Book Review: "Just Stay Away" by Tony Wirt

It's not every day that I decide to read suburban horror or anything of that same sort, but I took a chance on this one here. Just Stay Away is advertised as somewhere between a psychological thriller and a horror novel but I think it is more along the lines of a suburban thriller. I would not say there is anything psychologically messed up about it and though it starts off really well, it becomes boring and repetitive quickly, finding itself droning on with the reader only waiting for something new to actually happen. With plot holes that are not explained and an ending that is underwhelming and rushed - I feel like this book was quite promising and then drowned itself out before it could become something better.

The book is about an aspiring writer named Craig who just wants time to work on his novel whilst his wife, Courtney, is out at work. All the while, he also has to look after their daughter, Alice. Alice is a precocious and small child who hasn't got many friends since the family moved from Iowa to Minnesota. She's due to start school in the Autumn but for now, her father is working on a novel and she's playing out in the backyard. A boy called Levi comes to the backyard and begins befriending Alice. Although innocent at first, Levi's friendship turns malicious quickly and Craig can no longer contain his temperment, getting him into a lot of trouble. Ultimately, the pressure rises from stalking to attempted murder to arson and so on and so forth.

The advantages of this novel are plenty. First, it is well-written. There's lots of nice suburban atmosphere, there is some weird woods where strange things happen and there's stuff that feels a little off for a nice neighbourhood. Secondly is Alice is also well-written. Alice is a great character that the reader can really get to know: she likes Disney movies (even watching Moana more than once in a day) and she likes the pool. It is a very odd novel which deals with a strange off-putting situations that the suburbs may have in store for us.

However, this book also had its downsides which somewhat outweighed the advantages. First of all, after about halfway through the novel, the storyline starts to become a little dry and repetitive. You really no longer wonder where it's going but the 'fright' dries up due to the elongated nature of what's happening. Another downside to this book was the fact that there was no real build up. It all started and then stalled into the same almost routine situation for about half of the book.

The last thing I want to talk about was the fact that there were some oddities in this book for me. The first being that it took this man two days to write 3'000 or so words. I mean, I'm not even a writer and I write my short stories at about 3'000 words a night. The next thing is the ending in which there was no real movement going on. It was rushed, it just happened and then there was nothing. It ended on a weird note that felt as if it was either unfinished or finished in a very rushed way. I would like to question the belief of the rest of the community at the end point though because it changes for no reason whatsoever.

In conclusion, there were some good and some bad points to this book. I would not class it as horror because there is nothing viscerally frightening about it. There is nothing that feels frightening, it is just a child that is kind of just there. I understand how it is supposed to 'feel' messed up, but it didn't and I think that this book really faltered upon how much damage it could possibly do in comparison to how much damage it actually did. It felt just underwhelming at several points and by the end, you realise that not a lot has actually happened and there were several other ways of solving this problem. I also found the child himself to be a cliché of psychopath children. Nothing different, just cliché speech and cliché actions.

There, I said it.