I've been in a reading slump for the last couple months and this one has pulled me out of it with a vengeance. I really appreciate the extra story details that I missed from the movie. And the scenes of them having to go outside to get water or feed the birds is chilling.
There are a couple minor plot holes, like when Tom and Jules go find the dogs and they spend hours doing a sweep of the house they break into, but somehow miss the boy on the bed? Or the parents? But it hasn't been enough to fully pull me out of the story.
The concept of there being something outside and if you could just take a peek, you could confirm if there's a person or animal or…. something else…. but you can't look because you could die, has terrified me in a way I didn't expect. And I think the book is much more immersive experience for this story than the movie because as an audience, we can see if there's something there or not, but in the book we only know what they know.
I'm really enjoying the read. I saw a lot of people criticizing the writing style, but I feel like it sets the tone well.
by bextaxi
4 Comments
Deeply stupid novel
I’ve read the book twice, once before seeing the movie and once after, and it’s way better than you’d expect it to be. Is it the great American novel? No. But it’s an entertaining little horror book with a unique monster and plot, and you can do a whole lot worse.
It’s not bad. It’s a great premise. But there are at least 3 moments when it is unbelievable because of how unnecessarily stupid it is.
The woman is canoeing and gets scratched by a wolf? Wolves don’t even scratch people to attack, and if one was close enough to get scratched by a wolf it would just kill you.
Worst part of the book is she somehow navigated across the town to a music store??? That is so utterly unbelievable. It would be like reading a story where a normal human swims across the world pacific ocean. Most people could not successfully navigate out of a Walmart parking lot blind.
At the end of the book somehow this guy gets hung to death on an umbilical cord or something? I dunno it was a stupid moment and unrealistic.
I used to think it was one such scary movie experience as a kid 😛😝. But yeah, since its individual experiment that counts, I’m guessing its been the same for you 😉