kitties cats??

personal rating: 3.5/5

i really liked it overall, even with the sudden heel-turn in the final act to have more action. however. goddamn did that final chapter in particular feel so different from the rest of the story as to fall flat for me. it was SO strong until then, and the end really just took me out of it.

that being said, part of why it took me so long to read this was that i just did not click with the writing style for the longest time, and was put off by the casual fatphobia that kept coming up again and again.

i think if you enjoy stephen king's writing style, you'll enjoy adam nevill's style, as they feel very similar to me.

however, once i got into the writing itself and decided to push through it, i really enjoyed the evolving mystery and the horror at play here! the fatphobia is still a lot of why it lost points with me, but the story itself caught my interest.

if gore is a concern for you, it doesn't get super gorey until the last chapter, but the gore it DOES describe is nasty, brutal, and visceral. and more than that, what it DOESN'T describe is infinitely more impactful. a lot of the scariest moments in this book to me aren't described in all that much detail at all, leaving your mind to fill in the blanks. it's good!

horror that's purely through text doesn't tend to get to me, but this book genuinely left me unnerved and had me actually freezing up in fear a few times. probably doesn't help that i already have a fear of the dark, haha, but my point stands. there is one scene in particular that i know is going to haunt me for years to come.

pros:

i love the lore behind the cult and the "old friends," i think it's genuinely fascinating. also, i love seeing cults in fiction that are written by people that know what they're talking about with cults and how they operate, rather than relying on satanic panic bullshit.

the character voices are very strong, everyone has a lot of personality and stands out from one another. i could very clearly hear them speak while i was reading.

martha is a fucking fantastic tragic character and i need to study her like a bug.

i'm also studying max like a bug, but because i hate him. however, he's also a well-written and interesting character.

also, conceptually the "old friends" are just dope as fuck and deeply horrific. i find the rules and mechanics behind them really interesting, and i like how the story doesn't spoon-feed their workings to the reader! you can piece it together over time while seeing how they behave, and figure out quite a bit before the characters do.

the slowburn building of tension up until the final act is fantastic. i was quite literally glued to the book and had to force myself to put it down more than once to get back to my actual job.

it might not've been intentional, but the ending also made me laugh and i think it was a good way to round out the deflating energy of the last chapter.

very strong and evocative imagery, in particular during the dream sequences. it was also all very purposeful imagery, and it was genuinely satisfying figuring out how it all comes together in the end.

cons:

i haven't been able to decide if it's intentional, but there's a definite transphobic overtone in the final act in particular that had me uneasy. i probably wouldn't feel this way if jed wasn't dropping slurs and being transphobic to the ghouls, but alas, he was, and that just made me more aware of the subtext i was willing to overlook.

speaking of slurs and bigotry, if you want to read it i recommend considering how tolerant you are of early 2010s flavored casual fatphobia, because there is a LOT of it. there are dashes of homophobia and transphobia as well, among others like ableism, etc. again, it's all very 2010s flavor, so keep that in mind.

the last act :( i don't hate it becoming more of an action-horror in general, but it felt to me like it was straight out of a resident evil game, or a late-seasons supernatural episode. neither of those comparisons are meant positively in this context.

jed. most of the characters are at least interesting to see in action, but god i hated jed and felt he didn't add nearly enough to the scenes he was in to be worth the bullshit he was spewing.

while it's generally good about drip-feeding information, especially towards the end the book does quite a bit of lore-dumping. it might just be me, but it felt like a TON of information was dropped all at once about "new jerusalem" and losche and his "blood friends," and i just. was not processing it. it felt like the drama and the horror had to pause for a massive infodump, and i had to keep rereading it to understand what was going on.

while i find max interesting, he also falls a bit flat for me in the end, and i feel like the twists about his backstory and his relationship with the cult don't go anywhere interesting. i expected a lot more from him and ended up disappointed, but to be fair i think i was expecting a twist that just wasn't coming, haha.

what the fuck was up with the unholy swine. i hated that thing.

again, cannot emphasize enough, the fatphobia is bad. the leader of the cult in question, sister katherine, is a fat woman, and literally no one is normal about that at any point, and her fatness is referred to as an insult more than, like, her human rights violations and abuse of her followers. there's also cluster-b ableism in how they refer to her, and in general this book is not kind to folks with cluster-b disorders. in particular, max's little monologue about stalin in the last act drives me up the wall. reminding myself that it's the early 2010s only helped so much there.

favorite characters: by far, my faves are martha and dan, but i also adored susan and emilio. i did not like kyle for the longest time, but by the end of it i'd come around to that nefarious twink.

least favorite characters: jed, max, and finger mouse. the first two for aforementioned reasons, and the third because i just hate and loathe his name. sorry, buddy, pick a better alias.