Billy Coffey's latest book The Curse of Crown Hollow succeeds in eliciting fear from his readers, that's a fact. Maybe it's my time of life now, with facing my own demons, but his book was hard to read. Evil, even only imagined, was very realistically portrayed, and add ignorance to that mix and you have a varied collection of characters. Plus, I'd not recommend it for late-night reading. For me it was that frightening, and I think that's, pretty much, the point.
The story takes place in a Southern town, told in an effective Southern voice with a narrator whose identity is hidden until the end. Four teenagers go to a place on the mountain that's strictly forbidden, are supposedly cursed by one they call the witch, and the rest of the story plays out on the result. Rumors, myths, painful memories, and suddenly-brought-on-illness---all of these situations work together.
I found too many characters to keep up with, and even though each person was described in great detail, they oftentimes meshed together. I had to flip back to remember who a person was in relation to the story.
Coffey's a gifted storyteller, and this book proves it. An entertaining read for the fall, when you want to be scared. And even though The Curse of Crow Hollow is published by a Christian publishing company, I fail to really see many Christian overtones. Subtle at best. Some mild, expected language, which my teenage daughter found offensive, but maybe would be missed by many. I'd recommend it for a more mature, worldly reader.
(i received this book free to review from booklookbloggers)
