This is a dark book. Full of despair, horror, and uglisness. The writing is wonderful but it is not a feel good book. You will have trouble finding anyone to root for including Ig. It will make you think. Not because of some deep inner mystery because lays most of the plot about by page 50. Instead you will wonder about the demons and despair everyone around you might be carrying around. Only a four star for me because I felt the pacing was off in a few spots. It was still a great way to start off my Halloween horror read-a-thon. ( )

Easy to read and was engaging so I went through this pretty fast. It had a couple of corny moments but otherwise was a pretty cool concept and I liked the ending. ( )

Wow. Joe Hill is fast becoming one of my favorite authors. I'd heard high praise for his latest book, and was not let down.

We meet a varied, and wonderful cast of characters. We meet Ig, the main character, mourning his lost love who was raped and murdered. He faces the fact that everyone thinks him responsible for it. He also wakes up on the anniversary weekend of her death to find that he is growing horns. And those horns have powers over other humans. They cause the deepest, darkest secrets and desires to come out of people unprompted. He can also cause people to act on those desires.

We meet Glenna, Ig's roomate-with-benefits, and a long-time friend. She is a sweet, gentle girl who bases her self-worth on what others, especially men, think of her. Her life is full of never quite measuring up to her own standards.

We meet Ig's parents, grandmother and brother, Terry, who confess to Ig shocking things that no child should ever have to hear from his family.

We meet Lee, Ig's "best friend" and probably one of the darkest characters one could meet. Lee is someone who can put on the perfect front, when in fact, he is plotting against those closest to him.

And we meet Merrin, who was lost too early in her life, in one way or another. We see her through everyone's eyes, and know her, though she is lost.

I can't help but mention Hill's father, Uncle Stevie, who had the habit of referencing characters from his other novels. Hill did the same, so watch for a reference hidden in the text.

I loved this book. I took the emotional roller coaster ride, the ups, the downs, the love, the pain, and wondered at the human condition. Surreal, and beautiful, I probably will be reading this book again and again. ( )

Despite reading the back blurb and looking at the title it wasn't until I started reading it that I realized that "OOHHH it's really about a guy who wakes up with horns on his head". Apparently I'm an idiot. Idk, maybe I thought it would be a metaphor or something.

I did like this book a lot, but I was not 100% sold on the ending. I wanted everyone to know what that fucker Lee did. Death was not punishment enough!! But the ending that we got was not awful or anything, so it was not enough for me to retract a star or anything.

As with most books my biggest problems are the female characters (maybe some more of them?) and in this case how it treats gay men (very much like a joke ... at least in the beginning) and later on cross-dressing. The MC ends up wearing a skirt due to plot reasons, and the way some characters react to it was very much like "let's laugh at the man in the skirt" ... which isn't the greatest plot device to include.

But other than that, I thought it was amazing. Not particularly scary, but hard to put down, especially when I was nearing the end. And that wasn't even because of the "big" mystery, aka how the horns got there, I completely forgot that was even meant to be a mystery for most of the book. The rest of the plot worked well on its own. ( )

After reading and mostly enjoying NOS4A2, I decided to give Horns a shot when I saw the audio version was available at my local library. I'm very happy I did. The story was interesting and didn't go the way I had expected in quite a few places. Hell, I even got a little misty in one place.

My only real complaint is the POV switch that happens pretty late in the book and only lasts a few chapters. I didn't care for that at all. I understand that Hill wanted us to get some info and insight into one of the characters but it didn't feel right after having the only one POV up until that point.

Beside that, though, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and the narration. I liked it more than I did NOS4A2. Now I need to watch the movie to see how it compares. ( )