Name: The Moor
ISBN: 9781912618071

Sam Haysom

It begins with a ghost story around a campfire. Teenagers out on a walking trip, trying to act brave in front of each other. But as the walk gets underway and the boys begin to fall out, odd things start to happen. Noises in the night. A severed rabbit’s foot outside someone’s tent. Soon, the boys begin to disappear. As panic sets in and a storm approaches, the remaining boys must band together to face a darkness not even the local ghost stories could help them predict.

The Moor

Kelsey Lynn

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Overall, I'd give this 2.5-3 stars. I'm sure plenty of people will enjoy it, but it overall fell flat for me. 

Ever since "The Hounds of Baskerville" I've found the moors fascinating. How something can be so beautiful, yet so eerie at the same time. Having this be the location of a horror story was a fantastic idea. Also the publisher actually got a decent designer for the cover, making it look sophisticated. I was excited going in, but it was a controlled excitement as horror is very often done poorly. 
 Sam Haysom can write, no question about that, of all the books I've done reviews for I took the fewest notes regarding writing mishaps. Overall this just lacked a little in the plot. It broke a cardinal sin of horror for me (which most people won't care about) and had some issues with pacing, and general editing issues. 
 The story revolves around a guy named Matt, in 2015 who is remembering a walking trip with his classmates when he was around 13-14 in the moors. It switches between modern perspective (all to build up to the finale, but without the finale would be completely unnecessary) and the perspective from 2002 during the trip. The book also includes newsclippings regarding disappearances in the Moors, and pet mutilation. 
 The boys are chaperoned by their teacher, and the first night camping he tells them an eerie ghost story regarding a woman thought to be a witch, this spooks the boys, and leads to a number of incidents in the book. As the trip goes on, very soon into it actually, one of them goes missing. This is the beginning of what's going to be a terrible time for these boys.
 I can't go into it more without spoilers, so I'll try and avoid them. This book suffers from the opposite of many others, it get's right into the drama of it all, very quickly. Not only right into the drama, but you know EXACTLY what is causing it by about 30% in, leaving there very little else to build up to. There is no slow burn, just a quick set up and BAM here's the mystery in your face. This has always been a cardinal sin of horror for me, you need more burn, there should have been more children going missing, or somehow made their disappearance more unsettling, for this book it was "well, their missing, gotta keep going before we can get them help". The other aspect of the cardinal sin is never ever do a full reveal of your creature/ghost/supernatural thing, until after you've done a nice build, and especially not so early on. Nothing is scarier than what people can come up with in their own mind, leave something to the imagination, otherwise, your have to hope you thing is scares enough people. The remainder of the book happens in rapid succession, one boy missing, seeing what happens to the other boy, Knowing that the other 3 make it because of the flashforwards, sooo what possibly is there left the be told other than the culmination of the "horror" happening to the children? Nothing, because they describe the horror in great detail, we are left with that being what should scare us because nothing else is presented to scare us, nothing creepy happening in the night or in the moors, we already know. This author needs to read and watch more good horror, and learn the slow burn, learn how the monster isn't usually shown, the horror event not outwardly explained so early on, that way we can scare ourselves just thinking about the possibilities. Then after we've spooked ourselves, and have had a healthy build-up of smaller spooky things, then you reveal and we can gasp and shutter and get goosebumps. Instead, he opts to hope this monster he's come up with is spooky enough because the only spooky thing is him describing IT. The culmination and escape of the other boys is very anti-climatic, all leading up to what I think he hoped was a dramatic twist in the present, but wasn't because the hints throughout to it were giant neon sign-style hints. 
 There wasn't enough substance in this story to warrant a full book, this could have easily been a short story. it felt like one. I've read stories by Lovecraft told in a few pages that had more build up and dread and actual fear in them than this. I wasn't given anything to be scared of, and the characters didn't feel very scared either, If your story isn't even frightening your characters, how will it frighten your readers?
 I wish this author had taken some more time and kept this concept in his notes for after he researched the genre more, because while his writing style was fine, he did not know how to write a horror story. 

 I continue to hunt for a satisfying horror book. Until then, I'll stick with my Poe and Lovecraft, or but The Witch on, or maybe read Ship of Fools again.

The Moor

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