Hometown

HOMETOWN-createspace-edit

It’s the Fall of 1994 in the small milltown of Belford, New York. The leaves are turning, the kids are going back to school, and the heat of Summer is giving way to a cool, misty season. It happens every Fall.

Only this Fall, people are disappearing into that mist. Some people are found torn apart, some people are found dead for no reason, and some people aren’t found at all. Other people see strange things in the mist: ghosts and campfire stories.

There’s something out there in that mist. Something old. Something that has slept for a long time, but has now woken up hungry. Maybe the people of Belford could resist it, but as the terrible Fall wears on, more and more of them start…changing. Acting bizarre and violent. In the end, only a small group of teenage defenders are left to make their stand.

Now available at Amazon for sale and for reading at Kindle Unlimited.

Reviews For Hometown:

Erik Henry Vick

Five-Star Review

Where do I start?

Oh, how about this: You went to high school with these characters. Oh, sure, their names were different, and maybe even they were two or three people, but still… Every single one of them.

This book is set in small-town America (specifically in Upstate NY) in the ’90s. It’s your typical high school–drama club, psychos, chorus, child prodigies, football, monsters, field hockey (??), more monsters, preppies, murderers, homecoming, insatiable evil, racist assholes, prom, parties, ghosts, friends-turning-into-lovers, strict parents, bad parents, the hip hangout joint run by a hippie, lynchings, grandparents, a horrible, horrible past, and completely inedible school lunches. See? Just like your high school.

Okay, I’m sure people are going to compare this to Stephen King’s IT, both favorably and unfavorably as these things go. And yeah, it’s a mill town with a river running through the center of it and an amorphous evil thing that wants to kill every kid it sees. But that’s not all. There are twists and turns, and a novel way of combating said evil blob.

There were some mental speed bumps for me, but they are minor. The denouement dragged a little long for me. Yeah, it was work to come up with those. Did I mention they are minor complaints? Because they are. Minor.

Matthew Keville wrote a fun horror novel that I loved reading. I wanted to get back to it and see what the crew was going to get up to next. Books like that are rare these days–from indies and trad authors alike.

Give it a try. I think you’ll like it.

Small town, big terror

By Ben on May 27, 2015

Hometown is a great first novel from Matthew Keville that captures the essence of growing up in a small town, particularly the one in upstate NY in which he and I grew up. (Full disclosure, we went to high school together.) The horror genre gives him an opportunity to explore the simmering tensions just beneath the apparently quaint surface: the poverty and loss of industry, the historical vs. the modern, the cool vs. the rejects, the mansions vs. the trailer parks, and the haves vs. the have nots. The novel asks us, what if what if all of the darkness buried beneath the picket fences was let loose? What if some catalyst initiated an unstoppable chain reaction of all that we have collectively repressed and oppressed?

Two main features stood out to me as excellent in this novel. The first is character development. It was occasionally difficult to pick the book up after a long day because I had grown to care about the characters, and the tension of the action was sometimes too much after after a long day! Occasionally, I just couldn’t bear to see my favorites going through so much, which is the mark of a very good developing writer indeed. The characters were nuanced, especially the “good” characters, and I liked them on a personal level. I felt I knew them. The “bad guys” were utterly despicable.

The other excellent feature — for me — is the landscape of the town itself. It isn’t going too far to call the town a character in this book, and it has that feel of something alive. I was vividly taken back to the place where I grew up, as though the town reached out and pulled me back. In that sense, this book exactly expresses the idea of Freud’s uncanny or unheimlich: the familiar that turns to terror as it mixes with the unfamiliar. “The call is coming from inside the house,” as it were. That is this book to a “t.” We have met the enemy, and he is us.

This is the most fun I’ve had reading in a while. I will very much look forward to watching Keville hone his craft in further novels, and will be on the lookout for his next book.

Suspenseful ~ Great read!

By Thrifty Mamas on March 27, 2015

I received this e-book for my review purposes, all opinions and thoughts are 100% my own and unbiased.

This book is well written and is sure to keep you on the edge. It is very suspenseful and engaging.

It starts out before the school season starts for the kids. It’s the Fall of 1994 in the small Milltown of Belford, New York.Fall season is upon us and many things are going on in the fall, school starting, weather changes. Everything is normal until the disappearances begin. People are disappearing into the mist. Some people are found torn apart, some people are found dead for no reason, and some people aren’t found at all. Other people see strange things in the mist: ghosts and campfire stories. There’s something out there in that mist. Something old. Something that has slept for a long time, but has now woken up hungry. Maybe the people of Belford could resist it, but as the terrible Fall wears on, more and more of them start…changing. Acting bizarre and violent. In the end, only a small group of teenage defenders are left to make their stand.

This book was very exciting there were lots of suspense. If you enjoy on the edge moments you will truly enjoy this book.

This book has violence and sex but is very suspenseful. I would highly recommend it.