The demonologist

I wish I could use decimal points here. Because I enjoyed this far better than ‘The Never List' or ‘Night Film.' But it still has issues.

I like horror. I love it. My genre of choice. And I've read Pyper before and found him to have vast potential. Sadly, this isn't scary, and his potential goes unfulfilled here. Whereas I usually feel like books need to be edited to get rid of extraneous crap, I felt like his editor should have told him to flesh things out more. I could believe the human characters and their relationships; but I couldn't believe the relations going on in the supernatural realms. The supernatural element is what fell apart in this novel. And the road trip. Incredibly tenuous clues, more tenuous than clues in ‘Night Film,' even. So the setup was great, but the execution was lacking. A pity. I really wanted to like this book more. Won't stop me from reading some of his other stuff, though.

I will say, I liked David's relationship with his bestie, Elaine. That was realistic. And whilst I do believe men and women can be JUST FRIENDS, I find it realistic when besties (regardless of gender or religious belief) become couples. So David and Elaine's relationship was a pleasant surprise.

But demon children and psychic, precocious live children–those need to stop being tropes here. Like most tropes, they are usually done poorly.