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A review by justinkhchen
The Bonus Room by Ben H. Winters
4.0
3.75 stars
A chaotic horror experience, The Bonus Room is overall effective, if tonally inconsistent, starting out as a quiet psychological horror, but in its last act flips the script 180, becoming a campy, visceral, in-your-face creature horror. Losing some threads and abandoning logic along the way, I can see readers be annoyed by this sudden switcheroo and lack of a proper lead-up, but I was in the mood for something unhinged, and this fit the bill perfectly.
Post-reading, I found out The Bonus Room is actually a re-titled re-release of Bedbugs from 2011; which may explained why even with Ben H. Winters being a relatively established author, there was so little buzz about this from earlier this year.
Intentional or not, The Bonus Room reminds me of schlocky, low-budget horror films from the 80s, the unheard-of kind you stumble upon on the shelves of video rental stores. Not the most polished, but packs a punch and have nifty ideas buried among its rough patches If you're in the mood for something a little bombastic and not at all caring about nuances (I got the same 'vibe' from this as The Stranger Upstairs by Lisa M. Matlin), this short novel is worth checking out.
A chaotic horror experience, The Bonus Room is overall effective, if tonally inconsistent, starting out as a quiet psychological horror, but in its last act flips the script 180, becoming a campy, visceral, in-your-face creature horror. Losing some threads and abandoning logic along the way, I can see readers be annoyed by this sudden switcheroo and lack of a proper lead-up, but I was in the mood for something unhinged, and this fit the bill perfectly.
Post-reading, I found out The Bonus Room is actually a re-titled re-release of Bedbugs from 2011; which may explained why even with Ben H. Winters being a relatively established author, there was so little buzz about this from earlier this year.
Intentional or not, The Bonus Room reminds me of schlocky, low-budget horror films from the 80s, the unheard-of kind you stumble upon on the shelves of video rental stores. Not the most polished, but packs a punch and have nifty ideas buried among its rough patches If you're in the mood for something a little bombastic and not at all caring about nuances (I got the same 'vibe' from this as The Stranger Upstairs by Lisa M. Matlin), this short novel is worth checking out.