~ BOOK REVIEW ~ Chosen ~ by R.S. Broadhead
Title: Chosen
Author: R.S.
Broadhead
Genre: Horror
Black eyes. No emotion. No sympathy. Only emptiness.
Piper McAdams’s life was normal. Career? Check. Boyfriend? Check. Friends? Check. One unsettling run in with a homeless man turns everything from normal to terrifying. She begins seeing…things.
Things she can’t seem to explain or make any sense.
As if things aren’t already getting out of hand, Piper receives news that the only family member she has is dead. She thinks maybe a trip across the country to her hometown will get her away from all the strange events happening.
After a late night accident, Piper isn’t in her hometown burying her loved one. She’s in a town called Hell. All she wants to do is leave, but the people seem to be holding her there for some reason.
A reason she feels threatens her life. Around every corner things become darker and scarier.
Can she escape what is coming for her?
Piper McAdams’s life was normal. Career? Check. Boyfriend? Check. Friends? Check. One unsettling run in with a homeless man turns everything from normal to terrifying. She begins seeing…things.
Things she can’t seem to explain or make any sense.
As if things aren’t already getting out of hand, Piper receives news that the only family member she has is dead. She thinks maybe a trip across the country to her hometown will get her away from all the strange events happening.
After a late night accident, Piper isn’t in her hometown burying her loved one. She’s in a town called Hell. All she wants to do is leave, but the people seem to be holding her there for some reason.
A reason she feels threatens her life. Around every corner things become darker and scarier.
Can she escape what is coming for her?
~My Review~
5 out of 5 stars!
Holy heart racer, Batman!! Let me come clean first off that I am a
huge, HUGE chicken. I rarely read horror
stories. But there are some authors that
write them so well, I just can’t help but read them anyway. Stephen King, of course, is the first that
comes to mind for me. However, forever and always, R.S. Broadhead will ALWAYS
be right up at the top with him! I’m a very quick reader, generally. This book
took me at least a week longer than I expected.
Why? See the aforementioned HUGE chicken – and I’m a night reader. I have family, busy kids, responsibilities,
blah, blah, blah. So my review reading
time is almost always at night. But with
this book, it was SO HARD. First of all, from the very beginning of the book,
you learn dark = bad. Very, very bad. Second, the gasping, profanity yelping
(and sometimes out loud laughter at the main character’s choice of profanity
statements), etc. make it difficult to be a quiet reader while everyone else is
sleeping.
Beyond my super chickenness, you will notice I still finished the
book, and gave it a resounding 5 stars.
Why? Because for the 4th time now (I HIGHLY recommend her 3
books in the Realms of Darkness Series as well), this author HOOKED me – scared
or not. The detail alone was IN-CREDIBLE. I’m pretty good at visualizing what I read, but
with her writing there was no effort needed in visualizing even the parts that
I can only describe as completely insane, freaky, and what you would normally
think of as unimaginable. Think of the
super crazy things that you see happen in a horror film, and wonder how a
writer could even begin to describe what is happening in that scene – THESE are
the scenes she wrote completely flawlessly!
Any screenwriters out there looking for a good, original horror
flick? You’re going to want to read this
one. She already did all the work for
you! Every bit of this book played out like an absolutely horrifying movie in
my head. AND I LOVED IT.
Beyond how incredible the writing is, and how gripping the story
is, it’s hard to say much more without giving something away. The description of the book is about all you can
say about the story without giving something good away – but this is a good
thing! This means that the majority of what’s happening are the twists, turns
and shockers that add to the horror and just how distressing the situation is
that Piper is in. This poor, poor girl
had very few shining light moments in this book. BUT I truly believed this is what added to
the story. I really like that she goes
from pretty mousy, scared of her own shadow – and the dark for good reason – to
slowly building into someone that wasn’t going down without a fight, if she was
going down at all. The big question up
to the very last second of the book is ‘Does it matter? IS there a way for her
to win?!’
I would imagine there will be a lot of discussion on whether
people liked the ending or not. Although
my reaction to it was extreme (and I won’t say if that means happy ending, sad
ending, or anywhere in the middle), I will say that I normally may not have
liked it, but in this case, I DID. Very, very much. It was a series of surprises, where you
thought that was it, and there would be no more surprises, but there were – and
they were GOOD. I’m still fully reeling
from SO MANY THINGS in this book, and I have no doubt that this is a book that
will forever stick with me. The bigger
surprise? I only give 5 stars to books I would read again. I mentioned my chickenness, right? The fact
that I know how it ends changes NOTHING about how scary reading it is – it’s
the super creepy, nightmare creating things that happen throughout that make it
scary. But yes, I would still read it again!
I can’t say enough -- without giving things away -- about how well
written this book was, other than by saying that she describes in perfect,
horrifying detail things that seemingly can’t be described. Even if you’re not normally a horror fan; if
you’re just a fan of a well written book (like me), I highly recommend this
book to ALL readers. I can’t wait to see what she has next for us – that I will
probably have to read during the day again!
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