A Light Most Hateful

De: Hailey Piper

Narrado por: Jeremy Carlisle Parker

Mona Awad’s Bunny meets Stranger Things when a summer storm sweeps through a sleepy town, unleashing a monstrous power that threatens to bend reality, from the Bram Stoker Award–winning author of Queen of Teeth.

Three years after running away from home, Olivia is stuck with a dead-end job in nowhere town Chapel Hill, Pennsylvania. At least she has her best friend, Sunflower.

Olivia figures she’ll die in Chapel Hill, if not from boredom, then the summer night storm which crashes into town with a mind-bending monster in tow.

If Olivia’s going to escape Chapel Hill and someday reconcile with her parents, she’ll need to dodge residents enslaved by the storm’s otherworldly powers and find Sunflower.

But as the night strains friendships and reality itself, Olivia suspects the storm, and its monster, may have its eyes on Sunflower and everything she loves.

Including Olivia.

©2023 Hailey Piper (P)2023 Blackstone Publishing

Many twists?

This book had unique concepts, but overall felt very chaotic and lacking cohesion. The narrator did an excellent job.

There are some issues...

First and Foremost, this book is under the wrong labels. It is Cosmic Horror and Body Horror, not a thriller or mystery.
It can be considered a Mystery, in that you spend a good deal of time trying to puzzle out what exactly the author is trying to say. There were many times, where the descriptions of things just seemed like random words were smashed together by a high schooler, trying to sound as if they could use more than "just", "very", as adjectives. I didn't take notes, because I was listening while driving, so I can't give exact lines from the book.
Now, that I've shit on this book a little, I'll add two up-sides, and sprinkle on a little more shit at the end.
The idea behind the plot is brilliant.
The Narrator does a fantastic job, getting the novel out.
If you're going to give your characters names like Hazabeth, Sunflower, and Christmas, don't use those long names in every sentence of the chapter. It got to the point where I think if you tallied the words in this novel, those three would hold the top spots.

Mostly solid weird horror

I actually enjoyed this book quite a lot. It's got some criticism for the writing, but the style worked for me. It helped sustain a particular mood, starting from a teenager dealing with small town life and then piling weirder and weirder happenings and revelations on them. It was a very different story than I expected, but it grabbed my interest early on and held it for most of the book. My only real complaint was (as is fairly common for horror) that it felt like the plot became too jumbled towards the end, where it kind of lost me. But I'm used to that, the story and the evocative mood up till then were enough for me to enjoy it overall, and give it a solid recommend.

Longing and Worry

The story is good and it is well written, but the main (pov) character seems to experience only the emotions of longing or worry. Perpetual wet blanket. And I know that’s not unrealistic (there are people out there like that) it just makes for a tedious read over 10hrs.

No character building

This story provided very little character building/character relationships prior to jumping into what seems like a bizarre, fever dream. We’re supposed to believe in all these amazing outstanding character traits, but there’s been nothing other than 10 minutes of build up to show who they really are. The storyline moved very quickly through a lot of really weird hoops. I would return it if I hadn’t listened too far to get my credit back. Will probably not finish.