Book information
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Purchase link:
http://mybook.to/Amazon_GirlInCornJO
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Genre: Horror fantasy
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Print length: 353 pages
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Suitable for young adults? No
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Amazon Rating: 4 stars.
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Trigger warning: violence,
gore, swearing; killing of a dog and a child
About The Girl in the Corn
Beware of what lurks in the corn.
Fairies don’t exist. At least that’s what
Thomas Cavanaugh’s parents say. But the events of that one night, when he
follows a fairy into the cornfield on his parents’ farm, prove them wrong. What
seems like a destructive explosion was, Thomas knows, an encounter with Dauðr,
a force that threatens to destroy the fairy’s world and his sanity.
Years later, after a troubled childhood and
a series of dead-end jobs, he is still haunted by what he saw that night. One
day he crosses paths with a beautiful young woman and a troubled young man,
soon realizing that he first met them as a kid while under psychiatric care
after his encounters in the cornfield. Has fate brought them together? Are they
meant to join forces to save the fairy’s world and their own?
Or is one of them not who they claim to be?
Praise for The Girl in the Corn
“Norse mythology gives this story . . . a
unique touch [with] an exhilarating conclusion.” —Booklist
I love the grand sweep of this novel as it
traces Thomas Cavanaugh’s life from that first encounter in the cornfield
through an adolescence tainted by mental illness into an uneasy adulthood. I love the way that that his life is interwoven
with other lives, major or minor to the plot, but all of them full of depth and
solidity uncompromised by the fantasy components of the story. The grounded reality of setting and
characters is the perfect foil for the strange, disturbing fluidity of the plot
and its troubling moral compass that lacks a true north. The Dark Side from
the Inside
A very dark book with brutal content and a
slow crescendo of unsettling narrative, that sucks the reader – at first
unsuspecting, and then too late to put the book down – into places they did not
expect to go….It is a beautifully written book: the kind of prose that looks
effortless, unpretentious, and yet every word is measured and every phrase is a
perfectly placed stitch in the canvass. Open it at random for passages of
writing that insinuate themselves, relentlessly into your mind. The Hard Hat
Book Site
My Review
The Girl in the Corn is a strange horror fantasy novel that may or may not trigger certain reactions while reading it. Personally, I prefer to read at night while trying to go to sleep, even though that tends to be a bad idea, especially with horror. And while reading this one, the amount of anxiety I felt (yay, overactive imagination!) while lying in bed each night was extreme. In fact, at one point, I was so stressed while reading that I legitimately felt nauseous. I think that speaks to the writing and the imagery it brings forth. Also, overactive imagination. As a kid, I loved horror but also had horrific nightmares about various things. I was terrified of the dark, and still am as an adult, because my mind goes off on weird tangents. The Girl in the Corn brought forth some fears I didn't even know I had, like being lost in a never-ending cornfield with some sort of monstrous evil. Or having a fairy with nefarious intentions creep in through an open bedroom window to wreak havoc on my life. You know, stuff that could (probably) never happen but is still scary nonetheless.
This book is also very dark and brutal. There are some possible triggers that may turn potential readers away, including violence against animals and children. But even with these triggers, the book is a well-written and intriguing horror fantasy with a touch of Norse mythology. I do enjoy Norse mythology and won't ever say no to having a bit of it tucked within a horror novel.
The characters are done well and feel very real, even the ones that aren't human. Thomas could have maybe had a little more oomph to him, if that makes sense, but I liked him.
Overall, this is one horror novel that will leave readers anxious, creeped out, possibly bothered, and breathlessly exhilarated.
4.5 stars!
About the Author
JASON OFFUTT writes books. He is best known
for science fiction, such as his humorous So You Had to Build a Time Machine
and his end-of-the-world zombie novel Bad Day for the Apocalypse (a curious
work that doesn’t include zombies), his paranormal non-fiction like Chasing
American Monsters (that does), and his book of humor How to Kill Monsters Using
Common Household Objects. He teaches university journalism, cooks for his
family, and wastes much of his writing time trying to keep the cat off his lap.
You can find more about Jason at his website,
http://www.jasonoffutt.com. There are no
pictures of his cat Gary, and it serves him right.
Twitter: @TheJasonOffutt
Instagram: @thejasonoffutt
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