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A review by dtaylorbooks
The Halloween Children by Brian James Freeman, Norman Prentiss
1.0
Holy wow, was this bad. From the characters to the pacing to the plotting of suspense and horror, it was all bad.
The characters, the husband and wife, are insufferable assholes. They hate each other, they hate their marriage, they’re bad parents, they spend most of the book complaining about each other or about the other tenants around them. Literally nothing good about either of them.
The pacing was just off. The story hung around way too much on minutiae and unnecessary explanations of unnecessary things that bore no relevance to the plot itself. And that leads into plotting and the build-up of the horror, which was practically non-existent. It’s like the authors had an idea but had no idea how to actually execute it. Between the unnecessary info dumps on the random things in the couple’s lives and the buckshot scattering of “spooky” details that, I think, were meant to build suspense, there amounts to absolutely nothing scary going on in this book.
The build-up is so unevenly speckled throughout the story that it’s barely cohesive and the focus is all off. We get random POVs thrown in that are supposed to add suspense but since, as the reader, you have no idea who the characters even are and the story spends zero time with them, you’re left feeling nothing and the little breath of cold air you get with these little snippets ends up warming pretty quickly. And then the end is just dumped on you, practically out of nowhere, but since you care absolutely nothing for any of the characters it means nothing. Die in a fire, guys. Makes no difference to me.
THE HALLOWEEN CHILDREN was a total disappointment. There’s nothing scary about it. The story is bad, characters don’t even develop so I can’t say the character development’s bad, the plotting is bad. It’s just bad. Skip it. It’s not even cheesy horror. It’s just bad horror. Read something else. Anything else. A cereal box is scarier. All those preservatives . . .
1
The characters, the husband and wife, are insufferable assholes. They hate each other, they hate their marriage, they’re bad parents, they spend most of the book complaining about each other or about the other tenants around them. Literally nothing good about either of them.
The pacing was just off. The story hung around way too much on minutiae and unnecessary explanations of unnecessary things that bore no relevance to the plot itself. And that leads into plotting and the build-up of the horror, which was practically non-existent. It’s like the authors had an idea but had no idea how to actually execute it. Between the unnecessary info dumps on the random things in the couple’s lives and the buckshot scattering of “spooky” details that, I think, were meant to build suspense, there amounts to absolutely nothing scary going on in this book.
The build-up is so unevenly speckled throughout the story that it’s barely cohesive and the focus is all off. We get random POVs thrown in that are supposed to add suspense but since, as the reader, you have no idea who the characters even are and the story spends zero time with them, you’re left feeling nothing and the little breath of cold air you get with these little snippets ends up warming pretty quickly. And then the end is just dumped on you, practically out of nowhere, but since you care absolutely nothing for any of the characters it means nothing. Die in a fire, guys. Makes no difference to me.
THE HALLOWEEN CHILDREN was a total disappointment. There’s nothing scary about it. The story is bad, characters don’t even develop so I can’t say the character development’s bad, the plotting is bad. It’s just bad. Skip it. It’s not even cheesy horror. It’s just bad horror. Read something else. Anything else. A cereal box is scarier. All those preservatives . . .
1