Black River Orchard

3.5 stars!!!

I've read a few Chuck Wendig books and I always have the same complaint, they're all too long. It didn't negatively impact my enjoyment as much as it has in the past but I did reach a point were I was like “what? There's still 200 pages left?” The concept of this story was very interesting, a “magical” apple that lowkey brainwashes people? Shortly after finishing this post I saw a post about a fake apple that only grows in this one specific place that apparently is the most delicious apple in the world and my first thought was “DON'T EAT THAT” and I thought that was a lot of fun. This book has overtaken my brain and I can't stop thinking about it, but at the same time it's not all good things. I didn't enjoy a majority of the POVs that you follow and thought most of the characters were annoying. Overall though, I had a fun time reading this and read it a lot quicker than I thought it would. Despite thinking his books are too long, I would be interested in reading more by this author. I think he does a good job flushing out the world, and in this case, the magic, and the overall plots are very interesting and like nothing I've read before.






Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Del Rey, and NetGalley for providing me with an eBook copy to review.

Let's start with the thing others might disagree on: I don't think it was too long! I don't think it had pacing issues. There were multiple characters, multiple POVs, you got their stories, (plus nifty/gothic interludes) how they intersected, you got a steady flow of events, the plot moved along and things escalated, as they do in a horror novel! 
While there is a generous helping of body horror and creepiness, much of the horror took the form of examples of the worst case scenarios of real  life: loved ones get abusive and people stay because they still love them, think they deserve the abuse or can fix the abuser, veteran lives with the trauma of combat, loved ones neglect each other for their own ambitions, unscrupulous business partners take advantage, racism abounds, people mistreated into intolerance take violent action in support of their learned prejudices, people being horrible on social media. That's all difficult to read, but wishing the bad moment was over is not the same as the book structurally having a pacing issue. 
Much like Book of Accidents, what made this work was Wendig creating characters you become invested in. It makes for a better horror book when you truly want these people to survive dire circumstances, when you are invested in them making good decisions and getting out of bad. (I.e. not a slasher.)
I'm still ruminating on whether the reveal in the epilogue is something I needed or if I would have been more entertained if I was left wondering on the nature of a certain character. 
I'm still ruminating on the delicate balance presented between choices around peace and violence in the face of evil deeds/evil in people. You want peace to always be the option, you don't want to wonder if violence was chosen because it felt good (i.e. vengeance). 
I think having such a central character have such an ambiguous journey, and seeing how they are initially presented - their own voice and how others see them and how that changes, reveals itself, leaves the reader with some interesting questions about self-image, how much external circumstances or influence really took hold, the choices we have in reacting and selecting an attitude, a life, how much bad action is a result of our own unvarnished inclinations. 
I loved the Acknowledgements.  
Wendig writes from a number of POVs which do not reflect his own identities; I didn't see anything that tweaked me as offensive or stereotypical, and while an indigenous group is mentioned as historically linked to the story, I appreciated the respectful tone, no Pet Semetary ‘source of badness' B.S. in evidence. 
I'll defer to own voices reviewers if they had issues with any of the representation featured.
⚠️ suicide, animal death, homophobia, self-harm, domestic abuse