“I want you to remember what was good in me, not what was most awful. The people you love should be allowed to keep their worst to themselves.”

Rating: 4 stars

This book was way better than I expected. I saw the movie, and honestly found it massively confusing. After reading the book I have to get my hands on a copy of the movie to rewatch, because I think I’ll enjoy it so much more understanding all of the context of the book.

Ig Perrish is in living hell after his girlfriend Merrin is raped and murdered – everyone thinks he’s responsible, and the evidence that would exonerate him is destroyed. He wakes up, after a night of heavy heavy drinking, with horns on his head and a sudden power that he can’t control. Everyone he speaks to confesses their sins to him, and he can influence them to do the things they confess to him. 

Ig decides to use this power to hunt down the man who really killed Merrin, but the book is ultimately much more than that. Another reviewer said that every time something interesting was going to happen, the book jumped back in time, but I loved that aspect of this novel. Horns is a story of Ig’s life, leading up to Merrin’s death and the year afterwards. It’s about the impact of the accusations cast against him, and ultimately how his life has spiralled from that point.

The supernatural elements of this novel weren’t scary in a horror sort of way, more of a way carrying the psychological thriller aspects of the novel. And I would definitely call this a psychological thriller, keeping me hooked from page one all the way through to the end with an intense fascination in Ig’s story. 

Both Joe Hill books I’ve read have been equally good, and I’m definitely putting the rest of his work on the top of my list, because I find the way he writes incredibly engaging and hard to put down.

Note: This review was copied verbatim from my Goodreads account dated June 18th 2019.