Name: Kill Creek
Rating: 3.864285714285714 (70 reviews)
ISBN: 9781942645825

Scott Thomas

A psychological horror with a literary twist, Kill Creek delivers elevated prose, while evoking the unnerving, atmospheric terror essential to greats like Peter Straub and Stephen King—a haunting that lingers long after turning the last page.

Kill Creek

-Shortlisted for the 2017 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel -Winner of the American Library Association's Horror Book of 2017 "Intensely realized and beautifully orchestrated Gothic horror." —Joyce Carol Oates "A match for readers who enjoyed Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House." —Booklist (starred review) At the end of a dark prairie road, nearly forgotten in the Kansas countryside, is the Finch House. For years it has remained empty, overgrown, abandoned. Soon the door will be opened for the first time in decades. But something is waiting, lurking in the shadows, anxious to meet its new guests... When best-selling horror author Sam McGarver is invited to spend Halloween night in one of the country’s most infamous haunted houses, he reluctantly agrees. At least he won’t be alone; joining him are three other masters of the macabre, writers who have helped shape modern horror. But what begins as a simple publicity stunt will become a fight for survival. The entity they have awakened will follow them, torment them, threatening to make them a part of the bloody legacy of Kill Creek.

I greatly enjoyed this book, it was right up my alley. I love the multi-perspective books and this one was easy to follow along. It was somewhat predictable but overall a great read for me 

Beatrice

Date read:  November 25 - December 4, 2019 

 Actual Rating : 2.50 STARS 

I always have a very high standard when it comes to horror books because I just don't get scared easily. I actually read this kind of genre very rarely because I don't want to prevent myself from reading horror just because I get disappointed from what I got to pick. I can't exactly pinpoint what I was looking for in a horror story, but I just know it would be my-standard-good right then and there when I happen to read one. Unfortunately, Kill Creek is not what I was looking for.

It was really hard for me to get through this book. Like, VERY HARD!! I keep on reading with the hopes of it getting better as the story goes on. I got a really mysterious vibes from it at the beginning because of what it seems to be a 'breathing' house. A classic horror house would NEVER lose its charm. But damn, it didn't get better. I was looking for something significant in the story but what I proved is that THERE IS NO POINT! I lost interest halfway of the story and just decided that hey, I already wasted my time, why wouldn't I waste some more? My expectation wears a little thinner the more I spend my time with this book. And before I know it, I already finished it with a great disappointment. It was actually very generous of me to give a 2.50 ratings when I should have rated it lower, all thanks to the actual concept that got me into reading this in the first place. It makes me sad because this book has a really great potential. I just hoped I liked it like most people did. And I just hoped this didn't get me to read horror books rarely than it already has.

Krystyna 

First of all, I will start by saying that this book is Scott Thomas’ debut novel. Oh man, was it intense! This story had me captivated immediately while reading the prologue. While reading this book, it is almost as if a horror film is playing in your head. The descriptions and imagery the author uses makes it so atmospheric you feel that you are right there with the characters. I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed this book as much as I did. I was also surprised that it was so well-done since it is a debut. The author has a great voice and writing style. This book is a haunted house story that would be a perfect read for the fall season, especially around Halloween. 

There are four horror authors that all write different subgenres of horror. They agree to an interview at a notorious haunted house. It was all supposed to be a big publicity stunt but dun dun dun it was so much more than what they bargained for. It eases the reader into the story and then boom, things start to get crazy. This book was definitely a roller coaster of a ride. I don’t want to spoil anything so I am not going to mention anything about the plot in detail but if you like haunted house stories whatsoever, please go read this. 

The characters were great in this story, especially Sebastian. I also liked how T. C. Moore held her own and didn’t take lip from anyone. The pacing of the story was steady; it kept me engaged throughout the novel. However, one of my biggest issues with the book was the author holding the reader’s hand and letting you know what was going to happen beforehand. I know that novels have foreshadowing, especially in thrillers and horror novels, but it is still frustrating at times. I just want to figure it out on my own and be completely surprised. 

Other than that, it was a great book. It was definitely a creepy read and it would be absolutely perfect to read around Halloween. If you like horror and you love haunted houses please pick this one up and try it. Also, while reading this book I found out that Showtime is picking it up and adapting it into an hour long drama. So, I am excited to watch that when it is released. I am excited to see what other books Scott Thomas is going to write. This one was an excellent debut. I highly recommend this one.

This is a book that both made me feel like complete dogshit (good) and like complete dogshit (bad).

Let’s start with the good: The themes and motifs running through the novel are very interesting and I enjoyed the way the character relationships bloomed.

