Sunday, January 15, 2023

All Hallows by Christopher Golden


 With the 80's nostalgia of Stranger Things, this horror drama from NYT bestselling author Christopher Golden follows neighborhood families and a mysterious, lurking evil on one Halloween day.


It’s Halloween night, 1984, in Coventry, Massachusetts, and two families are unraveling. Up and down the street, horrifying secrets are being revealed, and all the while, mixed in with the trick-or-treaters of all ages, four children who do not belong are walking door to door, merging with the kids of Parmenter Road. Children in vintage costumes with faded, eerie makeup. They seem terrified, and beg the neighborhood kids to hide them away, to keep them safe from The Cunning Man. There’s a small clearing in the woods now that was never there before, and a blackthorn tree that doesn’t belong at all. These odd children claim that The Cunning Man is coming for them...and they want the local kids to protect them. But with families falling apart and the neighborhood splintered by bitterness, who will save the children of Parmenter Road?




As a Halloween loving horror fan who grew up in the 80s, I was giddy with excitement over the description of this book. Pair that with the fact that the setting is a fictional town called Coventry as I sat here reading it from my home in an actual town called Coventry and the anticipation was almost more than my little dark heart could handle.
I love holiday themed horror, especially when that holiday is Halloween. So I wondered, could All Hallows possibly live up to my expectations? 
YES! This is my first 5 star read of the year. 

A perfect blend of nostalgia, realism and the supernatural collide on Parmenter Road where the nice guys, the racists, the bigots, and the hypocrites coexist as neighbors. There were characters I loved and characters I loved to hate. I felt like this could be any town in 1980s New England including my own. In the midst of The neighborhood Haunted Woods attraction, and the annual Halloween festivities, something uninvited stirs on this special night when the veil is thin. A doorway opens and something comes through to crash the party. As marriages crumble and friendships are tested, peculiar children not of this world walk this final October Eve, blending in with the trick-or-treaters, and begging for help.  Not all will survive the night.

My thanks to St. Martin's Press




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