 “This forest eats people” I read The Night Will Find Us without knowing much about it and was quickly sucked into a drama involving six friends that slowly evolves into full-blown supernatural horror. In hindsight, it would be easy to be mean-spirited towards this novel as it features one of the most overused storylines in modern horror fiction. A group of teenagers, who have just finished school for the year, head into a forest for a night’s camping and are stalked by an unnamed evil. Sound familiar? Indeed, you will undoubtedly have read novels very similar to this, many of which are significantly better, but there are plenty worse too, and it remains a decent page-turner and a solid debut novel from Matthew Lyons. Bad things happen when you go camping; we all know that. The day school breaks up for summer recess Parker, Chloe, Adam, Nicky, Josh, and Nate head into the massive New Jersey forest the Pine Barrens for a night of drinking, hanging out, campfire antics and fun. Much of what you think of The Night Will Find Us will depend on how you connect to these six characters and until the plot moves on it took me sometime to separate them out as they came across as samey and whiney. Along the way they make some very dumb decisions, which does not make them any easier to like, but I guess this is not any different from any slasher/stalker horror film. Although they are there to have fun, there was considerable tension in the group as Parker has been acting out of character since his father disappeared the previous year. Since then he has had emotional problems and been very violent, which the other five have struggled to deal with, particularly Nate who is incredibly unpleasant to Parker, and does not act like he is his friend at all. Parker is also the only one of the six who knows the Pine Barrens forest and is particularly antagonised by Nate, who is the least likable of the group (he is a complete s**t). Does anyone really watch porn on their phone when there are girls present? A fair bit of the story is also seen from Chloe’s point of view, who is also the cousin of Parker and supports him when he is being would up by Nate. The rest of the group is made up of Adam, who is portrayed as a likable sportsman and relatively recent couple, Nicky, and Josh. Although the characters could have been more fully fleshed out, Chloe and Nicky grew on me, as they had to make some hard choices as things go south. The dynamics of the novel shift tremendously as the plot develops. In the first half, no spoilers, there is a horrific incident which results in a death and the collapse of the group which then splinters. I was not sure how believable this was, however, was invested enough to go with the flow, even though no real justification for the tragedy is given. Around this time strange, eventually supernatural, things begin to happen. Again, it is questionable how well this part of the novel is blended with the story of six teenagers who have a party which ends in a disaster. At one point they wake up and realise the path (straight out of Evil Dead 2) has disappeared and slowly (way too slowly) begin to get stressed but make no genuine attempt to get away. The second half takes us into survival and supernatural horror, although it was never dull, I found myself getting confused over what the ‘evil’, or whatever you choose to call it, really was. A variety of different scenarios are thrown at the reader, including ghosts, weird dreams, 200-year-old flashbacks, dangerous fruit, hidden villages, and characters morphing into monsters. I am happy to see the imagination run wild, but within the context of the story it came across as both disjointed, muddled, and out of focus. Even though the violence is ramped up significantly in the second half its impact is lessened by the fact that I was not too invested in any of the characters. Not to mention their ability to recover from a horrific stomach wound in a few hours. This girl was not Bruce Campbell! As I have already said The Night Will Find Us will remind you of lots of other books with forests, final girls, and ancient unnamed evils. Considering most of the novel was set in the forest it lacked the threatening atmosphere of, say, Adam Nevill’s The Ritual, where the encroaching and threatening trees are described in extra detail and instead came across as rather superficial. In was also reminiscent of a couple of Nick Cutter novels, especially The Troop for the body horror and Little Heaven for the ancient evil. However, the evil is genuinely brought to life as a character in the Cutter novel, this was lacking from The Night Will Find Us and I would have liked more questions answered about the source. The Night Will Find Us moves along at a decent pace and although Chloe is not quite a Final Girl she carries the novel as it moves through the gears, changing from a mousy background character to a fighter with spunk and grit which plays a big part in the cool and rather melancholic ending. Even though it was frustrating in parts, I enjoyed this novel and will be interested to see what Matthew Lyons produces next. Tony Jones  They say never go into the woods at night…
School’s out for summer and that means one thing to Parker, Chloe, and their four friends: a well-deserved camping trip in the Pine Barrens, a million-acre forest deep in the heart of New Jersey. But when old grudges erupt, an argument escalates into the unthinkable, leaving one of them dead and the killer missing. As darkness descends and those left alive try to determine a course of action, the forest around them begins to change… In the morning, more of the group has vanished and the path that led them into the woods is gone—as if consumed by the forest itself. Lost and hungry, the remaining friends set out to find help, only to realize that the forest seems to have other plans—a darker, ancient horror lies dead and dreaming in a lake in the center of the woods. And it’s calling to them. Meanwhile, deep in the trees, the killer is still at large, and one of the group’s own has started to transform and warp into something other. Something inhuman. Something that wants to feast. Banding together to survive, the friends soon begin to understand the true nature of the horror waiting for them in the Pine Barrens—and that not all of them will make it out alive. Comments are closed.
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