Review
An e-arc of the book has been provided by the publisher, Penguin Random House International, exchange for an honest review.
What if there are monsters in this world – real monsters – but we just refuse to acknowledge they are real?
Faith is a strong foundation when it comes to this kind of bizarre and otherworldly beings, but Noah Turner refuses to believe otherwise; he know its real and decided to let it in.
The Turner family has their history; unlike any other, though, theirs is not ordinary.
A father that saw the monster with his own eyes allowed its reality to consume him and made a shrine for them in the form of a haunted house attraction. A mother who knows its all real but refuses to admit it. An older sister who rejects and deny her knowledge of it. And there is Noah. Noah saw the monster, he chose to accept it, and decided to be friends with it.
Categorized as a horror novel, I was trying hard to find that right blend. The right mixture of what a horror story is. There is no doubt that plenty of what this book offers are unnerving to say the least, but horror? I believe it to be more disturbing than anything else.
My journey through this book started with the right foot. It offered me something different. The writing style and the slow pacing of the story really opens the reader to the world and characters of the book with more focus on the characters and their slowly crumbling family. This book tackles so much emotions and struggles. Each family members are given a sort of highlight with every chapter ending with a cycle called “The Turner Sequence”. Or were they the beginning of every chapter? I hardly noticed.
Noah, being unaware of his family’s secrets, is somewhat of an unreliable source of information. His youth gave way to endless curiosity and his family, being what they are, made him someone who adapts with what’s being served to him. There is a depth to his character that I really like but, his development throughout the book is unsavory.
Additionally, there was a particularly huge turn of event in this novel that involves romance. Not in the cute flirty kind of way but the full blown, “I am curious to know what will happen. Let’s have sex!” kind of way. I find it quite unnecessary and it really threw me off balance throughout the entire part of the story after that.
While this book did not particularly leave a good flavour on my tongue, I think that if you like a drama heavy, slow-paced story then this book is perfect for you. It traverses the story of a mother and her attempt to carry the entire weight of her family as it collapses and secrets that were the cause of their family’s destruction but, it is also about healing. Not all secrets are healthy to keep especially if it is about your family and this book made sure that we know that.
My initial rating for this book was supposed to be 2/5 stars but upon contemplation and writing this review, I think it wasn’t really not that bad
