Joe Hill - Heart-Shaped Box: A Novel - 9

Post by **StefanY** » Mon May 21, 2007 12:42 pm

Heart-Shaped Box: A Novel

Wow, what a great debut!

Now that I have that out of the way, let me start out my review by saying that Heart-Shaped Box is the creepiest, scariest new book that I have read in quite some time. Mr. Hill tells an excellent story; well thought out with wonderful character development. The thing that I really loved about his introducing us to the characters is that he just threw us into the ride with them without too much background and then built them up into very complex and likable personalities through the course of the book without setting us up with a "here's what this character is all about" sort of summary .

The story-telling in this novel is top-notch. Hill weaves a grand adventure fraught with tension and nail-biting moments that you won't want to put down. My only complaint with the novel was that sometimes his style/structure didn't flow extremely well and I had to re-read a sentence or two to comprehend what he was trying to say. These instances were few and far between, so it wasn't a distraction to the wonderful flow of the novel.

If you couldn't tell, I highly recommend Heart-Shaped Box. It's a great read. One word of caution though, if you're reading alone in a dark and quiet farm-house out in the boonies, I would suggest turning on some lights before running upstairs to get something. I didn't and I almost scared the bejeepers out of myself with the images from the book still lodged in my head!!

Have you read this book? Click here to rate it!

violetblue · Post by **violetblue** » Mon May 21, 2007 2:29 pm

I figured you'd get around to this book sooner or later, being as big a King fan as I am. For me, it was hard not to read this without expectations. Some kids of famous, talented people turn out to be talentless bums--but obviously King's son got a strong dose of his dad's talent. Horror is such a hard genre to write in, as I wrote in my review, and he seems like he's got his dad's touch with it. If he continues writing in this genre, I think he's going to distinguish himself completely from his father, however--by that I mean, I think he will be a very successful writer and write great books, but not have to live under the shadow of his father. Quite a feat.

Spoiler: show

Darla

Post by **StefanY** » Mon May 21, 2007 2:38 pm

Spoiler: show