The Only Good Indians

I really enjoyed the beginning of the book up through Lewis' ending, and then it became kind of a mess. The death scene for Gabe, Cassidy, Jo, and Nathan felt extremely contrived and over-wrought, and it took me completely out of the story. I think if the entire book had shifted continuously between the main characters and all had the same kind of slow descent into madness Lewis did it would have been a lot better.

Also, the introduction of Denorah as an important character in the last fourth of the book was very odd; it felt a lot like SGJ slapped a Final Girl plot onto the end of a completely different story. I cared about Denorah surviving but it was hard to be invested in her because I barely knew her outside of “she's just like her dad” and “good at basketball”. The way she played basketball against a vengeful spirit was pretty rad, but SGJ's attempt at describing basketball in prose didn't work for me. Half the time I didn't know what was happening. Having her show up, play basketball, and then plow straight into the Final Battle was a disservice to her character. Again, if she had made appearances throughout, if the story had shifted perspectives continuously and then tied them all together at the end rather than splitting them into sections, I think it would have worked a lot better.

Lastly I was kind of uncomfortable with the way SGJ would give detailed descriptions of the brutal murder of women while the men either died offscreen or their deaths were much more vague. It just felt very bizarre; if you're going to lean into the gore, then why not also describe Cassidy getting beaten to death by Gabe the same way you did Shaney getting scalped by a motorcycle?

3 stars because I really enjoyed Lewis' section and I think it had a lot of good creepy stuff in it, but the structure and pacing kind of ruined it and SGJ should have waited to keep all his Final Girl stuff in the book he wrote a year later.