Heart-Shaped Box

*Heart-Shaped Box* by Joe Hill is a riveting and original tale that weaves a complex narrative with main characters who are, at times, profoundly unlikable. The story successfully blends genuine terror with heart-wrenching moments of sadness and despair, creating a range of emotional experiences for the reader. Hill allows the characters to evolve throughout the narrative, contributing to the depth of the storyline and maintaining reader engagement. The author masterfully builds an atmosphere of foreboding and dread, keeping readers on the edge of their seats.

However, amidst the novel's strengths, there are notable drawbacks. One significant issue lies in Joe Hill's portrayal of certain characters, particularly those who are overweight, show more Southern, or perceived as uneducated. The author's depiction of fat individuals is marked by callousness and unnecessary crudeness, offering little to the plot or character development. These descriptions, seemingly driven by bias, contribute to an uncomfortable reading experience. The negative and portrayal of Southern, "low class" and uneducated individuals similarly perpetuates stereotypes without meaningful narrative contribution.

In conclusion, while Heart-Shaped Box stands out for its originality, intense emotions, and character development, Joe Hill's questionable treatment of certain groups raises concerns about sensitivity and inclusivity in his storytelling. The novel's strengths and weaknesses create a dichotomy that may leave readers torn between appreciation for the story's unique elements and discomfort with the author's handling of specific characterizations. show less

Welp! The apple truly doesn't fall far from the tree, unfortunately Joe Hill is apparently suffering from the same canker as his father. In fact, this debut novel could well have been a reject of King's, bearing all the same dated tropes from misogynist 'heroes' who are somehow exonerated by shitty childhoods, women who are either victims or bitches, and a weird obsession with the 'good old days'. He seems to have an immature grudge against overweight women and anyone from the Deep South to boot. There's also about enough plot for a short story, but Hill drags the whole painful saga out for over 400 pages.

Aging rocker Jude Coyne is a repulsive human being who mistreats very young and vulnerable women because he can - he erases their show more identity by reducing them to the name of their home state - but somehow still earns their undying (literally) love and respect. The purveyor of the eponymous heart shaped box calls him out at one point, which I had to applaud: ‘Who do you think you are, anyway, calling him a child molester? How many years you got on that whore behind you? Thirty? Forty?’ He also sacrifices his two lovely and loyal German Shepherd dogs, who were the only likeable characters in the whole book. He 'buys' the ghost of a bitter old man for his macabre 'collection', and then realises that the dead guy, who is delivered along with an old suit in the heart shaped box, is the stepfather of his previous nubile victim, 'Florida', another victim of abuse.

And then - nothing happens. Jude and 'Georgia' do horrible things, to themselves and each other, under the influence of the ghost's hypnosis/autosuggestion, or some equally hotchpotch backstory, and drive from state to state trying to escape the ghost, but ehhhh, that's it. Hill even crams in tired old horror devices like possessed cars and spiritual familiars, but all his hackneyed storytelling does is trivialises sexual abuse - as does having a dirty old man as the saviour of the story.

Hill is capable of better - I loved the Netflix adaptation of Locke and Key - but this was a distasteful and depressing drag of an introduction to his work. show less

An aging rock star who collects morbid memorabilia acquires a dead man's suit haunted by the man's ghost, a ghost who is intent on revenge.

This is a scary book. And it’s scary on a lot of levels. It’s got a couple of those make-you-jump scares, which are easy to do in a movie, not so much in a novel. There are bits that are creepy-scary, gross-scary, just plain weird-scary. And it’s also got that nightmarish, unrelenting fear thing going on, when the monster is coming after you and just will not stop. I would not recommend reading this book alone in the house late at night, unless you enjoy freaking yourself out.

The story begins when Jude Coyne, a 50ish rock star with a lot of excess cash and a penchant for collecting the macabre, show more is intrigued by an offering on an Internet auction. The seller is offering the ghost of her stepfather, Craddock McDermott, which comes attached to the dead guy’s suit, and Jude cannot resist. The suit arrives packaged in a black, heart-shaped box, and it soon becomes apparent that the ghost inside the suit is very real, and has an ulterior motive. Jude didn’t just purchase this ghost by chance. No, the ghost is also the stepfather of his former way-too-young-for-him groupie girlfriend, who committed suicide after Jude tossed her out, and the ghost wants revenge on Jude and everyone he cares for (or so it seems). As a former hypnotist, the ghost is particularly well-equipped to make Jude and others among the living do exactly what he wants.

It’s not long before Jude and his current girlfriend, nicknamed Georgia, flee with Jude’s two dogs and the ghost following on their heels in his rattletrap pickup. Jude heads for Florida to confront the living daughter and try to find a way to make the ghost stop. And the story does not let up from there until the end.

