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3.11 AVERAGE
3.11 AVERAGE
dark
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
No
challenging
dark
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Jack Ketchum always does such a great job of slowly drawing you in, making you feel connected with his world and characters before he burns it all down.
Hide and Seek feels like 2 different stories in on, the first half being our narrator Dan's chance encounter with tourist and his budding friendship with them and his romance with one of them. This is so well done and so deep that you almost forget that this is a Jack Ketchum book and there is going to be a dark turn soon. Casey is a beautifully broken and interesting character, she is deeply flawed but as her story unfolds you see why. All of these characters are at that point where childhood is ending and they have to start making adult decisions with their lives, in fact they all display quite a bit of arrested development.
You do see where the other part of the story is headed to early on, as soon as the Crouch house is introduced and the legends of it are told you instinctively know that is where we will end up. That is no surprised, but I was still a bit surprised by what we found there.
This is not the best Jack Ketchum book I have read, and it felt a little too short, I would have liked a little more time with the characters. Still it is a very entertaining ride. If you have read Jack Ketchum before then all you need to know is this story doesn't disappoint. If you haven't read one of his books before this book is as good of a place to start as any, just buckle up and prepare for some crazy and brutal stuff.
Hide and Seek feels like 2 different stories in on, the first half being our narrator Dan's chance encounter with tourist and his budding friendship with them and his romance with one of them. This is so well done and so deep that you almost forget that this is a Jack Ketchum book and there is going to be a dark turn soon. Casey is a beautifully broken and interesting character, she is deeply flawed but as her story unfolds you see why. All of these characters are at that point where childhood is ending and they have to start making adult decisions with their lives, in fact they all display quite a bit of arrested development.
You do see where the other part of the story is headed to early on, as soon as the Crouch house is introduced and the legends of it are told you instinctively know that is where we will end up. That is no surprised, but I was still a bit surprised by what we found there.
This is not the best Jack Ketchum book I have read, and it felt a little too short, I would have liked a little more time with the characters. Still it is a very entertaining ride. If you have read Jack Ketchum before then all you need to know is this story doesn't disappoint. If you haven't read one of his books before this book is as good of a place to start as any, just buckle up and prepare for some crazy and brutal stuff.
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book starts off badly and just gets worse. It objectifies women for seemingly no reason. The sentences are all really short and clunky. There is no horror here, obviously I didn't finish it, but at over half done I should have seen something at least mildly creepy. The writing just is not great.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Incest, Pedophilia, Sexism
Hide and Seek was a pleasant surprise for me. I'm not the biggest Jack Ketchum fan, even though Peaceable Kingdom is one of my favorite short story collections. His novels never really got to me. I think my four star rating is more in relation to Ketchum's other works, but this is a solid horror read with some excellent writing. Ketchum really nails it with this one - the writing is stark, descriptive, and accurate. The scares at the end are intense well worth the read.
dark
slow-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Gore, Incest, Rape, Sexual assault, Violence, Blood, Grief, Murder, Injury/Injury detail
so, so, so boring. i have other things to read lmao
The pace in Hide and Seek was pretty freaking slow for me. Or at least that is how it started off. I was intrigued when we were seeing college kids playing hide and seek in an abandoned house. Mostly because it just seemed obvious that so many things were going to go wrong throughout the game.
It just sucks that I didn't really enjoy or like any of the characters. I wouldn't necessarily say this was pure horror because it just felt like I had to untangle so much drama in order to get to that. If it had more spooky, supernatural or horrific things throughout the book then I probably would have rated this higher.
In the end, it was okay. A bit of a let down really. I'm not sure what I was exactly expecting from this book but it was more than what I got.
It just sucks that I didn't really enjoy or like any of the characters. I wouldn't necessarily say this was pure horror because it just felt like I had to untangle so much drama in order to get to that. If it had more spooky, supernatural or horrific things throughout the book then I probably would have rated this higher.
In the end, it was okay. A bit of a let down really. I'm not sure what I was exactly expecting from this book but it was more than what I got.