It looked like a horror novel, so I naturally gravitated toward what eerie tension it might hold. After seeing the oddly atmospheric cover of Ruth Ware’s debut novel, In a Dark, Dark Woodin a local used bookstore, I quickly lumped it with my other spooky season reads this year. That all said, I try to get into horror novels without much preconception before jumping into one. Do we blame the inherent shock value horror has succumbed to? Or do we just blame Stephen King? I’m more likely to blame King, because as much as I want to get into his leviathan bibliography, I could probably read two or three smaller indie horror authors in the same amount of time. It’s unfortunate, but it also goes to show that we can’t fully discount the horror authors who really make an effort to create thought provoking pieces of writing. Along with the abundance of pulpy mystery, suspense, and thriller novels that are practically synthetically churned out nowadays, horror seems to flounder under genre specifics and tropes that tend to lower horror’s literary value. As an avid fan of horror movies, it’s taken me a long time to fully get into reading horror fiction.
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