Horns

Loved it

There is quite a bit of Gore so not for the faint of heart. But if you can handle it I think this book is well worth reading. I haven't read a book like this in quite awhile, it made me feel every kind of emotion so vividly. I was engrossed in the story from cover to cover. It's also really hilarious in a twisted kind of way, that's what you get with a devil as a protagonist :)

Horror novel about a man who transforms into something demonic after his girlfriend is brutally murdered and he is accused of the crime. It's the sort of book you don't want to put down, but once it's over, you're left rather blank.

I'm not a reader of horror, but after listening to an interview with the author, it sounded good and I got the book as a kindle deal. The first part of the book was fantastic. There's something akin to a sexual thrill hearing the supporting characters lay their ids bare to the protagonist and revealing their most horrible desires. It slows up a bit with the backstory, although the backstory is necessary in order to give the characters and the book some depth. There were a few cool twists, and although I don't know if it's a story that's going to stick with me, it was a very entertaining read.

More of a 3.5 for me

I absolutely loved NOS4A2 so I was all over this one for my 2020 Spooktober reads, howeverI didn't enjoy this one as much as I thought I would. For me, it definitely didn't live up to all the hype I've seen.

I wasn't invested in this story and had a hard time finishing it. It was slow and bland more than thrilling. Of course, being a horror, there are the scattered shock scenes thrown in, but even those were just ok.

He's a good writer and I know, just like his dad, I won't enjoy all of the books he writes so this will just be chalked up to a read but kinda wish I skipped

The best part of the book is when Joe Hill makes fun of Dean Koontz at the beginning, however this book is only about as good as Koontz's ‘Odd Thomas'.

Somethings were well done such as the grandmother and some of the double meanings, but not much surprised me and so much of it felt repetitive. I get it Ig is good at math and has a hard time breathing.

I'd still watch the movie of this. I did imagine parts of this book as portrayed by Radcliffe and most of it feels gratuitous. I also feel bad that he's portraying another not so loveable protagonist, but I'm curious how much of this will come off as The Dresden Files meets Law & Order.

Well, I am glad that is over. Which ever little devil convinced me it was a good idea to buy this book, I hope I do not run into it again!

In a world where it seems everyone has deep, dark secrets or violent longings, I confess to my ugliest act - forcing myself to finish this book. There, said it. May the literary gods forgive me.

This review can also be found on my blog.

4.5 ⭐️
cw: homophobia, racism, rape, pedophilia, torture, pretty much anything you could think of

Y'all I had NO idea what to expect going into this one. I got this as a gift in a recent exchange and had been meaning to read it for a while (I'm hoping to get through all of Joe Hill's work within the next year or two). I hadn't reread the blurb and hadn't even seen the trailers for the movie, so didn't really know what the plot would be, just that it involved, well, horns. Let me say right away that this book is not for the light-hearted. There are some... pretty messed up things going on. People do and say the most heinous things you can think of. So, keep that in mind if you're thinking about picking this one up.

He threw the bible into the trumpet case as well. There had to be something in there, some useful tips for his situation, a homeopathic remedy you could apply when you came down with a bad case of the devil.

That said, this is incredibly well-written and compelling story about a man trying to solve the murder of the woman that he loves. He runs into a few snags – namely the fact that he's the main suspect. Oh, and the horns growing out of his head. Which do come with a few side-effects that I don't want to spoil for you. I liked how the story was layered, switching back and forth between past and present. In some books this ends up being jarring, but Joe Hill does it well here. He knew how to time it and used it to slowly bring the full story to light.

If you were in a boat and did not save a drowning man, you would burn in Hell for certain; yet God, in His wisdom, feels no need to use his power to save anyone from a single moment of suffering, and in spite of his inaction He is celebrated and revered. Show me the moral logic in it. You can't. There is none. Only the devil operates with any reason, promising to punish those who wanted to make earth itself Hell for those who dare to love and feel.

If you're a Joe Hill fan, you'll probably like Horns. This was one I just couldn't put down and I finished the last portion in a two-hour binge. I'd also recommend it for fans of horrors, thrillers, and mysteries, as it contains a little of each. The horror isn't as much outright scary as it is unsettling, but I'd say that's the most appropriate category to place it in.

She was innocent. All snakes were, of course.

