heyheycharly 's review for:

The Elementals by Michael McDowell

5.0

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I've been searching all month for a good scary read to get me in the Halloween mood and this was it! I loved the setting (haunted houses are my jam), I loved the characters that McDowell wrote so realistically; I'll be remembering all of them for some time to come (India is a badass and I adore her). I loved the slow burn of creepiness that kept building and building until the climax. McDowell shows some serious skill with his writing; he tells the reader enough, but ends up holding back everything in order to make the reader build what's missing, which really ups the creepy factor. He never goes into detail about character description, which allows the reader to create the physical embodiments of the characters in their own mind and which I noticed and appreciated-- often authors get bogged down in recreating their characters for the reader. McDowell showed us through action and conversation what these characters might look like. And McDowell doesn't waste words. Every scene had meaning and implications, and no time is wasted on useless backstory or explanations of personality traits, so you get a nice, tidy, scary novel in only about 200 pages. Off to go search for more of McDowell's books so I can read them all!