Off Season by Jack Ketchum

Off Season by Jack Ketchum
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Time taken to read - 1 day

Pages - 308

Publisher - 47 North

Source - Bought

Blurb from Goodreads

September. A beautiful New York editor retreats to a lonely cabin on a hill in the quiet Maine beach town of Dead River—off season—awaiting her sister and friends. Nearby, a savage human family with a taste for flesh lurks in the darkening woods, watching, waiting for the moon to rise and night to fall...

And before too many hours pass, five civilized, sophisticated people and one tired old country sheriff will learn just how primitive we all are beneath the surface...and that there are no limits at all to the will to survive.




My Review

Think Wrong Turn meets The Hill Have Eyes meets House of 1000 Corpses, a pinch of each and you get the vibes for Off Season. This is NOT for the faint hearted or easily offended and this version is "The Author's Uncut, Uncensored Version so if you have read the other version this has more bokey OMGness. Carla has rented a wee cabin, out the way of town on a hill next to a beach type town, off season. Her sister, lover and pals are coming up to join her, she has no idea she i being watched by savage killers, killers who murder for joy, pleasure and food!

The opening chapter gives a taster for what is coming, a women is brutalised by weans of this group and it really kicks off from there. We get to know the city folk who come to the cabin for some fun and then all hell breaks loose and it is just murder, carnage, blood drenching, stomach turning horror.

The killers are actual savages, they live in the wild, other living beings are for their use, pleasure, consumption. The descriptions are graphic, gorey and manky in some parts, again think of the three movies I mentioned and you know what you are in for. Torture, abuse (sexual and the violent), animal abuse/deaths, human torture, I think the book hits just about everything on the list.

For the other movies I wanted a police presence and or more if they were in it, this book offers a bit of that. This is only my second book by this author, again he is not for the faint hearted from what I have read. If you like your horror shocking, bloody, dodgy depraved killers ooft this is your book. I grew up on horror but even parts of this made me wince, he paints very vivid pictures, probably best not to eat whilst reading this one, 4/5 for me.

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