Painfully sincere and precious- it immediately made all this nostalgia come flooding into my mind.

Man, I loved the way Malerman wrote this. They venture out on a lake in a canoe-James cursing the fact that he chose to sit in front and can't see Amelia, who is rowing behind him and Amelia giggling to herself because she can see a bit of James' crack peeking out from his swim trunks. James and Amelia go on a first date-but not your typical first date for two 17 year olds. Emmett nods his head with approval and then blows all our minds with his thoughts on this book. The students could read this and discuss all the metaphors and symbolism while Mr. This novella is an English teacher's dream! I wish I was 17 again and in Mr. Malerman has earned an off-day, but i want chills next time! CHILLS, i say! which isn’t the worst thing ever, but is not at all horrific. i think this would make an excellent silent cartoon, though, where the horror is implicit, shadowed, like in a good japanese horror movie.Īs it is, it’s kind of like a rom-com version of Channel Zero: No-End House. there are moments when something really scary could happen, but it never blossoms into terror. It’s not terrible, but i kept waiting for the horror shoe to drop, and it doesn’t ever, really. and while “this is mildly eerie” doesn’t have quite the same impact on the letterhead, it would at least diminish the disappointment of horror fans who will read this novella and think, “buh?” instead of “eek!” and between the ominous promise of that line and my having enjoyed malerman’s full-length books, Bird Box and Black Mad Wheel, well - it did not take me long to whip out eleven of my dollars for what i thought would be a sweet little nightmare.Īnd while i have a shelf for “titles that lie,” i do not have a shelf for “publisher names who lie,” but i gotta say, if you are a publisher calling yourself “this is horror,” you’re setting up expectations in your readers. This is the perfect tagline for a horror story. Just because a house is empty, doesn’t mean nobody’s home.

Inspection by josh malerman