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Freakin Fridays!

Freakin Fridays is my own little meme. I’ll be posting about books, movies, and all things scary.

Feel free to join in and do your own Freakin Fridays posts!

Tune in every Friday. Get your scare on!

Let’s have some fun!

This book should come with a warning on it.

“Read at your own risk!”

It’s truly not for the faint of heart.

Description

Travis Coble didn’t kill and eat his family. At least that’s what a jury decided twenty years ago. But like Lizzie Borden, Travis Coble was branded guilty by an angry public and consigned to a life of suspicious whispers and sidelong stares. Now, Professor Dick Myers wants to clear Travis’s name once and for all. An interview with the reclusive mountain man would not only bring Myers fame—it could save his job.

But Myers will find more than a good story in Coble’s isolated shack in the Smoky Mountains. He will find the truth about what happened twenty years ago…and the true meaning of horror.

My Review

I love character driven stories and there are some doozies in this one.

The author wrote each character so distinctly, their voices were so individual, I could pick them out without reading which was which, just like hearing their conversations.

Travis Coble is the stereotypical red-neck. He lives in the mountains in a ramshackle house. The yard is filled with rusted out junk and broken toys, and the weeds have taken over.

Professor Myers has his doubts about Coble’s guilt. He’s thinking how great it would be if he could prove the man’s innocence. What a big splash it would make.

The professor has an air of superiority about him, which doesn’t sit well with Travis, and he needs this story so he brings it down a notch. He’s researched Travis and his murder trial and knows the man is crafty, has an evil intelligence. He needs to keep his wits about him.

As the interview progresses, so does Travis’s belligerence.  Professor Myers is no match for him.

The suspense is subtle at first. It creeps up on you slowly and you become aware of something nasty coming soon. I swear I would have screamed if someone had spoken while I was reading the ending.

I was so wrapped up in the final scenes. While I was grossed out by what was happening and what I visualized was coming next, it was more suggestion than graphic description. That’s what made it so horrifying.

I swear I heard the whisper of dueling Banjo’s while reading this. If you’ve seen the movie Deliverance, you’ll know what I mean.

5 Stars for making my skin crawl!

Thanks to Brendan at untreed reads for providing me with this book.

And thank you, Jonathan, for making me afraid to go to sleep! That’s what a horror book should do.

About the author

Jonathan Janz grew up between a dark forest and a graveyard, and in a way, that explains everything. Brian Keene named his debut novel The Sorrows “the best horror novel of 2012”. The Library Journal deemed his follow-up, House of Skin, “reminiscent of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Peter Straub’s Ghost Story.”

Samhain Horror will also publish his third novel, The Darkest Lullaby, in April. Look for his fourth novel, an action-packed survival horror thriller called Savage Species, this summer. He has also written three novellas (The Clearing of Travis Coble, Old Order, and Witching Hour Theatre) and several short stories.

His primary interests are his wonderful wife and his three amazing children, and though he realizes that every author’s wife and children are wonderful and amazing, in this case the cliché happens to be true. You can learn more about Jonathan at www.jonathanjanz.com. You can also find him on Facebook, via @jonathanjanz on Twitter, or on his Goodreads and Amazon author pages.

Goodreads

Website

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• Freakin Fridays! #5 ~ Four Tales For Midnight (fuonlyknew.com)