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The Hunger (November 2018 Pick) - Post Your Reviews Here!
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Here's my review of November's book, The Hunger!
I love the setting of the book, I thought the choice to re-imagine the Donner Party was effective. I assume most of you are familiar with the story of the Donner Party, so there was already a built-in tension when I started the book, knowing how it was going to end. There’s even a built-in understanding of how rough it was to survive in general back then, let alone making a treacherous journey across the country.
There were enough main characters to latch onto, and although some of them were problematic and some of them were just damn annoying, I found something to like or relate to in most of the characters. The biggest problem I had with the characters is that they all had their secrets, furthermore, none of them could just have normal secrets, they were all secrets that were either life-changing or they seemed like they were put into place to show how shitty the human race was and…still…is. There’s one guaranteed story of incest and at least one more implied instance of incest, there’s rape, there are affairs (both heterosexual and homosexual).
It all just felt a bit much, like somehow it wasn’t bad enough that these people had to survive in these horrible conditions against these monsters, but on top of that, we had to read through a lot of (sometimes irrelevant) backstory. I’M SORRY, I SAID IT. This is a spoiler, but I don’t give a rat’s ass that John Reed was gay, or that Tamsen Donner was in love with her brother, or that Charles Stanton’s first love (WHO ISN’T EVEN A PART OF THE DONNER PARTY) killed herself years ago because her dad (AGAIN, NOT PART OF THE DONNER PARTY) got her pregnant. I was getting so annoyed with all the flashbacks, I know they were there to make the characters richer, but what are the odds that all of these people with these dark secrets are all in the same party traveling West. Give me a break. Plus, I felt like all of these flashbacks took away from the monsters and the disease they carry. I wanted more of them, and they took second place after all the family drama.
Overall, the book was creepy and kept reminding me of the dark, true story of the Donner Party, but it fell short in the area that I was most looking forward to, the supernatural aspect.
I love the setting of the book, I thought the choice to re-imagine the Donner Party was effective. I assume most of you are familiar with the story of the Donner Party, so there was already a built-in tension when I started the book, knowing how it was going to end. There’s even a built-in understanding of how rough it was to survive in general back then, let alone making a treacherous journey across the country.
There were enough main characters to latch onto, and although some of them were problematic and some of them were just damn annoying, I found something to like or relate to in most of the characters. The biggest problem I had with the characters is that they all had their secrets, furthermore, none of them could just have normal secrets, they were all secrets that were either life-changing or they seemed like they were put into place to show how shitty the human race was and…still…is. There’s one guaranteed story of incest and at least one more implied instance of incest, there’s rape, there are affairs (both heterosexual and homosexual).
It all just felt a bit much, like somehow it wasn’t bad enough that these people had to survive in these horrible conditions against these monsters, but on top of that, we had to read through a lot of (sometimes irrelevant) backstory. I’M SORRY, I SAID IT. This is a spoiler, but I don’t give a rat’s ass that John Reed was gay, or that Tamsen Donner was in love with her brother, or that Charles Stanton’s first love (WHO ISN’T EVEN A PART OF THE DONNER PARTY) killed herself years ago because her dad (AGAIN, NOT PART OF THE DONNER PARTY) got her pregnant. I was getting so annoyed with all the flashbacks, I know they were there to make the characters richer, but what are the odds that all of these people with these dark secrets are all in the same party traveling West. Give me a break. Plus, I felt like all of these flashbacks took away from the monsters and the disease they carry. I wanted more of them, and they took second place after all the family drama.
Overall, the book was creepy and kept reminding me of the dark, true story of the Donner Party, but it fell short in the area that I was most looking forward to, the supernatural aspect.
I agree with a lot of your points. I was not a fan of this story and REALLY pushed myself to finish since I hate abandoning books. Compared to other books, this wasn't creepy to me at all which was very disappointing. And yes, too much back story, not enough creepiness and scary action. I hate feeling like I wasted valuable reading time, but that's what happened with this one. :-(
Just a reminder, as we are finishing up November (which flew by, holy crap), I'll be posting my video review of The Hunger on my channel on Wednesday. I'll be filming tomorrow (Tuesday), so if you want to be included in the video, post your review of this month's read here!
If not, no worries, post your review whenever you finish! :)