I’ll be honest. I am easily pleased by a simple spooky story I am new to horror so any cliche twist is unexpected to me. But my goodness the ending disappointed a lot. So pros: good characters believable motives and beautiful descriptive settings. Cons: ending rushed and a bit boring

This is excruciating to read. I'm so close to finishing, but I feel so done with it! I've never not finished a book, so I'll finish this one as well, despite everything. This book is what makes slasher films so popular....the blood, guts and shock value.....no content! I love slasher films, don't get me wrong, but I want my books to be weightier! And when John Saul takes a dream from earlier in the book and we realize it's actually prophetic, he treats us like 2 year olds and explains it till it loses all meaning! Ugh! And did I mention the cliches???? It was painful at some points! Did he really just say that????

I did read John Saul as a teenager, and had remembered liking him.....maybe I have a bad memory or whatever I had read was good and this book is the exception!

I hate being so negative about a book, because there are some people out there that like it. To each their own. Thankfully every book has someone to love it. (Sappy, right? lol)

Ok, finished this last night and my review stays the same. I just want to add......what a waste of time! :(

That third star is for the suspense of it all, which is recurrent in John Saul's books. They always hit that narrow sweet spot that I crave in horror literature, but never beyond the point of mediocrity. I keep rewriting the review, but words fail me today. I suppose I have nothing important to say about the book, nothing that could make a review valuable or important to read. I feel like others have phrased my opinions better and have nothing new to add to what has already been said.

My final thought is: mediocrity. That's the best you can get from John Saul. Never expect more or less. He writes based on tropes we find now overused and non-sensical, yet he makes them nostalgic in one sense or another. It's cheap horror, but sometimes that is all I want to read. So I suppose I got what I wanted.