My Rating
Delighted to be part of the BLOG TOUR for The Girl In The Corn by Jason Offutt.
Good Vs Evil has never been more apocalyptic!
Thomas Cavanaugh is just 6 years old when waking up one day wanders into the cornfield in search of his mother and meets The Girl In The Corn, believing her to be a fairy. We then meet Thomas at age 10 seeing the fairy again, following her into a parallel world facing the Daudr and almost dying in the process. Simultaneously the author introduces Robert Garrett, Bobby who is 14 yrs old having dark dreams about a farm, dogs, and monsters ordering him to kill. As all the three central protagonists fall into place and their roles established, the action begins with excellent backup from supporting characters.
Jason Offutt’s The Girl In The Corn is a creepy horror fiction that mixes up a lot of genres brilliantly. Thomas’s journey from a young boy to adulthood and the realization of a dark force waiting to devour the world uses fantasy elements like fae and fairies and further blends into science fiction to produce a deeply unsettling and brutal thriller. There is a boatload of images that the author draws to satisfy the cravings of any horror fiction fan chiefly the girl with the lizard teeth but that never caused any impact on me. What did terrify me was how Jason Offutt creates these vivid and descriptive violent scenes of murder and gore thru Bobby who is frankly speaking one of the most horrifying antagonists that I have read about in recent times.
So that brings me to a minor complaint in this story, the characterization of Thomas. He is much more appreciable as a young boy but as his adult self, Thomas comes across as weaker and not hero mode enough. Yes, we do root for him to go on and finally succeed and I did feel this was probably a deliberate tactic by the author as like Thomas the readers are left wondering about THE GIRL IN THE CORN. Is she good or a monster as Sherriff Boyd believes whose experiences are anything but favorable! As readers are made aware of the mayhem that is running behind the scenes of Thomas’s view, Jillian evolves as larger than life and gives clarity to why the title of the story is what it is. Bobby’s change into a monster is sudden and it left me feeling flabbergasted as to how the switch happened but the author clearly sketches his deterioration into a cruel psychopath, a true vessel for the evil to feed on.
An ingenious and cleverly plotted concoction, The Girl In The Corn oozes terror.
Many thanks to BlackThorn Book Tours, and the author for a chance to read and review this book. All opinions are expressed voluntarily.
Beware of what lurks in the corn.
Fairies don’t exist. At least that’s what Thomas Cavanaugh’s parents say. But the events of that one night, when he follows a fairy into the cornfield on his parents’ farm, prove them wrong. What seems like a destructive explosion was, Thomas knows, an encounter with Dauðr, a force that threatens to destroy the fairy’s world and his sanity.
Years later, after a troubled childhood and a series of dead-end jobs, he is still haunted by what he saw that night. One day he crosses paths with a beautiful young woman and a troubled young man, soon realizing that he first met them as a kid while under psychiatric care after his encounters in the cornfield. Has fate brought them together? Are they meant to join forces to save the fairy’s world and their own? Or is one of them not who they claim to be?
JASON OFFUTT writes books. He is best known for science fiction, such as his humorous So You Had to Build a Time Machine and his end-of-the-world zombie novel Bad Day for the Apocalypse (a curious work that doesn’t include zombies), his paranormal non-fiction like Chasing American Monsters (that does), and his book of humor How to Kill Monsters Using Common Household Objects. He teaches university journalism, cooks for his family, and wastes much of his writing time trying to keep the cat off his lap. You can find more about Jason at his website, http://www.jasonoffutt.com.
There are no pictures of his cat Gary, and it serves him right.
Twitter: @TheJasonOffutt
Instagram: @thejasonoffutt
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Sounds suitably hair-raising!
The violence really got me this time, Noelle😱😱😱