Full Throttle by Joe Hill
This is a thick collection of thirteen short stories from Joe Hill. A few of the stories are new and just for this collection where he references some of his favorite writers. My average rating for these stories is 3.3 stars, which is a kind of disappointing considering how much I love Joe Hill. I just think his talent is better suited to longer stories and maybe his dad should stick to short stories.
The collection begins and ends with a story co-authored by the King himself and I found I really liked them writing together. “Throttle” especially works well because it’s about a father and son bikers out on the road that is described as ‘road puke, not redeemable’ and though the story goes to prove that holds true for almost all of them they are run down one by one and it was a rush to read. Off to a great start and then followed by the ominous Dark Carousel and the mediocre werewolf story that is Wolverton Station. Then you’ve got a lake monster tale that bored me, so I skipped ahead to read about hunters going for the ultimate trophy hunt in fairytale land.
Late Returns suddenly tugged on my heartstrings when a bookmobile driver discovers he can gift books from the present day to ghosts in the past. There’s a touching part where a young girl gets to finish the Harry Potter series before she dies that did me in! My heartfelt a pull again in All I Care About Is You a story of a spoiled teenager who refuses to accept her new unspoiled life. I love a good dark twisted ending.
The next two stories were pulled from a reject pile to fatten the book up and made no impression on me other than thinking it was nice Joe Hill got to try his hand at poetry for a hot minute. Luckily, the next tale, Twittering From the Circus of the Dead was my favorite of the bunch. It’s told in a series of tweets from a teenager on a road trip who isn’t impressed with her parents' sideshow picks until it’s too late and she becomes one. The story felt so real and I loved the dark humor. I wish it were a full-length novel.
Back to a dose of paranoia mixed with political-ness for Mums, which I enjoyed and yet found a little confusing to follow.
In The Tall Grass is being turned into a Netflix movie and after reading the story itself I’m excited to see if the movie is equally chilling and creepy.
*SPOILER ALERT*
The movie was not creepy but was confusing and repetitive and I was annoyed they made such a big deal out of the tiny mention of a character from the story. The waving grass shots were pretty though.