The two main characters — an aging heavy metal star with a rocky past and his much younger, very angsty, Goth girlfriend — do not seem particularly sympathetic at first. But once it becomes obvious, to them and to the reader, exactly what a horrific situation they are in, they become a lot more human. Hill has the gift: to scare you despite yourself, and to make you care despite how unworthy his characters seem at first.

Most people know by now that Joe Hill is the pseudonym of Joseph King, Stephen King’s son, but he is an excellent horror writer in his own right. Although his father’s works have clearly influenced him — as they have any horror writing working today — Hill’s style is much more spare and contemporary than King’s, less folksy or likely to wander off on tangents. Where King’s books tended to ramble, Heart-Shaped Box just rocks (making Jude’s profession particularly apt). If you like a good scare and a good read, you’re going to like this book. show less

Perhaps the most surprising thing about "Hear-shaped Box" is that, in a novel filled with violence, fear, child abuse, self-harm, and maiming and with the overwhelming presence of a truly evil spirit, the real focus of the story is how a man in his fifties gathers his courage to confront who he has become.


It's that focus on character, on the person's history, the choices they've made, the grief they carry, the things they don't challenge about themselves but which make them miserable, that gives this novel its power. Of course, it doesn't hurt that Joe Hill comes up with a truly sinister, evil and believable ghost that is bent on murder and that he doesn't flinch from taking his character to dark and terrible places.


In the beginning, show more the plot seems simple: complacent, rich goth-rock star, Judas Coin, buys a ghost on the internet that turns out to be the real thing and which seems intent on harming him but even at the start it's clear that the plot is not the story. The story is about the self-discovery of Judas Coin.
Judas Coin is a man who doesn't like himself much but who also doesn't feel a need to do anything about that. He's built a comfortable, unchallenging, mostly empty life for himself and is happy to roll with it. Until the ghost arrives and brings his life into focus.


At the start of the book, we're given the take-it-all-for-granted it-is-what-it-is view of Coin's life. Yet, even then, things snagged my attention. Coin has lived with a string of young goth women half his age. He shares that he has trouble remembering their names so he names them after their State of origin. He calls his current bedmate Georgia. He knows the women don't like this because most of them want to forget where they came from but he does it because it's easy and because they let him. Even on a first pass, this made me think Coin was an asshole. As the story progresses and Coin's fate becomes linked to a Florida, a young woman he threw away when he was done, it finally occurs to Coin that he's behaved like a shit, just because he can.

The slow shift in Coin's self-perception is skilfully done.


The ghost, which arrives in the form of a dead man's suit is deeply menacing. I loved the way Joe Hill slowly builds the ghost from a joke purchase on an Internet auction site into an apparently unstoppable supernatural threat. At the beginning, while I was fairly sure the ghost was really there, I was willing to go with the idea that Judas Coin voices, that says, perhaps ghosts live only in the heads of the haunted. Either way, it was clear from the start that Coin was set to suffer. My initial reaction to that was, "Well, he deserves it."


Of course, Joe Hill made me revise my opinions. The ghost became horribly real and Judas, who was originally named Justin, became someone I was less willing to write off.


The book is told mostly from inside Justin's head, giving the reader the chance to watch how Justin's perception of himself and what's happening to him changes. Identity is at the heart of this novel. The main challenge is who Justin is going to choose to be.


At the start of the novel, he's definitely Judas Coin. When, as a young man, Justin created his Judas Coin persona, Justin transformed himself from an abused farm boy to a rock star. He set himself free. Except, now that he's a man in his fifties, he's been wearing the Judas Coin persona for so long it has become the self he recognises when he looks in the mirror, the one he thinks he will offend if he does something that rubs against the grain because it's inconsistent with who he is. We are told that Judas/Justin believes that:

"His own identity was his first and single most forceful creation. The machine that had manufactured all his other successes. Which had produced everything in his life that was worth having and that he cared about He would protect that to the end."


This is Justin's central problem: he wants to protect Judas. Yet Judas was the one who betrayed with a kiss. The one who placed pragmatism and survival ahead of love and hope. The one who ultimately couldn't live with himself. It was as Judas that Justin has been so careless with his own life and the lives of those close to him that he is now surrounded by nothing but wreckage. It's Judas that the ghost wants to kill.


If Justin wants to avoid the ghost's silver razor on the gold chain, wants to erase the dark scribbled across his eyes that the spirits of dead he sees wear, it seemed to me he'd have he to throw Judas under the bus.
The resolution that Joe Hill comes up with is both cleverer and truer than that. The man Justin is by the end of the book hasn't repudiated Judas Coin, he's just not in the driving seat anymore.


