Book Review: "Echo" by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

“You know I enjoy our juxtapositions, our squabbles and edges, the fact that at first sight, our worlds seem so incompatible. If there's anything you can point to as to why we love each other, then it's that, and I've been treating it for three years now as an unexpected gift. There's nothing more damaging to yourself than trying to mold your lover into your own image. Instead, I respect the fact that our differences empower us, and I see each hitch as an exploration - each quarrel as a new, unconquered peak.”

Now, I have heard of this author before and in fact, I have read a book by this author before called Hex. Did I enjoy Hex? No. I did not. But rarely do I ever give authors one chance before I call it quits with them and so, as I was searching around the internet I came across a Reddit thread about horror novels and this appeared on the list. Remembering my dislike for the other novel meant I was somewhat apprehensive about getting on with it. But as I started reading, there was definitely something to enjoy about this book. Unfortunately, it gets overshadowed by a bunch of other stuff too. If I have said it once, I have said it a million times: horror stories are best kept simple. Interweaving narratives get the reader to involved with trying to understand how everything is connected and it can take away from the fear they are supposed to be feeling.

The story starts with a prologue in which Julia is at home by herself. As she starts to see things around the house, she tries to convince herself it is not real. She sees people, edging closer towards her and, on the phone to her brother who is stuck in traffic at the time, tries to explain that there is no way out. She feels one of them embrace her before it cuts to the main story in which Nick, Sam's boyfriend, is in hospital after having an accident whilst mountain climbing. Nick's face is completely bandaged up and Sam questions doctors and nurses as to what happened to him. The story changes from "rocks fell on him" to "that doesn't line up with rocks falling on him" in a couple of chapters. Nick can no longer speak and so writes whatever he has to say on a notepad. Calling himself a monster, he urges Sam to leave before he gets hurt.

We switch between a few stories, one of which is the digital diary that Nick takes whilst mountain climbing with a friend called Augustin. Augustin has since disappeared and, whilst Nick is in hospital, he doesn't remember exactly what happened up there. As we delve into the digital diary we find the last photo that Nick ever took was a picture of a smiling Augustin. Weird things happen on the mountain according to the diary including some holes that apparently look just like eyes. There is definitely something strange happening but we won't here that much about it until later.

The best part of this book was the digital diary because it was the most atmospheric. The weirdest part was definitely that side story Sam tells about Prometheus and the one that the book could have done without was the whole story about Emily Wan. There was simply too much going on for me to keep involved with every single storyline for that long. I think if more attention was paid to the digital diary sections then I would have been a lot more interested because those parts felt like the cold, sublime gothic of Frankenstein with the horror that we associate with HP Lovecraft.

All in all, it was an average horror novel with again, too many little side stories everywhere. This meant that no matter how revealing the ending was, it was always going to fall flat as now the reader is relieved that they do not have to pay attention to every single character's storyline anymore. The one that we are really interested in is what happened on the mountain, everything else becomes secondary and so, it doesn't frighten us as much as it should.