Come Little Children
*I won this book through Goodreads FirstReads Giveaways.*
Ok...wow, I'm not sure if I can write a proper review of this book because most everything I'm wanting to mention would definitely be a spoiler. But suffice it to say, I loved this book.
It was scary. And chilling. And disturbing. And yet, it also has some really funny moments (some of them were of the morbidly funny ilk, though). I was pretty much sucked in at the beginning and was instantly engrossed. If Mr. Melhoff's next book is as good as this one, he's found a new fan.
Set mostly at a funeral home in a (very) remote town in the Yukon, the sense of isolation is really heightened and really ratchets up the tension almost from the beginning.
Camilla, I thought, was a great character, and while I didn't always agree with her choices, I understood why she made them. I also really liked Peter, but found most of the rest of his family, the Vincents (owners of the funeral home), to be pretty creepy.
The author does a great job of setting the scene, using really lovely descriptive prose that pulls you into the book without ever once slipping into being overly descriptive or purple. And he builds the suspense slowly, yet steadily, until by the time I was at the book's climax I could not read the pages fast enough. In fact, I was tempted to do something I never, ever do: read the last pages to see how everything turned out. I'm glad I didn't, because I found the ending very satisfying.
Being a horror novel, it does get pretty graphic when describing violent things at times, so if that turns you off, you may want to give this one a pass.
I could almost see this book as a movie...no, better yet, a horror series on tv.