I'm a member of Amazon Prime and I have an old version of Kindle but I take advantage of Amazon's Kindle First offerings at the beginning of the month. I have not read the previous month's yet but jumped right in to Ahlborn's horror book. You can check the other offerings for this month: here. Don't have an Amazon Prime membership?
I don't want to be the one person who dislikes something and so far, The Bird Eater has gotten good reviews on Amazon. Ahlborn's previous books have gotten a generally positive reception as well. Nonetheless, "horror" or psychological thrillers have never worked for me. Granted the other one I read that I thought wasn't even as good as my teenage R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike books was Shutter Island (the twist has been done in junior high horror dozens of times).
My review may contain major or minor spoilers.
The Bird Eater is a generally well traveled haunted house story without as many cliches as I expected but has one cliche that outweighs the lack of cliches so that it skews the book to being "meh" for me rather than "decent." The type of haunted house setting that appeals to me personally is still the slow reveal - it's the fear of the unknown that scares me. Unfortunately, in the first chapter the antagonistic entity is revealed and although there is ample tension - it opens up and fulfills expectations so that the unknown is diminished (twists notwithstanding).
Another thing that I had issue with is the introduction of too many characters immediately: Aaron, Edie, Fletcher, Evangeline and Aaron's son without really delving into them. It's the same issue I have in crime shows when the episode has nine different characters and I end up not bothering to care who's who. I feel like the book is a better one about dying towns in the Ozarks and the slight socio-economic tones rather than the haunted house story. Aside from characters transforming from being skeptics to believers, supposed believers to skeptics to believers character development itself is almost non-existent. I get that Aaron goes into a downward spiral into oblivion from being optimistic but he seems to lack any personality to begin with. I liked that the romantic subplot didn't turn out how I thought it would but I felt that the supporting characters were either thinly sketched or bland.
The plot progression is difficult to describe because the point of view shifts randomly to Cheri, Eric or Hazel (whenever major things start to happen). It was awkward at times and didn't enhance the horror aspect. I want to say more about this book I really do but almost everything about it was very mediocre and not scary. Even the supernatural element of identity (the bird eater/the little boy) was dealt with too briefly and the twist of "is he possessing generation after generation trying to come back?" is pretty "standard." I'm not even sure why the bird eating was in this book other than being slightly gross. There's really no reason it was birds. It could have been cats, dogs ; the birds served no symbolic or transcendent purpose for me (well, you could argue birds represent freedom or escape and the evil little boy seeks to enslave his kin but that's kind of cliche).
In conclusion, I don't really recommend reading this book as it wasn't scary for me and there was nothing novel or unique about it.
Verdict: 3.5/10
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