Joe Hill

Hill’s debut is not only well-written and terrifying, but also—as it draws to its close—surprisingly moving. So go ahead, take a chance, and open his Heart-Shaped Box. I think you’ll be happy you did.

I started reading HEART-SHAPED BOX late one evening and never put it down. The house could have caught fire and I never would have noticed. Joe Hill’s debut novel is rich with moments of terror and redemption and strangeness, but it’s also that rare beast of a book that hooks you from the very first paragraph and doesn’t let go. Books as good as this book, characters as interesting and likeable as these characters, writers like Joe Hill, don’t come along very often and when they do, you feel like celebrating. But why waste time reading a blurb when you could be starting in on the first couple of pages? Bet you keep on reading.

HEART-SHAPED BOX is, quite simply, the best debut horror novel since Clive Barker’s Damnation Game, twenty years ago. It’s the kind of book that the overworked adjectives people use on book jackets — relentless, gripping, powerful, a genuine page-turner — were really meant to describe, for it’s all of those things, and enormously smart besides. A genuinely scary novel filled with people you care about; the kind of book that still stays in your mind after you’ve turned over the final page. I loved it unreservedly.

Heart-Shaped Box is a true spine-tingler. I don’t use that hyphenated word much anymore. We have seen and read it all, haven’t we? But right away, in the first chapter, there was a subtle line that made the hairs on the back of my neck go up in a way I haven’t experienced since I first discovered great horror as a teenager.

Hill writes with a sure hand. The prose is compelling. Like most memorable tales of horror, this book is more about redemption than scary moments—though Heart-Shaped Box has plenty of scares. They are visceral, shocking and very well done. The characters are flawed and real. The father-son relationship adds texture and surprising poignancy.

So here’s the thing. My guess is, you won’t find a ghost to buy online, but if you read the Heart-Shaped Box, you will be getting something that will haunt you and startle you and stay with you and yes, visit you in your dreams.

Sleep well, dear reader.

Original, scary, thrilling and tightly written.

Heart Shaped Box starts with a premise that is as simple as it is brilliant: a ghost for sale on the Internet. But here is a tale that is far from a one-trick pony. It chills with every word, surprises with every page, and twists with every chapter. Here is a debut as literate as it is horrifying…and the resounding introduction of a new master in the field of suspense.