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Official Description:
Imagine a place where all your nightmares become real. Think of dark urban streets where crime, debt and violence are not the only things to fear. Picture a housing project that is a gateway to somewhere else, a realm where ghosts and monsters stir hungrily in the shadows. Welcome to the Concrete Grove. It knows where you live... Gary McMahon's chilling horror trilogy shows us a Britain many of us will recognise, while whispering of the terrible and arcane presences clawing against the boundaries of our reality! Book One in the Concrete Grove Trilogy.
I loved the supernatural elements to this book. McMahon manages to make humming-birds terrifying and TV-headed demons even more so. It is creepy, haunting and intense in all the right ways, and had me jumping at shadows.
The problem is there is not enough of it, the story revolves too much around the 'real-life' problems of our protagonists – Lana and her daughter Hailey, and their would-be hero Tom. They do have interesting lives, with Lana in trouble with loan sharks and Tom looking after his disabled wife, but it was too real, too depressing, and I couldn't really relate. I also found the frequent sexual scenes off putting. These weren't necessarily full sex scenes, occasionally just a thought that pops into a characters head, but they were often crass and uncalled for, a just made for uncomfortable reading.
Having said that I really did enjoy The Concrete Grove, I just found it hard going sometimes. It's a brutal novel that I would recommend to anyone who likes their horror with an edge, I just found it a bit too harsh, a bit too hard.
Recommended – for some.
The Concrete Grove is published by Solaris Books
Order your copy of The Concrete Grove from Amazon UK
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