A review by chuckstafer
Pew by Catherine Lacey

3.0

This was a miss for me. I was very intrigued by the mystery surrounding the plot of this novel and had seen many good reviews of it around the web so I was eager to give it a read and thought it would be a story that would lead to some crazy events or something. What I was presented with was a story about a small community thrown into confusion by the appearance of a mystery guest who progressively got more uneasy about their new guest, but that ultimately didn't really go anywhere. The slow-burning tension did build throughout the novel and seemed to be building to some big, cult-like ceremony that sounded like trouble, but ultimately it fizzled out into nothing. Kind of like a balloon that was being aired up but sprung a leak and slowly expelled all of it's contents and deflated.

The origin of the mysterious Pew was never revealed and I really think this story could have benefited from a longer "run time" to explore that more and could have really explored quite a few different ideas.

Ultimately, not a strong entry for me. The writing was good, I will give the author credit on that (and the audiobook narrator was great!) but from a story perspective, this just wasn't it for me.