This was a disappointment. Too much shock value for shock value-sake, an incoherent story line that was riddled with repetition and the word “cherry” - just not for me. Still looking forward to trying the The Fireman, though.

Quit at 60%. Sorry I'm not sorry. I'm in a rut or something?

No. 328429781 on my list of literary world crimes (word crimes? höhöhö): I do not like Stephen King. I just can't like him, something about his kind of horror just feels over the top nasty to me. Like disgusting and it makes me retch instead of being scared most of the time. Also, what did kids do to the guy? WHAT? We should ask Joe Hill about that, because he is King's kid. As we all know.

I had my doubts about this one, exactly because Mr. Hill is Mr. King's spawn. Not saying they are the same in any way, but I would assume that if you do what your parents did super successfully, then you must be at least a tiny bit influenced by them. Or something. Then again, it's not that hard to write horror and be influenced by him. Big names and all.
Funny enough, I actually didn't feel as repulsed in the not impressive way than I usually do in connection with Mr. King. I didn't even really hate this with passion. I was okay with it, I guess, I just... didn't really care that much, you know.

Here we have Ig, this small town son of rich people. He's awkward, not exactly star material like his great older brother, Terry, but not a bad person either. Ig is fine. But he had this girlfriend, the amazingly wonderful Merrin, who got raped and murdered about a year ago, causing Ig to be the obvious suspect, while he had nothing to do with her death. Never even got convicted, but in small towns people will file you in neat little piles. In his case, as a psycho.
One morning he wakes up with horns on his head and supernatural abilities that cause people to tell him their dirty, horrible secrets and maybe now he can find out what happened to his girlfriend.

The moment realised I didn't care was when Ig gets some of his teeth knocked out. I'm a trainee dental technician and hearing about knocked out teeth I went strait to how to solve that, the Latin names of teeth, I got the image of said teeth in my head, how much of a pain they are to form of wax, but how much I love doing that, it's all fun, I need to practice, I will have to ask one of my “mentors” to borrow the appropriate tool... and shit, I am not reading. I'm thinking about the shape of premolars.
When you care about work stuff more than what is happening in your book... well. I have bad news for you.

Another thing that bothered me was how horrible news lose their edge when almost every character is horrible. Oh, you want to kill someone, also you want to fuck little girls, while you blow up the country with a nuke to the soundtrack of cancer kids. I am just kind of emotionally separating myself when things are so bad it's almost comical.

The characters who fill more purpose than being there to say bad things are boring to me either. Ig is nothing, Merrin in the flawless angel everyone loves, but she is just... so douchy without anyone ever realising she is, the person actually killing her being just... really bad. It never felt like any characters were actual people to me.

I didn't exactly hate this book, really. More like I didn't find the thing that would draw me in enough to invest any more time in it. Nowadays I'm busy enough to not care about something that I don't find satisfying. The whole King family seems to be not my kind of people, which is fine.
This wasn't offensive. I can imagine the people who would love it and give it the attention I couldn't. I even feel a bit sorry about not finishing it. Huh.

Good night and I feel like strangling people on a daily basis and not afraid to say it.

Full disclosure, I did not even finish this book, I feel that I gave it a pretty fair chance, but about 150 pages in, I just stopped caring, and there was no way I was plodding through to the finish.

The appearance of the horns and their influence over people is in interesting idea, but that is a very small part of the first half of the book. Beyond that, there was never really a moment that I cared about the characters. The killer is revealed very early and his motive is fairly obvious, so there was very little reason to read to the end.

I did have enough interest in the story to get a summary off the internet, and I am actually glad I stopped when I did, as it doesn't sound like it gets any better. The “bad guy” is given every “bad guy” cliche from hating his mother to bed wetting to brain damage to animal cruelty to an urge towards pedophilia which is more than a little overkill and really makes a one dimensional character. I am also not sure what the obsession with the term “sex murder” is, it is used constantly and is just a weird phrase that doesn't sound natural. Speaking of not sounding natural, this is an actual sequence from the book.

“EEEEEEEEEE,” Ig Screamed
“He's awful, Ig,” Terry said. “You don't know him. You think you do, but you don't have any idea.” “EEEEEEEEEEEE,” Ig went on.

All “EEEEEEEEE” makes me think of is a 1950's woman standing on the coffee table escaping from a mouse, not the big reveal in a “sex murder” novel.

