I normally don’t read horror. Yes, I read Stephen King, but most of his stuff in the past few decades doesn’t really qualify as horror to me. I am a big scaredy cat and have avoided the genre but am slowly starting to dip my toe into the horror waters again.
Black Sheep seemed like a good place to start, horror but with some humor and light on the horror overall. Sounds good to me.
For the longest time, I had no idea what direction the book would take. I kept reading and just had no idea. It didn’t detract from the book but I was questioning the horror aspect for sure. Maybe mystery? Maybe just Family Drama? But horror? I wasn’t seeing it.
Again, not a huge fan of horror, so all of this sat well with me. I liked Vesper, her family was definitely weird and somewhat dysfunctional. Very dysfunctional at times.
Once the story got going and I figured out what was going on, I enjoyed the experience. Now that I have finished, I still struggle with how people classify this as horror. Really, at the end of the day, it’s a think-outside-the-box family drama, but not horror. There’s really not even a lot of tension built up…maybe once scene.
If you’re looking for horror, Black Sheep isn’t it. If you’re looking for oddball family dynamics with a bit of a twist, this might be your cup of tea.
I gave Black Sheep four stars because I enjoyed the story, it’s a new direction for me but for people heavily into horror or stories about cults, this is just window dressing. I think this book is a perfect example of what it means about a book being for you or not for you, not necessarily that it’s bad.
It’s for me, it’s good training wheels. I’ll keep wading into darker books but it was an excellent spot to dip my toe.