Twelve-year-old Jake Baker and his Uncle Calvin are into the unknown. When Jake befriends the new kids in town, his Uncle starts up The Saturday Night Ghost Club. Led by Uncle C, Jake and his friends learn about his small towns’ ghost stories and haunted locations. By the end of the summer, Jake and his friends will have a different understanding of who ghosts are and what haunts us.
The Saturday Night Ghost Club was not at all that story I thought it would be. You have to understand that the author, Craig Davidson, writes other books under a pen name, Nick Cutter. And I LOVE the books he writes under that name. They are terrifying and gory and I cannot get enough. The Saturday Night Ghost Club is the first book I have read from him as Craig Davidson. So I wasn’t expecting this book to leave me an emotional train-wreck, but that is exactly what it did.
The story is told to us from the main character, but as an adult looking back on it. He works as a neurosurgeon and he uses a lot of stories from the operating room to tie in some of the stories of his childhood. He talks a lot about memories and how they affect us and change us into adulthood and I loved those parts of the book.
The characters were complex and built really well. But the thing I liked most about these characters was what we didn’t know. Davidson uses mystery as a character trait and it’s really smart. I kept wanting to read faster and faster so I could figure out each character. I think leaving little pieces of each character a secret helped me to connect each character to a person I know in my own life.
There were a few parts in the middle that lagged a bit and bored me. But the book is a quick read so that didn’t get to me all that much. The one thing that really irked me about this book was the descriptions. The narrator is an adult and has a lot of grown-up sounding descriptions for certain things and then there are other things that sound like a twelve-year-old. When he describes his best friend he sounds very juvenile and childish. But when we hear him describe his feelings for his first crush, they are very adult sounding and well thought out. It didn’t annoy me enough to lose a star, but it’s something I felt I needed to talk about in a review.
The ending of this book shattered my whole entire heart. There were hints dropped here and there throughout the book as to what the ending would be. And I did figure it out, but I thought that there was no way that Davidson would actually make it so sad. After the heart-warming coming-of-age story we got, I didn’t expect the ending to be a tear-jerker the way it was.
I’m rating at 5 stars but I don’t think that this book is what any of us think of when we think of horror, but that’s what it is. It uses ghost stories and spooky settings to deliver real-life horror and heartbreak. I would recommend this book to any horror lover who wants a quick read that will rip your heart out. The Saturday Night Ghost Club will make you question what, to you, is truly horrific.
You can find Kallie on Instagram @pageandparlor
This Halloween, Jason Arnopp blessed us with his latest supernatural thriller, Ghoster.
Kate Collins is an addict. Looking to fill a void in her, Kate becomes obsessed with social media and her phone. Twitter, Facebook, dating apps. It isn’t until a horrible accident that Kate realizes she has an issue. Fast forward through time, and Kate moves into her boyfriend's apartment only to find that the entire flat is cleared out, nothing remaining but his smartphone. Kate clings to the phone like an addict looking for a fix and it’s not long until the dead show up.
I had a blast reading Ghoster. This is my first book by Jason Arnopp, and I was pleasantly surprised by what I read. I absolutely loved how the book deals with society's addiction to technology and social media. Kate Collins was a great character. She is a woman who has issues and knows it. Her self knowledge leads to a lot of funny dialogue within the book, and makes for an interesting narrative. I really enjoyed the supernatural aspect of this book, and don’t want to give too much away about it, but I will say that it is another perfect piece of the puzzle that Arnopp has woven into this tale. Where is Kate’s boyfriend? Who are these odd calls coming from? Why are these gouges being taken out of the door frame from within the house? These questions and more kept the pages turning. This is a book that I picked up and the next thing I know, a few hundred pages were gone. The ending of the book wasn’t what I expected, I genuinely had no idea what was going on, and for that, I loved it even more.
Ghoster is a supernatural thriller for the social media-obsessed society we find ourselves in today. It’s a funny, intriguing read filled with spookiness, sarcasm, and an ability to make you question your own technological addictions.
5/5
John is a native of Cranston, Rhode Island. He served 4 years in the United States Marine Corps, deploying twice to Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s a lover of all things horror, pizza and cheeseburgers. When he’s not reading or watching boxing he spends his time with his amazing wife and two beautiful sons.
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