We were doomed from the beginning.
A group of adults reunite in the town they all grew up in. The secret they’ve been hiding since they were kids is about to be exposed. I’ve read so many books with variations of this theme but I keep going back for more.
There’s something about nostalgia, even when it’s someone else’s, that draws me in. Nostalgia contaminated by unspoken trauma that’s been dragged into adulthood is intoxicating.
While I want to run in the opposite direction when drama threatens to knock on my door, I can’t get enough of it where fictional characters are involved. I blame a steady diet of shows like Days of Our Lives during my formative years. I mean, who can watch Marlena get possessed and not become a drama junkie?! But I digress…
Even though I was fairly convinced I’d been there, done that, I still wanted to read this book. It was in part because I’ve yet to meet a Ronald Malfi book I haven’t enjoyed. However, I also needed to know what the secret was and watch it bring together or destroy the friendship of the people who’d been living with it for so many years.
Andrew has secrets. There’s the big one from his past but there’s also the fact that he owns a house his wife doesn’t know about because … reasons. At least it gives him somewhere to stay when he takes an unwanted trip down memory lane.
“The five of us are cursed, man.”
I love so many of the books I read but, for whatever reason, they rarely surprise me these days. This one did. I was blindsided more than once and it absolutely delighted me when my assumptions kept being proved wrong.
I’d argue that every horror story needs a lighthouse. This one also has turkey vultures and itchy eyes. Counting has never been so creepy. This was such a fun read!
“You shouldn’t have come back here.”
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Titan Books for the opportunity to read this book.
Once Upon a Blurb
Maybe this is a ghost story…
Andrew Larimer has left his past behind. Rising up the ranks in a New York law firm, and with a heavily pregnant wife, he is settling into a new life far from Kingsport, the town in which he grew up. But when he receives a late-night phone call from an old friend, he has no choice but to return home.
Coming home means returning to his late father’s house, which has seen better days. It means lying to his wife. But it also means reuniting with his friends: Eric, now the town’s deputy sheriff; Dale, a real-estate mogul living in the shadow of a failed career; his childhood sweetheart Tig who never could escape town; and poor Meach, whose ravings about a curse upon the group have driven him to drugs and alcohol.
Together, the five friends will have to confront the memories — and the horror — of a night, years ago, that changed everything for them.
Because Andrew and his friends have a secret. A thing they have kept to themselves for twenty years. Something no one else should know. But the past is not dead, and Kingsport is a town with secrets of its own.
One dark secret…
One small-town horror…
Schizanthus Nerd 