I picked this up on a whim during the Dewey’s 24 hour Readathon and just had to finish it before I got back to my other book. This is a short horror novel about a couple going to visit the boy’s parents and the girl is thinking about ending the relationship.
There is a creepy, isolated feel to this book. The boy’s family home is a farm, far away from the city where the couple lives, a snowstorm moves in threatening to isolate the couple, and there’s just something off. Something is off in how the guy is acting, how the farm looks and feels, how the parents are acting. As the story continues, the red flags keep popping up more frequently and you have the urge to yell at the characters to prevent them from getting into trouble. You know you are hopeless.
Overall, I enjoyed this but wanted more from it. It just wasn’t eery and chilling enough to give me that tingle down my spine feeling. I mostly just found myself going, “this is why you don’t trust men, this is why toxic masculinity is toxic, stop it just leave go go go.” To have a reaction is a good thing, it does mean I was invested, but I don’t think having an emotional reaction means that it was great.
I’ve had that feedback before, that if the story made me feel something then doesn’t that mean it’s done a good job? And like, no. No, absolutely not. That’s such a limiting frame to view reading and it delegitimizes your feelings about a book. It is totally possible to be enraged by a book and love it, hate it, or feel indifferent about it. Emotional responses are not the benchmark for whether or not the writing is good, everyone has read really bad writing and hated it.
All that aside, this book will hit differently for different people. I’ve seen some people LOVE it, they found the chill and creepy factor that I was missing. Other people really didn’t like it, they didn’t get any of the unease that I got. So it’s really a personal preference and since it’s so short, I say give it a shot. If you don’t like it, move on, if you love it, great!
Just Read It 