I’m not sure if it’s just the mood I’ve been in or what, but I just haven’t read a book that’s really knocked me off my feet in a while. It’s like I’m in a book slump. I keep expected great things and come away from the end product with a strong feeling of apathy. It’s not that the last few books have been bad, they just haven’t been exceptional. Guess I’ll just have to keep reading and hope for the best. Alright, alright, tangent over time for the review.
David Ray is in hell. His mother traded in his abusive father for an abusive step-father and broke her promise to keep him safe. The other guys at school think he’s weird, they taunt him, harass him, and make things even worse. But David’s going to get them all back some day…
Inspired by the horrific accounts of shootings on high school and college campus Bennington creates a unique story. He deals with what makes bad people evil, coming to terms with your past, redemption, and moving on. The main story takes place twenty years after the infamous school shooting when several members of David Ray’s class decide they need to revisit their old school to get some closure. Once there they find out David Ray might have died…but he isn’t gone. The school is haunted with a spirit that seems intent on killing the survivors unless they give it what it wants. The book is well written and well edited (a major plus). It is easy to sympathize with the characters but only because of the trauma they’ve gone through. Bennington introduces quite a few characters in a short time and well he does a decent job of telling us who they are I didn’t feel quite as connected to them as I would have in a book of this length that only dealt with two or three main characters. That being said, it’s not really the characters that make the book but rather the experience they’ve gone through and their struggle to move on.
While this book is listed as horror the book takes a religious twist at the end which may leave the diehard horror fan disappointed. I enjoyed the book all the way up to this point but the ending left me feeling a little skeptical. I felt that things were tied up too neatly in an ending that was just a little too sugary for my taste. Taking this into account I think there are a lot more good aspects of this book than bad and if you’re a fan of ghost stories I don’t think you’ll be too disappointed. Bennington takes a very sensitive topic and treats it with respect while still crafting a page-turner.
