A review by izzyhagenbuch
Phantoms by Dean Koontz

3.0

To preface, I fear that I am in a little book slump and that I did not do this book any favors by simultaneously beginning my Twilight reread… That being said, I found Phantoms kinda difficult to get through.

I’ll start with the positives: The writing was eerily suspenseful and created the perfect spooky season vibe. The descriptions were pretty gory and disturbing. I wouldn’t say that I was ever scared? but I didn’t want to read this book alone at night. I would describe it as a combination of Stranger Things and Bird Box.

The theories at the end were my favorite part—who came first, humanity or the devil? Did one inspire the other? Interesting!! I loved how this theory tied into mass disappearances like Roanoke. I’ve always been fascinated by this, and I found Flyte’s chapters a welcome break from the monotony.

This leads us to my main issue: it was extremely repetitive. Jenny & Lisa first explore the town, then they bring the cops to re-explore the town, then the specialists come to re-re-explore the town. If that sentence felt repetitive to you, imagine reading 300+ pages of it. The same could be said about encounters with the monster. Each time it made an appearance, someone was killed. After a while I started to wonder what the point was.

I stopped being scared of the monster when the characters chatted with it online. Let me just include a few quotes: “Jesus fucks dogs”, “Clarify my cock, you boring bitch”, “Stupid slut”. Tell me why it sounds like a middle schooler trolling (or Sam (ily)). At this point the whole book started to feel like a joke.

I would maybe recommend if you like Stranger Things but I don’t know.