I was quickly hooked with the story. I love coming of age stories. I love books that focus on friendship. I love horror stories. I also love the TV show Survivor so a book cover featuring an island is going to interest me.
The story focuses on a small troop of boys lead by their leader for a weekend camping trip on an uninhabited island off the coast of their town. Everything goes horribly wrong when a test subject stumbles onto the shores of this island with an unending desire to eat and hunger that cannot be quelled. Tim Riggs, the leader of the troop, being a doctor decides to take the man in for the night. Trying to satisfy his appetite to no avail. This is where this troops trip turns into a nightmare. The boys in the troop fill fairly typical roles found in stories of this nature-Kent, the natural leader and over-confident jock. Newt, the over weight, sweet-natured nerd. Max and Eff- the relatable ever guy, best friends. Shelly-the loner, bad kid.
The most interesting part of the book isn’t the potential biohazard that finds the troop possibly quarantined on an island, but the interactions that take place between the troop and their leader under the stress of an unknown potentially deadly threat. The tension builds and the gore is aplenty in a horror story in the vain of Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever. There were moments as I read the book I felt I needed to take a shower to make sure I hadn’t been contaminated. I would recommend this book to any genre fan who is looking for something gory and well done. This book hit a lot of the horror elements genre fans crazy. I could relate to the victims in the book as I seem to have a never-ending hunger for a good horror story. I left this book with my appetite satisfied…for now.
PS- The have changed the cover of the book from the copy i received last summer. I do like the new red cover, but the island with the dark sky is what interested him in the first place. Also Nick Cutter is a pen name for a Canadian author.
Here are the two covers for comparison-