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tristan_lince's review
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
Alan Ryan knows his way around a small town, its singular inhabitants, and how it runs. Our main cast of characters all respect each other, have distinct personalities, and form a bond that carries them to the end. The fact there's an invisible caveman (no, really) running around killing expendable side characters is almost an afterthought.
It ended up being incongruous, these well-written stretches of a loving relationship between a couple, a sheriff agonizing over an unsolved murder, the dark thoughts of an abusive father, and other artistic scenes clumped together with the monster's simplistic internal monologue and Ryan's tendency to focus on...uh, female anatomy, especially in a frankly ridiculous scene when a woman is killed while using the bathroom in the woods.
So all in all, a better book than it needed to be, but you can only get so literary when your monster is...well, click the spoiler above if you want to know before reading and possibly forgo a great background setting to spare yourself from that bit of silliness.
It ended up being incongruous, these well-written stretches of a loving relationship between a couple, a sheriff agonizing over an unsolved murder, the dark thoughts of an abusive father, and other artistic scenes clumped together with the monster's simplistic internal monologue and Ryan's tendency to focus on...uh, female anatomy, especially in a frankly ridiculous scene when a woman is killed while using the bathroom in the woods.
So all in all, a better book than it needed to be, but you can only get so literary when your monster is...well, click the spoiler above if you want to know before reading and possibly forgo a great background setting to spare yourself from that bit of silliness.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder and Child death
Minor: Sexism
micro_cornelia's review
5.0
I really liked this book.
Gave me the spooks, some how the invisible rock monster with sandpaper skin seemed like a more real threat than say bears while hiking.
We live with forest all around our house and all I could think was what if there's some thing in our woods like that.
Gave me the spooks, some how the invisible rock monster with sandpaper skin seemed like a more real threat than say bears while hiking.
We live with forest all around our house and all I could think was what if there's some thing in our woods like that.
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