Reviews with content warning for Gaslighting - The Troop

Well... it finally happened... I found a book that scared my. Up to this point I have read books and thought "okay, that was creepy" or "that is gross", or even "golly gee I hope that that doesn't occur!" but I never truly felt a sense of "fear" while reading. And then I read this. This book was fucking filled with scenes that made me truly feel a level of uncertainty or fear. It is also filled with some of the most vile, stomach churning descriptions of body horror that I have read that have not come out of a true crime book. There are instances in this book where I feel like my face just was plastered with revulsion- more on that later.

The story of this book is a set of five Boy Scouts- Ephrem, Max, Newt, Kent and Shelley go with their scoutmaster- Tim- to an isolated island in the Canadian wilderness. They are there to enjoy camping, building fires, doing what scouts do. Until one day a random guy arrives on the island's shore in a boat. He is hungry. He is very hungry, afflicted with an unknown affliction.
It becomes known that the man is infected with a case of extremely lethal tapeworms- he is the new generation's Typhoid Mary- Typhoid Tom.
The worms infect Tim who loses weight at an extreme rate, as the worms consume his organs, his bones, blood- everything.
I love how the power struggle is built in to this story. These are boys in their early teens dealing with absolutely hellacious events.
The boys are forced to survive on this island with no food, no water, and while being hunted by one of their own. Shelley is a sociopath, he is a homicidal maniac. He engages in the killing of animals for fun, and eventually kills a hyper-infected Kent and gaslights and manipulates Ephrem in to thinking that he is infected. Ephrem then takes a Swiss-Army Knife to his own body trying to slice and cut in to himself to try and find a worm that is not there. He then eventually coaxes Eef in to self immolation. I loved the Chekov's gun that is presented in the form of a Zippo lighter, as well. That was some killer (haha) foreshadowing.

I thought that Shelley was a perfectly written repugnant ass character. He is the embodiment of that one person who everyone knows that has an air of superiority and high grade manipulation skills. On this island he is able to let his murderous impulses run rampant, which is fucking terrifying.
I loved the rest of the cast, even Kent who is a dude-bro type. He tries to be ultra-masculine to make his dad proud, but that hubris ends up being his downfall.
Newt is a nerdy type of kid, he likes things that are not typically cool. He is relentlessly bullied by the group to the point where I was like "haha really? Jesus..." it is just so fucking much dude- definitely a low-point of the book.
Eef is a troubled kid with a good heart who has anger issues stemming from his upbringing. He tries to be cool but frequently falls victim to his rage.
Max is kinda another low-point of the book for me. He is the last survivor- the only survivor of the event- but, quite honestly, I didn't really care about him. I levelled the same critique against Paul from Misery- that I only care about him because I am supposed to. I found Max pretty bland, and not a person who I rooted for, for any good reason.

I think the shining point of this book is the absolute abject terror the infestation of worms. I, like most people, have an aversion to parasites. Things like worms and those little fuckers that attach, parasitically, to the tongues of fish, make my skin crawl. That, in tandem with the absolutely disgustingly brilliant writing about how the worms bust out of a person's distended stomach were enough to make me shiver and cringe. The destruction that these fucking worms deal is absolutely vile.
This book is a throwback to the body-horror creature-features of the 1950s without the schlocky dialogue. There have not been many scenes in books that have made my stomach churn- a few like the foot scene in the aforementioned Misery and the hand scene in Gerald's Game . This book is full of some of that caliber and I loved reading it.
I thought that the ending of this book was absolutely bleak- comparable to the ending of The Night of the Living Dead. You see hope and then it is dashed away. I obviously do not support the killing of kids, but, the fact that the author had teenagers die in such horrific ways was as astounding as it was unsettling to read about.
I thought that this was a stellar read. It was a little light on story beats and some of the characters were not as fleshed out as I wished for them to be, but good goddamn was this book fucking scary. And, at the end of the day, a horror book that scares me is truly something of a rarity.

Content Warnings

jenc's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

3.5

This book loses like a quarter of a star because of the last chapter. It's probably 10 lines and right now I'm a little mad at it.
My roommate loves this book. He's very unsettled by it and I agree, v spoopy, v uncomfy, v no thank you. But...I just really need to read a horror book that commits to an ending. The last 3 have been all hand-wavy and I just want something else.

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mommarex1221's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

3.0

Content Warnings

entityj's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

4.0

Content Warnings

kimberlyswalters's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny reflective sad medium-paced

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

1.75

I had to stop reading this book several times. I'd read in forums that this book was too gory, too disgusting, too much. I thought people were exaggerating. They're not.

It was very well-written and the concept was good, but there was too much detail. I learned too much about some of these characters, especially Shelley.

I honestly don't believe we needed to know that he was erect as he murdered that poor kitten. Things like that are just thrown into this book for shock value and add no substance to the story. The worm swimming into his urethra was disgusting, but that's fine because it explains how they infected him. The erections were pointless and weird to imagine when reading a book about minors. I do know that serial killers do feel that way about their heinous acts of violence, but I don't need to know that about this child. It happens multiple times throughout this story. Bleh.

Is it scary? No. Is it gross? Absolutely. I'd only recommend this abomination to those that just want to read about some gross worms and gets off to body horror.

I'd recommend this to Shelley.

Overall, it was well-written and I genuinely enjoyed Max, Ephraim, and Newt. I don't think Kent's character was fleshed out enough for me to care about him. His father's character made more of an impact. I am not a religious person by any means, but I do think the author may benefit from Jesus and some therapy. In fact, I need therapy after reading this. My appointment is scheduled for three weeks from now. I'm not hopeful that I'll make it until then with this content wiggling around inside of my head.

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