Horns

How much can you endure before you have to become the devil?

This one hit me hard. What started as a fun ride into the mind of strangers, quickly got dark with the look back into childhood. Relations between characters felt so real it really hurt.The breakup between Ig and Merrin hit me especially hard, because it felt so goddamm real. As someone in exact the same relationship as theirs, I knew those thoughts and would've said the same things... I rarely read books, in which I hate a character that much and in which conversations feel so real.

We slowly learn what happens to Ig, before there's no other way than to become the devil. And trust me, those are bad things.

Horns spoke to me on a personal level many times, and for this it deserves five stars.

Well, I am glad that is over. Which ever little devil convinced me it was a good idea to buy this book, I hope I do not run into it again!

In a world where it seems everyone has deep, dark secrets or violent longings, I confess to my ugliest act - forcing myself to finish this book. There, said it. May the literary gods forgive me.

I struggled with whether to rate this book 2 or 3 stars. I guess 2.5 would be about right. I liked (or disliked, as it may be) the characters, but I just feel like something was missing from the story. It just feels like the author was all over the place with this book. I much, much prefer Heart-Shaped Box.

Quit at 60%. Sorry I'm not sorry. I'm in a rut or something?

No. 328429781 on my list of literary world crimes (word crimes? höhöhö): I do not like Stephen King. I just can't like him, something about his kind of horror just feels over the top nasty to me. Like disgusting and it makes me retch instead of being scared most of the time. Also, what did kids do to the guy? WHAT? We should ask Joe Hill about that, because he is King's kid. As we all know.

I had my doubts about this one, exactly because Mr. Hill is Mr. King's spawn. Not saying they are the same in any way, but I would assume that if you do what your parents did super successfully, then you must be at least a tiny bit influenced by them. Or something. Then again, it's not that hard to write horror and be influenced by him. Big names and all.
Funny enough, I actually didn't feel as repulsed in the not impressive way than I usually do in connection with Mr. King. I didn't even really hate this with passion. I was okay with it, I guess, I just... didn't really care that much, you know.

Here we have Ig, this small town son of rich people. He's awkward, not exactly star material like his great older brother, Terry, but not a bad person either. Ig is fine. But he had this girlfriend, the amazingly wonderful Merrin, who got raped and murdered about a year ago, causing Ig to be the obvious suspect, while he had nothing to do with her death. Never even got convicted, but in small towns people will file you in neat little piles. In his case, as a psycho.
One morning he wakes up with horns on his head and supernatural abilities that cause people to tell him their dirty, horrible secrets and maybe now he can find out what happened to his girlfriend.

The moment realised I didn't care was when Ig gets some of his teeth knocked out. I'm a trainee dental technician and hearing about knocked out teeth I went strait to how to solve that, the Latin names of teeth, I got the image of said teeth in my head, how much of a pain they are to form of wax, but how much I love doing that, it's all fun, I need to practice, I will have to ask one of my “mentors” to borrow the appropriate tool... and shit, I am not reading. I'm thinking about the shape of premolars.
When you care about work stuff more than what is happening in your book... well. I have bad news for you.

Another thing that bothered me was how horrible news lose their edge when almost every character is horrible. Oh, you want to kill someone, also you want to fuck little girls, while you blow up the country with a nuke to the soundtrack of cancer kids. I am just kind of emotionally separating myself when things are so bad it's almost comical.

The characters who fill more purpose than being there to say bad things are boring to me either. Ig is nothing, Merrin in the flawless angel everyone loves, but she is just... so douchy without anyone ever realising she is, the person actually killing her being just... really bad. It never felt like any characters were actual people to me.

I didn't exactly hate this book, really. More like I didn't find the thing that would draw me in enough to invest any more time in it. Nowadays I'm busy enough to not care about something that I don't find satisfying. The whole King family seems to be not my kind of people, which is fine.
This wasn't offensive. I can imagine the people who would love it and give it the attention I couldn't. I even feel a bit sorry about not finishing it. Huh.

Good night and I feel like strangling people on a daily basis and not afraid to say it.

I'm not a reader of horror, but after listening to an interview with the author, it sounded good and I got the book as a kindle deal. The first part of the book was fantastic. There's something akin to a sexual thrill hearing the supporting characters lay their ids bare to the protagonist and revealing their most horrible desires. It slows up a bit with the backstory, although the backstory is necessary in order to give the characters and the book some depth. There were a few cool twists, and although I don't know if it's a story that's going to stick with me, it was a very entertaining read.

