Synopsis
In Twilight Falls, Halloween has always been a night of tricks, treats… and old stories meant to scare the kids. But this year, the legend is real.
It’s 1998. Julie Carpenter is just trying to survive her senior year in the sleepy Arizona town she’s always called home. But when a figure emerges from the woods—silent, relentless, and wearing a cracked, vintage jack-o’-lantern mask—the town’s Halloween spirit turns to pure terror.
They call him Jack.
Once a man. Now something far worse. He’s back from the grave with one goal: make the streets of Twilight Falls run red before the night is over.
With the police overwhelmed, the phone lines dead, and the streets crawling with shadows, Julie finds herself face-to-face with the horror the town tried to bury. To survive, she’ll have to fight back—before the chime of midnight seals Twilight Falls’ fate forever.
Fans of Halloween and Friday the 13th—lock your doors. Jack is coming. Night of the Jack-O’-Lantern will leave you checking the locks, watching the treeline… and dreading the sound of footsteps behind you.
Review
If you didn’t know, Reyes is an auto-buy indie author for me. Read my reviews: After the Pink Moon, The Love Song of Nathan Crane, and more!
Thanks to the author for sending me this one early. This is the perfect Halloween season read.
Jack has risen from the dead. Not quite a zombie, not quite a spirit and definitely not just a man. He has been wronged, and now he is back for revenge. This Halloween night, while the veil is thin, some people are going to die…and boy do they, in spectacular fashion.
One thing I always notice, point out, and admire about Reyes’ books is how authentic or researched they feel. And while I’m sure he does actual research, to me this always feels like his love letter to whatever trope or sub-genre he’s tackling. He knows horror, has seen exhaustive amounts of it, and now he’s tackling his version of it. And this one’s no different, delivering readers a solid slasher classic with its own twists. This one, set in the 90s, has some nicely dropped hints to his previous release, After the Pink Moon, and will remind you of Blockbuster nights and trick or treating during a time when parents were maybe just a tad less careful about their children’s whereabouts.
Jack is the quintessential slasher killer. He has undead/deadite qualities that make him superhuman while also appearing like a semi-rotted corpse. He is driven to revenge by a grim reaper, hungry for souls, and while the revenge story is wholly his own, he isn’t inherently bad, as he is not the one making all the choices. That’s not to say he’s redeemable, he’s just not fully in control. He even has the necessary mask and knife combo—a jack-o’-lantern mask that obscures his eyes and a kitchen knife. He’s hulking in size and gives horror fans some really top notch kills. He is, essentially, the product of Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees blended together, but with the author delivering a more killer-based POV a la In a Violent Nature.
All in all, I thought this one was a hell of a lot of fun. Straight forward slasher, but with some twists involved. I really enjoyed the inclusion of the grim reaper, giving the novel a driving force that for once wasn’t a subconscious or metaphorical pull, as Jack literally follows its lead. I also liked how the author blended multiple “camp fire” lore stories into the history of Twilight Falls, and how not all of them were just stories. To me, that’s where this one took on its own shape.
Bloody, gruesome slasher horror.
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