This was so-so. I liked the concept of a cult-like town in middle america unknown to the outside world. And the idea that 3 kids stumble into this town and the strange things that happen there. But what I didn't like was the ending. Even with the epilogue, we don't find out what happens to one of the characters so I am left feeling like it wasn't finished.

Joseph just disappeared and we don't find out what happens? That is frustrating that the whole story was based around Joseph wanting out of the town and using Dee to do so only to not find out the end of his story.

Tja, waarom heb ik dit uitgelezen... Geen flauw idee eigenlijk. Op alle fronten teleurstellend, het einde nog het meest. Ik kwam er pas na het lezen achter dat het eigenlijk binnen het horror-genre viel. Geloof me, als ik als überwatje er geen horror in vind zitten, dan zit het er echt niet in...

Their car breaks down on the side of the road... okay, so more than a few horror movies start this way and if you like those movies, you'll probably like this book! It's entertaining and creepy, and scary mostly on a psychological level but with bits of gore tossed in. A few scenes felt a little over-the-top, but that did contribute to the creepiness.

Possibly my favorite thing about it was that only after the end did I realize what happened to the car!

As I mentioned recently, I'm on the lookout for solid YA horror to hand to my kids, particularly when they've got gore on the brains in October. So far, I've found very little that I can recommend wholeheartedly.

Perhaps part of the problem is that if teens really want gory, horrifying stuff, they'll probably just head over to adult or watch a movie. I'm not saying that's a perfect solution, but it is a common situation. Horror books featuring teens and written with a teen audience in mind are not very common. I've read more adult-oriented books with teen or tween protagonists--one that comes to my mind is the most excellent Wink. So-called teen scream books just aren't popular in the collective consciousness like they were when Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer made a splash in the late 90s.

I've been trying to request more galleys of YA horror in thehopes of finding something that I can happily recommend. I may have to stick with just spooky, like the excellent Lockwood & Co. series by Jonathan Stroud, or Constable and Toop by Gareth Jones. My latest foray into horror with the book Creed by Trisha Leaver and Lindsay Currie gave me high hopes at first, and then dashed them on the pointy rocks of Unbelievably Over-the-Top Villainy.

Creed begins with three teens going to a concert. Dee, her boyfriend Luke, and his brother Mike, are headed away for a secret weekend celebration of Dee and Luke's anniversary. Dee's backstory is actually really interesting and felt promising: she was placed in foster care after her father was thrown in jail for abuse. She doesn't trust men in general, but she's finally come to trust Luke. Mike is there because ... Dee can't lie or some lame excuse like that.

Anyway, they take a shortcut (Bad Idea 1), stop for Twinkies (Bad Idea 2--those suckers don't disintegrate!), and forget to buy gas, which is not just a Bad Idea but also a whaaaat? situation. It would have been more believable had they blown a tire or found out that someone had poured sand in their gas tank whilst buying Twinkies or something. Anything other than "I forgot to buy gas." Especially when Dee pipes in that her new family always makes her fill up the car after every trip. This was so unbelievable that I may have groaned in pain. That sets the theme for all of their subsequent decisions: stupidity.

Instead of hunkering down in the car (point: there's no heat / counterpoint: there are three of them and they can definitely generate heat, plus there's clothes in the trunk), they get out and start walking in a winter storm toward where they think a town might be. Mike grabs a tire iron, which is probably the most sensible thing anyone does in this book. As they walk through the abandoned town of Purity Springs, the only sound is the emergency siren. The streets, homes, and shops are utterly deserted. There's also a particularly effective creepy-graveyard-scene, which made me think, "Hey, maybe this would be okay. I hope aliens show up."

Dangit. No aliens. After sleeping in one of the cookie-cutter houses on a cookie-cutter street, Dee wakes up to find that Luke has gone foraging in the night and found a fundamentalist discipline manual in every single house. It advocates serious beatings and blood-letting to release evil and so on. A boy named Joseph just sort of shows up and claims to a) want to escape because b) his father is evil and going to hurt his sister. The Three Wise Men say, "Gee golly, let's go with this guy because we have no other choice!"

Yep, they leave the tire iron behind.



