Finished: 10/17/2019

Frank calls himself ugly, but is also clearly socially awkward too. His story starts out happy enough when he falls in love and starts dating the flower girl down the street. It’s when he gets mixed up with some drug dealers that his life goes sour quickly.

The tone of this book is a lot of fun despite hor dark it is. Strand knows how to pack a lot of character into Frank’s voice and it’s a fun, compelling read.

As things go bad for Frank, the action picks up, and you’re cheering him on through dangerous and violent decisions. Finally the book ends on some gruesome body horror that I ultimately had to skip through.

Although I’m not a fan of body horror, that’s ultimatelyl not what made me knock a star off this book, it was for a very different reason that I’ll explain with…

SPOILERS START

(Highlight the white space below to read them.)

Abigail grew on me as a strong, reasonable woman and even when she’s kidnapped, she doesn’t lose herself. However when she is ultimately killed, I was frustrated because she was the only woman in the book. When it happened “off screen” though, that only made it worse for me. For the rest of the book she’s the reasoning for all of Frank’s actions, and I wanted to at least hear what her last words to him would have been.

SPOILERS END

Despite this and the body horror, this was a good book. If you’re not a stickler for these details like I am and you love a book with multiple horror facets, I think you’ll love this read! For readers who love dark, bloody horror alongside humor and fun movie references, this is definitely the book for you!

My Overall Rating: 4/5