2007 Book Log #1: The Keeper, by Sarah Langan

[annathepiper]

My first book of the year turned out to be entirely unplanned--an impulse purchase at Albertson's when I went down there yesterday to pick up various staples. The Keeper is apparently a debut horror/suspense novel, and the blurb made it sound halfway interesting, so I figured what the hell.

There are a lot of oft-used tropes in this book: the run-down New England town, the creepy abandoned locale where nobody wants to go, the townsfolk full of secrets and in many ways just not right, the crazy young woman who's wandering around the place and spooking everybody right out. But I'll say this for the book; it used these tropes in pretty decent ways, and at the end in ways I actually didn't expect. A couple of characters who start off fairly screwed up as part of the backstory actually get chances to redeem themselves, which was a bit of a refreshing switch for a horror novel. There were a few bits that dragged, most notably portions of long dialogue, but I think one can easily chalk these up to rough spots of style that Langan may well improve as she gets a few more novels under her belt.

All in all, not a half-bad little read. Three stars.

Comments

[bloody-keri.livejournal.com]

Sounds intriguing! I hadn't heard of it and am going to go check it out on Amazon.

Hey, if you have time would you think about joining the horror_novels community and posting this review in there?

[annathepiper]

It wasn't bad at all for a complete impulse buy. I don't often read horror novels, but it was definitely of the sort I appreciate. It wasn't without a certain squick factor, but that wasn't dominant; it did much more emphasize the general spooky atmosphere of what was going on.

I don't have time to take on an extra community, though--and since I don't often read horror novels anyway I'd only be a lurker at best in such a thing. But by all means feel free to link to my review there if you like. :)