After forcing my way through one of the hallmarks of 19th century European literature (voluntarily, no less) I decided I deserved something less fussy, and so I picked Coates (always a reliable plck for moderately scary yet uncomplicated) and Harlan Coben, whom I’d never read before and kept putting off because people were giving me high expectations.
Let me preface this by saying I’m typing this after spending the entire weekend abroad with my students and coherence is not my forte at the moment, so here goes nothing.
The Boy From the Woods (Harlan Coben) ****
Thirty years ago, a young boy was found living alone in the forest. The boy grew up, adjusted well enough, but his parents were never found and his real identity remains unknown.
Decades later, in that same forest, a young girl named Naomi goes missing. Naomi is relentlessly bullied at school and she is assumed to have run away, but Wilde doesn’t trust the situation. With help of attorney, TV show host and Dolores Umbridge if she’d been likable Hester Crimstein, he sets out to discover the truth, but then another child does missing.
I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of this one, in all honesty. The plot seems weirdly convoluted, and I checked a couple of times to see whether this wasn’t a second/third/further part in a series. Aside from that, Coben put me on the wrong track a fair number of times. It’s the characters, however, where the novel really excels, from Wilde himself (a bit too likable, but an interesting guy nonetheless) and the teenagers to Hester, who is a hoot: sweet and bitchy at the same time, competent but not without flaw. And I loved how close all the characters in the novel seemed; no animosity or resentment, the occasionally bickering and telling off, but mostly just respect.
I kept putting off reading Coben’s work because people kept telling me to and that pissed me off, but honestly, I should’ve started much sooner.
Dead Lake (Darcy Coates) ***
Budding artist Sam has been given the opportunity of a lifetime: she’s received an offer from a gallery to expose a series of brand-new paintings. The only problem is that Sam suffers from a chronic lack of inspiration; she’s not getting anything done, and so, when an uncle offers to let her stay in his lakeside cabin for a week, she jumps at the chance, takes all her paint stuff with her and heads off into the remote heartland. But strange things appear in the fog, and why has her uncle told her not to use the dock?
It’s more of the same from Coates. That’s not a complaint. Coates is who I go to when I want to read when I lack focus or energy for anything complicated. Her novels aren’t badly written; just very barebones, clear and vivid. The ending was unsurprising and predictable and a little cloying, but otherwise I enjoyed finding out what new kind of horror her brain has come up with. This one wasn’t my favourite; she has books that were more gripping (Hunted), scarier (Gallows Hill) or more original (From Below), but it was a fun little read to take on when you’re dragging twenty very excited teenagers across the continent, and that was really all that I was asking for.