All Hallows Review

by Christopher Golden

Rating: 1/5

It’s Halloween night, 1984, in Coventry, Massachusetts, and two families are unraveling. Up and down the street, horrifying secrets are being revealed, and all the while, mixed in with the trick-or-treaters of all ages, four children who do not belong are walking door to door, merging with the kids of Parmenter Road. Children in vintage costumes with faded, eerie makeup. They seem terrified, and beg the neighborhood kids to hide them away, to keep them safe from The Cunning Man. There’s a small clearing in the woods now that was never there before, and a blackthorn tree that doesn’t belong at all. These odd children claim that The Cunning Man is coming for them...and they want the local kids to protect them. But with families falling apart and the neighborhood splintered by bitterness, who will save the children of Parmenter Road?

New York Times bestselling, Bram Stoker Award-winning author Christopher Golden is best known for his supernatural thrillers set in deadly, distant locales...but in this suburban Halloween drama, Golden brings the horror home.

All Hallows. The one night when everything is a mask…

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I really wished I’d just DNF’d this one. I kept holding out for a great horror ending. Instead I just had endless eye rolls and “here we go again."

The horrors didn’t even start until we were well past the halfway point. So I’m already bored and over the scares by the time they finally start showing up.

The horrors didn’t even truly make sense to me. I don’t really feel like we got a proper explanation on what was going on. I have more questions than we got answers. I’m just sort of sitting her like what the hell is going on? Am I supposed to be scared?

And so so SO many characters. I struggled hard to remember who is who and who’s connected to who and each of them gets a voice. I really don’t think we needed to see all of these perspectives. It just made it so hard to follow. And some of them we only see a small handful of times too.

Not only that, but so often we would be given the idea that a character “died” just for them to be like “just kidding! They’re not dead!” I would just groan and be like not this again… Stay dead dammit.

Like I said, I really held out for an amazing horrific ending, but this was just not one for me. It was way too drawn out, overly complicated and just not that scary.

The premise itself seems very intriguing but the execution just didn’t cut it for me.

Since reading this, my boyfriend introduced me to the movie Trick or Treat, which, when I watched that, reminded me of this book. I could see that being an inspiration for this book, the number of separate stories all occurring on one night. The overall feel really reminded me of this book. Though it didn’t change my overall feelings for this book. It just made me think, if you enjoy that movie, you might enjoy this book! I also did not really care for that movie, in case you were wondering.