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A review by coffinfinite
The Summer I Died by Ryan C. Thomas
challenging
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
I read this book out of morbid curiosity. As a teenager, I loved films like Hostel and Saw - until one day they turned my stomach, and I couldn’t watch stuff like that any more. But horror books hit a little different, and I’ve fared well with titles like Gerald’s Game and Misery by Stephen King, and when The Summer I Died was recommended as a splatterpunk novel with realistic characters you could actually root for, I decided I was game.
I don’t understand exactly what I was supposed to be rooting for. Tooth and Roger are two small town boys who speak casual misogyny and homophobia, and who “get hard” over shooting guns in the forest. Not the kind of people I bother forging emotional attachments to. By the time they’re kidnapped and tortured, I felt bad for them in the way a normal individual would feel bad for anyone they witnessed suffering, but the emotional connection I was promised simply wasn’t there. I couldn’t relate to them at all, except in the sense that they didn’t deserve what happened to them, because no one does. The tension didn’t really build quite right - if anything, the book is too short and didn’t have any room to generate tension at all.
The gore was, you know, gore, but nothing I haven’t seen in a horror film or read before in books that were better written. I didn’t go in expecting a masterpiece of literature - that’s not what splatterpunk is about - but I felt like the book had been hyped a little by those recommending it. There was so much more that could have been explored thematically - belief in God, the fragility of life, luck and chance - that just got skimmed over a bit. Another hundred pages or so for that would have been good - the writing was solid and pulled me in, and kept me going to the end.
I don’t understand exactly what I was supposed to be rooting for. Tooth and Roger are two small town boys who speak casual misogyny and homophobia, and who “get hard” over shooting guns in the forest. Not the kind of people I bother forging emotional attachments to. By the time they’re kidnapped and tortured, I felt bad for them in the way a normal individual would feel bad for anyone they witnessed suffering, but the emotional connection I was promised simply wasn’t there. I couldn’t relate to them at all, except in the sense that they didn’t deserve what happened to them, because no one does. The tension didn’t really build quite right - if anything, the book is too short and didn’t have any room to generate tension at all.
The gore was, you know, gore, but nothing I haven’t seen in a horror film or read before in books that were better written. I didn’t go in expecting a masterpiece of literature - that’s not what splatterpunk is about - but I felt like the book had been hyped a little by those recommending it. There was so much more that could have been explored thematically - belief in God, the fragility of life, luck and chance - that just got skimmed over a bit. Another hundred pages or so for that would have been good - the writing was solid and pulled me in, and kept me going to the end.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Child death, Confinement, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Rape, Sexual assault, Torture, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Vomit, Police brutality, Kidnapping, Murder
Moderate: Alcoholism, Homophobia, Misogyny