Zoe's Haunt by Augustine Pierce

Zoe’s Haunt is a short horror story.

 

Zoe and her friends love doing crazy things for Halloween. This year Zoe has promised them something new. She has tested out an app that leads you around a haunted house – all in the comfort of your own home and plans on blindfolding her friends and taking them on the journey. As the app begins and the story deviates somewhat from what she remembers, she blames it on AI. However, as friends start disappearing and then turning up dead, this Halloween is going to be the one that tops them all.

 

I grabbed this one night to read during loadshedding and was disappointed that it was so short (I didn’t realise it was a short story when I started reading as it ended at 64% of the total space). The premise was interesting and the idea that the app was taking them to a different place, while not plausible (but then again what is on Halloween), was something to look forward to. However, I felt really let down at the end of the book.

 

Some of the scenes are very dialogue heavy, and it seemed as though in certain sections each character had to add a line in turn to the conversation. So, you’d find line after line of Zoe said, Ben replied, Juan added, Rina said, Darren exclaimed, etc. etc. It started to remind me a bit of The House of Twelve by Sean Davies but didn’t quite have the reasoning behind it. Unfortunately, I felt a bit flat about the story as it wasn’t long enough for me to build a connection with any of them. I wish what the app takes them to had a bit more of a backstory to it, but it was more like this happened and then this happened. And since the paragraphs were very short (many pages with just one line or going directly between speech), the action felt very choppy and didn’t lead up to enough suspense. I also think that because some of the characters irritated me, I didn’t feel anything when they disappeared.

 

I was a great attempt at a horror story with a good basic idea but it left me hanging and feeling somewhat unfulfilled. I’ll have to try another of the author’s stories to see if a longer one draws me in more…

Face the Night by Alan Lastufka

 Face the Night is a horror thriller and a tale of long-awaited vengeance.

 

Adriana is a mother desperately trying to keep custody of her son, Dylan, while her father, the mayor, wants to remove him as he feels Adriana is an unfit mother. Currently without a job, and trying to make ends meet as a now-and-then tattoo artist, Adriana has asked her ex Eric, a deadbeat druggie, to help plead her case in court. With a month to find something permanent, she must make a plan ASAP.

 

After a mishap lands her at the police station, Adriana uses her sketching skills to snag a temp gig as a sketch artist. And she meets Officer Hinkley, who seems a little sweet on her. Unbeknown to the officer, Adriana suffers from terrible nightmares where she sees a terrifying face coming for her while she is underwater. These have been happening for years, but the face never gets clearer.

 

As her father campaigns for re-election, as well as to take her child, Adriana must delve into the meaning behind the face as well as put everything she has into securing her child’s future. But as with many small-town secrets, some things do not want to remain buried…

 

I was hooked by the promise of an early Stephen King-type book and I’ll say that I enjoyed the book and also didn’t enjoy it. While there is nothing inherently wrong with the book, nothing new came out that made me go – wow, I’d never have thought of that. Lots of strange decisions made and some directions not quite explained/closed.

 

(Spoilers ahead)

Adriana was a likeable character at times, and her desperation at trying to do the right thing for her son came through. Then she’d do something stupid like leaving her ex to look after her child while she decides a “few drinks won’t hurt” and goes out. This with her ex never having looked after the child before.
Then there is the issue with her seeing the face – when she eventually figures out what it’s about, it’s not really something that couldn’t have been guessed earlier. All the clues were there. It was just a case of whodunnit. But why did the face take so long to really make itself known?
The neighbour’s deaf daughter gets used to protect Adriana from doing something bad while possibly under the influence of the face. This seemed very irresponsible on her part and puts everyone in a potential dodgy situation there.
While I get that her new love interest was rebelling against what was happening in the police station, the risks he took for Adriana seemed extreme.

 

I’d call this a small-town thriller rife with “anything-to-win” politics and a dash of supernatural horror. It needed a lot more to call itself a genuine horror story. It was one of those where, after I turned the last page, I just said, “Oh.” Kinda fizzled out at the end with too many tangents. It was a good effort for a first-time novel, but one I wouldn’t read again, even if to try to pick up more details.

 

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to review the novel.