Reviews

Loved this! One of the best extreme horrors I’ve read. It was riveting and had some of the most realistic dialogue and characters I’ve seen. At first I couldn’t put it down, then I was putting it down because I wasn’t ready for the suspense to end! Plus, I had to choke back tears while I read, which is rare for me

trudilibrarian's review against another edition

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4.0

This was a tough one to finish and I nearly threw it down in complete revulsion more than once, yet there was also something so compelling about the story that kept me riveted and turning the pages to get to the end ... the whole "slowing down to look at the accident" compulsion I guess. Not one of our most attractive human qualities, this morbid curiosity that afflicts us.

In order to survive the worst circumstances imaginable the female protagonist makes a choice no human should ever make in order to save her own skin. It's brutal and calculating and really got me thinking...in the same situation, would I do the same? Could I do the same? And if I did, could I live with myself afterwords? If this book was half as tough to write as it is to read, my hat goes off to J.F. Gonzalez.

Understanding the appeal factor of horror is difficult for some people to accept, who will often turn up their nose at the genre and look at you with a wary expression as they ask "how can you read that stuff"? As if we should be ashamed, as if we are somehow mentally warped or our moral compass dangerously askew. Don't worry, it isn't. Horror appeals to many of us for very solid, rational, non-psychopathic reasons.

We love it because it's a genre that probes sensitive, taboo areas as it asks the difficult questions. The best horror fiction reflects back to us our collective cultural fears and everyday personal anxieties about, well, everything. As a species, we're pretty freaking neurotic. Some of us choose to deal with it by indulging in horror both in text and on the big screen. More than anything else, horror allows us to safely explore humanity's dark side, giving us a place where we can face our deepest fears from a non-threatening viewpoint.

In his non-fiction magnum opus on the horror genre -- Danse Macabre -- Stephen King explains our attraction to horror this way, and I've yet to come across anyone else who says it any better or any more truthfully than this:

Here is the final truth of horror: It does not love death, as some have suggested; it loves life. It does not celebrate deformity but by dwelling on deformity, it sings of health and energy. By showing us the miseries of the damned, it helps us to rediscover the smaller (but never petty) joys of our own lives. It is the barber’s leeches of the psyche, drawing not blood but anxiety....We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.

gunderchump's review against another edition

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dark sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

airishaaaaaaaa's review against another edition

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3.0

reread.. 3 stars

i read this when i was young.. like 15-16 maybe. so i read this again and for the first time i felt scared more than when i first read it.

so wow... it is indeed a masterpiece of extreme horror genre.
i always recommend this book to someone who likes the same genre as i am. (not to normal folks tho xD you know why)

continuation;;
i felt like the plot twist didn't do much of an impact here since it was already messy from the first half
but it was soooo gore and very disturbing.

bmacenlightened's review against another edition

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5.0

Christ...

riexxrie's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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