*THERE ARE SPOILERS AHEAD*
1989, Lamesa, Texas. A small west Texas town driven by oil and cotton—and a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. So it goes for Tolly Driver, a good kid with more potential than application, seventeen, and about to be cursed to kill for revenge. Here Stephen Graham Jones explores the Texas he grew up in, and shared sense of unfairness of being on the outside through the slasher horror Jones loves, but from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography. Find yourself rooting for a killer in this summer teen movie of a novel gone full blood-curdling tragic.
Tolly as our main character was likeable but pretty pathetic in a way. I think it was the fact that he allowed people to do things to him that any other normal human being would take offense to which in a way I guess that parallels nicely with Justin’s storyline. Even the way he let Amber (his best friend) continually smash his head on her windscreen was a bit of a red flag for me. I was intrigued as we get straight into the book how he was going to ‘turn’ into a slasher and how he managed to evade capture all these years and I was quite happy with how the storyline played out albeit for the majority we aren’t shown exactly what happens.
I loved how Amber was just 100% on board with what was happening and actually believed Tolly. The fact that she even went as far as to call up her brother and then conduct those series of tests was very entertaining and makes the story a bit more believable in a way. I mean you definitely have to suspend disbelief for the most part as these events have only occurred because a teenage boy came back from the dead to enact revenge but it makes you more invested.
The only real flaw I found with this book was the amount of times Tolly would just go on these random long tangents in the middle of chapters. It was just very disjointed and made the story harder to understand, very chaotic. Which I suppose makes sense since he was infected and not in his right frame of mind at the time but made me have to slow down and focus on every word which took me out of the story.
⭐️3/5 very entertaining but confusing at times!
