Title: Seed
Author: Ania Ahlborn
My Rating:
GoodReads Synopsis:
Fans of Stephen King, Jack Kilborn, and Blake Crouch… prepare to meet the Devil.
In the vine-twisted swamps of Louisiana, the shadows have teeth.
Jack Winter has spent his entire life running from something no one else can see. His childhood is his darkest secret, but after a near fatal accident along a deserted road, the darkness he was sure he’d escaped rears its ugly head… and smiles.
But this time, he isn’t the only one who sees the soulless eyes of his past. This time, his six-year-old daughter Charlie leans into his ear and whispers: Daddy, I saw it too.
And then she begins to change.
Faced with reliving the nightmares of his childhood, Jack watches his daughter spiral into the shadows that had nearly consumed him twenty years before.
But Charlie isn’t the only one who’s changing.
Jack never outran the darkness. It’s been with him all along.
And it’s hungrier than ever.
A new breed of dark fiction: the subtlety of Seed will haunt you, and the end will wickedly satisfy.
I wanted to to do the format of this review a little different. Bear with me, it’s gonna be long winded.
Jack’s family is having a bit of trouble. Something has haunted Jack from childhood and seems to bes talking his family. He notices his 6 year old daughter Charlie has fallen prey to the same entity that stalked him all those years ago. He feels it’s his duty to protect his family from something that even he can’t identify. Something he has been running from his whole life.
What I liked:
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This story is very well written. The story is plotted very well and it moves along. The story definitely has a pretty good creep feel to it. There were many moments when I was waiting in suspense to see what was going to happen next. The writer is very talented and knows how to put a story together.
What I didn’t like:
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I should preface this by saying that I am a HUGE horror fan. I watch all kinds of horror movies, my favorite being foreign. So I know good horror. So many aspects of this story read like every horror movie you can imagine. I felt like it was a mix of the movie ‘The Omen’ and Stephen King’s Dreamcatcher. I felt like this book hit every horror cliché and I had to push myself to get past the useless animal killings. I know a lot of people don’t care this way or another if an animal dies in a book, but I do. It was pointless and added no real value to the storyline. It seemed added for a little bit of shock value so you could see how evil the entity or whatever was. I say whatever because I still have no clue what the entity was. The book hints it’s some sort of demon named “Mr. Scratch” (sound like Mr.Grey anyone…anyone? What an evil entity that takes over a human body and does evil deeds? Surely not!) But the author doesn’t explain why or where it came from. Jack visits a cemetery in his youth and then all-of-sudden decides to string up a cat from a tree. So.. umm why? Because a demon was inside him, and then just leaves at some point? Some point Jack can’t remember? There is this HUGE plot hole. I honestly don’t get it at all. Perhaps I am being dense. Maybe it said somewhere and I was too busy being flabbergasted by the lack of… anything. Even the ending is a little kick in the face to reader. It ends in your typical horror film way. This book was okay, but the only reason I will remember it is because I got to see every horror genre cliché be driven home in this novel.
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