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A review by theglassedandthefurios
Below by Laurel Hightower
3.0
In general, I liked the idea and the writing of this novella. It's something I've not really come across, which is always a plus. I will definitely have a look at other books by this author.
However, the one thing that really brought the rating down for me was that this is a roughly 100-page novella, and for this limited amount of space, too much was crammed into it. As if the author didn't know which horror theme to focus on, all were thrown into the mix. Now, on the one hand, this added the pleasant mystery of which of my theories could be right and gave the book more suspense, on the other hand, it made the story feel overloaded with too many variables and all of them ended without a real resolution.
I think in this instance, less is more would have been a great mindset to have while editing, because this could have been a brilliant new twist to horror stories, at least more me.
However, the one thing that really brought the rating down for me was that this is a roughly 100-page novella, and for this limited amount of space, too much was crammed into it. As if the author didn't know which horror theme to focus on, all were thrown into the mix. Now, on the one hand, this added the pleasant mystery of which of my theories could be right and gave the book more suspense, on the other hand, it made the story feel overloaded with too many variables and all of them ended without a real resolution.
Spoiler
I mean, at the beginning I was left to wonder if this was a story about a creepy psycho who hunted on dark and abandoned highways. Or maybe the truck driver could be evil. Finally, there was a creepy thing with glowing eyes that ate people, it could impersonate people and the nice truck driver was into some shady shit with transporting frozen people for an organisation. To top it all off, I constantly had to question if Addy was a relatable narrator at all because of her constant mental dialogues with her ex-husband. So there are a whole lot of different plot twists that were added, which made this short novella feel overloaded and, especially the ending (which wasn't really an ending because nothing truly feels resolved), seem rushed.I think in this instance, less is more would have been a great mindset to have while editing, because this could have been a brilliant new twist to horror stories, at least more me.