MY REVIEWS: BONECHILLER BY GRAHAM MCNAMEE

Reading is what I've spent most of my life doing. It started off with Enid Blyton's Book of Faeries and grew from there. Little Women, What Katy Did, Great Expectations, David Copperfield, you name it, I read it. And once I hit puberty, losing myself in the pages of a good Mills & Boon to be swept up in the arms of the perfect Mills & Boon man, with his perfectly coiffed hair and waxed chest. Then finding myself on the high seas, having my swash buckled by some chisel-jawed pirate who looked remarkably like Fabio.... sigh.... Then I discovered Stephen King! Carrie, Cujo, Christine (we won't talk about Tommyknockers) and many more, as well as the Richard Bachmann books. Wonderful otherworldly stuff that fed my need for adventure, for soul-searching and beautifully woven heart-stopping moments of the valiant survival of the human spirit. And, of course, having the pants scared off me! Where would we be without those wonderful stories? Bored out of our minds watching reality TV shows, that's where!

Now, I don't know about you lot, but I like to read in the bath. I know, I know, many a good book has fallen into the bubble-filled depths, but hey, that's what Amazon is for--to replace the soggy ones. Well, the other night I was book-less and not quite sad enough to read one of me own, so I asked my best mate.... my son, Alex. He asked for books this year, as did Gracie, but I was a little loathe to read the Diva Diaries and if I'd dropped one of hers in the bath I'd never have heard the end of it! Al went through his stash and gave me Bonechiller by Graham McNammee. I read the blurb....

'Even here, at the end of the world, nightmares always track you down.' To Danny, small town life is deadly dull ... Until his school mate disappears, naked and delirious, into the snow one night, never to be seen again. It turns out, it's not the first time this has happened. There's something out there in the dark and now it's waiting for him. Fear has a face ... and it's watching.  Small town life is no longer dull, just deadly ...

BUY HERE

....my interest was peaked, so I retired to my candlelit bathroom and headed into what I thought was going to be a pretty bog-standard read. I mean, it's aimed at teenagers so how scary could it be, right?

Holy crapoly! I couldn't put it down. Eventually I had to though because the water was freezing and I was beginning to resemble a cross between a prune and my 89-year-old Auntie Dot. But I did eighteen chapters in that first bath and it took me three more semi-scalding dips and half the car journey to Sue Brown's to finish it! 

Brilliantly written from a teenager's point of view. Trying to cope with the still raw death of a parent whilst falling in love for the first time is hard enough, but when you add a monstrous well... monster.... into the mix things can only get worse. Children have been going missing for years in the Cove and Danny and his friend Howie are next. But with the help of Howie's crazy brother Pike and the beautiful wise-ass, Ashley, Danny is determined they will be the last.

I loved this book from start to finish. Can't recommend it enough. I think Alex and I are going to be wrestling for the other books in the series. Don't worry, if he wins I'll ground him, so I know who'll be getting first dibs!