Synopsis:
When Kadence’s father dies, she begins hearing voices in her head. Soon thereafter, she discovers alcohol, which silences the voices, and Kadence becomes an alcoholic. To finance her addiction, she turns to a life of crime. Then she meets Arianne, the girl of her dreams.
After she gets locked up, Arianne breaks up with her and begins dating Kadence’s cousin, Beatrix—a serial killer who collects human skulls. When Kadence gets released, will she be able to keep Beatrix from adding Arianne to her collection?
Fans of bleak, transgressive fiction will enjoy this coming-of-age horror novel.
Review:
First, let’s get the nitty gritty out of the way. Old Too Soon contains a lot of dark themes and adult content, such as drug use, gory deaths, and references to necrophilia. It’s a brutal story with flawed characters and wildly horrific events. If you can stomach that, let’s get into this review.
From the beginning, Bowyer unveils a time and place where morals are already lacking, adults are not acting their part, and the kids are even worse. The setting laid out contains alcoholics, drug dealers, and sadists—and those are just the characters under fifteen years old. The adults are too busy drowning in their addictions, grief, or indifference.
The plot is less about one major dilemma that must be solved, but is character-focused. The story follows Kadence between the ages of eleven and sixteen, and along with that comes the growth and events of those around her: parents, friends, family, and others in the community.
Most of the people in this book dwell in a morally twisted atmosphere. There were certainly some that I was rooting for (poor Brendan), and others that I longed to watch crash and burn. On the outside, it seemed appalling to watch mere children get involved in the drug use and crime that occurs in this story. Then, Bowyer took me deeper into their lives, and I found understanding and empathy for the characters who dealt with so much. They drink to numb the pain, they take drugs to offset the drugs. Watching them spiral from one vice to another was a humble reminder of how quickly people can get caught up in simply trying to quiet the emotional pain inside them.
Between Bowyer’s short chapters and to-the-point writing style, I breezed through this book in about a week. That is very quick for me in regards to physical reads. Each chapter was a revelation of a character’s past or their brutal demise. While the writing style is concise, I still found every detail I needed to picture the world I was sucked into. Bowyer excels when it comes to “less is more”.
While the dialogue is realistic and not over-flourished, and the descriptions are tight but not overdone, I enjoyed where Bowyer took the time to slow down and focus on a particular moment or idea. For example, in a story that Kadence writes, a character is having brain surgery, and Bowyer takes us through each step of drilling into the skull and pulling back pieces of the cerebellum. There are also times when Kadence drops some interesting facts about Vikings and gladiators.
I’d be remiss if I failed to mention the metal vibes here. Kadence learns to master the guitar, referencing legends like Slayer and Pantera. She forms a band called Fear Fetish (banger of a name) and plays metal at venues. There are also some fun references to books, reading, and horror movies.
While there were a lot of intimate and violent moments portrayed in this book, most of them were referenced, which I appreciated especially because the majority of the characters were minors. The kills were savage and graphic in the best ways, but the more grotesque aspects were left to the imagination.
Old Too Soon is a vicious window into the world of ruthless kids just trying to survive. Whether quieter moments underlined with dread or fast-paced chaos, this book is a quick and fun horror book. Like any great book in the genre, it’ll make you queasy, leave you feeling uncomfortable, and force you to keep turning the pages.
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