I actually picked up this book the day I voted in the election. A three hour line at the local library where you’ve run out of podcasts will do that to you. 😄 Mostly, the cover looked neat, so I figured I’d give it a chance. Which makes this only the second physical (non-children’s) book I’ve read in probably a decade.

For better or (and) for worse, the book is billed as ‘if Shirley Jackson wrote The Shining’, which… this is not. It does have a family moved out deep into the wilderness, away from the city they’ve always loved, thrown into land where somehow you can get … feet of unexpected snow? And a tree that may or may not be talking to you?

Mostly, I think it feels not quite finished. There are some decently creepy scenes in the book, but it never quite ramped up for me. The hallucinations the family goes through are certainly disconcerting but, barring one, they don’t really seem to be all that dangerous. I did like that it was never entirely clear what was hallucination and what was real though, that was a nice touch. Then, by the time things really start falling apart, we have sudden violence/death that doesn’t really land and an ending that wrapped up all too suddenly.

I will say that I did enjoy the descriptions of the mountain wilderness and their new home. I would have liked to explore that more. It felt wild, which I appreciated.

Anyways, being only the second physical book I’ve read in a long while and a hardcover at that, it really did have a nice tactile feel to it and I was enjoying the book enough to read it all the way through, so I’ve certainly come across worse.

Onward!