Loved it

There is quite a bit of Gore so not for the faint of heart. But if you can handle it I think this book is well worth reading. I haven't read a book like this in quite awhile, it made me feel every kind of emotion so vividly. I was engrossed in the story from cover to cover. It's also really hilarious in a twisted kind of way, that's what you get with a devil as a protagonist :)

Full disclosure, I did not even finish this book, I feel that I gave it a pretty fair chance, but about 150 pages in, I just stopped caring, and there was no way I was plodding through to the finish.

The appearance of the horns and their influence over people is in interesting idea, but that is a very small part of the first half of the book. Beyond that, there was never really a moment that I cared about the characters. The killer is revealed very early and his motive is fairly obvious, so there was very little reason to read to the end.

I did have enough interest in the story to get a summary off the internet, and I am actually glad I stopped when I did, as it doesn't sound like it gets any better. The “bad guy” is given every “bad guy” cliche from hating his mother to bed wetting to brain damage to animal cruelty to an urge towards pedophilia which is more than a little overkill and really makes a one dimensional character. I am also not sure what the obsession with the term “sex murder” is, it is used constantly and is just a weird phrase that doesn't sound natural. Speaking of not sounding natural, this is an actual sequence from the book.

“EEEEEEEEEE,” Ig Screamed
“He's awful, Ig,” Terry said. “You don't know him. You think you do, but you don't have any idea.” “EEEEEEEEEEEE,” Ig went on.

All “EEEEEEEEE” makes me think of is a 1950's woman standing on the coffee table escaping from a mouse, not the big reveal in a “sex murder” novel.

That being said it's not the worst thing ever committed to paper, it's a easy, fast read not really requiring much thought, if books were food, this would be something like generic brand potato chips, edible enough, but not really providing any nourishment and just leaving you wishing you had something better in it's place.

Say whatever you want. I loved it. I loved the theological ideas, as a recovering ex-Conservative Christian; I loved the tragedy. I loved the (perhaps unintentional) ideas of a woman's own sexual agency, about how men view women; in particular, our protagonist and our antagonist. Neither are perfect–the antagonist is a racist, sexist, nasty, evil, cruel, psychopathic freak, and he terrified me. I found him to be fairly realistic, if a bit extreme in his case. But I digress. The two main males suffer from viewing Merrin in the virgin/whore dichotomy, and the book seems to be aware of this. And even though the reader never gets HER p.o.v. (which seems to be part of the point), she is a fleshed-out character whose personality comes through despite the male view of her.

Also, I grew up in NH, and this...was a little too close to home, perhaps?

My main problem–fewer animal deaths, please. Sniffle.

Now, I am so ready for the movie.

More of a 3.5.
The story was interesting and I liked Ig. He sometimes drove me off the wall but he wasn't a bad “hero” I especially appreciated that he got powers to do some serious damage and he didn't. Mostly.
The problem was that Hill got too wordy for me. I felt like there were scenes in the book that dragged on or there were flashbacks in the middle of the action.

Quite enjoyed it though and I'll try to read Joe Hill's other work.

More of a 3.5 for me

I absolutely loved NOS4A2 so I was all over this one for my 2020 Spooktober reads, howeverI didn't enjoy this one as much as I thought I would. For me, it definitely didn't live up to all the hype I've seen.

I wasn't invested in this story and had a hard time finishing it. It was slow and bland more than thrilling. Of course, being a horror, there are the scattered shock scenes thrown in, but even those were just ok.

He's a good writer and I know, just like his dad, I won't enjoy all of the books he writes so this will just be chalked up to a read but kinda wish I skipped

I really loved the premise of this book. it was so well written. this is the first of Joe Hill's that I've read and I would consider reading his other works.
the only problem I had with this book was the somewhat disjointed sections of flashbacks and switches of perspective. having about 200 pages in the main character's perspective and then a sudden switch to 50 pages of the antagonist's perspective was a little confusing at first, and honestly a little annoying. it did give a lot of information for the plot, though, which was definitely needed.
overall, a very enjoyable read. I can't wait for the movie!

The best part of the book is when Joe Hill makes fun of Dean Koontz at the beginning, however this book is only about as good as Koontz's ‘Odd Thomas'.

Somethings were well done such as the grandmother and some of the double meanings, but not much surprised me and so much of it felt repetitive. I get it Ig is good at math and has a hard time breathing.

I'd still watch the movie of this. I did imagine parts of this book as portrayed by Radcliffe and most of it feels gratuitous. I also feel bad that he's portraying another not so loveable protagonist, but I'm curious how much of this will come off as The Dresden Files meets Law & Order.