Reviews with content warning for Child death - Little Heaven

The best Nick Cutter horror.
Fantastic trio of main characters, a genuinely unsettling horror and doesn't feel as gratuitous as other extreme horror novels. Don't take that as me saying it's an easy or comfortable read though!

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vetrina's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I enjoyed the book! It definitely has a slow start, but it pays off in the end. I liked the 1960s storyline quite a bit, but I feel like the 1980s storyline was underdeveloped and kinda unnecessary. Most of the time jumps were kinda jarring, and it might have been better to make most of the book chronological (except for maybe the prologue/part 1 at the beginning to build up interest).

I really like the idea of a spaghetti western horror. The creatures were cool (especially the one made up of a bunch of different animal parts), and I really liked the main characters and their chemistry. The gory descriptions were pretty great and disturbing. I do think that this book was trying to do a bit too much, and I think the cult itself got pushed to the backburner.

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cswirl1's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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emsemce123's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I have previously read 2 other books by Nick Cutter; The Troop and The Deep, and I love how different and unique they both felt from one another and this one is no different. Telling 2 stories that take place in separate timelines, one in the 60's and another in the 80's, we follow a trio of hit men, first hired to kill one another, later working together to infiltrate a religious Cult in the scrubland to find a child. Getting into the Cult is easy enough but once inside there's something in the wild abducting children and it won't let them leave. The 2 storylines style is always gamble but it worked well enough here, giving us insight into each of the characters and getting to know them so well that when we flashback to the present timeline, we already know them. Another thing I loved, and I don't know if this is the case, but this gives me a Cormac Mccarthy feel to it, as if Cutter was trying to emulate his style and its not 1:1 but I didn't need it to be. The way he describes the setting, as someone who's never been to the American southwest, I can still picture and feel.it perfectly in my mind, might also be a big contribution to the McCarthy feel as well, but also in the character work. Speaking of characters, despite following hired killers who've all done deplorable things and have no problem with taking a life, they feel sympathetic enough to never be dislikeable and I think that's because he gave us an even more deplorable villain in the preacher Amos Flescher, who leads the cult. My only complaint is while the human menace is easy enough to understand, the supernatural one is still a little bit of a mystery to me by the end. What is it? Where did it come from? Why can it do the things that it can do? How is it able to? Why does it? It's a very cool monster but I never felt like I got a good idea why it did the things it did. I would say this is the weakest of the 3 for me but in no way a bad book, and I would recommend it if you're curious in the slightest.

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momostark's review against another edition

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dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

2.25

This book was written in 2017…..I get that it is set in the 60’s-80’s but do we really need to use slurs in this day and age??? I was also not a fan of the explicit content with the children. That was unnecessary.

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darksaphira's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Started off so slow for the first 80-100 pages (took me over a week), then it dug its claws in and wouldn't let up (just a few hours, didn't want to put it down). I'm glad I stuck with it!

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hokunani_sorci's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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caspian's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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