.) But the book lost something for me when it stopped being frightening, and devolved from something creepy and unusual to something much more done, almost an ordinary, average horror/thriller. So it's a good novel, yeah, but not a great one; I really do wish Hill's spark of originality could have burned a little bit longer. Maybe in the next one.
The beginning of this book—the first hundred pages or so—was truly frightening to me. A secret: vampires, werewolves, mummies, sea monsters, demons, zombies, killer clowns—these things don't scare me. Ghosts scare me. They don't even have to do anything: there's just something about them, intangible but there, watching, that scares the crap out of me. So this book freaked me out the most—in that wonderful, shivery, brrr kind of way—when the ghost wasn't doing anything, when it was just sitting in Jude's hallway, its hat in its hand, two mad, black scribbles where its eyes should be.
Then the plot happened. See, there's a reason Jude came to find out about this particular auction; Jude's ex-girlfriend's family is blah blah blah...okay: all of this is actually pretty interesting. The action did lag in the middle, when there were just a lot of instances in a row of the ghost trying to convince Jude and Jude's new girlfriend, Georgia, to kill themselves, but it does pick up again, and the whole book is generally captivating. However, as soon as the plot engages, the book stops being scary. At least to me: once its motivations are explained, the ghost became a creepy dude out for revenge, and a lot of the otherworldliness, the inexplicableness, went away, and with it the scary. There were still things I enjoyed: Jude and Georgia are both interesting, flawed characters, and I liked how their relationship developed; I even liked the slightly unrealistic ending. (It made me happy, okay? I'm a sap; shut up.) But the book lost something for me when it stopped being frightening, and devolved from something creepy and unusual to something much more done, almost an ordinary, average horror/thriller. So it's a good novel, yeah, but not a great one; I really do wish Hill's spark of originality could have burned a little bit longer. Maybe in the next one.