As I listened to the "Heart-Shaped Box", I found that the scary bits - the ghost with the scribbled over eyes, the compulsion to self-harm, the sight of things that aren't there but which still make you sweat with fear - rolled over me. I could see that they were well done, original, powerful, deeply envisioned, but it was like a polished sex scene about an orientation or fetish I don't share. I could see it, admire it, but I didn't feel it.


Yet when Joe Hill got me into people's heads, when Judas Coin is honest with himself, when Georgia opens up and shows the person she'd like to be and how dragged down she feels by the person she's been so far, THAT I felt. It felt true. It felt real. It made me hungry for more.


Stephen Long does a great job reading the "Heart-shaped Box", although I would have enjoyed it more if Harper Audio had resisted the urge to add music. Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear Stephen Long perform (and the irritating music at the beginning).



https://soundcloud.com/harperaudio_us/heartshapedbox_hill show less

Every once in a while I find a book that is so delightfully creepy I'm torn between tossing it across the room in a frightened attempt to escape it and refusing to put it down until I finish it. Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill is just such a novel.

The story involves hard-edged, aging rock star Jude Coyne, with his macabre collection of trinkets and artifacts, who buys the haunted suit of a dead man off an internet auction site. Thinking only of the novelty of purchasing a ghost, Jude doesn't realize that the malicious spirit is more than just an online gimmick until the suit arrives at his doorstep in its titular Heart-Shaped Box. Jude must discover the dead man's identity and motives while confronting ghosts of his own past along the show more way.

Hill does a magnificent job of building the suspense in this book. The hairs on the back of my neck were raised every time the ghost made an appearance - with his Johnny Cash suit, black fedora and pendulum razor on a chain - and my pulse was pounding along with Jude's as the chilling story progressed. This is a great book for those that love ghost stories, but it just might leave readers peeking over their shoulders and cringing a little more at things that go bump in the night. show less

I stopped early because the protagonist’s narrative voice didn’t work for me. Jude is intentionally unlikeable, but he reads as emotionally infantile and fundamentally disengaged rather than psychologically complex. His anger feels structural and unexamined, and I never developed a sense of interior stakes. As a result, I didn’t care what happened to him. Without investment in the haunted, the haunting itself had no weight.

Joe Hill’s Heart-Shaped Box is a chilling, adrenaline-fueled paranormal thriller that proves ghost stories don’t need creaky mansions and flickering candles to be truly terrifying—sometimes all it takes is a haunted suit delivered in a black, heart-shaped box.
At the center of this unsettling tale is Judas Coyne, a grizzled, aging death-metal rock star with a morbid hobby of collecting oddities. When he impulsively buys a dead man’s suit said to be haunted, he finds himself stalked by a malevolent ghost hellbent on revenge. The ghost doesn’t just appear—it invades, poisons, and terrifies. With a razor blade on a chain and a stare that drills into the soul, this is no metaphorical haunting. It’s deeply personal and show more all-consuming.
Hill’s writing expertly balances horror and emotional weight. While the novel leans into familiar tropes—vengeful ghosts, guilt-ridden pasts, and cursed objects—it does so with a gritty, grounded tone that keeps the tension simmering throughout. The dynamic between Judas and his current girlfriend Georgia is a compelling layer, revealing both vulnerability and depth in a man who initially comes off as cold and detached. The way she supports him on this nightmarish journey adds a surprising amount of heart to a book soaked in dread.
The real horror, though, isn’t just the ghost—it’s the exploration of blame, trauma, and how easily families can twist pain into blame for their own narrative. The plot taps into the cliche of the grieving family scapegoating someone else, but does so with enough realism and psychological complexity to make it feel believable. The antagonist’s backstory unfolds with enough emotional brutality to keep the reader constantly guessing—and squirming.
The portrayal of paranoia is one of the strongest elements in the novel. Judas’s descent into fear is intense and raw, capturing how relentless anxiety can warp perception and trigger dangerous behavior. Hill doesn't just use the ghost as a scare tactic—he lets it represent how the past claws its way into the present, how guilt manifests physically, and how pain is never as buried as we want it to be.
Heart-Shaped Box is a visceral, high-stakes ghost story wrapped in sharp emotional truth and classic horror energy. It's not just about a haunting—it's about being haunted. With a gritty protagonist, psychological depth, and some truly terrifying moments, this book earns its place among modern horror staples. Definitely best suited for adult readers, it’s dark without being gratuitous, and emotional without losing its bite. show less