The characters themselves are also very interesting: I started off wanting to hate how one dimensional they were but as they grew they brought their caricature molds to a whole new level.

I’m also a major fan of the writing in general—The book is in many ways for me personally beautifully constructed on a sentence level. It’s the kind of book I really want to look at the structure of, especially with how I flew through it.

There is one scene in specific I can think of and it just entirely messed me up, along with a lot of long-term pay-off and encouragement of puzzling out pieces.

I also just really love the kind of central horror this ended up being. I liked the book for the most part, even if and maybe even because it ended up being wildly different from what I thought I was getting into.

I can already tell the ending of this book is going to be one I think about a lot.

Starting small, I enjoyed the first three parts of the book vastly more than the fourth and fifth, mainly because what I ended up getting was not what I expected and it messed with the impact of the ending for me.

There are also quite a few moments throughout the book where something is said or written that jolted me out of an otherwise compelling read, mostly focused around the characters Slaughter and Moore. There is a lot to be said for the way Slaughter’s weight is handled and the overall writing surrounding Moore, but while I can kind of see at the end why Slaughter’s weight being written like that might have seemed like a good idea and Moore is definitely a character I like, there are pieces of the way Moore is written that are questionable.

If you can go into it however knowing that Slaughter’s handled poorly and Moore very much comes across as a male fantasy of a woman and you’ve read the book description, you’ll probably enjoy it quite a bit. It’s definitely got some interesting things to say that are worth parsing out.

Jules

This is a book that both made me feel like complete dogshit (good) and like complete dogshit (bad).

Let’s start with the good: The themes and motifs running through the novel are very interesting and I enjoyed the way the character relationships bloomed.

The characters themselves are also very interesting: I started off wanting to hate how one dimensional they were but as they grew they brought their caricature molds to a whole new level.

I’m also a major fan of the writing in general—The book is in many ways for me personally beautifully constructed on a sentence level. It’s the kind of book I really want to look at the structure of, especially with how I flew through it.

There is one scene in specific I can think of and it just entirely messed me up, along with a lot of long-term pay-off and encouragement of puzzling out pieces.

I also just really love the kind of central horror this ended up being. I liked the book for the most part, even if and maybe even because it ended up being wildly different from what I thought I was getting into.

I can already tell the ending of this book is going to be one I think about a lot.

Onto the less good.

Starting small, I enjoyed the first three parts of the book vastly more than the fourth and fifth, mainly because what I ended up getting was not what I expected and it messed with the impact of the ending for me.

There are also quite a few moments throughout the book where something is said or written that jolted me out of an otherwise compelling read, mostly focused around the characters Slaughter and Moore. There is a lot to be said for the way Slaughter’s weight is handled and the overall writing surrounding Moore, but while I can kind of see at the end why Slaughter’s weight being written like that might have seemed like a good idea and Moore is definitely a character I like, there are pieces of the way Moore is written that are questionable.

If you can go into it however knowing that Slaughter’s handled poorly and Moore very much comes across as a male fantasy of a woman and you’ve read the book description, you’ll probably enjoy it quite a bit. It’s definitely got some interesting things to say that are worth parsing out.

sophia n

* 4.5 stars

SO MUCH FUN OH MY GOD WHAT A RIDE

Sonja H

Da ich jedes Jahr an einer Bloghalloweenaktion teilnehme, bin ich immer auf der Suche nach gruseligen Büchern, am liebsten solche, die ein Spukhaus beinhalten.

Dieses Spukhaus bekommen wir in diesem Buch. Es ist ein wirklich gruseliger Ort, der für die Figuren so einige unschöne Überraschungen bietet.
Hier wird auch die Stärke des Autors deutlich: Er versteht es, ein atmosphärisches und überzeugendes Setting zu erschaffen.

Das war’s dann aber auch schon mit den guten Seiten der Geschichte…

Die Handlung selbst braucht recht lang, bis sie in Gang kommt, ist zwar stark überzogen, aber das gehört wohl zu einer Horrorstory dazu.

Was wirklich, wirklich extrem schlecht und noch zudem extrem sexistisch ist, ist die Darstellung der Charaktere. Wow, was haben wir hier für männerphantasiegetriebene Frauenfiguren! Eine ist eine Gespielin eines wichtigen Mannes, eine ist ein „Sex-Vamp-Proll“ mit derber Sprache.
Scott Thomas reduziert Frauen komplett auf ihre Optik und Fähigkeit als Sexpartnerinnen.
Seine Männer kommen etwas besser weg und haben wesentlich mehr Anteil am Geschehen, sind aber recht eindimensional und Machos.