That being said it's not the worst thing ever committed to paper, it's a easy, fast read not really requiring much thought, if books were food, this would be something like generic brand potato chips, edible enough, but not really providing any nourishment and just leaving you wishing you had something better in it's place.

How much can you endure before you have to become the devil?

This one hit me hard. What started as a fun ride into the mind of strangers, quickly got dark with the look back into childhood. Relations between characters felt so real it really hurt.The breakup between Ig and Merrin hit me especially hard, because it felt so goddamm real. As someone in exact the same relationship as theirs, I knew those thoughts and would've said the same things... I rarely read books, in which I hate a character that much and in which conversations feel so real.

We slowly learn what happens to Ig, before there's no other way than to become the devil. And trust me, those are bad things.

Horns spoke to me on a personal level many times, and for this it deserves five stars.

Say whatever you want. I loved it. I loved the theological ideas, as a recovering ex-Conservative Christian; I loved the tragedy. I loved the (perhaps unintentional) ideas of a woman's own sexual agency, about how men view women; in particular, our protagonist and our antagonist. Neither are perfect–the antagonist is a racist, sexist, nasty, evil, cruel, psychopathic freak, and he terrified me. I found him to be fairly realistic, if a bit extreme in his case. But I digress. The two main males suffer from viewing Merrin in the virgin/whore dichotomy, and the book seems to be aware of this. And even though the reader never gets HER p.o.v. (which seems to be part of the point), she is a fleshed-out character whose personality comes through despite the male view of her.

Also, I grew up in NH, and this...was a little too close to home, perhaps?

My main problem–fewer animal deaths, please. Sniffle.

Now, I am so ready for the movie.

More of a 3.5.
The story was interesting and I liked Ig. He sometimes drove me off the wall but he wasn't a bad “hero” I especially appreciated that he got powers to do some serious damage and he didn't. Mostly.
The problem was that Hill got too wordy for me. I felt like there were scenes in the book that dragged on or there were flashbacks in the middle of the action.

Quite enjoyed it though and I'll try to read Joe Hill's other work.

Awesome book! Joe Hill continues to entertain the “hell” out of me!

Would have enjoyed it more if it had finished stronger, and with less famous musician references... It gets old.

Wonderful narrative with characters you come to care about. The narrative was a little disjointed, especially when it jumped between narrators, but was easy enough to follow. There were a lot of shocking moments and it was hard to put down. I can't wait to see ths film adaptation!

God, he writes so much like his da, it's not even funny.

I listened to the audiobook instead of reading this one. The story was interesting over all. There were some sections where it seemed to drag on, but the events described all added up in the end.

I enjoyed this clever tale from Joe Hill, a tale of dark revenge that is at times sad but also bristles with humor.

Definitely kept me hooked.

Really 3.5 stars. I liked this book at the beginning, but it slowed down in the middle and I would lose interest very quickly. Interesting book, waiting to see how the movie is.

I really loved the premise of this book. it was so well written. this is the first of Joe Hill's that I've read and I would consider reading his other works.
the only problem I had with this book was the somewhat disjointed sections of flashbacks and switches of perspective. having about 200 pages in the main character's perspective and then a sudden switch to 50 pages of the antagonist's perspective was a little confusing at first, and honestly a little annoying. it did give a lot of information for the plot, though, which was definitely needed.
overall, a very enjoyable read. I can't wait for the movie!

I struggled with whether to rate this book 2 or 3 stars. I guess 2.5 would be about right. I liked (or disliked, as it may be) the characters, but I just feel like something was missing from the story. It just feels like the author was all over the place with this book. I much, much prefer Heart-Shaped Box.

I needed something that was fun to read, knew not to take itself too seriously, and was outside my usual reading circles without being just foreign. Horns fit the bill, and I'm glad I read it. While I think Hill played the devilish references a bit much (from the Evil Knieval trail to the number of times he throws 666 out there), the book was still a fun read and well worth the price of admission. To sum up, because we don't waste too many words: Horns is the story of a young man that wakes up one morning, a year after his love was raped and murdered, to discover a pair of horns growing out of his skull. In particularly, I kind of enjoyed the fact that the Devil can be a superhero in the right light.

Big fan of Joe Hill, big fan of parts of this book, but was ultimately disappointed and felt the story got away from him.