Ghoul by Brian Keene

What a wonderful book. The book had everything you could think of: scare, a good story, a hideous monster, and believability. It is funny because when I started reading this book, I thought I might not get past chapter 1, just because of the whole cemetery background. When I read any story, I like to visualize and get engrossed in the story and I didn’t like Mr. Keene’s cemetery background, but as I read, he made the cemetery seem natural, and not the scary part of the book.

The book has the horrible monster in the Ghoul, who is awakened by the caretaker and is eating the corpses. The Ghoul through the help of the caretaker takes a wife into the tunnels being bored around the underground complex. This part of the story is the horror and what made me pick the book up in the first place, but the kids / heroes are the ones that made me love the book.

The kids, Timmy, Barry and Doug are the lifeline of the book and they keep it interesting. Not only do they need to fight the demon they also need to contend with their personal battles and that was a twist that was enjoyable and refreshing. The book kind of reminded me of “It” from Stephen King with the monster and the kids own battle outside of the monster. You see, Barry had to fight his abusive father, who is also the caretaker, Doug had to fight his molesting mother and Timmy had to fight the loss of his grandfather who was his friend, and he had to live with the battle his father was having with the same loss. The kids also were fighting a battle against a rival group of friends that they had to contend with.

I am not going to go into great detail, and give the book away, but I will tell you the ending is frightening and very much surprising, so I suggest you go pick the book up right away and start reading, I venture you will not want to put it down.