The Twilight Pariah - Not What I Expected

TITLE: The Twilight Pariah
AUTHOR: Jeffrey Ford
PUBLISHER: Tor.com
PUBLISHING DATE: September 12, 2017

FROM GOODREADS: All Maggie, Russell, and Henry wanted out of their last college vacation was to get drunk and play archaeologist in an old house in the woods outside of town. When they excavate the mansion's outhouse they find way more than they bargained for: a sealed bottle filled with a red liquid, along with the bizarre skeleton of a horned child

Disturbing the skeleton throws each of their lives into a living hell. They feel followed wherever they go, their homes are ransacked by unknown intruders, and people they care about are brutally, horribly dismembered. The three friends awakened something, a creature that will stop at nothing to retrieve its child.

MY THOUGHTS: I had really high expectations for "The Twilight Pariah" despite seeing some well-trusted bloggers who eluded it didn't quite meet their's. I should have trusted them because I had a really difficult time finishing this novella and it took me forever to read something that shouldn't have taken so long.

Maggie, Russel and Henry are on summer break from college. Maggie has switched her majors (again) and now wants to be an archaeologist so she convinces her friends to start a dig on an abandoned town property - in the outhouse of all places. They eventually stumble upon an scary old skeleton of a baby with horns so Maggie puts it in her trunk so they can figure out what exactly they have found (apparently Maggie doesn't watch horror movies and doesn't know she should leave the dead buried). Following this, a strange apparition appears throughout the home and the town and people end up dying. It's up to Maggie and her friends to figure out what is going on before every one they care about ends up dead.

This book had potential and a good premise but overall I felt it was a tad disjointed. In fact, I kind of felt like I was reading two stories mashed into one. Anyone who has read this book and knows me and my blog will know that I really liked how this "being" was formed (the apparition creature, not the devil baby) but had a hard time connecting that with the baby in the well. I will admit that perhaps I wasn't fully invested in this book as I picked it up on a whim and there were some things going on while reading it that kind of distracted me. That being said, I just expected better. "The Twilight Pariah" is a short read and if you like horror, definitely consider picking it up, just don't set your expectations too high.  

RATING: 3 STARS