The Children of Red Peak

De: Craig DiLouie

Narrado por: James Patrick Cronin

David Young, Deacon Price, and Beth Harris live with a dark secret. As children, they survived a religious group's horrific last days at the isolated mountain Red Peak. Years later, the trauma of what they experienced never feels far behind.

When a fellow survivor commits suicide, they finally reunite and share their stories. Long-repressed memories surface, defying understanding and belief. Why did their families go down such a dark road? What really happened on that final night?

The answers lie buried at Red Peak. But truth has a price, and escaping a second time may demand the ultimate sacrifice.

©2020 Craig DiLouie (P)2021 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Don’t Bother

I loved DiLouie’s other book about the virus, and I love cults as a Sub-genre. That said, don’t waste your time with this one. It has good intentions but felt rushed to meet a deadline— not that the book is fast paced. It’s just not good. It’s not creepy, the characters are cliche, what it lacks in mystery it makes up for in sentimentality. I literally stopped reading with 5 minutes left because I truly couldn’t be bothered to waste one more minute of my life with this one.

The Children of Red Peak

Plot. Children, now adults, reunited at the funeral of their childhood friend. They were all survivors of a deadly cult.

Difficult to follow time jumps - sometimes they are kids, sometimes adults. Interesting take on the blind obsession of cult members/followers - especially given the mind-bending cults in politics. People are sheep.

Written by Craig DiLouie, narrated by James Patrick Cronin, just over ten hours of listening in unabridged audiobook format, released in January 2021 by Dreamscape Media, LLC.

Alright

This is my second book by this author and it was alright. I think the flashback to children in the cult made a more interesting plot. It dragged on some parts and I had to skip around.

Spellbinding

I really enjoyed this book. I am already a fan of Craig DiLouie, and this book did not disappoint. The children of Red Park brings out those emotions that draw us into the book, frustration, happiness, curiosity, and so much more. This book takes you into the mind of people who have suffered a traumatic incident in their past. and shares the different way each one of them has coped with it.

Had me hooked and then nothing.

It was a sum what of enjoyable ride till you realize the at the top of the hill is nothing and you now have to get off the ride. Also your little bother ate your ice cream while on the ride. It was that level of disappointment.

Unconventional plot twist

The ending and progression toward the conclusion is pleasantly unconventional for what I've come to expect of thrillers in this genre subtype. It did get a little messy to follow at times with the timeline jumps back and forth but the narrator and author did well at keeping me invested when I lot the pinpoint. I genuinely enjoyed this!

Ending killed it

Was a great book about healing until I’d say about the last 20%, then it become nonsense that leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Sadly the ending makes the whole book a waste of time.

psych textbook meets Lifetime movie

If you threw a psychology textbook and a late night Lifetime movie into a blender, dropped in a few bits of a promising folk horror trope, added a vague concept that the story is a metaphor for grief/losing faith/finding faith, hit pulse for 10 hours, then layered in a few chunks of the Bible, you'll end up with this disappointing mess of a story. The kids in the cult aspect of the story was interesting and flip-flopped around on the edge of being a horror/thriller novel, but just as those events started getting good, the story switches back to the sad-sack adult survivors. Of the four main characters, we only got to "know" two of them. We just get told that one of the other two is scared of everything, along with multiple episodes in his past and present where he is, well, scared of stuff, and that his sister is a tough, bad-ass cop who looks like their mom. That's all you really get about her. There's very little action in the book until the very end. These mournful dopes are FINALLY taking steps to deal with their issues, and then... it's like the author just got bored and half-assed the resolution. The whole book just meandered around some angst and trauma and quite literally Deus Ex Machina'd an ending.

An interesting take on what a cult can be

The story and concept was fascinating to me. The pacing was decent. My only complaint is about the lack of an emotional punch. Sometimes, the author really makes you feel what these characters are going through, and while other moments feel hollow. It is beautifully written and well crafted, but a few of the characters needed a bit more development.

I LOVE This Book! (Slight Spoilers)

I've mostly listened to Craig DiLouie's zombie novels (The Infection, The Killing Floor, The Retreat series and Suffer the children) and I really love the way his zombie books don't dissolve into nothing but survivors fighting each other. Having mostly listened to only zombie stories, I was surprised when I read that this book was about a cult. I like his style so much I decided to give this book a chance, and boy am I glad I did. Books about cults can be stale, or unoriginal, or just about the violence, but if I had to pick one word to describe this book it would be TASTEFUL. He doesn't sensationalize the cult aspect, and I could not stop listing. The characters are so fleshed out and relatable, and I enjoyed hearing their stories. The inevitable mass suicide was a real gut punch, I could feel the fear and confusion from the kids, the doubt and love of the parents, and the inescapable determination of the leader. The narrator does a perfect job, great pace and each character has a distinctive voice.
Give this book a listen!