Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Heart-Shaped Box
Book Review: Extremely disappointing
Summary: 1 Stars
This book was such a disappointment. I found tedious & repetitive. I found myself waiting for the story to get better.Book Review: Fun read - couldn't put it down
Summary: 5 Stars
I don't usually read horror, and I didn't know Joe Hill's parentage until I read these reviews today. This book gripped me from the first few pages and held on. I loved the characters, found them interesting - more and more likeable as the book progressed.
Hill's style of writing was engaging and original. I never cared for Steven King's books but I liked this one a lot. Try it!
Book Review: Fun weekend read...... not great.
Summary: 3 Stars
"Heart-Shaped Box" by Joe Hill is a suspensefull thriller/horror that will keep you on the edge of your seat (or wherever you read)throughout the novel.
Judas Coyle is an aging divorced rocker (think AC/DC) who has a knack for collecting weird, freaky stuff most normal people would cringe at (Snuff films and the like). While online he buys something marked as "my stepfathers ghost" from a shady seller in the south. When he gets this "ghost", the terror starts and unwinds creepy twists and plot turns that will leave you guessing and actually tug at the old heart strings on a couple of occassions, but there are some parts that will purely scare the hell out of you.
All this praise aside, this novel is a really fun weekend read and that's it. It's nothing you should jump up and buy but if you wanna have some fun with a cool read for a couple of days then pick it up and enjoy.
Book Review: Good First Novel About Rock N' Roll And A Psychotic Ghost.
Summary: 4 Stars
The beginning of this has its creepy and weird moments, but the second half of this one is what really pays off. When you reach page 250, prepare for some really good writing.
When you think about what Joe Hill picked as a premise for his first book-a rock star buys a haunted suit and is then chased by the ghost of it-you realize that he actually picked something hard to make good.
In the world of ghost stories, you can't even count how many there are. I don't care how original the concept is, most of the time, a writer doesn't even want to go near the word ghost. But Joe Hill did, stuck it out, and did a good job for his first time out.
The beginning is a bit slow, setting everything up, but strap yourself in for the last half of the book, which I think is the best.
There are a lot of worse first novels out there. Pick this one up and at least you'll be turning the pages way past your bedtime.
Book Review: Great horror debut
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a scary book. And it's scary on a lot of levels. It's got a couple of those make-you-jump scares, which are easy to do in a movie, not so much in a novel. There are bits that are creepy-scary, gross-scary, just plain weird-scary. And it's also got that nightmarish, unrelenting fear thing going on, when the monster is coming after you and just will not stop. I would not recommend reading this book alone in the house late at night, unless you enjoy freaking yourself out.
The story begins when Jude Coyne, a 50ish rock star with a lot of excess cash and a penchant for collecting the macabre, is intrigued by an offering on an Internet auction. The seller is offering the ghost of her stepfather, Craddock McDermott, which comes attached to the dead guy's suit, and Jude cannot resist. The suit arrives packaged in a black, heart-shaped box, and it soon becomes apparent that the ghost inside the suit is very real, and has an ulterior motive. Jude didn't just purchase this ghost by chance. No, the ghost is also the stepfather of his former way-too-young-for-him groupie girlfriend, who committed suicide after Jude tossed her out, and the ghost wants revenge on Jude and everyone he cares for (or so it seems). As a former hypnotist, the ghost is particularly well-equipped to make Jude and others among the living do exactly what he wants.
It's not long before Jude and his current girlfriend, nicknamed Georgia, flee with Jude's two dogs and the ghost following on their heels in his rattletrap pickup. Jude heads for Florida to confront the living daughter and try to find a way to make the ghost stop. And the story does not let up from there until the end.
The two main characters -- an aging heavy metal star with a rocky past and his much younger, very angsty, Goth girlfriend -- do not seem particularly sympathetic at first. But once it becomes obvious, to them and to the reader, exactly what a horrific situation they are in, they become a lot more human. Hill has the gift: to scare you despite yourself, and to make you care despite how unworthy his characters seem at first.
Most people know by now that Joe Hill is the pseudonym of Joseph King, Stephen King's son, but he is an excellent horror writer in his own right. Although his father's works have clearly influenced him -- as they have any horror writing working today -- Hill's style is much more spare and contemporary than King's, less folksy or likely to wander off on tangents. Where King's books tended to ramble, Heart-Shaped Box just rocks (making Jude's profession particularly apt). If you like a good scare and a good read, you're going to like this book.