May 20, 2024
Bestseller Jones (the Indian Lake trilogy) again riffs on 1980s slasher movies in this indulgent bloodbath. Tolly Driver witnesses a massacre at a high school party at the hands of Justin Jones, an undead classmate who died during a vicious prank gone awry. Having gotten infected with a couple drops of Justin’s blood, and reeling from a near-death experience stemming from his peanut allergy, Tolly finds himself driven by the urge to go on a murder spree of his own. He dons a mask and slashes his way through his small Texas town. Only his childhood friend, final girl Amber Dennison, serves as a tether to the scared and fragile kid he was before the killing began. Will she be able to stop the slaughter once and for all? The story has a clear love for the splashy slasher films that inspired it, and Jones does a great job of landing the plot’s gorier excesses as the bodies pile up. Unfortunately, chaotic plotting undercuts the story’s tension and narrator Tolly’s many tangents make the pacing somewhat start-and-stop. Still, fans of meta horror will find a lot to love as Jones remixes well-worn tropes with glee. Agent: BJ Robbins, BJ Robbins Literary.
September 1, 2024
Jones's ("Indian Lake" trilogy) latest is a gore-filled yet tender coming-of-age story full of gruesome nods to the slasher genre. Listeners meet Tolly Driver, who, 17 years earlier, embarked on a horrific killing spree during the summer of 1989 in the small Texas town of Lamesa. During a house party gone terribly wrong, Tolly, a good but fragile kid with a peanut allergy, was transformed into a slasher. He rampaged through the town, with the body count steadily rising. Despite the horrifying content, Michael Crouch narrates Tolly with engaging tenderness, making the quintessential slasher into a sympathetic character. Listeners may find themselves rooting for Tolly, someone who's faced many obstacles and is forced to kill owing to circumstances beyond his control. Jones narrates his acknowledgments with appealing casualness, describing his memories of growing up in a West Texas town 45 miles from Lamesa. VERDICT From final girls to slashers, Jones's ode to the genre and exploration of what it means to be an outsider is a fast-paced, horror-filled book that listeners won't be able to put down.--Elyssa Everling
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