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Ten Years Gone by H.P. Newquist

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ericarobyn's review

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Loveable characters? It's complicated

3.5

Ten Years Gone by H.P. Newquist is a tense crime horror novel centered around a decade of murders. But what’s more terrifying than the Death Day and the murders themselves, is the detail that the police are keeping from the public…

Full disclosure: I was given a free copy of this book from the author per request of an honest review. This did not affect my rating in any way.

CW: Dog torture and death, brief fatphobia.

Another year, and another body of a girl has been found hanging in a tree in Kerrville, Pennsylvania. The police are beyond ready for this decade of killings to end when they hit the tenth murder in ten years, but they also dread the loss of another teenager.

The next year, Year Ten, two producers, Daria Pegler and Neenah Bernberg, that work at Crime Scene Now research to come up with a new series stumble upon the case. They quickly make a plan to meet with the lead investigator, Roland Mattocks, and head to Kerrville.

After convincing Mattocks to work with them, they later have to go back on their word, which destroys their relationship with a few of the locals. Even so, they press forward, not caring who in the town they offend with their presence.

Meanwhile, Mattocks isn’t going to let this case go. He was there from Day One, and he will see it through getting the monster behind bars.

This storyline hooked me in immediately! I was so unsettled with the thought of one teenage girl being killed each year like clockwork, while the town was helpless to do anything. Sure, they could try to keep their teens inside on Death Night, but we all know that you can’t get all teens to listen.

The small town the author created here felt very real. I loved seeing the relationships between the towns people and how they reacted to this film crew coming in. I also loved that one of the characters specifically, Bev, didn’t hesitate to give the big city folk sass after they talked down to her.

I was rooting for Mattocks and Bev from the start, and even though I typically love documentaries, I was rooting for this one to fail. The people running it were all just so nasty!

My Favorite Passage from Ten Years Gone

He shrugged. “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.”

My Final Thoughts on Ten Years Gone

I read this in one sitting. I just could not tear myself away from this tense tale, hoping they would find the killer before they claimed their tenth victim.

I recommend this one to fans of tense crime horror that don’t mind dipping their toes into some blood-boiling situations.

Content Warnings

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