Abandoned dilapidated houses and buildings on covers are one of my favorite things. I am drawn to them and almost all of the time, my expectations are high. I had seen this book all over Amazon and Goodreads, so much so that I thought I actually owned the ebook. I didn't and I ended up borrowing it from my library which surprisingly they had available since it seems to be getting hyped up.
Going into this book the only thing I knew was that it was similar to The Blair Witch Project and that it was kind of like a documentary. Reading the first chapter, I wish that this was told in mixed media format. I also wish that there had been a character list included because we are introduced to so many characters from the very beginning and I had to go back a couple pages to remember who was who and it kind of took me out of the story.
We are following a girl named Alice and she is trying to get sponsors for a documentary about an abandoned town that her grandmother grew up in. The town was abandoned and no one knows why or where the 900 residents went. No trace was left behind and all valuables and possessions were left as well. The book starts off from the POV from two cops who are going into the town and they find a woman tied to a pole in the town square who had been stoned to death. There is also a newborn baby that is found.
Alice and her production crew are planning to spend 5 days in town to get shots and footage to make a decent trailer for their backers. Alice is also dealing with emotional issues with one of the crew. She has so many past problems with Emmy, that just reading about them was annoying. Alice didn't want to take the blame, but then she constantly told her self that everything that had happened was her fault.
While reading this, I noticed on the cover that this was a translated work. Now I don't know if it is a good translation because while reading, I did notice multiple times that some scenes were very repetitive. The back and forth between the Now and Then was very jarring. There would be many chapters of the present day and then one lone Then chapter of the past and it would be left on a cliffhanger, but it would give you enough information to figure out what was happening. Very predictable.
This book is categorized as a horror and I disagree with that. There was nothing scary or gory or hair raising about this. I did get the chills here and there but not enough to creep me the hell out. But I did enjoy it enough to go ahead and put the author's next release on my TBR.
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