Jonathan Janz

"American author Arthur Pearce is traveling abroad, when he encounters the lovely Sarah Coyle on a train. After a daring rescue from a would-be thief, Sarah confides that her younger sister Violet has been entranced by the handsome, princely but much older Count Richard Dunning. After learning that Dunning might be performing cruel experiments on young women, Arthur agrees to travel to her family's ancestral home of Altarbrook to prevent Violet from falling to ruin."

Arthur Pearce is a modern show more improvement on the classic Gothic MMC. Traditionally they are privileged, brooding, and tragic. If they're secondary, they're a monied, seemingly flawless bachelor that saves the damsel in distress. Instead, good looks and wealth are the characteristics of the villain in this story, which is refreshing. On the other hand, Arthur Pearce is sensitive but gallant, and becomes infatuated quickly, especially for intelligent and formidable women. He's honorable, principled, yet haunted by scandal and imposter syndrome. When he finally meets Sarah's divided family, it's not the usual suspects of neglectful or overbearing parents. Her parents, although naive and witless, are not unkind. The discord comes from the bitterly divided siblings, like "Knives Out" circa 1912. There's determined and outspoken Sarah, humorous but hopelessly alcoholic Jimmy, alluring and bookish Lizzie and the coquettish but spiteful Violet. But Arthur has no idea of the kind of entrenched, horrific, nightmare that he is about to confront or what lies hidden behind a beautiful smile.

And where are all my Victorian Psycho fans? This one is for you. The first half checks all the boxes for a romantic gothic tale, but builds up perfectly to become a gruesome and unhinged penny dreadful - and not in the way you'd expect! I needed a bit more fearful suspense before the gloves came off, but once the action starts it doesn't stop. If you pay attention, you'll have a wonderful time spotting the references and similar themes: Frankenstein, The Fall of the House of Usher, and Wuthering Heights just to name a few. show less

Well, wasn't this a dismal little piece of crap. It took me forever to finish, because I just kept hoping it might actually develop a story.

I was wrong.

I truly do not understand all the glowing four and five-star reviews for this. Did you all read a different, well-written, well-edited version that I didn't get? Because lord god amighty, this stank.

There's so much to unpack here, but let's try and pull it all out a piece at a time, shall we?

First, there's the seemingly never-ending show more character introductions at the beginning, where we learn way way way too much about characters that we don't even care about yet (and some will be killed off very soon...so, again, why the page-padding characterization for what amounts to a red shirt?). And, despite all this wasted effort, Janz populates the first half of the book with characters so interchangeable that it's tough to keep them all straight. Which one was Joyce? Savannah? Melody? Jessica? What about Glenn? Mike? And Weezer and Short Pump?

I truly think Barb, who doesn't show up until more like 2/3 of the way through, was the only likeable character I ran across in the entire novel.

Let's also talk about Duane aka Short Pump. He's overweight (his weight is specifically given as 270 pounds), and he's been a loser all his life. And yet, amongst all of that hand-wringing characterization we get at the beginning, and the absolutely ludicrous conversations we get between him and Savannah later on, we really get no sense of motivation for why he suddenly becomes heroic, leading man material. He's completely unbelievable.

Also unbelievable—and somewhat nauseating—was how virtually every single male in this novel was painted as horny as dog in heat. Every one. Glenn. Duane. Weezer. Mike. Melody's entire family. And Janz kept hitting that button, and hitting it, and hitting it, and hitting it. Honestly, I am the least prudish person you're going to meet today, but this was so over the top, I didn't understand why he didn't simply de-age all his characters by ten years to make them horny 17 and 18-year-olds instead of the good-christ-would-you-grow-up-and-start-thinking-with-your-head-instead-of-your-engorged-nutsack 27 and 28-year-olds.

The women aren't painted a hell of a lot better. Virtually every one of them is hot (even the ones that have been married and had six children), and every one of them seems to roll their eyes at all the walking erections that constantly come on to them. Instead of writing strong females, Janz has to write them as hot, pissed off, and wanting sex, but slightly...slightly...more woke about it than the men. One or two, sure. But it's seemingly Janz's mold.

