Poor Things by Daniel BarnettMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Had fun with my new kindle reading this one, sharing lots of good quotes as some may have seen. This book is perma-free on Amazon and if you like horror and gore with characters in the Stephen King mould, you'll enjoy this.
A devestating event sends Joel to live with his Aunt Sandy in the town of Honaw; a place with more than one skeleton in its closet. New school, new friends, new bullies - pretty soon we're treated to a cast of characters to become attached to, and horrors to endure.
“In the dictionary under ‘adolescence’ you’ll find a bunch of stuff about transitional periods and developmental phases, and that all may be accurate enough if you’re writing a paper for Health class, but only one word defines ‘adolescence’ and that word is ‘earthquake.”
I shared many quotes and could've chosen any of them to put above, but the truth is the writing is just extremely solid throughout. There's a definite style which lends itself well to suspense and horror, and in first person it is peppered with incisive observation.
“I think we all have that place where we feel closest to ourselves, where the mind slides into perfect orbit around the heart.”
And when it arrives, the crawling horror is satisfyingly bloody, and splatty, gorey and squelchy - almost too much, stretching the believable, testing the limits of our narrator. But then it's reigned in again, lulling us into its safe space. Before kicking on, shifting into a higher gear, crescendoing to a satisfying conclusion.
Did I mention it's free?
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