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3.35 AVERAGE
3.35 AVERAGE
dark
mysterious
medium-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
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
It was fine. I wanted more of a theme. This felt like a mixed bag of scares with no real throughline.
This was just… meh.
I liked the premise, I liked the nods to the Dyatlov pass incident and the Donner party… But it just didn’t grab me at all. I didn’t care what happened to them. I could’ve put it down at any point and not been bothered, just for some reason, did not connect with the writing
I liked the premise, I liked the nods to the Dyatlov pass incident and the Donner party… But it just didn’t grab me at all. I didn’t care what happened to them. I could’ve put it down at any point and not been bothered, just for some reason, did not connect with the writing
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
medium-paced
In This Wretched Valley from Jenny Kiefer, four friends (or friends-adjacent) go camping in the Kentucky wilderness in order to climb and map out a new rock that no one has discovered before, all of them for various important to them reasons. Once they get out of town, they have spotty (or mostly no) cell service which turned out to be very easy for me to believe because even though I assume the town of Livingston mentioned in the novel is fictional, I was listening to this audiobook as I was driving through Kentucky, and I happened to drive through a town called Livingston, and I didn’t get cell service while I was in the town, so…
My good girl, Laika, ready to go camping.
It’s easy to underestimate how scary it can be not to have cell service, especially if you’re a certain age, as I am. When I went to college on the opposite end of the state from my Appalachian Virginia hometown, nobody had a cell phone except some people on tv or in movies had 5-lb bricks or car phones. So back then, maybe it would have been less scary because that was just life. But now? In the middle of the woods where every crackle of a leaf or snap of a stick breaking could be Bigfoot or Chupacabra or a regular old serial killer? I at least need to have my final screams recorded so the 9-1-1 tape can be played on the episode of Unsolved Mysteries they will make about my disappearance.
Anyway, as the very good boy and at least part Australian cattle dog (just like my old girl Laika, also rescued from a shelter) alerts them almost immediately, evil is afoot.
Seven months later, three of their bodies are found - one of them basically a skeleton, one with organs missing, and one horribly mutilated with extremities missing - are found, and the fourth, Dylan, is never found. Knowing the end doesn’t make following their story any less harrowing as they are unable to escape the woods, time stops having any meaning, and they become unable to trust each other or even themselves.
The audiobook production was very good, and the narrator, Megan Tusing, brought the characters to life, making it easy to empathize with and fear for them (and with them).
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
tense
One of the best horrors, I find- while I can’t say that I get scared, this book really made me uneasy! At first, we’re in for a hiking trip absolutely normal.. and then things starts to get wierd. Paranormal horrors is my absolute favorite, and this one is well made. The going back and forth between present-tense and what happened in 1700s was easy to follow, giving much needed imput to the story.
I also liked that we first started with how the bodies were founds, and then go into the story of what happened during the trip. I had to go back and reread one or two times with the informations I had gotten later in book.