There’s two types of horror novels: The first type is where scary things happen, and then everybody runs around screaming for a few hundred pages until some deus ex spookina pops out and fixes things. The other is where scary things happen, and then they assemble a Scooby Gang to try to figure out what’s going on, and then end with a big fight where they fling some magic substance around.
This is the latter kind, which is good, because I really don’t enjoy the first kind.
So while that’s nice and all, it’s just not very exciting. The main problem is that the mystery is so obvious — surely even in 1968, it had to be obvious? I don’t know; perhaps there hadn’t been too many of these books using the same formula? The other problem is that one of the protagonists was acting like a total, monumental asshole of a psycho, and the other characters were just going “well, that Pat’s a card, eh?” It just made me go “eh? eh?” the entire time I was reading the book, which isn’t the sound you want your head to make.
This novel is from 1968, and it’s strange how old this book seems. I mean, I read quite a lot of books that are way older than this, but this one seemed set on really stressing how of its time it is. Like — “like” is slang!? It seemed to be a book written for old people in 1968, so it’s like it’s was outdated even then, and has become twice removed now. Or something.
But overall, it’s not bad? Pretty entertaining. Not really worth reading.
So what are the Goodreads saying…
Is that good or bad?
Ammie, Come Home (1968) by Barbara Michaels (buy used, 3.98 on Goodreads)