Pleasant Surprises Herein

This is a light, quick read. It’s almost paradoxical in that I found myself frustrated at times because the story misleads you into believing it might be predictable, but characters don’t always adhere to archetypes, and the plot doesn’t twist as much as I had expected. Finally I realized this wasn’t a bad thing. What we have here is a book that gently plays with your expectations right from the beginning. You think you know what is coming next, and what you want to come next. Then the book will take you on a different trajectory. Strand is often considered a horror writer, but this book is more of a bizarre love story with a light pinch of horror thrown in for good measure. You can tell this dude thinks outside the box when he writes. And it isn’t contrived. He doesn’t come across like he’s trying to go where few others roam. It just happens organically. I liked it. It reminded me how much I have come to rely on genre conventions, and how deviations result in pleasant surprises.

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