Helpful Score: 4
Great horror story - not just about the monsters that live in our imagination, but the ones we live with in our everyday lives.
Helpful Score: 3
Very good book about 3 childhood friends who deal with family troubles as well as a ghoul who...well you just have to read the book. It is slow in some parts but over all, kept me up late at night for about a week until I finished it. Highly recommended.
Helpful Score: 1
Some of his books just grab you right from the start and you can't put them down. This is not one of those books. I'm having a hard time getting thru this one. It's just dragging along very slowly.
Helpful Score: 1
**Warning: Some spoilers***
I don't know why but I love coming-of-age horror stories like Ghoul. Maybe it is the nostalgia factor, reliving memories of childhood summers. Things seemed so much scarier back then. Or it could be the underdog nature of a group of kids taking on a powerful evil enemy all on their own, without any adult help.
Coming-of-age stories have almost become a new horror sub-genre...'It' (King), 'Summer of Night' (Simmons), 'The Traveling Vampire Show' (Layman) and maybe 'A Boy's Life'(McCammon). Although I enjoyed reading Ghoul, I didn't feel like it quite lived up to the other coming of age horror I mentioned. A lot of attention was given to the real-life horrors that two of the boys suffered at home (i.e. abuse and molestation). I think the author was making a point about real-life sometimes being worse, but I felt like it overshadowed the horror elements so much that it took a lot of the thrill out of the story.
Also, Brian Keene is a great author but if there is one thing that bugs me about his novels, it is that so many of them end badly (as in unhappily) and way too abruptly. He writes great action scenes and characters that I really care about, but then he kills everybody and everything off in the last 5 or so pages. I kind of feel like Keene is saying to the reader "life is tough and there are no happy endings, so deal with it." Ghoul had a happier ending than most of the other Keene novels I've read, but I still felt let down at the end. The real-life monsters could never really be defeated, so there was no chance for the boys to truly win in the end. If only one of the boys could have overcome the horrors in their real life, maybe I would have been more satisfied.
All that said, Ghoul was good and I would recommend it. If I was grading it, I would give it a B-. I just wish the author could be a little more upbeat in his endings once in awhile.
I don't know why but I love coming-of-age horror stories like Ghoul. Maybe it is the nostalgia factor, reliving memories of childhood summers. Things seemed so much scarier back then. Or it could be the underdog nature of a group of kids taking on a powerful evil enemy all on their own, without any adult help.
Coming-of-age stories have almost become a new horror sub-genre...'It' (King), 'Summer of Night' (Simmons), 'The Traveling Vampire Show' (Layman) and maybe 'A Boy's Life'(McCammon). Although I enjoyed reading Ghoul, I didn't feel like it quite lived up to the other coming of age horror I mentioned. A lot of attention was given to the real-life horrors that two of the boys suffered at home (i.e. abuse and molestation). I think the author was making a point about real-life sometimes being worse, but I felt like it overshadowed the horror elements so much that it took a lot of the thrill out of the story.
Also, Brian Keene is a great author but if there is one thing that bugs me about his novels, it is that so many of them end badly (as in unhappily) and way too abruptly. He writes great action scenes and characters that I really care about, but then he kills everybody and everything off in the last 5 or so pages. I kind of feel like Keene is saying to the reader "life is tough and there are no happy endings, so deal with it." Ghoul had a happier ending than most of the other Keene novels I've read, but I still felt let down at the end. The real-life monsters could never really be defeated, so there was no chance for the boys to truly win in the end. If only one of the boys could have overcome the horrors in their real life, maybe I would have been more satisfied.
All that said, Ghoul was good and I would recommend it. If I was grading it, I would give it a B-. I just wish the author could be a little more upbeat in his endings once in awhile.
Helpful Score: 1
Wow, Best of Keene! I spent many summers as a youth bored with nothing to do but these three boys summer will be unforgettable for me. I'm still shaking!
Helpful Score: 1
This was one of the best horror novels I have read. I have read and disliked other Brian Keene novels that dealt with a different subject matter, but this was an entirely different experience. Mr. Keene, in all his novels, shows a remarkable knowledge of Christian religion and folk mythology; in this book he ties them together with human experience in a unique and interesting way. I felt the ending was a bit contrived, but it didn't destroy the story for me. This is a great read.
Helpful Score: 1
Great original horror story!
To me a while to really get into the book, in fact I put it down for a few weeks and picked it again and read in in two night. Not one of my favorite books however once I got in to it, it was a pretty good book.
A nice retro coming of age story. Though the 80's references were way too heavy handed during the first section of the novel (nearly one, sometimes two every line!) the author lightened up on the music and tv references and got on with the story. It's about a young boy and his two best friends and the summer when they must deal with everyday monsters as well as a slimy, corpse-eating ghoul. It's a fun monster book with a realistic ending if you're in the mood.
Keene keeps it coming!
Good horror story about 3 preteen boys against the ghoul. My heart just went out to these boys and their individual stories. However the ending was not satisfactory, there were too many questions unanswered.
Great book! Im new to this author ive read 3 of his books all of them are good !
Fun book. Part horror, part adventure, part coming of age and very enjoyable.
I had high expectations for this book and it didn't let me down. I loved it!
top notch story telling with this one. 5 star book from me.
Somethings unearthing fresh graves and it's not human.
Very good book but the movie was very boring!
