Reviews with content warning for Injury/Injury detail - The Ritual

The Ritual was fun! It's like Call Of The Wild had a Lovecraft-inspired fanfiction written by a guy who only wears Patagonia. While I found myself thinking about it when we were apart, the actual experience reading would sometimes drag. This might be due to the fact that I can't visualize, and Adam really leans on visuals to get his ideas across. I found myself getting turned around during fast paced sequences, and many of the scares flew over my head because of how imagery-oriented they are. Don't get me wrong, I still got some good scares in (

I shat myself when he realized Moder had been stalking behind him and Dom was long gone, for example

) especially in Adam's amazing non-visual descriptions, like the soundscape and textures of

the attic

. The characters don't develop so much as their existing dispositions are recontextualized, which I loved. Luke's anger is obviously out of place in London, but instead of just trope-ily going "but in the wild it's an a s s e t" Adam instead constantly puts Luke in new situations where this anger can mean survival OR death. And while I absolutely loved the scares of

the body in the truck bed, or the goat legs on meemaw

you know what scares I DON'T love?? Fatphobia. Oh my gOd this book has so much pointless, distracting fatphobic moments. Several times, even during the rad climax, Adam couldn't help taking a few lines to remind us how unattractive he thought this fat person looked while fighting for their life through an ancient wood, home to long-forgotten horrors older than any gods for which we still have names, older than names at all. THERE'S MORE INTERESTING STUFF IN THIS FOREST THAN CELLULITE, FRIEND.

All in all, I enjoyed this book and think it's worth reading if you're a fan of horror. It has a lot of cool ideas, and explores themes of nature, survival, and humanity in ways I haven't seen before. For real one of the best contemporary depictions of cosmic horror, and as a former Pretentious Lovecraft Teen, I oohoohoohoo!-d at that.

Love you bye

Content Warnings

raychelbennet's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense medium-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? Yes

1.0

If (like me) you decided to read this book because you enjoyed the movie so much, do yourself a favor and don't do that.

Here's what Adam Nevill told me is the worst horror in the world: being fat. Being fat is the most monstrous thing about humanity. We're going to overlook the cool, tree-like monster thing and instead talk about the fat, flubby, and/or chubby bodies of people in nearly every single sentence. It's exhausting. It's fatphobic. It ruins the whole book IMO

The *real* cincher for me though was when--for absolutely no reason other than to be a creep--Neville decided to describe a teen girl as having a doughy, yogurty-smelling c*nt. I'm going to go vomit somewhere to get that sentence out of my head.

This is another book I wish I hadn't read. Usually I can find some redeeming qualities, but the bad far outweighs the good.

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rojo25's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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danimacuk's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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coleyreads's review

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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? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

The first half of this book was exciting, mysterious, tense and thrilling! I got to the end of the first half and it felt like an ending… but I still had half a book left? The next half was the weirdest storyline and a total 180 from where we had just been. I don’t know what it added for me, or if it was the right thing to do for the book but I enjoyed the very end with our main character.

The first half of the story took a long time to tell and we only spanned about 3 days, although it was still enjoyable. The last half felt rushed, yet took ages, spanning well over a week.

The writing style was very descriptive and flowery, although not in a pleasant storytelling way. It’s set in a scary forest with malevolent forces at play, so what can you expect. This was my first Nevill so I’m unsure if I enjoyed his writing and think I need to give another book a go!

I ended up watching the film right away and it’s quite different. I get you don’t have as long in films to lay out the backstory of the characters and play out all the intense descriptions. But, I think I enjoyed the book more.

Overall, I’m giving Adam Nevill another chance to impress me even more. This one had a lot of potential but took too long and had me drifting at parts.

Content Warnings