Thank you Dreamscape Media/Netgalley, #partner for the ALC of Book of Knives in exchange for my honest review.
Publisher: Dreamscape Media
Published: October 6, 2022
Summary:
There are thirteen knives. One by one they begin to disappear
Nora didn’t expect Hidden Lake Camp to be in a state of ruin. Dock full of rotten boards, smashed windows, cabins falling apart. To her new husband, Paul, the camp is the past he’d just as soon bury. Nora agreed to drive north with him to get his elderly parents settled while he makes enough repairs to sell the property. Only a few months, Paul said. The summer camp, however, and its deep lake have other plans.
After Nora’s first meal with his difficult family, one knife-part of a prized collection-goes missing. By the time the fourth and fifth vanish from behind locked doors and out from under watchful eyes, Nora can barely sleep. There’s talk of ghosts, secret rooms and someone at the summer camp found dead in the tall grass.
Unsettling, gripping, and totally original, Book of Knives is a literary thriller that shows how one person’s unraveling can bring the whole house down.
My thoughts:
I don’t tend to read a lot of horror books but for some reason, this one piqued my interest and I decided to give it a chance. Plus, it totally screamed a book that should be read during spooky season and boy was it that! I was on edge all the way through!
This is a slow-burn thriller/mystery that is hard to explain. I really liked the locked-room element of it, of course and I liked that the horror parts were not so in-your-face. They were lightly threaded throughout the story, giving it an ominous feel to it. This is definitely a case of nothing is as it seems – not only with the house but also with the characters. I loved that even though they are well-developed, for the most part they were quite unlikeable. It sure makes for a great character study of a dysfunctional family!
What really kept me engaged was the missing knives and what would happen each time one went missing. This is where things got interesting – I loved seeing how it impacted everyone and what the result would be with each new report. But I also feel this is where I was left with some unanswered questions when the book finally ended. Perhaps it’s just a case of missing something along the way – which could always be a possibility as I did listen to it and sometimes that happens. But I feel there are parts of the paranormal/ghost storyline that were never resolved. Was that intentional?
All in all, I’m glad I gave this book a chance and perhaps someday I’ll pick it up again to see if I did indeed miss something.
Audio thoughts:
This was a fun, spooky book to listen to and I think the narrator, Eve Passeltiner, did a great job bringing the story to life. Her pacing and intonation were spot on and she infused just the right amount of tension and suspense into her voice as needed.
