"The Halloween Children are everywhere and they know our fears"

This was a hair raising tale perfect for a Halloween read or any time of year if you love horror like I do.

Lynn and Harris seem like a typical married couple, living with their 2 young children Matt and Amber in an apartment building where Harris is the on site handyman. Lynn is a combination stay at home mom and computer tech support operator for a company that enables her to work from home.

"When did you realize something wasn't right that Halloween night?"
"When I discovered that so many of my neighbors were dead."
Lynn has an obvious propensity to favor her daughter over her son. Harris has the opposite tendency.
The closer we get to Halloween the more strange things get at Stillbrook Apartments culminating in a party you won't want to attend!

I received a complimentary copy for review. ( )

This was a great read!

I really enjoyed reading this book. It was a different style of writing as the story is told from a husband and wife's point of view in each chapter as they attempt to explain what happened to their children leading up to Halloween night. Both parents decided to cancel Halloween for their two children as punishment for something the children did, but by doing that, the parents started a chain reaction of events that lead to a Halloween tragedy.

Most of the beginning up to the middle of the book was kind of light hearted and kind of humorous in some parts of the story, but then the book takes a 360 degree twisty curve into something much more dreadful and intense as the children are not as angelic as you would think. If there is no Halloween and the children are not able to get candy, then it is too bad for everyone involved as the children have more than tricks up their sleeves.

This book was so fast paced that I had a hard time catching my breath while reading it and I could not put it down!

A perfect book for Halloween! Definitely a five star read for thrills and chills! ( )

I received a copy of this short story collection from the author and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Right away I enjoyed the structure of this story. Told entirely through emails, transcripts, interviews (some by therapists, others by police), and point of view narration I found that this manner of telling the story gave it an immediacy and kept you guessing up until the final explanation. Unreliable narrators are always interesting but sometimes a narrator is only unreliable because their knowledge is limited. How about several totally reliable and truthful narrators with inconsistent stories? Interesting. Peeling away one entry after another brings you to the core of this story—which is horrifying, probably much worse than you were thinking.

I also like a horror story that is as much about the people involved as the supernatural elements. That takes the story to another level.

Brian Freeman is a very good writer but clearly spends much of his time editing the wonderful books that come from Cemetery Dance publications so it is a real treat to get something new from him. I recommend his Painted Darkness (2010) as a fine example of literary horror that packs an emotional edge, much like this novel. Norman Prentiss is another very talented writer of the same style and their two voices mesh completely like a Lennon and McCartney harmony but so much darker.

4 stars. ( )

I received a copy of this short story collection from the author and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Right away I enjoyed the structure of this story. Told entirely through emails, transcripts, interviews (some by therapists, others by police), and point of view narration I found that this manner of telling the story gave it an immediacy and kept you guessing up until the final explanation. Unreliable narrators are always interesting but sometimes a narrator is only unreliable because their knowledge is limited. How about several totally reliable and truthful narrators with inconsistent stories? Interesting. Peeling away one entry after another brings you to the core of this story—which is horrifying, probably much worse than you were thinking.

I also like a horror story that is as much about the people involved as the supernatural elements. That takes the story to another level.

Brian Freeman is a very good writer but clearly spends much of his time editing the wonderful books that come from Cemetery Dance publications so it is a real treat to get something new from him. I recommend his Painted Darkness (2010) as a fine example of literary horror that packs an emotional edge, much like this novel. Norman Prentiss is another very talented writer of the same style and their two voices mesh completely like a Lennon and McCartney harmony but so much darker.

4 stars. ( )

To begin, despite my negative feelings overall, this still was an okay read for October.

However, the writing left much to be desired. Whether it was purposeful or not, the mom and dad in this story do not sound, or act, like a mom and dad. It almost feels like a young adult wrote this, and it's their impression of what adults must be like. I felt very distracted from the meat of this story due to the juvenile portrayal of the parents.

And there is an okay story in here. Haunted apartments, vague history, and a who-done-it mass murder. But those parents... just too poorly written to support the rest. ( )