Jeremy Bates

I would place this solidly between the suspense and horror genres. It may not be everybody’s cup of tea, some may find it simplistic or to B-movie-ish in plot and dialogue. Nevertheless, as simplistic as it comes across, its character development feels sufficiently constructed the plot how no holes. If you like foreign places, especially Japan, then you may find some points of interests and localities about the country which are descriptive and well-chosen. There are interpersonal conflicts within the group of travelers that are believable and kindle ones interest .
Overall, the characters and their interactions make sense and I found myself wondering how they would make it out of the eponymous suicide forest.… (plus d'informations)

I inherited a stack of these “World’s Scariest Places” books from my late uncle, so, I decided to check one of them out. I should’ve judged them by their cover. First off, these are NOT HORROR. They are thrillers with an atmosphere reminiscent of horror. I kept reading because of the atmosphere the author establishes early on, then again, how could he not – using a genuinely creepy real-life location?
However, the plot is virtually non-existent as it comprises entirely of a bunch of unlikeable douches getting together and going to the titular Isle of the Dolls to shoot video and make some money and then start getting picked off by a killer. This could be a setup for a horror novel, but the narrative focus is on the character drama involving a love triangle then when one of the male members is murdered another female member is added to it. The author constantly interrupts the narrative with background stories of the jerks in a vain attempt to get the reader to like them. It doesn’t work. In fact, it stops the murder plot dead (pun intended) and is unnecessary as the characters are not that deep at all nor do they need to be.
There is also a parallel narrative running alongside the main one of the origins of the dolls that crowd the island. This is the narrative of poor little Maria which is much more compelling than the main narrative. At least it ties into the main narrative at the very end.
The format makes this shortcoming even worse by fragmenting the main narrative and intertwining it, poorly, with Maria’s parallel narrative, even switching from the protagonist’s (Jack) first-person perspective (definitely used as a hook in the first chapter) to third person when it switches to another character’s perspective for no real reason; not for any plot or narrative reason that I can discern.
The “horror” in this book comes in late (about 100 pages in) and is confined to a stabbed corpse, eye extractions as the killer’s M.O., some slit throats, and squirting arteries; the same thing you can find in crime thrillers and even traditional detective fiction. There is a scene of forced vomit eating by a nun in a catholic orphanage which stuck out to me. However, the only real horror tropes this story steps on are creepy atmosphere and a little gore which is just in a couple of scenes just like a typical thriller. It only gives a schmear of horror styling over its killer by keeping them concealed (badly, but you instantly know Maria’s in the mix) and putting doll nightmares in the characters’ heads as they try to sleep. The main narrative focuses on personal drama and what arises from the current situation. There is no real exploration of fear, terror, or even gore (horror). This work reminds me of something more like a J.A. Jance thriller than anything even remotely related to something like Stephen King (not his biggest fan but I cannot deny he has written plenty of horror novels that live up to that label).
Otherwise, the writing style is very plain and nondescript, the author introduces boob ogling and a sex scene at the most inappropriate times in the narrative (paying off the love triangle drama, blech!). I was hoping for an atmospheric horror novel, but what I got was a disjointed love drama with characters I actively hated. And the “twist” at the end is that the supernatural had nothing to do with what happened at all one of the jerk-holes killed one other jerk-hole because he was an undercover cop and was going to kill all the other jerk-holes to cover that up using Maria (who killed the couple at the beginning due to a violent misunderstanding) as the fall guy. Yawn. This is definitely a twist from a thriller. All the dreams, atmosphere, and setting were all just teasing/red herrings. Sheesh. At least Maria was wearing a doll face mask while wielding her knife, another shallow use of horror imagery in service of a thriller-esque twist. The only positive I can draw from this one is that it does have a great setting and atmosphere drawn from its setting, other than that, I cannot recommend this book. It is wholly meh, just meh, nothing to grab onto, or to hate, or to distinguish it from other standard mainstream pop-lit works.… (plus d'informations)