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linamclane's review against another edition
4.0
Deeply disturbing, shocking, disgusting, and highly entertaining. I think I would have gone for 5 stars if it were a little more fleshed out. Metaphorically, of course.
yorgabunz's review against another edition
4.0
This was a pleasant surprise for me. I’ve been straying out of my genre lately and I didn’t know what to expect. This book dances deliciously back and forth over the line separating the supernatural and the psychological thriller fields. The final face off plays in your head with gory detail and you often find yourself wondering who to root for. It was a great read! I’m going to read another of his books: Rotters very soon. This is the author of The Shape of Water btw...
ali_brarian's review against another edition
2.0
Creepy. The vocabulary and language took me out of the story at points, and I was thoroughly creeped out by the characters' actions. I don't know if I would recommend it to fans of Stephen King as the cover suggests because it didn't follow through with the horror until the end.
d_sebek's review against another edition
4.0
There is a disconnection that comes with leaving the structure of public education. For years the calendar rose and fell with the ringing of bells, holiday breaks and assignment deadlines. A year after graduation, nineteen year old Ry Burke is lost on his families failing farm. His dad is in jail, his mother is slowly killing the farm, and his pre-teen sister torments him with new curse word combinations.
Ry seems destined to follow his mother off the farm into a life of dead end minimum wage jobs when his life is changed by a stranger, a meteor, and three old friends from his battered childhood.
A well placed meteor destroys the prison housing Ry's murderous father. Before long, Martin Burke finds his way home and is ready to take out revenge on the people who ripped him from his land.
In confronting his father, Ry has to unleash the repressed nightmares of his childhood and overcome his tortured past in order to help his family survive the monster watching t.v. in their living room.
Ry seems destined to follow his mother off the farm into a life of dead end minimum wage jobs when his life is changed by a stranger, a meteor, and three old friends from his battered childhood.
A well placed meteor destroys the prison housing Ry's murderous father. Before long, Martin Burke finds his way home and is ready to take out revenge on the people who ripped him from his land.
In confronting his father, Ry has to unleash the repressed nightmares of his childhood and overcome his tortured past in order to help his family survive the monster watching t.v. in their living room.
tyrshand's review against another edition
5.0
This audiobook was wonderfully narrated and well written and so very emotional... It is not, however, the kind of book I feel comfortable recommending because it's very difficult to listen to as well simply BECAUSE it's so good but covers difficult subject matter. The book is terrifying and disturbing and heroic and heartbreaking. It's completely gripping, but also repellent -- the horrors that exist in this book are real world horrors and that always makes me uncomfortable. I generally prefer my terrors to be otherworldly so I can close the book and walk away. But if you prefer the grotesqueness that can exist in real life, you must read this book. It was amazing.
emmabussolotta's review against another edition
3.0
Something about this lacked the lyricism of Kraus' other works. As always with Kraus' books, I appreciate the mental health messages, and the emphasis on the lack of treatment and lack of belief. But something was missing from this book.
I think Kraus is very smart in real life, and while he plays that up in Zebulon Finch and Rotters, it seems like he downplayed it in Scowler for the benefit of the reader.
I'm also sad because I know how Ry's story really ended.
I think Kraus is very smart in real life, and while he plays that up in Zebulon Finch and Rotters, it seems like he downplayed it in Scowler for the benefit of the reader.
I'm also sad because I know how Ry's story really ended.
afro8921's review against another edition
3.0
The walking dead meets freddie versus jason in a gruesome read about psychotic breaks within a severely damaged family. Ryan Burke is a 19 year-old young man tied to a dying farm and broken family. Trying to recover from the mental and physical abuse he suffered at the hands of his father, he struggles to knit the various personalities in his mind back together. This book would appeal to readers who like a little horror with their emotional baggage.
mmorton's review against another edition
4.0
In the land of young adult books, true horror stories can be hard to find (Yancey's Monstrumologist comes to mind). If you are a fan of the genre, Daniel Kraus is a must read and is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. Fresh off of reading Rotters I quickly added Scowler to my "to read" list and was not disappointed. Scowler is suspenseful, disturbing, and guaranteed to stick with you. Kraus make does a great job of depicting horrible things with beautiful language. I must warn you that this book pulls no punches. Do not read this book unless you are prepared for an honest to goodness horror story in the hybrid form of Stephen King meets Rob Zombie. 4.5 stars.
trudilibrarian's review against another edition
4.0
It puzzles me -- and sometimes frustrates me to no end -- how or why some books get categorized/released as Young Adult. These days it seems the label has become so loosey-goosey all that's required is that there be a teen protagonist. Content, language, themes -- all of the meatier, important elements of any book are blithely ignored in the rush to market and movie deals.
There are definitely books that walk the hinterland -- the very, very outer reaches of YA and upon reading them you realize that there's way more 'Adult' in the pages than 'Young'. On any given Sunday it shouldn't really matter ....except for when it does. In the case of Scowler it makes me think about how many people will ignore it and miss out turned off by its YA label, and then it makes me think about the young teen readers who will lack the emotional maturity and mental resilience to process such a dark and disturbing tale.
Scowler is firmly planted in the Rural Lit / Country Noir tradition. Really, if someone had handed me this book and told me it was written by [a:Donald Ray Pollock|784866|Donald Ray Pollock|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1240540889p2/784866.jpg] or [a:Daniel Woodrell|65135|Daniel Woodrell|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1276358809p2/65135.jpg] I wouldn't have blinked an eye.
Yes, it's that good and that dark. Patriarch Marvin Burke is as chilling and disturbing a villain as any I've encountered and belongs in the pages of a [a:Frank Bill|3983305|Frank Bill|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1366952773p2/3983305.jpg] novel. The language is vibrant and pulsing -- a living, breathing thing:
The cracks in the dirt now yawned to proportions slutty with thirst...I had originally shelved this as 'horror' but am now removing it because while Scowler is horrific in parts, it has much more in common with realistic, gritty fiction that has a psychological underbelly.
There it was. A miracle, really, finding this speck of bone in a world of dust. There was a brown spot of blood on the tooth's root, and to Ry it seemed the encapsulation of the bum deal of life: a once-perfect thing plucked and bloodied and tossed to the dirt.
I highly recommend this one.