And finally there's the story...or the lack of one. There's no real story here, only three or four major set pieces surrounded by guys trying to get laid, or people dealing with turning into werewolves, or people having the most insanely inane and boring conversations ever.

The four set pieces that come to mind are the bonfire party that starts the whole thing off (but it still takes pages and pages and pages to even get there, and even then, we have to wade through pages of horny shit before something interesting happens). The second set piece is at a drive-in. The third is at Melody's home. And finally, the park.

Pacing is non-existent in any of them. They all take far too long (seriously, the park stuff at the end just never seems to end). The story, such as it is, just sort of happens, but seemingly in a vacuum.

Riddle me this, Riddler: Fifty-odd people attend a bonfire. At said bonfire, a werewolf shows up and many people die. Yet, despite a glancing mention of going to the hospital for injury treatment for the wounded main character survivors, that's it. No fallout. No investigation. No cops. No questioning. Nothing. Hell, dudes are going to the drive-in the next evening.

And at the drive-in? More deaths. You think people would start avoiding public places? Nope, that's just crazy talk.

And then, with no warning, with nothing more than a single tossed-off line, the third act somehow involves the arrival of three female (read: super hot) werewolves. Again, there's a glancing mention of a sorta kinda bit of a reason, but really, it's just to create more carnage.

Honestly, this is just a terribly written, terribly plotted, terribly paced, terribly characterized excuse to write a bunch of violent werewolf scenes. Call it werewolf porn.

Call it whatever you want. Just don't call it good. show less

I started out absolutely adoring this book--everything about it. The characters, the pacing, the story, everything. I'd never picked up Janz's work before--though I'd meant to for some time--and especially since I'd heard about him quite a bit, I was especially curious once I saw his warning in the beginning of the book, that the work had started off as one thing and turned into something else, and was likely darker than anything else he'd written. That didn't scare me off, though I will say show more that if you tend to check CWs (especially the big ones), you should definitely check them out for this book before reading. But one way or another, the book grabbed me and kept pulling me deeper.

And then...maybe a third of the way through the book...things shifted, and that's how this ended up being a 4-star read for me instead of a 5-star read. Simply put, what had been a really well-paced story with a lot of nuance all of a sudden shifted gears into one very long action scene, and while I *love* action scenes and fights, it's tough to read what amounts to an 80-page action/fight scene--even one that shifts around to various fights within the larger battle--and stay fully engaged and just as interested as before, especially when there just aren't any breaks to change tone or emotion or pace during that stretch. On one hand, I don't think the book needed to be longer than it is, and I think every fight and page within that long action scene mattered. On the other hand, though I'm not one to suggest adding filler for no reason, I suspect that the last part of this book, and thus the book as a whole, would have been a more powerful read if the fights had been broken up a bit more and we'd had some scenes that weren't so heavy on fight-or-flight violence.

This is a good time to note, by the way, that this horror novel probably has a higher body count than any other horror novel I've read, if you're looking specifically at bodies that fall on the page (i.e., not talking about hearing about a disaster killing a thousand people), and at characters who you get to know and then see fall. The gore level is also high, so take the warnings around this one seriously if any of that could bother you.

All that said, Janz is a great writer, I loved the characters and relationships here, and I have every intention of reading more of his work. show less

A few years ago I may have said Jonathan who? These days I need only see the name Jonathan Janz to know that I need to grab the book without even reading the description. Jonathan Janz knows horror, More than that he is an amazing story teller who doesn't need to go for the cheap scares or the gore only route. Every character has a purpose and I am not going to go into the plot much except to say each character has their own twisted little back story and the way in which it all played out show more was deliciously creepy. I also loved the way it mentioned The Siren and The Spector, which is another book by this author that you really need to read if you haven't yet.

I received an advance copy for review. show less