Nightshade

Rating:
Summary: I Slept With The Lights On
Review: This book was chillingly suspenseful. It's a great book for those who love getting their pants scared right off. John Saul was able to create a gruesomely, delightfully scary storyline. The characters seemed to jump to life right off the bat and... wow! I was sucked right in and the next thing I knew I couldn't believe what I was reading. I admit I slept with the bedroom light on until I finished the book.

Rating:
Summary: good reading
Review: This was a good reading. John Saul always grabs your attention right from the very beginning of his books.
Matt is a normal teenager who has a lot going for himself. Hes popular has a girlfriend and his mother joan and stepfather bill love him dearly. Then his grandmother moves in after a fire. She insists on decorating the room next to hers as a memorial to her daughter cynthia who died over ten years ago. Him and his mother then start to feel the presence of his aunt cynthia in the house and his life is turned upside down. After an accident with his stepfather every one turns against him. Things get worse after his grandmother and girlfriend go missing to. Matt keeps having blackouts and losing track of time...could he have possibly done the things he was accused of?
Though the book was kind of predictable, it was good. This book will have you on the edge of your seat. I started reading friday night was finished saturday afternoon. Its fast paced and doesnt lag at all. I never look for a happy ending when reading john saul, so i wasnt surprised with all that happened. The only thing i wanted was to know exactly what happened between joan and her father. Was it really how her mom said or was it just a figment of her imagination. Also i was disappointed with the way that cynthia died. After all the trouble she's caused joan growing up i was just waiting to read how joan gave it to her. But no it wasnt what i expected. Poor becky though and her mother got EXACTLY what she deserved. And i agree with cynthia. After everything her mother did to joan she still managed to love her.
But pick up the book and you wont be disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Easy read, kept me interested
Review: This was my first John Saul novel. I had read reviews on some of his books and after finishing the book I agree on many things. John Saul doesn't twirl and shape the words in endless paragraph that extend the book another 100 pages like Dean Koontz. Nor does he create a personal story for most of the characters like some of my favorite St. King's. The writing works most of all to keep the story moving forward, sometimes a little too quick. Now I'm not saying this bothers me that much. In the specific case of Nightshade I found the first few chapters really great as Saul tells the story of this old woman with Alzheimer disease and in some parts did really touch me (like when he relates how Emily began forgetting everybody little by little till everyone seemed to be a stranger). However the book later focuses on the teenager Matt whose life just shatters after a terrible accident. Everything that comes next just seems to make Matt's situation worse and there is not the slightest hint of things getting better. In my opinion this is what's wrong with this book because in the end (I'm not gonna tell it dont worry) things kind of fix too fast, too conviniently. Still it was an easy read, nice to engage with for a couple of nights. Some graphic gorish details.

Rating:
Summary: It is dull, dark and depress...if this what you like.
Review: When I read the first 100 pages, I thought: What's wrong with all the negative review? It's a easy read,keep me turn every pages and read till I couldn't open my eyes at late night...
So it's good then, yes. And when I got this book, I first thought it's a haunted house or something about haunted. But then, when things started to happened, when Matt's dad killed...
I found out this is not a haunted story but a very depress, dark mentally murder story. At least I don't get the chill, scary feeling but I don't feel well at my stomach and not comfortable when I read it along. When all the detail, killing part, how they struggle for life...made me feel like them. So Mr.Saul wrote a good honor story then, yes. It effect reader, which they will experience the darkest things that they don't want to happen in their life. But for me, I am a haunted, ghost story fan but I have a weak stomach for murder, crime story that I always try to avoid. So this is an accident that I read this book, It made my weekend depress and I have that dull dark feeling in me when I think of going back to it. So I am not sure if I will read till the end. But If you really love murder or blood, killing story then you will love this for sure. Mr.Saul has a unique perspective of darkness for human mind.
I gave 3 stars, cause it is really a page turner and good write.
But for the story and idea, you be the judge.
If reader that can just read the story and can't affect from it at all...maybe you will read. But for those who's sensitive, I would say think twice before you read it. It effect your mind.

Rating:
Summary: A masterful novel of psychological horror
Review: With Nightshade, John Saul gets back to what he does best, giving birth to a story almost as chilling and compelling as his premier masterpiece Suffer the Children. Forget biomedical experimentation, genetic manipulation, and all of the other external forces that often lie behind Saul's plots; this book marks a return to good old-fashioned madness and horror. Of course, we start with the perfect all-American family-Joan Moore Hapgood, her son Matt, and husband Bill who has always thought of his step-son as his own true son. Suddenly, Joan's grim, bitter, nasty, Alzheimer's-afflicted mother almost burns her own house down and comes to live with the Hapgoods. Emily Moore is obsessed with her daughter Cynthia, the perfect child whom she refuses to believe is never coming back home to her. Immediately, Matt's nights are filled with the horrible nightmares he had not experienced since leaving Emily's home as a child to move to the home of his new step-father. Watching his mother-in-law tearing his happy family apart, Bill simply leaves his wife and son to the misery of Emily's company. A series of tragedies unfolds, affecting not only the family but the entire close-knit community. Matt changes into a haunted young man, seeing suspicion and dislike pointed toward him from everyone he has ever cared about. Misery turns to the ultimate tragedy, and the reader is left to ponder just who is responsible. Is it Matt, who looks guilty in the eyes of everyone else? Is it his aunt Cynthia, whose presence comes to permeate the house and exert an unhealthy influence on Matt's life in spite of the fact that she is long-dead? Or could it be someone or something else?

Saul hits a home run with this novel. Whatever suspicions the reader entertains, the truth is never truly known in spite of its foreshadowing, not until the ultimate conclusion. As the plot progresses, Saul slowly but surely increases the tension, drawing the reader further and further into this fascinating story. One is never really sure what to think about the action as it unfolds. Even when the true source of the horror is revealed a couple of chapters before the end, the heightened sense of expectation and worry for the characters so well-presented and seemingly real continues unabated. To some degree this is a ghost story, but it is better described as psychological horror. Madness makes for a much more compelling villain than outside entities, and that is why Nightshade stands as one of John Saul's most compelling novels. Filled with insanity, ghostly impressions, terror, murder, a bit of blood and gore, and a surprise or two at the end, Nightshade reveals the true talent that resides in the mind of an author too little appreciated by the horror community.