SYNOPSIS
She has an eerie gift for drawing faces. Will one terrifying vision tear apart everything she loves?
Ohio, 1987. Adriana Krause hasn’t slept in weeks. Desperate for work to keep her three-year-old son out of her powerful father’s controlling clutches, her vivid illustrations land her a job as a police sketch artist. But the only image she can draw is the shockingly mangled visage from her recurring nightmare.
With her disturbed nights spiraling into violent episodes, Adriana’s unique talents pull her into the tight-knit small-town’s buried secrets. And now fearing she’ll lose her little boy to the madness sucking her down, she’s convinced that the monstrous likeness she can’t stop scrawling holds the answer to a brutal crime.
Can this struggling mother solve a dark puzzle before her family is destroyed?
REVIEW
Secrets and small towns are at the heart of this dark tale, two of my favorite things in a horror story. Alan Lastufka takes those tropes and runs with them, spinning a tale that might seem predictable at first, but as the layers peel back, something darker emerges.
One of the things I’ve always admired about Stephen King’s writing is his ability to populate a town with fully realized and distinct characters. Lastufka gives the King a run for his money with this colorful cast of characters who reside in Cellar, Ohio. Everyone in this town feels like they could be the main character with the depth they’re given and their unique voices. Even though Adriana is our main character, I was never disappointed when we’d leave her POV because the writing is just that engaging. It brought me back to reading Stephen Graham Jones’s Don’t Fear the Reaper. At first, I didn’t like leaving the POV of the main characters of both novels but that quickly faded as I was immediately invested, no matter who I was with.
These days, when you set a story in the ’80’, comparisons to Stranger Things is inevitable, especially if it’s a horror story. What Face the Night does that I really appreciate is it doesn’t feel the need to remind you that you’re in the ’80’s every page or chapter. There’s some references here or there, but ultimately, the time setting isn’t the driving force of the narrative, unlike Stranger Things, which I think sometimes relies on nostalgia to a fault. (Don’t get me wrong, I love the show, but it’s definitely nostalgia bait at times and that’s not why we’re here. Back to our regularly scheduled review.) Face the Night feels like it could have been written in the ’80’s, as opposed to being set in the ’80’s and written today.
The mystery is very well paced and plotted perfectly. Lastufka will settle into the domestic dramas of the characters and next thing you know, something supernatural will happen and scare the shit out of you. I dropped the book and lost my place at one point. Jump scares are rare and hard to pull off in the written word and Lastufka got me good in this one. The only one I can recall at this moment is The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones, and you don’t get much better company than that, in my opinion.
Small Town politics play a much larger role in this novel than I expected, but having grown up in a small town with small town politicians, I ate this right up. Seeing the ambition of some and what they’ll do to get where they want is the true horror of this story. Greed is an ugly thing and this story shows how ugly it can get.
All in all, Face the Night is a creepy and engaging read, full of surprises, great characters and a scare that ranks with the best of them. If you like small town horror and don’t mind some politicking, this is the book for you. Perfect for fans of Stephen King, Robert McCammon and Stephen Graham Jones.
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