If you were given a choice to sacrifice a loved one to save the rest of the world, would you do it? The lives of every single person on Earth depend on the decision you make. Would you do it? Andrew and Eric are faced with the most impossible task.
Synopsis
Seven-year-old Wen and her parents, Eric and Andrew, are vacationing at a remote cabin on a quiet New Hampshire lake, with their closest neighbours more than two miles in either direction.
As Wen catches grasshoppers in the front yard, a stranger unexpectedly appears in the driveway. Leonard is the largest man Wen has ever seen but he is young and friendly. Leonard and Wen talk and play until Leonard abruptly apologises and tells Wen, “None of what’s going to happen is your fault”. Three more strangers arrive at the cabin carrying unidentifiable, menacing objects. As Wen sprints inside to warn her parents, Leonard calls out, “Your dads won’t want to let us in, Wen. But they have to. We need your help to save the world.”
So begins an unbearably tense, gripping tale of paranoia, sacrifice, apocalypse, and survival that escalates to a shattering conclusion, one in which the fate of a loving family and quite possibly all of humanity are intertwined.
“Come inside, now. Please come in… There are people here and they want to come in and they want to talk to you and some of them scare me.”
Generally speaking, “splatter” horror doesn’t scare me. And whereas this book was gory (the scene with Redmond!), it was also so much more- an emotional roller-coaster! I found myself on the tensest ride towards destruction and there was no stopping it!
Tremblay has masterfully put together a story that could potentially happen in real life and that’s what scared me about the book the most. I had no idea where it was going until the very end, and was split between believing and not believing the Apocalypse scenario Leonard and the group tried to deliver.
Spoken from the different view point of the characters, you get to decide for yourself who to believe.
Also, it was impossible not to fall in love with little Wen. Too smart for her 7 years, and so witty- an old soul in a young girl’s body. Wen and her little grasshoppers…
5 out of 5 stars, as terrifying as horror gets!
