Book Review: Edenville by Sam Rebelein

I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.

Edenville by Sam Rebelein

Mogsy’s Rating: 1.5 of 5 stars

Genre: Horror

Series: Stand Alone

Publisher: William Morrow (October 3, 2023)

Length: 336 pages

Author Information: Website

Edenville may have the distinction of being my biggest disappointment in 2023, and as it stands now, it’s also probably my lowest rated book of the year. I’m not even going to do my usual rundown of the plot because, quite honestly, I’m not even sure I knew what the hell was going on! For the sake of clarity though, here’s the gist: We have a young couple who move to Edenville because Cam, a failed author with no real job prospects, has taken job at the local college, and his girlfriend Quinn reluctantly follows along because she grew up nearby and has heard all kinds of creepy urban legends about the town. Soon after they arrive, however, Cam starts having these terrible nightmares, and Quinn realizes there may be more than a grain of truth to the horror stories she’s heard growing up.

At this point, I feel I should mention that this was also the year I started DNF’ing books, and the only reason Edenville was spared from this ignominious pile was due to my 25% rule—that is, if I’m not interested in reading any more by the time hit the quarter mark, then it’s time to throw in the towel. Somehow, this novel managed to squeak by this threshold despite being a snoozefest for the first fifty pages or so, mainly because right before 25% was when Cam and Quinn finally made it to Edenville. I thought to myself, well, at the very least, I really should give the novel a chance to win me over now that its namesake has—at long last!—entered the picture.

Which turned out to be a huge mistake. Things not only failed to improve but took a turn for the worse as the plot grew increasingly confusing and nonsensical. As I mentioned before, the opening chapters were a struggle, and most of this was due to the overly indulgent and cumbersome prose. The writing itself is pretentious to the extreme and exudes an air of someone who feels awfully clever and satisfied with themselves. This just made all the jokes unfunny, the profanity crass instead of witty, and robbed any satire of its sophistication. Unfortunately, this attitude of excessive self-satisfaction continues through the entire book. Meanwhile, more important matters like succinctness and lucidity go out the window.

Then there were the characters. Cam was an insufferable snob, but believe it or not, Quinn was the bigger disaster. Girl had no agency, no backbone, no mind of her own. Randomly, she would say, do, or think things that were so jarringly stupid or absurd, many times I found myself wondering if the author was purposely doing this for shock value, or if Quinn was really just that badly written. Evidently, there’s a belief that some male writers struggle to portray female characters realistically, and I’m thinking maybe there’s some of that happening here.

Moving on to the horror aspects. To be fair, this was perhaps the one bright spot of this entire debacle. I do love myself some cosmic horror, which I confess I did not expect from Edenville going in, and it was the singular reason I stayed riding on this trainwreck for so long even after every instinct was screaming for me to bail. In any case, I was already past the point of no return, and I wanted to see things through. There is some serious gross-out gore and body horror within these pages; I only wish the author had exhibited such lack of subtlety from the outset because maybe then the beginning wouldn’t have felt so clunky and ostentatious.

I could go on, but I think I’ve written enough to get the point across. Obviously, I don’t recommend Edenville, and while I won’t deny experiencing a certain degree of catharsis from banging out this review, in retrospect I probably should have listened to my gut and saved myself from this bloated, overly ambitious novel.