Book Review: The Lodge by by Chris Coppel

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I requested The Lodge for review because it sounded like a gory horror set in one of my favourite places on Earth: the Scottish Highlands. I was hoping it would be an atmospheric and spooky read, but I immediately felt let down by the writing style.

The writing felt very juvenile, with lots of exclamation marks within the prose which I do not like. It tends to feel childish and stunted when authors do this, especially to the extent the author of The Lodge used them.

There was also a lot of info dumping, which is not something I typically expect from my horror books. One moment I was reading about the goings on at the hotel, and then I was suddenly switching to what was basically a biography of one of the characters, which talked about what seemed to be their entire lives up until they got to the hotel. It was boring, it was jarring, and I didn’t care for it. I feel like this could have been done much more smoothly, if it was even necessary.

Because of this writing style (and the instalove that had?? no?? place?? in such a horror book, I wasn’t able to get into the book and I’ve had to rate it quite poorly. I didn’t enjoy it at all.