Book Review - Horns by Joe Hill

Synopsis:  Ignatius Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things. He woke up the next morning with a thunderous hangover, a raging headache, and a pair of horns growing from his temples. At first Ig thought the horns were a hallucination, the product of a mind damaged by rage and grief. He had spent the last year in a lonely, private purgatory, following the death of his beloved, Merrin Williams, who was raped and murdered under inexplicable circumstances. A mental breakdown would have been the most natural thing in the world. But there was nothing natural about the horns, which were all too real.

Once the righteous Ig had enjoyed the life of the blessed: born into privilege, the second son of a renowned musician and younger brother of a rising late-night TV star, he had security, wealth, and a place in his community. Ig had it all, and more—he had Merrin and a love founded on shared daydreams, mutual daring, and unlikely midsummer magic. But Merrin's death damned all that. The only suspect in the crime, Ig was never charged or tried. And he was never cleared. In the court of public opinion in Gideon, New Hampshire, Ig is and always will be guilty because his rich and connected parents pulled strings to make the investigation go away. Nothing Ig can do, nothing he can say, matters. Everyone, it seems, including God, has abandoned him. Everyone, that is, but the devil inside.

Now Ig is possessed of a terrible new power to go with his terrible new look—a macabre talent he intends to use to find the monster who killed Merrin and destroyed his life. Being good and praying for the best got him nowhere. It's time for a little revenge. It's time the devil had his due.

First Line:  "Ignatius Martin Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things."

Random Quote:  "It was early afternoon, the indolent, timeless period that followed lunch and came before people began to show up for their after-work drink.  There were only a few parked cars, belonging, Ig guessed, to the more serious sort of alcoholic."

Review:  I loved Joe Hill's first book, the wonderfully creepy Heart-Shaped Box so I was excited to see he'd written another novel and even more excited to find it at the library so soon after publication. I wish I could say that I liked this, but I just didn't. I struggled with every page until I finally just gave up with about 150 pages to go. I don't usually give up on books and certainly not when I'm so close to finishing, but I just couldn't finish it.

New Hampshire voters - Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I think this has the bones of a good story, but too much of this was just too coarse for me. I'm not generally a prissy person, but I also don't want to read nothing but people referring to each other as "Cumstain" and generally revealing all their darkest secrets to be along the lines of wanting to smear themselves with poo and run naked into traffic while singing show tunes. I'm positive that some people want that, but I bet other people have simpler dark desires - like they want to lock themselves into a closet with a box full of Harlequin romances, or to smack the screaming child at the grocery story - something. I guess I was looking for a little nuance and this just wasn't the book for it.