MontiLee

A Pale Imitation of It

Revisado: 08-06-24

It's easy to make the comparison to Stephen King's IT, but at half the length, Summer of Night feels so much longer.

After the close of Old Central, the school in Elm Haven, a group of young boys uncover a sinister supernatural plot to take over the town. Vampires? Demon Undead?

We never find out.

The characters, for being mere shells, are wildly inconsistent. The kids can't decide if they're 12 or 18. The adults are brave or drunk or oblivious or missing. The story is a hodgepodge of Salem's Lot and Goonies and the much slower parts of It.

It could have used a capable editor to trim some of the exposition and rambly dialogue. For a 20-hour book, you could zone out and not miss much.

Perhaps my expectations were too high since it's touted as a genre best, but I didn't enjoy it and found myself ahalonf my head at a lot of dialog and actions. I wouldn't recommend.

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Compelling read, if a little long

Revisado: 10-20-23

A story worth listening too, if it seemed a little long. The mystery of the Spite House was only slightly less interesting than the drama of the small town it loomed over. Lots of unanswered questions and a few off holes keep me from giving the story itself more than 4 stars. Good, soothing narrator and given the material he had to work with, did an admirable job keeping the characters separate.

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None of the above

Revisado: 09-06-23

This was neither crime, nor horror, nor suspense. I don't know what it was. If you're looking for incest, garbage characters, corpse mutilation, beastiality, and necrophilia, you've found your book.

Not my thing. At all.

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Intriguing premise and strong narrator

Revisado: 06-03-23

Sallow Bend is a "small town with a dark secret" story, complete with a traveling circus, so you know exactly what you're getting. Easily digestible with some strong beats of horror, the story itself drags from repetitive passages, monologuing villains, and a few stereotypical character traits and tropes that we can all do without.

That said, it's a well-paced story that kept me engaged, with strong narration from Joe Hempel, so I recommend it.

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Stick with it, it pays off!

Revisado: 08-26-22

Struggled to finished, but man oh man, that last 90 minutes was well worth it!

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Not for me.

Revisado: 07-17-20

Struggled to finish this because it kept jumping around, giving minute details that and experiences I didn't need to know. Had it been told I'm a more linear fashion, I may have enjoyed it more, but this isn't the style of mystery I like. Too many flashbacks.

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Amazing

Revisado: 03-26-20

Thrilled I took a chance on this book! Much like Stephen King's Revival, you're not sure where you're going with this story, but you become so invested in the characters, it's a great ride. Peter Cline manages to weave a modern story of mismatched misfits into a well trod mythos. Very well written and exciting through to the end. Ray Porter never disappoints

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I didn't hate it.

Revisado: 02-27-20

I struggled to finish this. The action idms fine but the characters are inconsistent, except they all say "And besides" like a million times. Simon is the kind of guy women work hard to avoid - full of bravado and at the same time, not nearly as quick as he thinks he is. Too much mouth and too little to back it up. It's not as entertaining as he thinks.

I liked the reader and this had that going for it, but the story itself had a few too many holes for me to want to jump into the next book.

I think it could benefit from an editor. Grab it for a quick read but it falls short of "Dresden Lite."

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A little too empty

Revisado: 02-13-20

I wish I liked this more than I did. I can't tell is John is regressing, but this new unit John is embedded with just isn't working. Too loose, too disparate, too broken. The Withered just aren't as scary as they used to be and hunting them doesn't have the urgency it should.

The narrator was very good, but the story seemed sparse and disconnected.

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Long and plodding, and it never seems to end

Revisado: 11-25-19

I don't know what literary horror is, but I think it means finding 20 different ways to end a book and trying to use all of them consecutively. None of the children sound like children, the teenagers sound emotionally stunted, and for some reason Chbosky hates using characters first names. The Sheriff is never "Bobby", Christopher's Mother (a major character) is rarely "Kate", so after a dozen hours in, there's this weird disconnect.

It's a messy mash of religious allegory, mental illness, misogyny, sex, women, and elder abuse.

The first few hours were riveting and engaging, but then it got very repetitive. Repeating the same phrases over and over and over again doesn't make it literary, it makes it not edited.

I skipped 10 hours and then skipped another 2 more just so I could get it to end. It didn't get any more engaging, it just made me wish I hadn't wasted 14 hours.

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