Such a good spooky read!!

A really enjoyable follow-up to the brilliant Summer of Night! We revisit some characters from that summer of 1960 at a much later date - however, I'm pretty sure there's no problem at all reading this one stand-alone. That said, it must be noted that having read the first book really adds a dimension as you get a fuller and quite vivid picture of the characters of the stories. As this is a ghost - or at least a mystery - story, I won't be writing about any synopsis as to not reveal anything. It's well written and the shorter format (shorter than the predecessor that is) works well (however, I must say I thought the climax dragged on a bit and that's the reason for the missing star). The story is very well handled, with just the right amount of explanations and seeds of doubt planted to make you ponder and reason about the book during, but also after reading it. This was my February buddy read with Edward Lorn. Thank you Edward, always a pleasure (but even bigger when we manage to pick a good one)!

It turns out that this book is the sequel to a book, Summer of Night, that I've never read. It doesn't seem to matter much; I understood and liked it anyway.

It's a ghost story and a story about a man who has become self-destructive; an easy and entertaining read. It doesn't have the ambition of many Simmons novels, but it does have a few red herrings to keep you guessing about what is going on, as the past literally comes back to haunt the protagonist when he returns to his home-town and spends the winter trying to write a novel about his childhood in the home of his friend who died far too young.

I am more familiar with the Science Fiction from Dan Simmons but it looks like Horror also makes up a considerable amount of his back catalogue so I thought I'd check it out.

Simmons writes in the same unashamed fashion as seen with King or McCammon, human nature is on display without filter, no bodily function or thought censored out.

Possibly I am unfairly judging Simmons in my rating against the above mentioned authors and also against his own work Hyperion which is firmly in my top 5 reads of all time, but this was nevertheless a decent tale and I would certainly be interested to read more of his works in the Horror genre.