Book Review
Title: Hex (Robert Grim #1) by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
Genre: Horror, Thriller, Paranormal
Rating: 4 Stars
I didn’t know anything about Hex before getting into it, it only came to my attention because the sequel was released in Dutch almost 7 years after the publication of Hex. With Halloween in 20 days I decided now was the perfect time to pick up some spooky reads. We are introduced to Steve Grant, his wife Jocelyn and their children, Tyler and Matt along with their dog, Fletcher who all live in Black Spring which is notoriously haunted by the Black Rock Witch who they affectionately refer to as Gramma but her name is Katherine. The Black Rock Witch has her eyes and mouth sewn shut but is seen by almost everything as she likes to appear in homes and watch the occupants sleep but she seems relatively harmless right now other than driving poor Fletcher absolutely mad. Katherine likes to enter homes and watch the occupants sleep and she also seems to be corporal unlike most ghosts. However, the town seems to be cursed and once you settle there you can’t leave as the Grants found out when they went on holiday and within a week they were depressed and contemplating suicide and by the 10 day mark they were returning home early because they couldn’t be away any longer. When some new people try to move into town Robert Grim and a group of others try to stop them but they won’t be dissuaded from buying a house in Black Spring and this is where we get introduced to the HEXapp and the network of security cameras that monitor the entire town keeping track of Katherine’s movements.
As we approach the ¼ mark in the novel, we being to learn a lot more about the town of Black Spring and the history of Katherine herself. It turns out that she tried and hung as being a witch after people began to believe that she raised her son from the dead. She was forced to kill her son with her own hands after the town’s people threatened to kill her daughter to and then they forced her to kill herself. After this Katherine returned to the town and hasn’t left since but death has always followed her. At some point in history someone managed to sew her eyes and mouth shut and binds her with chains at the cost of their own lives and others have tried to remove them hence why she has a loose thread at the corner of her mouth but she forced them to kill themselves the second they did it. Steve along with Robert explain this to the newcomers to town after Katherine appears in their home for the first time and they are obviously met with disbelief and anger that they can’t leave Black Spring now. The younger generation also share this anger, Tyler in particular, as they want to lead normal lives which they can’t do being bound by the curse. Tyler wants to tell the world about Katherine in the hopes something can be done about her but the real reason is he wants to be honest with his girlfriend, Laurie but is advised against by Steve because the council won’t stand for it. He would be committed to Doodletown which is an asylum outside of the town where people experience what Katherine’s influence is like if they try to leave in a safe environment and it is also used as a detention centre for those that break the rules. However, Steve is unaware that Tyler and some of his close friend are planning to blow the town secret sooner rather than later while being completely ignorant to the potential consequence of their actions.
As we cross the ¼ mark in the novel, I was finding Hex interesting but I was waiting for something to happen with Katherine, an attack or a killing or for Tyler to actual release the information he has about Katherine to the world to spark something off and add to the creepy atmosphere and tension of the town. With Halloween approaching and the only time the town can bring in outsiders without blowing the secret of Katherine’s existence we see tensions are rising. The tension between the older and younger generations is building and eventually it is going to explode as Tyler and his friends haven’t stopped their experiments and documentation of Katherine ready to go viral with it. However, the are also tension between Tyler and his friends as Jaydon is becoming a much darker person and this might be due to the childhood trauma he suffered at the hands of his abusive father before he attempted to leave Black Spring for good which resulted in his death. Tyler is stunned that some of the others followed Jaydon in his tormenting of Katherine even knowing what it could result in and he manages to get them to back off for now but something tells me Katherine isn’t going to be as kind to them when they reveal her to the world. The only notable thing that has happened so far is that Jaydon’s mother beat a man to death after he grabbed her, he has been imprisoned because he was talking about Katherine and threatened their entire existence but here Jaydon’s mother suffers a flashback to her dead husband beating her and snaps. We also get to witness a council meeting which seems more like a dictatorship as the entire community has been indoctrinated into the same way of thinking with only a few like Steve and Tyler willing to speak up and defend their ideals but it doesn’t do much good when they are the minority.
