A magician and a dark evil at Halloween come together in an intriguing coming-of-age thriller.
Readers of Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes and All Hallows by Christopher Golden will love this. In 1970, four boys on the cusp of becoming teenagers notice strange events occurring in Maplewood, NH, timed with the late-night arrival of an old magician who has taken up residence in a boarding house in their neighborhood where one of the tenants is a reclusive pulp horror writer. The writer’s fears have kept him from venturing outside in over forty years, fears linked to the magician’s previous visit. As children go missing in town, the four boys try to piece together seemingly unrelated phenomena and realize dark forces are at work, but no one will believe them.
Wow, what a book. I don’t really know what I was expecting to be honest but this was just brilliant. I love the fact that it is almost diary like with each day in October being detailed. Within each day though we hear part of each of our central characters stories, seemingly unrelated.
I thought that the storyline was so unique, it had me gripped as I was so intrigued as to what was happening within each persons story. The characters were really well written and there was times when I thought that they were all hiding something. Some I felt more sorry for especially Ryan as he had already lost his brother and then had all this going on. But I think it was Harold that I felt most sorry for as he was so scared about what he had seen all those years ago and had never left the house since that one night.
I loved the way that it built up towards the ending and I loved those scenes in the house near the end, it had all built up towards that point but I still really wasn't sure what the outcome would be. I loved the mysteriousness of the whole story, it honestly had me so captivated. I loved the writing style of it and couldn't put it down.
You can grab a copy here #Aff (If you buy a copy through this link I get a teeny commission of the sale from Amazon)
Huge Thanks to Random Things Tours, Gregory Bastianelli and Flame Tree Press for my place on the blog tour.
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