December Park

It's the early 90s. Something evil is lurking in a small town while we watch the lives of 5 16-year-old boys and their coming-of-age. Teenagers are disappearing from the small town of Harting Farms. The main point of view of the story is Angelo “Angie” Mazzone. While Angie and his friends are trying to shed light on these kidnappings in their town, we also witness their real-life issues like grief, parental relationships, girls, bullies, and school. December Park is a complete coming-of-age story in every way.

This is one of my favorite tropes. When it's done good, it can make you feel all the emotions, and apparently, Ronald Malfi is very good at that. It is not an unprecedented story, we have read this type of story many, many times. Watched movies many, many times. What sets December Park apart from its counterparts is its characters and relationships with each other. It is my first Ronald Malfi book and he is almost at the level of Stephen King at conveying emotion. Almost. But his end-of-book writing ineptitudes certainly match with King which we'll talk about later.

I am a child of the late 80's - early 90's so the setting was great for me. The sense of nostalgia hit the mark. Along with the familiar setting, it is also easy to get into the story because some of the characters in Harting Farms are written with great depth and detail (not all, some). It's not hard to get into their minds and understand how they're feeling also judging some of the decisions they make (besides, it's easy to say they're just teenagers and shrug) By the end, I was deeply moved by the relationship of these five friends and Angie's relationship with his family. Those were the moments that teared me up. Actually, I might have shed a couple of tears in the end. At the train back home.

Although I loved December Park so much, in the end, I gave it four stars instead of five. There are two reasons for this. The first is the reveal at the end. I had no way of guessing and that's not always good. The reveal was like it was a last-minute decision. It felt baseless and very unsatisfying. That was a disappointment but with a story like this, it's the journey that counts, right? By the nature of the reveal, it leaves some questions unanswered and adds to the mystery. Throughout the book, Malfi sprinkles little clues all over the place, but in the end, these too go unanswered. I like some closure in my standalone.

The other reason was the length of the book. If we remove some events and long descriptions that contribute neither to the story nor to the character development, the book could be 100 pages less but much more satisfying. I am ashamed to say it, but I may have skipped some paragraphs and I feel sad when I say it, but this action did not create any deficiencies in the story. Book provides lots of details for small stuff but then the main event in the last act lacked detail and ended very quickly without explaining much. Didn't make sense to me.

I wouldn't categorize December Park as a horror or a thriller. I think it's a YA-crime novel. In the end, although it wasn't exactly the genre I liked, overall I had a good time and really liked the characters. Malfi got me excited, curious and, emotional. Even if all didn't pay off in the end. Hats off to you sir. I will read other books by Ronald Malfi for sure.

I've got kind of mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, the writing was very atmospheric and immersive. The immersion of it didn't focus on the murder mystery itself – although it was included – but rather on the time period we were in during the book. I felt like I was living in a small town in the 90s, with teenagers doing stupid shit and people just living their lives day-to-day. I enjoyed that aspect of it and the creepier aspects, when they were included, did hit fairly well, especially near the end of the book.

But the things I didn't like about this book outweighed the things I did like, so that's why I can't rate this higher than a 3.75. First and probably the most benign is that there is a LOT of stupid, immature teenage boy stuff that happens given that it's a group of them the book is focused on. I'll acknowledge that it could've been a lot worse given that this book is set in the 90s and written in 2014, but there's only so many fart jokes you can read without getting exasperated about it. Some sprinkling of bigotry in there as well which wasn't pleasant to deal with but again, not as bad as it could've been. 

The book was also 100 pages longer than it really needed to be. I got through this in fairly average time for me but there were parts of the book that really dragged, and with the overall slow pace of the story it made getting through it a bit of a struggle at times. There were a lot of superfluous details and scenes that could've been cut out without affecting the story.

I also wasn't a fan of the twist. I don't think it was set up well and it seemed bizarre after 0 buildup. I also generally don't like when the twist of a thriller/murder mystery involves mental illness. I think it's a tired trope and it often leads to lazy writing.

Overall I didn't dislike this book but I'm not going to give it a reread.