As it turns out, the town of Purity Springs is run by Joseph's father, who is flat-out insane and has somehow managed to a) convince an entire town to beat their children and wives to death in order to save their souls and b) not show up on any map or garner any attention from the authorities. Literally no one in the outside world knows what's going on. Of course he captures them and tortures them and blah blah blah. That's where I quit--52% of the way in (or out). The multitude of bad decisions made my brain hurt.

I *think* they were trying to go for a Stephen King vibe here, what with the isolated winter setting, the madman, and the depressing denouement. However, King's works thrive on the meticulous crafting of the characters. Here, the characters are flat and boring. I didn't care about any of them.

So, if you want to write a YA horror novel, please don't:

Make your characters stupid
Make your characters boring
Use a cliché villain and blame it all on AHH RELIGIOUS FANATICISM!
Let them forget the tire iron

I received an ARC of this title from Netgalley and the publisher.

I do oils not recommend this book. The plot does have a lot of potential to be a good book but It fell way to short.I don’t like the book for a couple of reasons, first the characters the girl is someone that when threw some trauma growing up and it’s understandable how she acted with her boy friend but I think it was exaggerated too much. Secondly even after they went threw everything the little girl they were trying to save didn’t even want to leave witch is ver frustrating even when all the evil her father is doing she didn’t want to see it. Lastly when they were saved nothing happened the people who tried to kill them or marry them by forced because the police from the town didn’t believe them. The story could have gone a different direction it would have been better.

*eARC kindly provided by Flux via NetGalley*
*Review can be found at The Fox's Hideaway.


My Review!
You know those horror films where you know something is going to happen but you can't stop it? You know that the characters are walking straight into danger and you can't warn them but you want to? You just have to sit there, knowing full well that the shit's going to hit the fan, but no matter how much you yell at the characters to turn around and dear God go back the way you came you idiots, you have to let it happen. That's pretty much how I felt while reading Creed. It was like a B rated horror movie, with the dumbass teenagers who do everything possible to put themselves into danger when you know that none of this would have happened if they'd listened to their instincts and used common sense in the first place.

It's not like this book was bad. In fact, it was extremely creepy, but more so in the beginning. And it's a "horror" novel, so it's not like I expected a different outcome. It wasn't supposed to be about smart teens who know which path to choose that won't destroy their lives and possibly kill them. It was an entertaining read that just reminds me why I should listen to my gut when it comes to signs of danger. And no matter how much I cringed at the stupidity and ridiculous theatrics, I couldn't stop reading it.

This book had me completely gripped in the beginning. It sunk its claws into me, with an interesting main character and two boys who probably shouldn't have been making the decisions. I was sucked in by the writing style and the way Dee was telling the story. At first, I found her to be a balanced mix of strength and vulnerability, but where that strength and courage went throughout the story, I have no idea. She was tough, in part because of her "tragic" childhood (which should make me sympathize, but honestly it was hard to connect with her). But I wanted more character development. Since this was such a fast read and more about what was happening, it left all the characters and their relationships barely developed. And that's okay, considering what type of story this was. But I did want more from them. I think that would have made the direction this story went have more of an impact on me. Because the way everything played out just made me not really care what happened to the characters.

I think that's mostly in part to how all of it played out. Like I said, this was so creepy in the beginning! I was completely tuned into the scary factor of the story and I couldn't help but be intrigued as the characters made their discoveries and found this little town in the middle of nowhere with a population of 150. But after that, once the characters started coming out of the woodwork and the evil "Elijah Hawkins" showed up, I was less than impressed. I was mostly just outraged by his ridiculous notions and what he did, not scared or even creeped out. And honestly the plot was all over the place and left me feeling disconnected from the characters and not even that concerned about them. There were a few sad parts, but they didn't really impact me.

And although I liked the book, I hated that ending so much. I'm sorry, but that was just ridiculous and felt way out in left field. It made what happened seem trivial, there was no resolution, and the main character totally lost all of her development that she'd had before the start of this book. It left me feeling underwhelmed, annoyed, and angry because I wanted the ending to be more resolved. I didn't care if it wasn't a happy one; I just wanted it to make sense. And it didn't to me.

I think Creed could have been a great horror novel/thriller, but somewhere along the way, it lost the scary factor due to ridiculous theatrics and a story-line that seemed to go nowhere.

Rating: 3 Paw Prints!