Screams Your Hear
Author: James Morris
Published: January 8th, 2018
Book Length: 275 Pages (Kindle edition)
Genre: Young Adult, Horror, Suspense
Buy the Book: Amazon
Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Disclaimer: I was given an e-copy from the author in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.
Murder and madness infect a small town
For sixteen-year-old Ruthie Stroud, life on tiny Hemlock Island in the Pacific Northwest is an endless sea of boring green, in a place where everybody knows everybody’s business and nothing ever happens. Then her world is ripped apart when her parents divorce and a new man enters her mother’s life. But worse is yet to come.
When she drifts ashore on the mainland, hideously burned, Ruthie has a harrowing tale to tell. It begins with the murder of a family. It ends with her being the sole survivor of a cataclysm that sweeps her little island. As a detective attempts to unravel Ruthie’s story of murder and madness, only one horrifying conclusion can be drawn: whatever was isolated on remote Hemlock Island may now have come to the mainland. Is Ruthie safe? Is anyone?
As usual, I always begin my review with my opinion of the cover. Though it is said “don’t judge a book by its cover,” but that is the first thing that a reader looks at when I really enjoy this cover. It is dark and ominous but shows aspects of the story. The island and Ruthie. I love how the two images are combined.
Let me begin by saying this is a secret gem! Get your hands on a copy and enjoy it as soon as you can. Screams You Hear switches between the present in the hospital and the past on Hemlock Island. Ruthie Stroud is merely a teenager but has lived through one of the most horrifying events I have read about in a long time. Told from her point of view, we learn exactly what occurred on that small island, population 600. This novel is full of suspenseful horror, but no sex that would give it a category title of any other than young adult. I read my first Stephen King novel before I was even a teenager. This runs along the lines of his work, an edge of your seat gripping and terrifying.
The reader is thrown into the story right away. Ruthie is conscious in the hospital, covered in bandages. She desperately battles the urge to see herself after these horrifying events. She tells her story to Detective Perez of the Washington Police and it unfolds in front of the reader effortlessly. The descriptive details in this novel were amazing. The traumatizing events are recanted with extreme graphic detail. I felt I was with Ruthie, experiencing these events as they were recanted to the Detective.
The character development here relies heavily upon teenage angst, giving many young adult readers something to relate to. The feeling of isolation and lack of control in life is common among many teens, but pair that with living in a small town where everyone knows everything about everyone else…that is an entirely new layer of isolation and lack of control. I grew up like that, in a small town…we had more cows than people. I could relate to these characters and feel why Ruthie felt trapped and only wanted to escape Hemlock Island.
Since the story takes place in modern times, there is no need for extreme world building. There is, however, a wonderful pace to this plot. This is a book that will keep you up late at night, turning pages, yearning to discover what really happened on Hemlock Island. There is a huge, and I mean really huge, plot twist at the end of the book. I never saw it coming. I actually said “Oh my God!!” out loud when I read about it. It is a shocking turn of events.
This was my first time reading James Morris’ work and it will not be my last. He now has a new fan! Grab yourself a copy fo this hidden horror gem. I am grateful to have been given a free copy to review, I not only read a great book but discovered an amazing author in the process.
Have you read this novel? Does it sound like something you would enjoy? Let me know what you think below.