Point Pleasant
by Jen Archer Wood
Horror with some M/M romance elements
4 Stars
Blurb:
Ben Wisehart grew up in the idyllic town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. An early encounter with the supernatural shaped his worldview and served as the catalyst for his career as a bestselling horror writer.
Ben left Point Pleasant at the age of twenty. Thirteen years after abandoning his home, he returns to the town to investigate the apparent reemergence of the terrifying creature responsible for his childhood nightmares.
In Point Pleasant, Ben is confronted not only by the town’s resident monster, the Mothman, but also by Nicholas Nolan, Ben’s former best friend. Together, with Bill Tucker—the old recluse who lives on the edge of town—Ben and Nicholas uncover the mystery of the monster in the woods and discover that the ghosts that haunt us are sometimes made of flesh and blood. And sometimes, they lead us home.
Review:
Thirteen years ago Ben Wisehart left his home town of Point Pleasant after he had his heart broken by his best friend, Nicholas, who had just announced his engagement. In love with Nic for years, Ben admitted his feelings, only to be rejected and have them crushed to nothing.
He's made a life for himself in Boston as a horror writer under the pen name Preston James but his next book isn't flowing as well as he'd like. As a child, he and Nic had been chased through the woods by the town's resident monster, what the inhabitants had taken to calling the Mothman. Perhaps there is a story there, so Ben decided to return home and find out all he can about this creature.
Reading through the town's newspaper archives, he discovers old photos and it seems the monster had appeared every time before some sort of disaster. But what was really happening? Is it an omen of bad news? Or is it actually causing all these deaths?
What he hadn't counted on was the town's open hostility towards him and even Nicholas, now the sheriff, doesn't seem to want anything to do with him. But strange things are happening in the town and they need to work together to find out what the creature in the wood really is and what it wants.
This was an interesting, engaging novel with vividly drawn characters and quite a few twists.
What was strange for me, was how long the chapters were. For such a long novel, there were only about six chapters, which seemed odd. It made the book drag a bit, even though there were lots of exciting things happening. Shorter chapters could have prevented that.
The romance between Ben and Nic seemed to happen quite fast, considering most of the book took place over about two weeks. It was very introspective, most of it from Ben's point of view and so we only got Ben's view of the other characters. I would have liked to have been in Nic's head for some of it, to see how he really felt.
There were some tense, scary moments, but all in all it's a book about the characters, how they feel, how they cope with the things that life throws at them, love, loss and everything in between. Ben is very sympathetic and easy to relate to and despite the fast moving romance, you want him and Nic to have their happily ever after.
There were some illustrations in the book, but I couldn't really see them very well on my Kindle Keyboard, they probably look a lot better in the print version :)
An enjoyable read.
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