Heart-Shaped Box

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill, 376 pages

Judas Coyne is an aging shock rocker, quietly settled on a farm in New York, when an odd opportunity comes his way: Coyne chooses to buy a dead man's ghost, which is attached to the man's favorite suit. If that wasn't weird and spooky enough, when the suit arrives in a large black heart-shaped box, Coyne learns there's a lot more to this suit than he originally thought. This ghost is no Casper, that's for sure.

This is, by all means, a scary book. Hill has a great premise here, and there are definitely some heart-thumping scenes. But I was warned (by multiple people) about the nightmares this book has induced, and so chose to read this during daylight hours only. For that reason, and probably that reason only, I didn't find it nearly as scary as I expected. I also thought that Hill showed us the monster a little too soon; the scariest parts for me were at the beginning, when Coyne was frozen with terror, and not sure what was going to happen. That terror ended too soon for me. Otherwise, I thought this was a well-written spooky ghost story. I've enjoyed Hill's other books, and this one didn't really disappoint; I just wish I could go back in time and try reading it at night to get the full effect of the terror.

Good for fans of horror, ghost stories, Stephen King.