Reviews - Don't Fear the Reaper

2.27k reviews for:

Don't Fear the Reaper

Stephen Graham Jones

4.15 AVERAGE

mitskiesque's review

3.5

adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

"And a thousand men like you can’t even reach up to touch her combat boots."

As a fan or horror, I loved the first book! It was a read that stuck with me for a long while, but I ended up struggling a bit with the sequel.

In my opinion, the constant change in POV (particularly the new characters) made it difficult to follow at times and I kept getting distracted because I tried to remember, if the person was mentioned in the previous book.

A few things were so twisty, that it took me a while to understand what was even happening to begin with and I was still a bit confused when I finished it.

The fight scenes were amazing and I found myself feeling like I was actually watching a movie.

The part about Sheriff Hardy going into the lake with his daughter left me both shocked but also curious, because it was such an unexpected development. I hope, it'll be cleared up in the following book.

I loved seeing Jade again, my favourite final girl.

Content Warnings

gabepants's review against another edition

3.5

dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

jackphoenix's review against another edition

3.0

dark tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Not all readers will respond well to this meta tale and its pop culture references mashed with literary style, but those that do are in for a bloody good time.

gracecoady's review

4.0

Liked this one much better than the first book! Still maybe too much gore for me but got thru like 80% of it on my plane ride home which made the time fly.

euphoric_rambles's review

5.0

Is the sequel bigger and badder than the original? Maybe and I just loved it. I loved My Heart is a Chainsaw but I did have some pacing problems with book 1, that are absolutely absent in this volume. The relationship developed between Jade and Letha, the gore, the depictions of actually sitting and dealing with the guilt and physical results of the first book all make sense. I really appreciated the structure, pacing, and the way Dark Mill South just tore it up. Great stuff, I love the series.