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raforall's review against another edition
5.0
Star Review in the January 2022 issue of Library Journal
Three Words That Describe This Book: Utterly original, intense unease, twist on the vampire trope
Easter Sunday, 1970, rural Ohio, the local witch goes to her front porch, a dark, winged shadow passes over, she collapses, and dies. At that exact moment, twins Joy and Hope are born. What follows is the story of those twins, framed in four chapters, each one set on the days leading up to their birthday, on the years it coincides with Easter. During each of those years, local youths are brutally murdered. The police chief finds a suspect every time, but the fact that it happens when the twins have a holiday birthday is not lost on anyone. Madden, an award winning film director, balances the mundane and supernatural perfectly with an intriguing frame propelling the pace and tension, while at the same time, she sets up a classic coming of age story with an omniscient narration from Hope’s perspective, as the girls grow up from birth to age 18. The chapters grow in length as Hope begins to put the chilling details of the town’s curse into place, leading what was once a deceptively quiet, atmospheric story to its terrifying conclusion.
Verdict: Utterly original, bubbling over with unease, featuring a shocking twist that breathes new life into a popular Horror trope, Roost is quite simply, breathtaking. For fans who enjoyed Slade House by MItchell, The Rust Maidens by Kiste, or Fledgling by Butler.
Three Words That Describe This Book: Utterly original, intense unease, twist on the vampire trope
Easter Sunday, 1970, rural Ohio, the local witch goes to her front porch, a dark, winged shadow passes over, she collapses, and dies. At that exact moment, twins Joy and Hope are born. What follows is the story of those twins, framed in four chapters, each one set on the days leading up to their birthday, on the years it coincides with Easter. During each of those years, local youths are brutally murdered. The police chief finds a suspect every time, but the fact that it happens when the twins have a holiday birthday is not lost on anyone. Madden, an award winning film director, balances the mundane and supernatural perfectly with an intriguing frame propelling the pace and tension, while at the same time, she sets up a classic coming of age story with an omniscient narration from Hope’s perspective, as the girls grow up from birth to age 18. The chapters grow in length as Hope begins to put the chilling details of the town’s curse into place, leading what was once a deceptively quiet, atmospheric story to its terrifying conclusion.
Verdict: Utterly original, bubbling over with unease, featuring a shocking twist that breathes new life into a popular Horror trope, Roost is quite simply, breathtaking. For fans who enjoyed Slade House by MItchell, The Rust Maidens by Kiste, or Fledgling by Butler.
booksasmeals's review against another edition
3.0
This is a tough book to rate. I enjoyed the beginning, but then it started to read more like a screenplay than a novel. I think the story itself was great and had a lot of cool elements; I haven't read Easter horror before! I liked how the chapters were laid out and how we jumped forward in time with the Murphys. But the story is told almost entirely through dialogue which made it hard to make sense of the world in my head. Omniscient POV is extremely hard to pull off and I felt it was a downside in this novel, I think it would have been stronger had we been in the twins heads. I will still continue to read this author if they put anything else out because I can feel the love of horror.
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