Comments for The Pricker Boy

The Pricker Boy: 04/26/14

The Pricker Boy by Reade Scott Whinnem takes place in the forest surrounding a rural town that is mostly a summer home destination. Stucks Cumberland and his friends, are year-rounders. They have to live with the forest even when its at its most sinister.

There's a local legend about a creature with gray skin who is the ghost of a boy left to die in a trap. Children leave offerings to him to throw him off the scent. When Stucks and his friends find one of these shrines, strange things begin to happen.

The Pricker Boy's pacing is similar to Lord of the Flies and the anger expressed by Pete (Stuck's best friend) gives the book a similar savagery. But the pacing of events and the slight of hand used to obfuscate the flashbacks ruined the horror elements for me. Too much of the plot rests on the shoulders of an unreliable narrator — one of my least favorite plot devices.

Two stars

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