In October I read NOS4A2 by Joe Hill in hopes it would kick off a spooky reading month for me! I had such high hopes for this book because so many bookstagrammers that I follow love this book. I know people who reread this every year because they love it so much! Based on that I was ready to get to reading it. A few chapters in I was starting to enjoy it. There was potential for some horror with this book which I love in October. As I got deeper in the book, however, I realized it was mostly just really really weird. Probably the strangest book I’ve read (up there is Dead Path though) and I was just not into it.
I hate ditching a book once I start it and I was still going on the fact that so many people like it. So I continued reading but I found I was forcing myself to pick it up so I could finish and continue on with my large to be read pile. This book has so many different things happening that I found myself eyerolling as another oddity was brought into the picture. It has teleportation, fortune-telling scrabble pieces, a magical Rolls Royce, and a Christmas type theme that certainly ruins the magic of Christmas. The main character goes through hell constantly and I found myself thinking that if this was real she’d be dead a hundred times by now. I appreciate that the lead is a very strong female but I mean… come on. Although I suppose her survival is the most realistic thing in the whole book.
Certain parts of this books are gripping which I flew through, only to get to another part that made me want to throw the book across the room. This sounds like a super harsh review (and it is) but this is the second lowest rated book (by me) that I’ve ever read. I love fantasy type books and if this was written in that kind of world it would have been more enjoyable but trying to tie all the crazy into what is supposed to be the real world just doesn’t make sense for me! Despite this entire review I’m honestly not trying to deter people from reading it because so many other people loved it. Its just not for me. I think it set a really bad tone for October reading for me and I’m pretty sure it’s why I completed so few books that month. If you do read it, I think it would be a good read for December because of it’s christmasy theme. But fair warning it may cause you to be a little down on the holiday!