Small Town Horror by Ronald Malfi

 

Well, this was a disappointingly mediocre horror novel. Read for a while like a spin on IT with less functional main characters, and a first-person POV narrator that never sat entirely right. Lots of tedious crap, lots of people (or at least the POV) refusing to believe what's right in front of them. Then there was a Sudden Reveal a bit more than three-quarters through that kinda made it OK that he died at the end. The novel comes across as though it wants to say things about parenthood, and about how motherhood is different from fatherhood, but it's not a good enough novel to carry the weight of narrative, let alone the weight of subtext. There are probably some weirdnesses here coming from so many horror novelists being so heavily influenced by slasher movies, and from my strong dislike for slasher movies; you don't even have to squint to see the lone survivor of the quintet being cursed--and the only woman--as a bit of a Final Girl. The writing musters an occasional sparkling glint, and the dialogue seems reasonably plausible; that's the extent of the good, here.