Availability: Kindle, Paperback, Audio
Book Description: It was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime, a final adventure before settling down. But after a perfect start, an encounter with a young couple on a night train forces Daniel and Laura to cut their dream trip short and flee home. Back in London, Daniel and Laura vow never to talk about what happened that night. But as they try to fit into their old lives again, they realize they are in terrible danger—and that their nightmare is just beginning…
My Review and Thoughts:
This is a dark and mysterious book filled with depravity and haunting nightmares. It has a complex twisty plot yet is by no means original. But that is not a bad idea or reality. The book comes together in a gritty way. The characters are average persons, down in their luck or flowing through life with one strange ordeal after another. Traveling couple Daniel and Laura is supposed to be on the trip of a lifetime. During a train trip while traveling they come across a couple Ion and Alina. Little did they know that these two would end up becoming a part of their lives in more than one way, both physical and nightmarish.
During the train trip Daniel and Laura’s pass ports are stolen and then they are kicked off the train in the middle of nowhere in a foreign country. Alina also is kicked off. Soon all three become part of a darkness in the woods, that would change, alter, haunt and destroy everything about their lives.
This is a psychological thriller mixed with trademarks of horror. There is mystery that weaves the tale together. The reader ends up becoming somewhat part of the story through the actions being told by the characters. Most of the characters are really never fleshed out enough to honestly care about them. That is one thing this book is lacking, yet that can also be looked at as something good, in that the author decided not to over fill the book with useless rambling. But without that rambling there is a lack of personality in characters.
The overall disturbing nature is graphically told leaving really nothing to the imagination which I always favor by any author, because to me to describe something horrible, and make it gut wrenching believable, is solid skill in storytelling. Mark Edwards is able to graphically grab the reader and smack them with that gritty disgust, and make one want to take a bath after reading, and I find that as perfection in storytelling.
Final Thoughts:
This book is not for everyone. It’s geared toward more of the horror fans that enjoy the darker, gritty, disturbing visceral horror, or as it is called in modern movie terms, torture porn. Mark Edwards storytelling is both deep, dark, solidly told, sometimes unoriginal and filled with clichés, but flows with an imaginative means to keep the reader engrossed.
Would I Recommend: I would to lovers of dark mystery and graphic horror.
Four Words: Visceral. Disturbing. Twisted Plot.