"When you think back on watching L'etrange Lune, how do you remember it?"

The above question--a The Star and the Strange Moon-adapted quote from I Saw the TV Glow--sprang to mind while reading this book, because the novel and my favorite movie of 2024 indeed share overlap. Both explore cult fascination with a piece of media and what the fixation says about the watcher more than what's being watched, and both L'etrange Lune and The Pink Opaque aren't what Christopher and Owen think they are at first. Truthfully, if I had to describe The Star... to someone, I'd pitch it as "TV Glow without the trans stuff: a creepy interaction between someone and the story they love, and their desire to use it to fill a missing center."

The core difference is that The Star lets us spend way more time inside the horror itself with Gemma. The book could be accused of being a little slow to start, but this to me is a necessary investment on two fronts: Gemma's opening stretches ground us in her character so that we're able to follow her once the story's off to the races, and damn near everything present there comes back again. One of my favorite things about this book is the way it absolutely nails set-up and payoff.

The other favorites are that it's just suited to my taste. The atmosphere, the setting, the use of monsters, time loops, dreamscapes, the projections of an inner mind...all deeply my shit.

 Thanks to Redhook and NetGalley for providing me an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and feedback are my own. 

I've read a few horror books about media gone awry recently (Silver Nitrate, Mister Magic, etc.), but I've never heard of one with this exact premise. And I really did like the premise. I thought the concept of having to act your way out of a horror movie in a Groundhog Day-type manner was riveting, and the fact that the film with the new additions was shown every couple of years was very eerie.

For the most part, I enjoyed the execution! I loved the Gothic atmosphere, the slow burn, the twists that the audience was given. I will say it was probably 50-100 pages too long. However, the thing I liked most was the evolution of the relationship between Christopher and Gemma. It felt reminiscent of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue for a couple reasons (and I loved that book).

The biggest disservice to this book is marketing it as a horror; it is absolutely not. This is a fantasy historical fiction with a touch of romance. The backdrop / inciting incident is the filming of a horror movie, but I feel like describing it as a horror book closes it off to a potentially wider audience who would enjoy this book. While there are certainly a few horror/Gothic elements to the plot, I wouldn't let that characterization dissuade you from looking into this book.

Overall, an interesting premise executed very well, and I look forward to seeing what Sayers comes out with in the future.