Ich habe schon bessere Groschenromane gelesen als das hier.

„Kill Creek“ ist ein Roman von einem Chauvinisten für Chauvinisten, anders lässt sich das nicht beschreiben.

Patti Reinheimer

Atmospheric horror with a fun premise and interesting characters. Truly creepy and thoroughly enjoyable.

Tayler Park

It dragged half way through out the book so I was originally planning to rate it 3 because it got really slow but the ending boosted it up to a 4.

Insiya Ghadiali

This book is about four authors who agree to stay a night at a famously haunted house called Kill Creek.
I am not someone that scares easily but kill creek did leave me really unsettled. The atmosphere of this book was so good.
Still it took a little while for me to get into the book. But it hit all the right spots for me.
I'll definitely be reading more from Scott Thomas.

Anastaciya

Eh... 2.5? I don't know. There's some sort of imbalance in the story. We get the tiny bit of info on why the house might be the way it is, but it's buried beneath the stories of the authors... so what's the focus? Nah, it's a bit too messy for me

Witch

4.5 stars
Is this book perfect? Not in the slightest. There are some glaring issues with it, especially with how the women characters are handled. But it is a quick-paced and fun haunted house tale. I couldn't put it down.

Kelsey Holtaway

** spoiler alert **
           I think the last time a book made me this…mad? Disappointed? Was Midnight Sun by Stephanie Meyer and like. Whew. Buckle up. 

I wanted so badly to enjoy this book. I was fully on board with the first few scenes in this book. Excited, even. The history of the house and the lectures on gothic horror were captivating. The first few chapters were a fantastic set up for a dismal 400+ page book. 

First up and most distracting: Your standard “dude writes women characters.” 

The women in this book were props for the men. Most of the women in this book (I think there’s like…three we actually meet but there are more women in this book and yes they all still die for the dudes) die solely to propel the men further in their own portions of the plot. One woman, after she dies, is described by a man by what she did for him, not who she was. She saved him, was kind to him, etc etc, he doesn’t say anything about her that doesn’t relate directly back to him. This treatment of the women characters so common it was distracting. I genuinely don’t think this author knows how to write women in any other way. 

The main woman in this book, Moore, is so over the top, talking and thinking in ways that clearly the author wishes women would talk and think. The over-the-topness transforms Moore into a grotesque caricature of a woman, what the author clearly believes to be a representation of a woman who is a feminist. In the one scene where she is dealing with a more direct sexist situation, she is at her worst, and as a woman it didn’t even feel like a good/fun vindictive moment. There’s nuance that the author didn’t care to dig into it, and it made for a sloppy character. 

It might be okay if all the other characters were also over the top, but they’re not. It’s just her. Which then makes it very odd when she’s interacting with anyone else because she’s so out of place. In one scene there seems to be a tender moment between all the authors (all men except Moore) who visited the haunted house together and she grabs the hand of one of them and he says to her “your nails are a mess” (lmao wtf) and she responds “You should see my bush.” WHAT. whAT!?!? WHAT?! This is the entire book. And it is exhausting.

Then we get to generally how the women are described. Body first (lotta barely contained breasts), how they interact with men second, and then MAYBE we learn about who they are as people as a little treat. Lmao at one point a man is describing his own daughter’s ‘budding curves” like wtf. And YES, in case you were wondering, his daughter *does* die to move his part in the story along. 

I think I would have preferred zero women tbh. 

Then we have the pacing and how this story is laid out and good lord. We take SO long to finally get to the house. Once we got to this haunted house I kinda expected to have the rest of the story take place there? Reader: it does not. We get a chapter or two in the house (a lot of which is taken up with paragraphs describing Moore’s breasts, how she writes naked lmaooooo, and a maybe/maybe-not-sex-scene between her and our standard “nice guy” lead protagonist) where maybe a creepy thing or two happens and then we are BACK TO LIFE. And everyone realizes that the evil of the house has followed them all home. And I get it. It’s a play on the gothic theme described in the beginning where the evil from the house can indeed follow you home, but their experience at the house the first time around doesn’t match up with how it affects them afterwards. There wasn’t enough of a catalyst at the beginning that matched up with what happened to them when they went home. It seemed like they all had a kind of weird night, that’s it. 

It all builds up to a drawn-out messy climax, where we’re mainly interacting with the character’s pasts inside their minds instead of whatever is supposed to be happening in the house. I get that the house is doing this to people, but unfortunately it’s not very interesting. 

I don’t want to be so distracted by the actual mechanics of a book. I want to sink into a book and experience it. 

The best part about this book is that it’s over.

Kill Creek

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