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abmalada 's review for:

Jackknife by Joe Hill
3.0

Ooh love that I accidentally read a horror short story on Friday the 13th! I’m usually a big fan of horror novellas but this one sort of missed the mark. Since short stories can’t have super complicated plots, I’m usually in it for the vibes. Despite the murderous tree, this story didn’t curate the creepy/scary atmosphere that I was hoping for. The open-endedness of the ending is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this respect.

I’m kind of on the tree’s side though since the MC is a terrible person and there were tons of red flags all over the place. Not happy about the cat death though.