As we approach the halfway mark in the novel, things really start to get creepy as Jaydon goes off the deep end and actually attacks Katherine, stabbing her. While nothing happens immediately when Fletcher bites Katherine as well something happens to the dog and later that night he runs away. The whole town comes together to look for the dog but they eventually find him hung from a tree and it seems like Fletcher did it to himself but that impossible as dogs can’t climb the way cats can but the security camera footage confirms that Fletcher was walking with Katherine before his death. This leads to a fight presumably between Tyler and Jaydon but it happens in the background but people being making animal sacrifices to Katherine since she has shown an interest in them but the creeks begins to bleed into the water turning red which has only happened once before in the town’s history and it was followed by many deaths. The HEX agents begin keeping an even closer eye on Katherine and her movements and when they find her with a live peacock, wearing its feathers they try to take it from her only for her to kill it and continue carrying it about town. Obviously, this is beginning to create a lot more fear in the town as Katherine seems more proactive that passive now and many are wondering how long it will take for her sight to turn from animals to the people. This kind of fear is never good and it leads people to do some crazy things and I can’t wait to see where the novel goes in the second half especially considering that a sequel was published this year.
As we cross into the second half of the novel, the changes in Katherine’s behaviour of the past few weeks has everyone on edge but it tips some people over the edge like Jaydon. Along with two other boy who worked on OYE with Tyler and Lawrence they join HEX under the premise of getting close to Katherine where the attempt to stone her. Lawrence and Tyler jump in to stop them getting injured in the process but Tyler manages to record everything before they have to escape. Afterwards, Tyler enters a catatonic state until Steve brings him out of it and Tyler confesses everything they have been doing, in order to protect him, Steve gets Tyler to delete everything except the footage of the stoning which he is going to use to get Jaydon punished. Jaydon is very quickly arrested with the other boys for breaking the Emergency Decree and harming Katherine which resulted in the death of an old woman just like it has in the past when people have attempted to mess with Katherine and as he is of age, Jaydon will receive the harshest punishment of the three. His mother attempts to protect him but the council know she has been seeking out Katherine and force her to resign from the council as her own form of punishment but the entire town has now turned against the families of the boys and are lashing out due to the fear they have of what Katherine could do to them.
As we approach the ¾ mark in the novel, apart from a few minor encounters like killing Fletcher and the old woman Katherine has been pretty docile, it the town that has been stirring up trouble like Jaydon did and I was wondering where Heuvelt was going to take the story in the final 100 or so pages. After their arrest the boys are sentencing to be flogged and sent to Doodletown afterwards which is excessive and the whole town is ordered to watch the flogging as a deterrent to others that might be contemplating messing with Katherine. The whole ordeal has had a major impact on the Grant family and even though everything seems to return to some state of normal, it is disrupted again when Jaydon and the others are released and Jaydon wants revenge. Jaydon is still in possession of the recording of Katherine’s whispers and plays them to both Tyler and Matt while they sleep. Tyler hangs himself in the stable and dies while Matt consumes some poisonous mushrooms but he doesn’t die. Matt ends up in the hospital fighting for his life and potentially blind while funeral arrangement are made for Tyler, in the end, it is decided that they will use Tyler’s corneas to try and save Matt’s sight but even after the operation he is completely unresponsive to anything around him possibly due to shock or the mushrooms he consumed have done more damage than they first thought. During this Katherine makes an appearance next to Tyler’s body but she doesn’t seem malicious at all but rather that she is observing a child’s life being taken much like her own son’s life was cut short because of the people in the town.
As we cross into the final section of the novel, with Tyler dead and Matt essentially comatose I had no idea how the novel was going to end especially since they were less than 80 pages remaining but I have a feeling that it will involve Steve and Jocelyn in some way. The final section of the novel is where things really get interesting but we have to work for it as readers. While I did think the finale was great and there was a slight opening for a sequel it was a little disappointing we have to wait for almost 300 pages for anything to really happen. Overall, Hex was an interesting read that had all the tension and paranoia of novels like Pet Semetary and it fit a similar style and themes but it just didn’t quite deliver for me as a reader. Maybe if we had some flashback scenes into Katherine’s past or a chapter or two from her perspective especially towards the end of the novel then it definitely would have been closer to a five star read for me but it was the perfect book to ignite those spooky Halloween vibes.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Comments